LinkedIn Suffers Legal Smackdown
You heard it first on The Shred, and the boys go deep into the legal case pitting hiQ against 800-lb. gorilla LinkedIn that's left LinkedIn licking its wounds. What's more, McDonald's is making acquisitions that will impact workers while Walmart is working to employ teens while California says Uber drivers aren't contract workers anymore. Oh, and Trump is reportedly launching a Facebook-killer.
- Walmart goes teeny and payday loans WTAF? - Trump social network will divide and possibly conquer?
Enjoy and pay respect to the sponsors that make it all happen: Sovren, JobAdX, and Canvas.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
Announcer: Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion, and loads of snark, buckle up, boys and girls. It's time for the Chad and Cheese Podcast.
Joel: Aw, yeah. Time for another show, another podcast. It's the jet lagged edition of the Chad and Cheese Podcast, HR's most dangerous. I'm Joel Cheesman.
Chad: And I'm Chad "Delta Lounge" Sowash.
Joel: On this week's episode, LinkedIn feels the agony of defeat, McDonald's embraces AI, and California says gig workers are more full-time employee than contractor. Get ready to party like HiQ's legal team, we'll be right back after a word from Canvas.
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Canvas: Request a demo at gocanvas.io, and in 20 minutes, we'll show you how to text at the speed of talent. That's gocanvas.io. Get ready to text at the speed of talent.
Chad: Oh yeah.
Joel: Great seeing the Canvas crew this week.
Chad: That's right. Amber, she was on stage all week, and she was just on stage here at Chad and Cheese.
Joel: Dude, Amber's a rockstar, man.
Chad: She is.
Joel: She's introducing Soledad O'Brien, she's introducing delegates from whatever. I don't know who the guests were.
Chad: I don't know.
Joel: She's a pro now, man. She's all growed up.
Chad: She's all growed up. She's killing it. And Jobvite overall, we had a great time in San Francisco. Yeah, had to stay for a little-
Joel: Totally blast.
Chad: ... Soledad, but a lot of great information going on. We got some interviews that are going to be popping out here in the next few weeks, but yeah, no, man, we had a blast.
Joel: Yeah, for sure. Go check out #RNL19 for photos, updates, and highlights from the show.
Chad: Yeah. And while we were there, shout out to Jonathan Duarte for bringing us beer. Local beer. And Giants tickets, baby, and we're not just talking about any Giants tickets, we're talking about on the fucking field Giants tickets. That was good shit.
Joel: We're talking third row. Now granted, they're not very good and it's towards the end of the season and tickets are pretty readily available, but still-
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Third row is still third row, so Jonathan, major shout out. And it's always nice to be out of the Bay winds that come up when you sit higher up in the stadium, which I have definitely done before.
Chad: Oh yeah.
Joel: Down by the field is much warmer.
Chad: Yeah, yeah. Well, also shout out to Anthony Garcia, founder of HMFIC over at Purepost. He joined us, starting to work a little bit with the guys at Purepost, it's a translating platform for veterans, and I've been one of the biggest assholes when it comes to a lot of these crosswalks and shit because I actually hit one once, and I said, "The only way this shit's going to get done the right way is if you build it from the ground up," and these guys actually built it from the ground up, and I knew it was legit when I was introduced to these guys by Google. Google reached out to me and said-
Joel: Nice.
Chad: ... "Chad, you guys, you know some things about this. Why don't you hook up with these guys? Because I think it's a good marriage." So they're legit and they're doing it the right way, but they're in total startup mode and it was great to finally meet him face to face.
Joel: Now is HMFIC actually on his LinkedIn profile, or is that just something that's special to you guys?
Chad: If it's not, I should be. Head motherfucker in charge should always be-
Joel: It sure as hell should be.
Chad: Yeah, wow.
Joel: Shout out to Mason Wan, long-time listener, fan of the show, fan of all things what we're doing, got to connect with him at Recruiter National Live. He's now at Lyft making miracles happen at the ride-sharing service, and I sat down with him for an interview, so double shout out for seeing him as well as sitting down for an interview. Be excited for that to drop here hopefully in the near future.
Chad: Good stuff.
Joel: Good dude. Good people.
Chad: Shout out to Nathan Perrott over at AIA. Dude needs to eat a fucking cheeseburger. I sent him a medium Chad and Cheese T-shirt-
Joel: That's a medium?
