Indeed Desperation & Vibe-Coder Rise

Is Indeed getting desperate?

This week on HR’s most dangerous podcast, Chad, Joel, and Lieven break down the "cage match" between the industry’s two biggest titans.

There are rumors that Indeed has launched a bold and DEFINITELY suspicious "spend-matching" pilot program aimed directly at LinkedIn's market share. But as Chad points out, this "Pepsi Challenge" comes with major strings attached.

Meanwhile, LinkedIn isn't sitting still. They are introducing AI to manage the initial interview process and screen candidates before they even reach your desk.

"Banana in the tailpipe" tactics?

• The Cost of Indeed’s Incentives - It's a trip!

• Will LinkedIn's automated initial interviews actually improve the hiring funnel?

• The rise of "vibe-coding" making ATS integrations easier and Travis Kalanick’s new fleet of industrial robots.

LET'S DO THIS!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wsbx_VdBHmc

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Joel Cheesman (00:31.518)

yeah, the tide is high, but we're holding on. Hey, kids, it's the chat and cheese podcast. I'm your co host, Joel honored to take Cuba cheeseman.

Chad Sowash (00:44.006)

And this is Chad. Daddy's got a new car, so watch.

Lieven (00:48.684)

And I'm Lieven, I really should be doing something else right now, funny when I was in...

Joel Cheesman (00:53.79)

You have nothing better to do than this on this episode of HR's most dangerous podcast. Indeed is desperate service now is doom saying and Jack and Jill. Well, well, they went up a hill, didn't they guys? Let's do this.

Chad Sowash (01:10.8)

Back in my place, got a new car.

Joel Cheesman (01:12.67)

Tell us you're recording after St. Patrick's Day without telling me you're recording after St. Patrick's Day. It's 9 a.m. where I am and I'm particularly looking rough. The European guys look a little better and Levin always looks fantastic.

Chad Sowash (01:18.47)

I can see.

I can see you're sweating.

Lieven (01:27.19)

I know, know Joel. I know.

Chad Sowash (01:28.864)

I know, even though Leavens.

Joel Cheesman (01:29.862)

In fact, Lee was like, yesterday was St. Patrick's Day. had no idea.

Chad Sowash (01:33.03)

Yeah, he's a redhead. mean, it kind of like he has to have some kind of Irish connection.

Lieven (01:34.006)

Yeah, that's, that's the Scottish part. No, no, no. And they constantly make fun of me. You're a ginger. You're ginger. I'm so happy. I'm not a ginger, et cetera.

Joel Cheesman (01:38.546)

Are your kids redheads?

Chad Sowash (01:43.974)

Ha

Chad Sowash (01:48.166)

That's awesome. Ginger Dad.

Lieven (01:51.04)

Indeed.

Joel Cheesman (01:51.422)

Ginger dad. what on your, is it your mom or dad? Like who has the red hair on your parent's side?

Lieven (01:56.64)

It's in my dad's family. Not even my dad. mean, has, I'm sure, but I probably don't know him.

Joel Cheesman (01:58.909)

Okay.

Joel Cheesman (02:05.95)

some bastard father that was visiting from Ireland or Scotland back in the day.

Lieven (02:08.022)

So, then in that case, I would be the bastard now.

Chad Sowash (02:08.58)

man yeah

Joel Cheesman (02:14.44)

Nice, nice. So Chad, you got a car. You got some wheels there in Portugal. That's fun.

Lieven (02:18.798)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (02:18.978)

Yeah, yeah for the very first time I think in both of our lives Julie and I have focused on getting a not practical car So she wanted a convertible She wanted something small. I mean, obviously we live in the our Algarve. There's sunshine most of the time Something where we could let our hair down. That's that's a joke kids So we we she did a lot of research and I said this is the babe you go get what you want, right? I mean I

Joel Cheesman (02:33.75)

huh.

Lieven (02:39.191)

Mmm.

Joel Cheesman (02:40.03)

That's good. That's not bad.

Joel Cheesman (02:47.522)

huh.

Chad Sowash (02:48.198)

I'm the practical guy that I'm going to I'm going to get some kind of like SUV or some shit like that. One of the smaller like European SUVs. And she chose a no, no, no, no. She chose a Mini Cooper. So a Mini Cooper John Cooper Works edition is used, but not a lot of miles. And yeah, so we'll get it delivered tomorrow, which was interesting because here you can't just drive a car off the lot in Portugal.

Joel Cheesman (02:55.836)

Not the Range Rover, yeah, not the Range Rover.

Lieven (03:01.268)

Mmm.

Lieven (03:12.599)

Joel Cheesman (03:18.131)

huh.

Chad Sowash (03:18.136)

You can't go give them cash and drive the car off. They have to do maintenance, inspection, all this stuff, even after they've done it before. And then they deliver it to you at your place. And then you have to show proof of insurance before you can actually receive delivery. really cool. I mean, really cool process.

Joel Cheesman (03:39.998)

That's what we Americans call big government. Big government. have to get my... So you have a Mini Cooper. What's gas prices like in Portugal these days?

Chad Sowash (03:43.494)

Hahaha

Chad Sowash (03:48.55)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (03:52.295)

$2 a liter or 2 euros a liter and euros are more than dollars obviously and was it 4 liters a gallon?

Joel Cheesman (03:56.024)

Yeah. Okay.

Lieven (03:58.934)

Yeah, it hurts, it hurts.

Joel Cheesman (04:03.08)

Well, you're welcome. You're welcome. How is the war viewed there in Europe, ungrateful NATO countries that you are? What's the vibe there in Europe, you bastards?

Lieven (04:13.39)

You know, you can't keep taxing us and you can't keep telling us that we're awful and then expecting us to come send some ships to liberate the street of what's it called. No, Yes, that's the one. Well, we don't play that way,

Chad Sowash (04:26.736)

thing.