Chad: That's a medium, and the dude had to wear a shirt underneath it, so Nathan, you know you're not like 6'2 or anything like that, but still, dude, eat a fucking cheeseburger.
Joel: Dude, we're going to have to start getting shirts from Baby GAP if that thing's a medium. Good lord.
Chad: As we're talking about some really good shit, some social media sharing shit, Recruitics plus KRT equals hold my beer. We did that podcast-
Joel: Fucking brilliant.
Chad: ... a little while ago, and then these guys took that shit and ran. They actually created a logo, a hold my beer logo, and they sent us pictures of Josh and Mona, and then there's another picture of a bunch of employees on a boat with the Statue of Liberty behind them, and they all had hold my beer koozies and they were KRT and Recruitics. It was awesome.
Joel: Now built some context around this. This was born out of our show.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: And when they made the acquisition to Recruitics, your comment, I'm giving you full credit, was "Hold my beer." I think you social media'd that shit, and they grabbed onto it and got fucking koozies and the whole staff is touring, I guess, New York City or something with these koozies, and it's fucking ... It's like game over-
SFX: That's it, man. Game over, man. Game over.
Joel: ... for any other company to give us props for our show. That was fucking awesome.
Chad: This is how ... We always talk about Tengai and some of these other companies who listen to us, and they troll us or they use our shit, this is how you do it. Just have fun with this shit. Quit being so stuffy.
Joel: Get a koozie, goddammit.
Chad: Get a goddamn koozie. My last shout out is, you're going to love this one, this is fucking hilarious, John Thurman saw one of those food delivery robots on a sidewalk delivering in George Mason University and he shared it on Twitter.
Joel: That is awesome.
Chad: Yeah, because we were talking about how they were deploying them at Purdue, and now we see they're at George Mason, so man, that is freaking hilarious.
Joel: I just want to know if this was before he took an aluminum bat to the moving cooler, or spray painted it with a penis or something, because that's going to happen.
Chad: Maybe. I'm telling you right now, buy stock in aluminum bats.
Joel: Well, let's get to our travel schedule before we get to the news.
Chad: Oh, real quick, we had a question from a listener.
Joel: Oh, yeah.
Chad: So a listener-
Joel: Oh, okay.
Chad: ... actually asked, because of Appcast and their purchase, or they were purchased by StepStone, they didn't believe that Appcast was still doing distribution to Indeed, and that is wrong from all accounts that we know, that's a big no. Appcast is still working with Indeed, so if you've heard rumors out there, is that long-term plan, who knows? But right as of now, all indications that we have is that there's no question, Appcast is still working with Indeed. It would make no sense for them to cut that line of partnership off right now.
Joel: And not that making sense ever made sense in our industry, but yeah, cutting off Indeed from Appcast would be a really bad decision by Appcast, so I don't think that's happening. Travel schedule.
Chad: Sponsored by Shaker Recruitment Marketing.
Joel: That's right, powered by Shaker Recruitment Marketing.
Chad: Powered by. So TAtech in late September, we've got about a week and a half until we go down to Austin for Death Match. We're really excited about Death Match. Who's on the schedule there for Death Match?
Joel: Oh, man, we're talking Pez, not the candy.
Chad: Pez.ai.
Joel: We're talking Seekout, we're talking Seekout with founder Anoop, former direct-
Chad: Advisor.
Joel: Bill gates, we're talking Job.com-
Chad: Yep.
Joel: And their crypto blockchain credit card haven startup stuff, and then we've got ... Who am I missing?
Chad: Ass is first.
Joel: AssessFirst, French company, whose founder is incredibly animated.
Chad: Good.
Joel: So getting him onstage is going to be a trip, for sure. And I've just ordered the hardware for the winner, which I don't think we've revealed yet.
Chad: No.
Joel: But pretty excited about the winning hardware that the company will receive for being champion.
Chad: Yes, said trophy. And all of this brought to you by, get ready, step back-
Joel: I'm ready.
Chad: Alexander Mann Solutions. That's right.
Joel: Woo.
Chad: This is the Chad Cheese TAtech joint, but this baby is fueled by Alexander Mann.
Joel: I think it's worth talking about the judges if you're talking Quincy-
Chad: Oh, fuck yeah.