Joel Cheesman (04:29.33)

Hmm. Hormuz. Yes. Yeah. What John Stewart said, war, the excuse we give Americans to learn geography because otherwise Americans would have no idea what the Strait of Hormuz was. Yeah.

Chad Sowash (04:40.678)

Yeah. Yes. Straights of four moves. What is that a club? Yeah. So it's interesting because I mean, I've been here. We've been back and forth living here in Portugal for about four years now. And usually Portuguese, they don't really ask much about Trump. I mean, they're kind of chill, kind of relaxed. Everybody else does. The Dutch, the Germans. mean, everybody's like, what do think about Trump? This is the first time I have actually had

Lieven (04:41.07)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (05:02.44)

Mm-hmm.

Lieven (05:04.536)

Hmm.

Chad Sowash (05:09.862)

Portuguese who I had just met. Usually, you know, I've known Portuguese for a while for a few years, then we might have that discussion. But Portuguese that I just met, they just automatically, what do you think of this Trump thing? You know, and so, I mean, when you have a very laid back society, who kind of like sits back and watches and waits and they're patient, and they're starting not to be as patient, that says something. Not to mention it's obviously affecting our gas prices.

Joel Cheesman (05:12.2)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (05:27.454)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (05:35.176)

Yeah.

Lieven (05:35.638)

Hmm.

Joel Cheesman (05:38.408)

Do you feel like as an American, maybe Portugal's different, but that people look at you differently when they find out you're American because of the whole Trump administration nonsense?

Chad Sowash (05:47.643)

Well, they, for the most part, think that I'm here because I hate the fucker in the first place. So they automatically think, you're one of us, right? You're one, we hate that asshole too. So it's almost like a symbiotic kind of like connection right out of the gate.

Joel Cheesman (05:51.94)

Okay, so you get a pass. Yeah. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (06:02.686)

How about Belgium leaving? You guys hate everybody. I assume you hate Americans even more now.

Chad Sowash (06:05.478)

Just a Dutch.

Lieven (06:06.03)

No. I mean, normally we just talk bad about the French and maybe the Germans a bit. It's still ancestry. We used to like the Americans actually, but those days are gone now. I think it will take some time to fix things. Man.

Joel Cheesman (06:11.398)

Yeah. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (06:20.86)

I'm, I'm a little worried to come to Europe. I mean, not that I'm going to get shot or stabbed or something, but just dirty looks, you know, somebody spitting in my, in my logger. That's okay. Yeah. I didn't notice any difference in France. Yeah. You'll, you'll, you'll still take my money though. I bet you'll still take my money. Well, from America guys, it's a fucked up situation.

Lieven (06:24.405)

Nah.

Chad Sowash (06:26.917)

I

Lieven (06:29.006)

Yeah, but that's nothing new. mean, no, no, you're so, you're so welcome. You're so welcome, Joel. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

Chad Sowash (06:33.786)

That's a, you've.

Ha ha!

Of Of course.

Joel Cheesman (06:49.564)

Most of us aren't happy about what's going on.

Chad Sowash (06:51.803)

Yeah.

Lieven (06:52.192)

Not even Republicans, I read.

Joel Cheesman (06:54.622)

Republicans mostly are, which is, well, so there's a split in MAGA. Trump ran on no more wars, no more forever shit, no more Bush, no more Neocon and psych, we're back at war. So there's for certain a split in some of the Republican party. But if you look at polls, Republicans are 80 % in favor of this, like 3 % of Democrats. But then you have the independents, which are largely like 60, 70 % anti.

Lieven (06:57.678)

Still? Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (07:24.37)

what's going on.

Lieven (07:26.568)

And when are those midterms?

Joel Cheesman (07:28.711)

November.

Chad Sowash (07:29.071)

November.

Lieven (07:30.228)

That will be interesting.

Chad Sowash (07:31.961)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (07:32.132)

It will be interesting. And if they haven't wrapped this sucker up by then, it's going to be really, really bad for the Republicans.

Chad Sowash (07:37.15)

He's trying this whole Save America Now Act, which is more of rigging of the election. So we'll see how that goes.

Lieven (07:42.572)

Hmm. I thank you.

Joel Cheesman (07:44.828)

Yeah, and Cuba's messed up. mean, Cuba is like straight out of the 19th century. We're just taking them. I'm honored to take your country. Thank you very much.

Lieven (07:47.679)

That would be a problem.

Lieven (07:52.384)

Yeah, I mean, what is Cuba doing wrong these days? mean, maybe 50 years ago with putting some missiles from Russia could be debatable, but

Joel Cheesman (07:57.874)

They're communists. They're dirty Castro loving communists is what's wrong with Cuba. no. No, no, no.

Lieven (08:07.032)

Yeah, I mean, it's disgusting. Sorry. The whole Venezuela thing I thought was kind of on the limits, but he actually, he, it was a nice operation from a military point of view. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (08:16.862)

He clearly thought the Iranians would be Venezuela 2.0 and it not even close. Yeah, turns out China doesn't like it if you take two of their biggest oil resources away from.

Lieven (08:20.502)

Yeah, and he was going to score and...

Lieven (08:29.088)

I not. We'll see.

Chad Sowash (08:31.322)

Yeah, we don't need you Europe. Please help us. Which is it?

Joel Cheesman (08:34.738)

The good news is I'm sure this is the last time we'll talk about it on the show. It'll okay. Let's get the shout outs.

Lieven (08:35.459)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (08:37.912)

Yeah, let me put this out there though. Epstein files. Epstein files. Go ahead. Go ahead.

Lieven (08:38.51)

Yeah.

Lieven (08:44.418)

Yeah.

Shut up.

Chad Sowash (08:48.094)

Okay, so I want to shout out I wasn't on last week's show I was I was listening to last week's show and I want to give a shout out to JT and you going head to head last week Over the juice box over over juice box. Go ahead and run that tape real quick

Joel Cheesman (08:59.175)

What?

Lieven (09:01.856)

Joel Cheesman (09:12.542)

Wait, I don't have Juicebox.

Chad Sowash (09:14.63)

That's the wrong juice box.

Joel Cheesman (09:17.948)

All I have is CNBC from you.

Chad Sowash (09:20.55)

I sent it to you let's out, but I'll go ahead cut this out and I will send you, Sergei, will send you the clip. Anyway, so roll the tape, tape's rolled. Okay, my comments. So I want to give you both a shout out for hitting both sides of this argument, but I tend to lean heavily toward their toast side, but you forgot one very big aspect of the argument.

Joel Cheesman (09:31.73)

Yep, here we go.

Joel Cheesman (09:40.84)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (09:50.631)

And that aspect is the Fair Credit Reporting Act, so FICRA. Eightfold is currently getting sued for candidate profile enrichment, which Juicebox also does, which means they're adding unverified information to a candidate's profile without getting the candidate consent, right? So if the courts rule against Eightfold, they're literally creating a credit report and Juicebox is dead on their

Joel Cheesman (09:50.695)

Yep.

Joel Cheesman (09:55.326)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (10:18.289)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (10:20.486)

So shout out to trying to hit every angle of this. It is so hard these days, but I love watching you and JT going back and forth on that one.

Joel Cheesman (10:30.706)

Yeah, Levin, you have a side on the death of the resume argument?

Lieven (10:37.71)

Nah, not really. I think it's going to stay alive for quite some time, but we'll see. We'll see. Now they've been predicting the death of the Rézémi for, since ever the internet came along, I think. It's still there.

Joel Cheesman (10:54.174)

huh.

Chad Sowash (10:54.244)

Yes, yes they have.

Joel Cheesman (10:57.523)

It's always great when three old white guys can agree on something that...

Chad Sowash (11:01.35)

You

Lieven (11:04.567)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (11:04.659)

I wanna see what the courts have to say after that. It's a done fucking deal, man.

Joel Cheesman (11:08.478)

Yeah, by the way, the workday trial is moving forward. The Mobley workday, not a topic, but yeah, we'll be watching that one as well. My shout out goes to our boy, Alexander Chukovsky, a couple of things with him. know, when, again, when the old guys get together, we, we, we usually talk about like, are the new voices? Where are the kids? Why aren't they speaking up and talking about this shit? And Alexander, my first, uh,

Chad Sowash (11:12.229)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (11:21.841)

Chad Sowash (11:31.878)

Hahaha

Joel Cheesman (11:36.528)

love for you is that you're, one those younger guys. It's kind of talking about the stuff that I'm too tired to sort of research and talk about. And the second part of the shout out is, he had a great post recently about, I guess the integration tools, the ATS is the, API connector business, being under siege by, by AI and Chad, I know you and I leaving you work with a lot of startups. One of the first things of tips.

One of the first advice that we give them is like integrate with as many ATSs and platforms as possible. And most of them end up going to merge and some of the others combo just got a ton of money to solve this problem, to get their integrations into these ATSs. Alexander has a great post saying that vibe coding and just basically having the tools through natural language to code these things is coming.

Lieven (12:07.786)

and

Chad Sowash (12:21.626)

Yep. Stack one.

Joel Cheesman (12:34.034)

basically making the connector tools irrelevant or much less valuable than they were before. He talks about companies like merge and job sync, which are starting to pivot away from sort of that core business, the integration side of things. I think we're seeing this play out in some of the vendors. talked about, know, text EO becoming lavalier job case recently launching AI tools, et cetera. So.

Lieven (12:40.075)

Hmm.

Chad Sowash (12:47.846)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (12:51.871)

yeah.

Joel Cheesman (13:01.04)

It's going to be interesting as more and more of these connector companies pivot, what do they do outside of that? And will this vibe coding integration thing really take off? But hats off to Alexander for doing really good work, doing some of the digging that I'm too old and tired to do anymore. And I love it, man. Keep it up. Keep it up. I appreciate you.

Chad Sowash (13:22.406)

When I spoke to Rebecca and Sharon from Smart Recruiters, they now have the backing of SAP, right? And they had 120 engineers actually pushed over from success factors to Smart Recruiters. And using some of those engineers, they're actually looking at building AI versions of those connectors themselves. And that's not just for Smart Recruiters.

Joel Cheesman (13:27.24)

Yep.

Joel Cheesman (13:36.658)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (13:50.799)

right? And the front end of the funnel side of the house, that's all the way down through the business applications of SAP. That's fucking big. So I agree with what Alexander has to say, but you're also, think, going to see some of these bigger ecosystems build their own and or acquire and then start to expand.

Joel Cheesman (13:59.516)

Yep.

Lieven (14:02.105)

I agree with what Alexander has to say, you're also at a point where you some of these bigger, you know, things going around and you're like, why?

Joel Cheesman (14:12.988)

Yeah. And not even the large ones. think, you know, you and I advise some companies that they're putting features in much more quickly than they used to because they can easily vibe code these things in. So I think you're probably see a lot of platforms start to put in integration tools and just like, push this button and get your stuff on all the ATSs and other platforms. So yeah, interesting times we live in interesting times.

Chad Sowash (14:21.008)

yeah, yeah.

Chad Sowash (14:35.682)

Well, and think about think about uptime, right? If it takes three weeks or six weeks or whatever it takes to actually get an organization integrated into your system. One of the reasons why companies don't change applicant tracking systems or any type of core platforms is because of the time it takes to be able to get their data mapped over to get all this shit integrated into a system. If you can take that from, let's say, six months to three weeks. fuck. Yeah. The change.

Lieven (14:36.366)

and think about our current, right? And then say, if you were used for 60, so whatever it takes, I'm sure you get that.

Lieven (14:50.35)

As I said.