Joel: Cindy from Talroo, we just added Robert from Sovren, president, CEO. It's a star-studded cast, not only on the stage but also at the table judging them. And then we go to ... And then our HR Tech is shortly after that-
Chad: HR Tech, yeah.
Joel: ... in early October. The show that banned us a year ago now wants us to perform, which is fucking ridiculous.
Chad: Twice.
Joel: Yeah, love it.
Chad: Twice. Yeah, we're on stage twice on the Tech stage or something like that in the Expo Hall, but yeah, Jobcase said, "If you're going to TAtech, we're going with you." So thanks to Fred and the kids over at Jobcase, yeah, everybody loves a little HR Tech, but we're going to be able to love it from the stage a couple of times and do it in style, due to Jobcase.
Joel: The Jobcase hats are fat, so I'm going to be supporting that puppy in HR Tech. Going to be a real upgrade from my Emissary T-shirt from a year or two ago. It'll be nice.
Chad: Then we go to Paris, France for Unleash.
Joel: Oui, oui.
Chad: SmashFly is partnering with us to have a little fun in Paris. You're going to have to come to Paris to see what that fun is, but we're going to have a star-studded panel, and again, we're going to be in the Expo Hall doing all of this, but excited about Unleash, not to mention our newly formed podcast, again, brought to you by SmashFly, is the cult brand that we just launched. Brand-spanking-new, we have about half dozen more of these podcasts already in the can, ready to launch, and we've got many more that are already scheduled, but this is bridging cult brand and HR, really the understanding of how do you create a cult brand, companies like Airbnb, Chili's Bar and Grill, Las Vegas What Happens Here, Stays Here, so we've got a ton of really cool brands and journeys to be able to sit back and just listen. These are amazing stories.
Joel: Yeah. We're wedging a Golden Gate Bridge between recruiting and marketing. Can't wait to see the content that we produce from that, and just published the one with Douglas Atkin, head of community at Airbnb, talking about their culture, cast of characters, the start of the company. I think it's some of our best work to date. I don't know how you feel, but really proud of what we're doing in the cult brand series and hope that everyone listens into that.
Chad: Not to mention we just had fucking Dan Pankow, man. It's going to the next level.
Joel: Yeah. Eventually people are going to wake up to the fact that we're a bunch of idiots and will stop talking to us.
Chad: Shh, shh.
Joel: But until then, we have some pretty smart people on the show.
Chad: Why don't we talk about some pretty smart people? What about HiQ and the win that they just had-
Joel: What about HiQ?
Chad: ... over LinkedIn?
Joel: Yeah, let's get to the news. So you and I have been covering this news, jeez, almost from the start.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Basically LinkedIn sent out cease and desist letters to a bunch of companies that were using their data to provide services and info and intel about profiles to their clients. Most of the companies they sent letters to said, "Yes, sir," shut down, stopped doing it, whatever. One little company out in San Francisco said, "Suck it, we're going to take you to court," and HiQ, the company that basically scans, scrapes, takes LinkedIn data, makes sense of it for their clients, took them to court. They've been in court a couple times, a couple appeals, a couple of shit that goes in if you want to search our archives, feel free to do that.
Joel: But most recently, the court ruled against LinkedIn, again, in court, federal appeals court Monday ruled in favor that scraping data from LinkedIn profiles was basically okay. The opinion by three judges in the 9th U.S. circuit court of appeals held that LinkedIn does not own the data posted by its users, and thus cannot block HiQ, a recruitment data marketing company, from compiling the information sorting it or otherwise using it. One of the quotes from the news that was interesting, from one of the circuit court judges was, quote, "Giving companies like LinkedIn free reign to decide on any basis who can collect and use data-"
Chad: That's right.
Joel: ... "Data that the companies do not own that they otherwise made publicly available to viewers and that the companies themselves collect and use risks the possible creation of information monopolies that would disserve the public interest." So-
Chad: So ...
Joel: There you have it.
Chad: Hoping to have Mark-
Joel: Scrape away.