Joel Cheesman (15:00.914)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (15:03.974)

the cost of change goes down dramatically and then all of those platforms who are just old and cranky and they're like, you gotta stay with us because the cost of change is too much, that goes away.

Lieven (15:11.15)

Absolutely. The only reason why we don't change is because it's just such a hassle to change.

Joel Cheesman (15:11.314)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (15:21.584)

Yeah, yeah, you take that reason away that excuse away and then next thing you know, you're you're hopping you're hopping girlfriends like Cheeseman in high school.

Joel Cheesman (15:22.29)

Mm-hmm.

Lieven (15:25.895)

All right.

You

Joel Cheesman (15:31.524)

Easy now, easy now, easy now. Yeah. You're using the word girl in pretty, pretty good, pretty broad terms. And I do think so the, the HR tool or the tools for HR are going to be much more susceptible to getting, and you know, hurt because let's agree. No one in HRTA is going to be like vibe coding integrations and shit, but like a startup, a vendor, someone on the vendor side will, will vibe code and make those features available.

Lieven (15:35.564)

Yeah.

Lieven (15:47.544)

Hmm.

Lieven (15:59.978)

Yeah. And even we use it, those vibe coding stuff, because I know how to program in Python a bit, but I'm slow and it takes too much time. So if I needed a prototype, if I needed some data mining tool or whatever, I asked IT and then it took six weeks because those people have better things to do than delivering whatever I come up with that day. And now just by vibe coding, I can do it in a few hours. That's amazing.

Joel Cheesman (16:10.131)

Mm-hmm.

Lieven (16:25.294)

And I use mostly Manus.ai, I'm not sure if you know it, it's an agent which was recently bought by Meta, by the way. Yeah, and it's really good. It can even produce a website based on just a few lines of code I give it. And it comes up with a whole website to present whatever I wanted to present, it's amazing. Okay, but Vibe coding.

Chad Sowash (16:30.682)

Nice.

Joel Cheesman (16:38.078)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (16:45.222)

Leven, trust me when I say what you say is the most important thing in your organization. They don't ignore what you're talking about, which is why we're going to you for shout outs. What you got?

Chad Sowash (16:50.437)

Hahaha

Lieven (16:55.834)

Okay, my shout out this week is to Travis Kalanick, if I pronounce it correctly, who after making Kalanick, Kalonic, Kalanick, no, Travis.

Chad Sowash (17:00.902)

Kalanick?

Joel Cheesman (17:01.266)

Uber.

Yeah, that's what I'm getting next year according to my schedule. Colace and colonics. Welcome to the healthcare podcast. Colonics and colace.

Lieven (17:07.766)

Colonic, right. It was my shout out now. Okay. So, Joel's colonic. So, my shout out goes to Travis Kalanick, who after making life of taxi drivers miserable by launching Uber, he's now coming for basically everyone else. And he is doing it by launching Atom, which is a company constructing not humanoid robots, but

Chad Sowash (17:08.647)

Now that's ICIMS' newest product, the High Kalanick. Sorry.

Joel Cheesman (17:28.798)

Mm-hmm.

Lieven (17:36.95)

special specialized industrial robots. And those have been, those have been around for decades, of course, but these are kind of new because they are totally deployable. can put them wherever you want. They're mobile. can vibe code them. You normally, a robot has to be programmed using whatever language they use, but it took a lot of time and very specific knowledge. Now you can just talk to the robots and play in English, or if it's a very sophisticated robot, you can talk to it in Dutch. So, it's an

If it's an elite robot, but yeah, they use all the knowledge they have using large language models. So they know basically everything. are contexts to where they use lenses. They use a camera to look around and they can see the context. They can be used for multiple purposes and depending on the case, they just change the way they look. So humanites are nice because we feel familiar to them. It's nice to look at something humanite, but in most cases, humans aren't the best form.

Chad Sowash (18:08.208)

Flemish.

Joel Cheesman (18:08.316)

Very sophisticated.

Joel Cheesman (18:18.674)

Mm-hmm.

Lieven (18:35.904)

Let's say if you want to flip burgers, it's easier to use six arms than two legs if you are static. So depending on whatever they were built for, they will look different, but they all have the same knowledge. And if one robot learns something using Wi-Fi, all the others know it too. So these are the perfect employees. So this is interesting because robots, they used to take over some tasks, specific tasks. These robots are just designed to take over complete jobs.

Joel Cheesman (18:42.482)

Yeah.

Lieven (19:03.638)

You can use them for one job before noon and another one in the afternoon. this is, for me, it's kind of, I'm getting anxious about it. This is going to change a lot of jobs, a lot of industries. And if it was only to fill in dangerous jobs, like they're talking about mining jobs, then it's great. And if you can put a robot in a mine and do the dangerous stuff, that's great. But they're also going to do, logistic jobs, which are just jobs open to basically everyone. And if those jobs are disappearing, it's going fast.

Chad Sowash (19:07.898)

How?

Chad Sowash (19:15.77)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (19:21.374)

Mm-hmm.

Lieven (19:33.878)

So I'm going to look into it and I'm sure someone somewhere will be getting very rich. So we'll try to take some part of it.

Chad Sowash (19:42.522)

More to come,

Joel Cheesman (19:42.766)

Never doing podcasting though. They're never going to do podcasting for sure. But by the way, until all the, all the robots look like Sydney Sweeney, I'm thinking that it's, it's, it's going to be a long time before it takes off. Make all these things look like her and robots are going to be everywhere. Trust me. Trust me. Almost as everywhere as our t-shirts are just flowing in and out and all the free stuff at Chad and cheese. Let's, let's hear about what you can get by signing up.

Lieven (19:46.092)

They'll never be in our show.

Chad Sowash (19:54.47)

Amen.

Lieven (19:54.894)

You

Chad Sowash (19:57.191)

That's the easiest thing to do. That's the easiest way to gain any type of adoption. Yes.

Lieven (19:57.494)

Nah, we'll see.