Chad: And maybe even Darren on from HiQ sometime soon to be able to talk this through. I'm sure ... This is awesome, man, and it says a lot really how we're going to be looking at data, but here's the thing, as with GDPR becoming a standard, is this really winning? Now I agree, it's not LinkedIn's data. Fucking get that. But that doesn't mean that you can just come in and scrape shit, because as we start moving to a GDPR-like society, it's owned by the candidate, 100%. So the big question is for companies like HiQ, which these are questions that I want to be able to really hit them with, is how are these candidates ... You're going to have to get buy in from these candidates before you go take data.
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: It doesn't matter. Before you do any type of scraping whatsoever, you're going to have to get buy in, and so is LinkedIn. Just because you put your shit in LinkedIn does not mean you own my shit, right? So LinkedIn doesn't have, and again, this is pretty much what this case says, LinkedIn can't just do whatever the fuck they want with this data. So my big question to them is, how are they going to deal with GDPR on the LinkedIn side, and then how are companies like HiQ going to deal with it because you're going to have to get that opt in?
Joel: Yeah. And we don't know how many of HiQ's customers are really focused outside of the U.S. in places like Europe where that's a big deal. We both agree that-
Chad: It's a big deal in California right now.
Joel: [crosstalk 00:16:42] privacy will be a big deal. Yeah, California, it will be a big deal, so I think to me, question not only is privacy and who owns the data and taking it from the web is obviously most likely going to be a no-no at some point. I don't know how hard HiQ is partying when they look at the future of privacy, but also, if LinkedIn is losing on a judicial front or legislative front, I think they're probably winning on a technological front, and they're doing so many interesting savvy, clever things to make it really hard to scrape their data in the first place. I've talked to some people that are really good at this stuff saying that LinkedIn is starting to randomize the data that shows up for robots that go in and try to get stuff. And they're just getting better at that, so it's becoming a whack-a-mole situation where you just have to consistently tweak your algorithm or tweak your stuff to be able to get LinkedIn's data.
Joel: So for most companies-
Chad: It's not LinkedIn's data, though.
Joel: [crosstalk 00:17:52]
Chad: See, that's the thing. Now because of this, companies can start to think about taking LinkedIn to court, if they try to play this whack-a-mole bullshit game. Right? You can't-
Joel: Well, good luck with that.
Chad: This changes the conversation dramatically.
Joel: I don't know ... That's going to be a nasty black hole to try to legally tell LinkedIn that it can't put up technological protections against spiders coming to the side, etc., because that's a whole issue of bandwidth and using our service, making it slower for other people that are actual people that are using it ...
Chad: That was part of the defense on this current case.
Joel: It wasn't about bandwidth, it was about who's ... Do they own the data or not?
Chad: It was also about maybe not bandwidth, but it was also about taxing their technical infrastructure. So they were putting out those defenses. It wasn't just about who owned the data, it was much further than that. So this result will smack that square in the fucking face.
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: I don't know. Because I think it's ... At what point can they declare intellectual property in terms of how-
Chad: It's not their data.
Joel: ... they ...
Chad: It's not their data. Fuck you. It's not your data.
Joel: But it's their website.
Chad: Well, and that's fine. It's your website, but that doesn't mean ... I mean, you don't own the data within that website. That's what I'm saying. This conversation changes dramatically. I'm not saying it's a simple conversation, I'm saying it-
Joel: No.
Chad: ... changes dramatically and when you start playing those whack-a-mole games, as we've talked about for well over a year now, can you do that now? Because that's not your fucking data.
Joel: Yeah, these are all questions that will have to be answered.
Chad: I'm so excited.
Joel: By people smarter and wealthier than us. But yeah, I think the privacy is definitely going to be an issue regardless, and then how sites protect their data.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Publicly data, or can they do that? And what is intellectual property? Can you declare intellectual property? I don't know, dude.
Chad: See, and there's a big difference. So the technology itself is the intellectual property. What you're doing with that data is the tech, right? The data is not the tech. So it's fairly simple to spread those things apart and say, "Okay. That's the data, candidate stuff that they actually put in the fucking system, their content, all that stuff, is the data. How you slice and dice and do all that other shit to be able to do predictive analytics or whatever it is, that's the tech." That's where you start to split the conversation, and that is what this decision does. It says, "Look, it's not your data." Split that decision, now the conversation is so much different. I love it.
Joel: I know, but if I want to present my data in a way that's impossible or nearly impossible to scrape from a robot, am I breaking the law or am I breaking that ruling?