Lieven (20:06.467)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (21:07.518)

You

Lieven (21:18.52)

Check and cock

Joel Cheesman (21:25.246)

I have to come in. I shared a little eye issue that Stephen was dealing with and I didn't think he'd be as sensitive to my joke about whiskey being spilled into his eye. So Stephen, I'm sorry, just clowning around, but I'm happy to say that you're on the mend and you're feeling better and I will be much more careful with comments that might wreck your fragile.

Chad Sowash (21:33.146)

Yeah, a little.

Chad Sowash (21:41.264)

Dude, he was like blind for two weeks.

Joel Cheesman (21:54.366)

state of mind, fragile.

Chad Sowash (21:55.843)

Okay guy was guy was like blind for two weeks. I wouldn't call that fragile. I'm gonna see him next week though He's taking a train down to Hartfordshire That's right for next week for the RLX March 24th through the 26th Joel I'm not sure these people know what's gonna hit them. I mean, yeah. yeah

Joel Cheesman (22:15.066)

Stephen's gonna come down. Well, that's exciting. There he is, he's excited.

Chad Sowash (22:20.08)

For those that don't know, the RLX is a fully hosted two-day retreat for senior TA leaders, and they're putting them in a room with Steven and I for two full days. That's ridiculous. Plus, Natalie Farmer, a foreign legal consultant from Field Fisher, and I will be leading a discussion called AI and Hiring. Legal is panicking, and TA is stuck.

in the middle. So it's going to be two days of nerding out and a lot of scotch. Can't wait. That's next week of the RLX.

Joel Cheesman (22:52.702)

Well, it's nice to know that you're ignoring my recommendation of doing a session on QR codes that you went with AI. Like I think that's bullshit, frankly, but you do you, Chad. You do you.

Chad Sowash (22:57.414)

Hahaha

Lieven (23:00.686)

Chad Sowash (23:01.51)

I can only submit presentations. I don't accept them. I just submit them.

Joel Cheesman (23:10.686)

All right guys, let's get into topics here real quick, unless there are some rumors that somebody, okay.

Chad Sowash (23:17.35)

yes, yes. Yes. Rumor alert. So I get a little birdie told me not fully fledged out yet, but a little birdie told me that Paradox's assessment platform, Tradify, is being acquired, which is interesting because obviously Paradox acquired by Workday.

Joel Cheesman (23:23.933)

Hahaha

Joel Cheesman (23:31.774)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (23:37.128)

Mm-hmm.

Lieven (23:41.154)

Joel Cheesman (23:46.12)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (23:46.15)

Tradify was already underneath that paradox umbrella. So, Tradify being chunked out of that deal, apparently, and getting sold off as a part.

Joel Cheesman (23:49.655)

yeah.

Joel Cheesman (23:57.374)

Do we know the acquire? that?

Chad Sowash (24:00.135)

I have an idea, but I'm not 100 % sure yet. So we're going to sit back. We're going to wait on this one. But I I'd kind of leak that out there as a rumor.

Joel Cheesman (24:03.358)

Okay, you'll. All right, you heard it. Heard it here first kids. All right, let's get to some of the news this week. Indeed has incentives everybody promoting spend matching indeed promise to match promises to match your current spend on non indeed channels. Think LinkedIn aggressively promoting your roles proving that indeed is good enough, smart enough and gosh darn it. People like them, but wait.

Chad Sowash (24:28.934)

Ha

Joel Cheesman (24:32.882)

LinkedIn says hold my beer because they're introducing AI to manage the initial interview process and screen candidates before moving forward in your interviewing process. It's the cage match desure Chad. What's your take on all things indeed and LinkedIn this week.

Chad Sowash (24:49.84)

Yeah, this is the banana in the tailpipe on both sides of the house. I'm not falling for the banana in the tailpipe. I'm not. How do you say LinkedIn is a thorn in Indeed's side without saying LinkedIn is a thorn in Indeed's side? Well, this bullshit quote unquote spend matching program. So, okay, let's get down to brass tacks on this. To initiate.

Joel Cheesman (24:54.941)

boy, are you falling for it? Are you gonna fall for this one? No, okay.

Joel Cheesman (25:10.234)

A Pepsi challenge. Is that it? A Pepsi challenge.

Lieven (25:12.078)

in the expanded matching program. So, okay, let's get down to our last half hour to initiate the expanded matching program.

Chad Sowash (25:17.988)

the spend matching program employers have three requirements. Indeed is placing three requirements on them. Number one, they have to provide a source of hire report, which means they want your data. Number two, that you have to provide existing contract information, which means Indeed wants competitive intelligence. What are you spending with LinkedIn, right? And number three, they want leadership buy-in.

Lieven (25:38.945)

Ugh.

Chad Sowash (25:45.019)

which means Indeed wants to bypass agency. So yes, if you're a recruitment agency, ad agency, Indeed wants your contacts to try to squeeze you out and take that 15 % fee for themselves. They've been doing this forever, they're gonna constantly do it, and this is just another way within this match spending, whatever the they're calling, kind of scenario. I mean, imagine...

Lieven (25:52.75)

school wants more car vans. Try to school you out to take that 15 % fee for themselves.

Joel Cheesman (26:05.264)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (26:10.636)

raising revenues by 15%. I mean, that's what every CRO wakes up every day wishing that they can do. So remember, this basically costs Indeed nothing. And they can get your data, competitive intelligence, and they can have an opportunity to bypass your recruitment marketing agencies. And Indeed does nothing for free kids. This is a Trojan horse to get your data contracts.

Joel Cheesman (26:17.096)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (26:40.422)

and contacts and to me it's a show of desperation and any recruitment ad agency or hiring company who buys into this is a complete and utter fucking idiot. Just my personal opinion. You can't be doing this stuff. They're gonna give you a free style. It's not free. You're paying for something and you're paying with your data, competitive intelligence and your contacts. Give me a break, come on.

Joel Cheesman (26:41.758)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (27:00.701)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (27:08.67)

Which sometimes comes off genius, right? Like remember job tracker, the app where you would put in, you take pictures of help wanted signs at your local downtown barber shop. And then they would get, Oh, you get little, you know, you get, uh, don't know, steak and shake gift cards or something. Uh, but they get a sales lead. They get like a small business sales lead. So Chad is correct. There is no free lunch kids. There is no free lunch. They have a, they have an interest in getting something from you in this.

Chad Sowash (27:12.345)

yeah, yeah.

Chad Sowash (27:23.507)

like a fee, yeah.

Chad Sowash (27:32.103)

Well, and then you take a look at the LinkedIn interview stuff. Let's move on to LinkedIn. No, no, no, no. Any system like this needs to be directly connected to your system of record. And that's the last thing you want companies like LinkedIn and Indeed to connect to. Why? Well, first, you don't want an Indeed or a LinkedIn to have access to your hiring signals, period.

Joel Cheesman (27:39.004)

Mm-hmm, sure.

Chad Sowash (27:59.365)

Right, that's your data, especially that data you do not want them to have access to. Plus the AI needs to train in a silo of specific data to your hiring needs and behavior. So LinkedIn isn't an option, but you should be looking at your core applicant tracking system players and or point solutions to help you scale your interviewing. Right, so you should be looking at AI interviewing, but not from platforms like LinkedIn and Indeed. Hiring companies need an expert.

in this area and that's not a player that is a big behemoth like LinkedIn or Indeed. That's why Bright Hire was acquired, right? Those types of platforms who are specifically in that realm, those are the ones you want to look for.

Joel Cheesman (28:46.952)

Yeah, so use someone separate until they get acquired by Zoom or LinkedIn or Microsoft or somebody and then you can give your data to everybody. Zoom makes a little bit more sense.

Chad Sowash (28:51.686)

Zoom makes more sense.

What do think, Levin?

Joel Cheesman (29:00.966)

Yeah, real quick, Chad, you, you stole most of my notes from the indeed thing. Like you and I, you and I are like, and we're on the same page on that one. nothing is free kids. call me a jaded American, but there is no free lunch. indeed want something for me for this. do, I do think there's maybe a little more, on the desperation side. I don't know how they're.

Chad Sowash (29:05.286)

you

Chad Sowash (29:11.536)

Mm-mm.

Joel Cheesman (29:25.352)

Their initiative to get your disposition data is going. I don't think it's gangbusters. I don't think it's been a slam dunk thus far. So to try these different, different tactics to say, Hey, we'll give you something free. If we can go in and get your, you know, your reporting and what's going on there. And then somehow sneak my way in to getting your disposition data. So I'm flipping the budget to that as opposed to what you've been spending on. And maybe that's part of the objective as well.

Lieven (29:45.334)

I'm flipping the budget to...

Joel Cheesman (29:53.918)

You saw this, think as a, a, a promotional email in the UK. I don't think we've seen this hit the U S shores yet, but if, uh, as a lot of our listeners are in the U S you should start looking out for that indeed special offer, uh, to match your spend, uh, with indeed stuff. Um, the LinkedIn look, this is nothing new. The whole like autonomous interviewing pre-screening. was just a matter of time before they were going to get into this.

Chad Sowash (30:19.226)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (30:23.57)

they have a history of producing products that are lesser, let's say, than the companies that just focus on one thing. So the jury's out is whether or this thing fucking works at all. it should because they're owned by Microsoft and they have connections to open AI and things like that. And I do see, I do see some examples of LinkedIn getting better at the AI thing. but this is a big step forward for them to get right.

Chad Sowash (30:51.376)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (30:52.284)

I also think that if they do get it right, it's really bad for the, the, the smaller guys. Maybe you and I differ on this. mean, I think for a lot of companies, if I can do everything on LinkedIn, I'm fine. Not using other services to like provide that. So if they get this right, it's, it's going to be really good for them. And I also think we talked about LinkedIn's recent advertising campaign that targeted SMBs and smaller companies, which they've really been not into forever.

Lieven (31:05.678)

and

Chad Sowash (31:13.766)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (31:21.778)

They've been executive knowledge based type workers. So to me, having this automated tool sets them up to go to some of these smaller businesses and say, look, you don't have a recruiter. You don't have a dedicated HR person that has the bandwidth to handle all this stuff. Let LinkedIn's, know, robot pre-screen and interview the people that you want to bring in. So I think there's a bit of a small business target in this, in this thing.

It's a pretty small test right now. I think you can do 40 a month, 40 of these pre-screens or for these interviews. If it does well, they'll obviously extend that, but that's sort of my take. And if you ever have a startup, if it's, if, if your startup can be replicated by a big company that everybody uses, like you should maybe think twice about that startup unless you know there's someone that's going to buy you. Also why paradox timing was great in a selling to work day.

Lieven (31:57.486)

And if you ever have a startup, if your startup can be replicated by a big company that everybody uses like...

Lieven (32:08.354)

Hmm.

Chad Sowash (32:14.63)

Yes. Yes.

Joel Cheesman (32:16.978)

Not that they saw LinkedIn being a competitor, but they might've seen LinkedIn being a competitor. Leaving your thoughts on Indeed and LinkedIn this week.

Lieven (32:20.302)

You know, I would love to give my honest opinion on it, but I still want them to sponsor the Congress on October 6th. So I'll October in Amsterdam, you know, but I need to be careful now because the contract hasn't been signed yet. With a bit of luck, you'll be standing on stage with some people from LinkedIn and indeed for the panel discussion. I would love to see that.

Chad Sowash (32:31.558)

It's happening in October.

Joel Cheesman (32:32.253)

Ha

Chad Sowash (32:37.35)

That's right.

Chad Sowash (32:46.316)

we could have a nice panel discussion, yeah. that'd be great. we could record that, that would be awesome.