Chad: That's the question. I don't know, but that is the question that now can be asked. That's a question that can be asked because they're infringing the opportunity of a smaller business to actually do business, because they're fucking with somebody else's data.
Joel: Well, clearly we have to get some smarter people on the phone and find out exactly what's going on.
Chad: It just opens up a conversation that I love. On to more things that we love and we were just talking about California and regulation-
Joel: California.
Chad: California approves a bill that will turn gig workers into employees. So benefits and protections, and from my standpoint, this is incredibly interesting because what's happening is what we're seeing to happen now, is the pendulum swinging back and forth. So unions were just incredibly strong, and we were talking to Mason about this in San Francisco, he's with Lyft. Unions were just so incredibly strong and powerful and they misused some of that power at one time, that pendulum swung away from them to employers where they just broke up all those unions in many cases, but I feel like it's going back to the union conversation and I think this in itself is one of the indicators that that's where ... We're on the road to actual basic protections that we don't have today and we need to have those unions to be able to organize that.
Joel: Yeah, to me there are two sides to this story, as most stories have. One is the contractor themselves. And for the most part, if you drive Uber or Lyft as a job pretty much, you're doing it on a basis that's almost like a full-time job, it's great news to now know that you'll be treated like a full-time employee, which includes benefits and all the things that come with being a full-time employee as opposed to just being a contractor. But to me, that's fairly straightforward. I think the real questions become for Uber, Lyft, and anyone else that is a platform for work is this a good thing or not?
Joel: On one side, I can see where yeah, you should treat people in a certain way. They're working for you for 40 hours plus a week or whatever that is, and on the other side, I can see well, okay, that's a whole layer of intricacy and complexity of doing business. You and I talked to Mason at length, who's a Lyft employee, and there are real questions about their business model, both Uber and Lyft, in terms of profitability and are they going to be able to turn a profit, right? So adding this complexity of having full-time employees and giving them benefits and maybe healthcare and everything else, that makes it harder to do business arguably. Does that keep other potential competitors out of the space because now they know it's not a contract business, it's an employee business? Does that create less opportunity, which generally is a bad thing?
Joel: So I think on the surface, you can say, "Yeah, this is great for employees. They're going to get benefits. This is great." But looking deeper into it, I don't know the impact on the companies, but I would imagine they're probably not super happy having to deal with what you sort of referred to as labor unions, which essentially is kind of what we're dealing with. And when we talked to Douglas Atkin from Airbnb, talking about mobilizing his community, it was sort of like a labor union situation, so these contractors, these gig workers, have a lot of power and to what extent they use this to get benefits and full-time employment and who knows what else will be very interesting as we move into the future.
Chad: Yeah. Well, I think any company out there that doesn't focus on the employee first, and the human being first, to ensure that they're getting what they need in benefits and healthcare are obviously fucking part of that. If they're talking about the bottom line and how that's going to hurt profits, fuck you. You shouldn't have a fucking business. You need to focus on your goddamn business model. If your business model isn't working, guess what? You need to innovate and evolve or die. That's what capitalism is, but you have to take care of your fucking people. That's job one. You take care of your people, your people will take care of you. If you have a shitty business model, that's on you.
Joel: Yeah, and clearly many of these companies are built as tech companies. They're not built as people companies, per se. So now at least in the case of California, the government's saying, "Look, you have to start thinking of these people as people and not machines that are going around and you're getting 15% off of everything." So I agree with you, it's just does this speed up the process of automation, right? Which it probably will, because if you have all self-driving cars, then there aren't going to be drivers anyway. That's another question to think about as well.
Chad: Yeah, yeah. But I mean, we're talking about the possibility, and there's obviously arguments on both sides of this, but the possibility of getting rid of those jobs in the first place is going to evolve and create different jobs. The thing that we need to focus on here first is making sure that we treat the humans right and we make them the center, if they're a part of this, that they're the center of our thought process, right? Because if they're not happy, well, we're not going to retain them. They're probably going to do a shitty job. How's that any good for the company in the first place? And if they don't have healthcare and they don't have different types of benefits and they're worried that a $400 expense could prospectively submarine them, that's ...
Chad: Nobody should live that way. Nobody should live that way, and if a company is worried about the profits over the people, they need to get the fuck out of business.