Joel Cheesman (32:48.508)

That'll work out great for them. That'll be great for them.

Lieven (32:49.834)

Yeah, I know, I know. So, yeah. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (32:54.75)

So you don't want to, what can you, like are you optimistic about these moves? Do you like these moves? Can you give us something?

Lieven (33:06.826)

LinkedIn is doing okay, I think, and it's moving in the right direction. I don't understand why it's taking them so long. I mean, they should be moving in my opinion much faster, but they're getting there. is something else. What I've been doing with Chachipiti is a great move and they've got some integration. I haven't seen the results yet, but I want to figure it out. But you won't hear me saying lots of positive stuff about Indeed, the way they have been treating us, the whole industry.

disgusting to be fair and I was asked to not be too direct about them so I'll shut up right now

Joel Cheesman (33:44.958)

Okay. Hubris. Hubris gets everybody every time. LinkedIn has the luxury of being sort of Apple. They don't have to be first. They just have to get it good enough for everybody to adopt it. And they have, when you say they move slow, it's probably on purpose. It's probably on purpose because they have that luxury.

Lieven (33:49.898)

Yup.

Lieven (33:57.068)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (33:57.798)

Mm.

Lieven (34:02.785)

I guess so.

Chad Sowash (34:03.91)

Well, and the testing in the SMB side of the house, because they know that a lot of these tools, these smaller companies aren't going to have those tools baked into bigger systems because they don't use bigger systems. So to be able to do that from a transactional standpoint, it makes sense. the jumping into enterprise, which they're going to need to get into to be able to scale from a total addressable market standpoint, that just doesn't make any sense for a company at all.

Lieven (34:12.077)

Mm.

Joel Cheesman (34:27.176)

Yeah.

Lieven (34:31.16)

Hmm.

Joel Cheesman (34:31.644)

I think it'll be really interesting how it unfolds as to more professional level folks getting okay with robot recruiters. Because we've always historically said, well, you know, these hourly jobs, these folks don't have resumes, like we're just going to give them this chat bot and they're going to be happy about it. I'd say it's not yet decided whether management level and above people are comfortable with robots interviewing them.

Chad Sowash (34:37.798)

Mm.

Chad Sowash (34:46.182)

Yeah.

Lieven (34:51.245)

Hmm.

Lieven (35:00.424)

even

Chad Sowash (35:00.644)

Yeah, we'll get comfortable and more comfortable every day as leaving was talking about having all these robots, physical robots that are around us. Those are more intimidating than the non-physical robots, right? It's more processed than it is actual physical robots. So I think these types of things, the actual algorithms that we'll be dealing with that will take more white collar workers, jobs or tasks, those are going to be adopted.

Lieven (35:04.621)

Hmm.

Joel Cheesman (35:15.869)

Yep.

Lieven (35:24.482)

Hmm.

Joel Cheesman (35:26.45)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (35:28.228)

much faster and easier just because they're not as menacing. They're not as black mirror.

Joel Cheesman (35:29.66)

Yeah. And I think, I think voice voice will be a big step forward to that. think chatting with texts, I think feels a little bit unprofessional, but if you can get the voice stuff right, then, then that'll be, that'll be fine. All right, guys, let's move on to gum loop. Say that three times fast. the break is after this one, unless you want to take this break here. Okay. Okay. gum loop and service now. So gum loop has raised.

Chad Sowash (35:35.589)

Mm. Yeah.

yeah.

Chad Sowash (35:48.294)

and take a quick break.

Chad Sowash (35:52.725)

okay. Wow, this is a long segment. I love it.

Joel Cheesman (35:59.454)

$50 million in a series B funding round led by Benchmark. The company aims to empower non-technical employees to automate repetitive tasks using AI agents with a focus on ease of use and model agnostic flexibility. And the humans will need lots of agents because according to ServiceNow's CEO, AI agents could easily send college grad unemployment over 30%. Check out this clip from CNBC.

Chad Sowash (36:34.63)

Not saying a clip.

Joel Cheesman (36:46.526)

Did you see a clip, Levin? Did Levin see a clip? Yeah. Oh. Okay. Okay. So Chad, we've got agents galore. Aside from the ServiceNow CEO looking like every cocaine dealer ever on Miami Vice, what are your thoughts on all this agent talk and unemployment?

Chad Sowash (36:47.814)

Is it live?

Lieven (36:50.454)

I was looking at the other screen.

Chad Sowash (37:09.324)

Yeah, the CEO over Gumloop, I think it was actually said they get addicted. The users actually get addicted. They start building more agents and then all of the sudden the whole company is AI native. Let's face it, companies like Gumloop are incredibly smart. They're having people pay them to build armies of agents that work inside of thousands of different platforms. For me.

Gum Loop watches the builds, then they move to offering the most popular agents for specific systems, and then they turn into an orchestration platform instead of just building agents. So Gum Loop is already showing agents working in Slack, Asana, Linear, Airtable, Google Calendar, Monday.com, and many other platforms. So for me, this is crowdsourcing the... And think about it.

If you have a bunch of people that use monday.com every day and they know that there are process gaps or what have you or things that can be automated. If I can, if I can as a user actually build something like that for myself and then gum loop can watch it happen inside of monday.com, they can, they can go ahead and take that robot and they can make it available to everybody and sell it. So it becomes an orchestration engine.

Lieven (38:27.102)

Exactly.

Chad Sowash (38:31.588)

that was built by me, the fucking user who paid to build the fucking agent, right? And then you've got the guys at ServiceNow. Obviously McDermott told CNBC that ServiceNow's tools will help businesses slash hiring costs, adding that the software firm has already taken out 90 % of customer service use cases. Then Palantir's Alex Karp told CNBC that he wants to grow revenue by 10x while reducing headcount. And then obviously,

Lieven (38:33.39)

Yes.

Bye!