Joel: I also think this is probably a good thing for traditional businesses that do have to treat people as full-time, part-time employees and have to be under the same regulations, because up to this point, the Ubers of the world have been above or below, however you look at it, from the traditional way of doing business. So I'm sure the businesses that we know are pretty happy about Uber having to do business as they do.
Chad: Yeah. And this discussion, we're talking about pretty big companies right now, this discussion is much different, but it is the same for small business. So the small business, and we've heard this talking to different restaurant companies and whatnot, saying, "You know, if we're going to have to pay a $15 minimum wage, we're going to have to give benefits, then we're just not going to be able to be in business." And the answer is, okay, so you either evolve and learn how to take care of your people, or you're right, you're not going to be in business. That is a very hard discussion, but guess what? If you can't fucking take care of your people's basic needs, then you shouldn't be in business.
Joel: Yeah, and I also wonder, with small business that are under 50 people, they're typically not under the same sort of regulations that companies over 50 are. So I wonder at some point we're going to look at these gig platforms and say, "Okay, if you're under this many people, you don't have to adhere to some of these regulations," so maybe we don't stifle some innovation in new companies.
Chad: As we continue to talk about cult brand and whatnot, we have the discussion coming up with Fiasco Gelato, which is a very small mom and pop type of a shop, but their focus is taking care of the people and this is the kind of ... These are the types of discussions that we need to have. They are hard, they are uncomfortable, but guess what? If we don't have them, we're never going to find the answers.
Joel: And we're here to have them, right after this word from JobAdX.
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Joel: To all beef patties, lettuce, sauce, pickles, cheese on a sesame seed bun. Was that the song? That's good. Wow, that's some memory.
Chad: Probably eaten a few, so ...
Joel: Stop. That's not true. That's not true. [crosstalk 00:30:31] McDonald's in the news.
Chad: Yeah, we come off of talking about, again, workers and whatnot in California, and go straight into talking about McDonald's and automation. Now McDonald's employs over 300,000 people, right? And we've heard, and we've talked about automated fryers, Flippy the burger robot ...
Joel: The kiosks.
Chad: Yeah, yeah, the kiosk, and we were talking about all these things through automation that is probably going to make that 300,000 go down substantially, or who knows, maybe it comes more cost effective and they open more McDonald's.
Joel: Yeah, who knows?
Chad: But now, McDonald's buys Apprente, I think that's how you say it, Apprente-
Joel: Yeah, sounds right.
Chad: A startup building conversational agents that can automate voice-based ordering in multiple languages, so this is pretty much a chat bot with NLP that does the drive through order, right?
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: Or they could even do this at the kiosks, if you think about it.
Joel: I love this story. We don't normally talk about these sort of traditional brick and mortar businesses buying a business like this, so the fact that we're even talking about it is really cool and I hope that more and more businesses that are brick and mortar-established do this. But yeah, to me this is genius. If nothing else, to speed up the process, create efficiencies. How many times have you been in a drive through and you can't hear the person-
Chad: Sounds like Charlie Brown's teacher.
Joel: ... But also, we're a country, maybe less so since Mr. Orange got into office, but we're a country of multiple languages, and I'm sure for someone who speaks Spanish to go to a McDonald's is intimidating, because the people in the drive through is probably speaking English. So to think about the market opportunity of wow, how many people that speak Spanish are now going to come through our drive through because we can instantly speak their language or any language, or that matter, I think is great business to use technology to do that. It's fantastic. So I definitely applaud McDonald's move to start getting smarter with their voice communications with customers.
Chad: Yeah, yeah. So in the disability kind of range, it's called universal design, so you're designing for anyone, not just the individual with disabilities, but for anyone. And this is really being able to take that holistic, universal design and make it easier for everybody, and this is also what I'm seeing as an acqui-hire by McDonald's because they're creating a new Silicone Valley-based group called McD Tech Labs, with the Apprente team becoming the group's founding member. So we were just talking about business, and how if business ... If they can't do business and they can't make the profits, then they have to evolve. This is it, kids, and yeah, it's McDonald's and yeah, they're a big organization, but we have a little bitty company here locally in Columbus, Indiana called Fresh Take, and all they ... They have kiosks up front. That's the only way that you can order, right?
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: Right out of the gate, they're looking at efficiencies. These are the things that we have to look at when we start having these conversations. How do we evolve and stop this bullshit 50s mentality?
Joel: Just don't change the Quarter Pounder too much. That's all I ask. That's all I ask.
Chad: Unless, you add the Impossible Burger to it. That's awesome.
Joel: Well, I love that they're now fresh, but they're delicious, and so yeah, keep doing that stuff, McDonald's, no matter how much tech you add to your services.
Chad: And earlier this year, they actually acquired another ... It's an online personalization startup with the goal of creating a drive through experience that's customized to things like the weather, restaurant traffic, all these different things, so that when you come up, if it is a little busy, you're going to have a better experience because, who knows? Maybe they're going to entertain you. Maybe you can listen to the Chad and Cheese Podcast-
Joel: There you go.
Chad: ... while you're going through the drive through.
Joel: Yeah, and we use their app, you pre-order, you drive into a specific spot-
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: You let them know that you're there, they bring out your food. It's great. McDonald's is doing some really great tech shit.
Chad: Well, and there's another company that I've talked about plenty of times on this podcast that is really focused on convenience and battling against Amazon, and that's Walmart, with their pickup delivery? That is amazing. Julie will be on the coach and we'll be going through orders and we'll need this, need that, all that other fun stuff, and we have a pickup the next morning at 8:00. We don't have to step inside to get our groceries and whatever we're looking for.
Joel: Just one more step to our Wall-E future of sitting in chairs all day and having our pie holes stuffed on demand. But speaking of Walmart, our next story ...
Chad: Yes.
Joel: ... talks about hiring teens, which apparently is a big deal because when you and I were teenagers, it was very normal to hire teens in the summer and hire them for part-time work, but we've gotten away from that. But Walmart, fortunately, is trying to get teens back into the labor market, mainly because there's an increasingly tight labor environment, but anyway, from the news, to entice high school students to come aboard Walmart, the retail giant has started offering free ACT and SAT prep courses. It has also followed the lead of employers like Starbucks, and has begun to offer tuition assistance to part-time employees. From the study between 2000, 2018, teen non-summer employment in the U.S. fell from 43% to roughly 29%, that's according to peer research.
Joel: So I think teens not working is, we're losing a very valuable window where people can learn really good skills about doing work and getting paid for it and what that entails, because the rest of their life is going to be a lot of that shit, so you might as well learn it in your teens so you're more comfortable doing it later in life.
Chad: Right. Well, and we need options nowadays, because kids are strapped with college debt that they weren't strapped with before. Boomers didn't have $100,000 that they had to pay in debt for fucking college. Xers, we didn't either. This is ... It's really changed the game, so we have to look at different ways to be able to subsidize going to school, you know? And I believe every company that's out there who wants to be competitive and they want to go after that new talent. This is Walmart, for goodness sakes. They want to turn these kids into regional directors, managers. This isn't just about being the greeter, for goodness sakes.
Joel: Sure.
Chad: They're thinking long-term and building talent pipelines. This is incredibly smart, I believe, and I think every company should be doing that to be able to focus on getting those really talented kids into positions and then hook them up on a contract, you know? We'll pay for your college and you stay with us for three years, or whatever the term is.
Joel: Yeah, let's be real, not every kid is going to throw up a Shopify store and get Kim Kardashian to wear your shit. Not every kid is going to be a Fortnite champion.
Chad: Right.
Joel: Most kids will have to have a similar road to most every other person on the planet, so doing these things I think are a great way to get them off the couch and get them into the workforce.
Chad: Agreed. And one thing that I see Walmart doing that is really pissing me the fuck off is there's a Wall Street Journal puff piece where they talk about, and here it is, "A growing number of companies are helping workers gain access to payroll advances and loans reflecting concern over the impact money problems are having on productivity levels and worker retention." So instead of paying these people more, right, and we talk about $15 an hour, 40 hours a week, that's around $30,000 before taxes, right? And in many cases, they're not even making that much at Walmart, but yet they want to try to get them into a payday loan kind of scheme. It's cheaper than going to the loan shark on the corner, right?
Joel: So instead of 25% it's 17% or something, is that what I'm hearing?
Chad: Dude, I mean, so it's like $6 a month for fees, right?
Joel: Okay.
Chad: But if you think of it, especially from the standpoint of the company that they partnered with, PayActiv, so they have 380,000 Walmart employees using this process right now. If you think of $6 a month, you're instantly making millions of dollars, every month. Every fucking month, and once again, this all revolves around making sure that you're taking care of your fucking people by paying them enough to live on, not strapping them. So they also talk about retention, right? They have a retention problem because of this, so instead of, and here's where it really gets fucking crazy and this is a bullshit puff piece from the Wall Street Journal, it's like oh, yeah, they're giving all these great benefits. It's like no, they're fucking shackling them-
Joel: Indentured servitude.
Chad: Yeah. This is a fucking company store kind of scenario. Don't goddamn unicorns and fucking rainbows glaze over this. You're fucking people who should be paid more and overall, what you're doing is saying, "Oh, that's okay. We're not going to pay them any more, but we're going to go ahead and shackle them into this whole company store scenario, so they'll never be able to fucking leave."
SFX: That is one big pile of shit.
Chad: What the fuck?
Joel: Well, I've got good news for you. We're going to take a break and listen to a word from Sovren, and then we're going to calm you down to talk about Donald Trump. Sound good?
Chad: I can't wait.
Sovren: Sovren Parser is the most accurate resume and job order intake technology in the industry. The more accurate your data, the better decisions you can make. Find out more about our suite of products today by visiting Sovren.com. That's S-O-V-R-E-N.com. We provide technology that thinks, communicates, and collaborates like a human. Sovren, software so human, you'll want to take it to dinner.
Chad: Here we go.
Joel: Here we go. So politico reports this week a Trump social network readies for launch. Okay, so his campaign plans to launch its own app, professionalizing its operation to track quote "the army of Trump", end quote, and keep supporters donating, volunteering, and recruiting. So if you've been spouting off neo-Nazi stupidity on Twitter or any other social media and got kicked off, you can come to Trump App or whatever they're going to call it, it says Rory McShane, a Republican strategist, quote, "Trump supporters are more dedicated and committed. If there's any campaign where they have a shot at making this work, it's the Trump campaign." And according to our talk, one of your family members will be the first to join the Trump App.
Chad: Okay, so full transparency, I have been a Republican my entire life until this orange motherfucker came into the political existence. Yeah, there's no question, I mean, if there is a channel for him to be able to really spew propaganda, this is it. This is incredibly smart, but the problem is dividing the nation even more. It's kind of like the news channels, MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, if you hear a specific news story from one to the next, it's going to be entirely different, colored with opinion, not fact. It's kind of like wanting to have state TV, but it's going to be state social network propaganda.
Joel: That's an interesting take. This certainly ... It does circumvent Facebook, Twitter, or really any other medium. If they do open it up to people just creating user-generated content that is really out of bounds, at what point does Apple get involved? Because they have terms of service, Google Play I think less so, so Android users might be fine doing whatever the hell goes on with Android, but yeah, this could really spin out of control and just be really bad on a lot of levels.
Chad: I just don't know why any politician would want to have quote-unquote, "an app." They should have the discussion out in the open.
Joel: If people just start gravitating to something like this for all of their unfiltered news, then what have we become because we're ignoring legitimate journalism?
Chad: Yeah. The hardest part right now is being able to discern journalism for many people that only go to one source. They don't try to cross reference with other sources. When I have discussions with individuals about politics or economics or workforce or whatever it is, I always try to look at not just BLS data. I try to go beyond that and do a little bit more reading and research to better understand all the different flavors of what's going on. Something like this is totally counter to that.
Joel: Yeah. It's kind of a big joke. We talk about Trump App, but if this becomes a major deal and a large part of the society and community gets their news from this because it's "the truth," in quotes, that becomes really scary.
Chad: Being able to make bad decisions in this administration seems to be par, so this seems to be on par.
Joel: Well, now I'm depressed. I need to hear Christopher Walken to cheer me up.
Chad: I thought you were going to say Christopher Cross.
Joel: We out.
Chad: We out.
Walken: Thank you for listening to, what's it called? The podcast, with Chad, the Cheese, brilliant. They talk about recruiting, they talk about technology, but most of all, they talk about nothing, just a lot of shout outs of people you don't even know, and yet you're listening. It's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one, cheddar, bleu, nacho, pepper jack, Swiss. So many cheeses, and not one word. So weird. Anywho, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. That way, you won't miss an episode, and while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com, just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. It's so weird.
Walken: We out.
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