Chad Sowash (39:01.858)

Amazon, go figure, Jassy, also wants to shrink its workforce by using AI tools. How are they going to do that? That's the question, right? And that's what we're seeing with like the MIT survey where CEOs are like, this is not working. We're not getting the ROI. It all goes back to companies like Gumloop. That's how it fucking gets done. It's everything that's being built.

Joel Cheesman (39:03.891)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (39:27.3)

that goes in the background that takes all these tasks away. But Gumloop is smart enough to have me, the user, dumbass, paying for their platform and building their next gen product. I mean, it's fucking genius, man.

Joel Cheesman (39:30.888)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (39:46.461)

The interesting thing that will unfold here is you have these AI tools, agent builders within companies, but you also have agent builders everywhere, like everywhere else. So we've seen Atlas, the browser, we see what Gemini is doing. you're going to have a little bit of like email.

Like I have my Gmail, my personal account that goes with me anywhere and everywhere. But then I have like my work email and everything in that stays within work. So my initial, my initial thought would be like, why, why couldn't you just take all your agents you make in open AI or Gemini and just take it to every company that you work for? of course, the problem with that is that the information is disparate. doesn't necessarily fit in with what the company's objectives and goals are. So I.

So I do think there is going to be value in sort of this enterprise level agent that is outside of open AI or Gemini or anyone else. Because if, if I can basically have an archive of all the agents that we've created in a company, all those agents are built for our individual company goals and tactics and whatever we do. Right. So, whereas if you brought it one in from the outside, it may not fit like a glove.

Chad Sowash (40:58.758)

Mm.

Joel Cheesman (41:03.058)

with what we do here internally. Plus, if it's internal, you're training all your coworkers, some that aren't even at the company yet on how to do certain jobs and how to get agents to do these jobs. If it's a passport where you just bring it in and out with you as you leave, that's less valuable to a company. So do think these services that are enterprise level agents and how you build those and how you coordinate that with fellow employees, there is going to be a market for that. Now,

Do the big guys, Anthropic, et cetera, create sort of like enterprise level companies and you go, well, the Claude agent is going to be way better than the Gumloop agent. So we're going to go with that. I think that's left to be determined, but as a general sort of consensus, I get that having an enterprise level agent makes sense for companies on the service now side. I mean, it's like, it's very popular for Silicon Valley types to say everyone's going to be unemployed and we don't need to save her for retirement. And.

Lieven (41:52.59)

It's very popular for social and health advice today. Everyone's going to be employed, and we don't need to save our people's

Joel Cheesman (42:00.494)

UBI is going to be everywhere and anywhere. And there's been a lot of articles recently about the connection between saying such things and making AI related layoffs and stock value. So you get like a block, you get a meta. And when they make these announcements, the street usually likes it and improves stock prices and values. do think directionally he's right though. mean, unemployment rate between like college level entry level job age is,

Chad Sowash (42:27.877)

it's

Lieven (42:29.096)

Hmm

Joel Cheesman (42:30.002)

going to 8%, the amount of underemployed in the US anyway is like 40%. So even the ones that aren't employed are taking lesser roles than they would, than their degree apparently got them, you know, that they got. So short term, think there is pain. Longer term, and this goes back to us talking about vibe coding and Alexander Chakovsky stuff. if people can...

Chad Sowash (42:31.611)

Mm.

Chad Sowash (42:35.952)

Huge. Yes.

Joel Cheesman (42:58.76)

create new companies, new services solutions. Like there's going to be more businesses and AI is creating more problems to help that we need to solve. So I think longer term, think about Chad and we're coming up in the nineties and leaving, what it costs to make a website, hundreds of thousands of dollars, right? had developers and servers and like all that stuff is gone. All you need is an idea and you can make, you can make software. I think short term pain is going to be there, but I think

Lieven (43:12.97)

Oh. $100,000 right now developers and servers and all that stuff is gone. All you need is an idea. You can make software. So think short term pain is going to be there, but think new businesses spread out.

Joel Cheesman (43:27.166)

There are going to be new businesses spread out from these kids that aren't getting jobs that will create more jobs in the future. think we just have to eventually get there. Leave in your thoughts.

Lieven (43:38.862)

I love the whole idea about enabling people to automate the boring stuff and to give them the tools to create these flows and to get them to spend some time and stuff they actually like doing. But in this case, I totally agree with what Chet was saying. You're just giving your knowledge away to a company who is going to create tools and they can duplicate them forever and sell them to everyone else. So basically you are trying to make me build my own replacements.

Joel Cheesman (44:01.427)

Yeah.

Lieven (44:08.886)

You're going to commercialize my replacement. It reminds me of Shutterstock. know the story probably. Shutterstock, the biggest image database in the world. They got 10,000s, hundreds of thousands of designers and all those people were freelancers and they sold their images to Shutterstock and then Shutterstock could sell them to users. And suddenly Shutterstock saw it coming and they sold the whole database with images to ChatGPT.

for 170 million euros. then Chachipiti was able to create its own images using that database to study on. And so now nobody ever uses Shutterstock anymore because you just asked Chachipiti. So they're going broke, but also those tens of thousands of designers are going broke. It's disaster. So in this case, Shutterstock sold it. They saw it coming. They got the money and they'll figure out something else. But it's the poor people who didn't realize that what was happening, they lost their job. I think this is happening again and again.

Chad Sowash (44:44.048)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (44:49.926)

Hmm?

Lieven (45:07.052)

And the best will stay working and they will design even better flows and even better agents. But all those mediocre profiles will lose their jobs.

Joel Cheesman (45:07.219)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (45:16.606)

I mean, every app store that's ever been made is built to basically steal all the best ideas and bring them into your organization. read the fine print on these. I'm sure these enterprise tools will have to have something that says we won't sell or it all stays with you. But yeah, for now I'd say that's, that is a risk for sure.

Lieven (45:21.879)

Of course.

Lieven (45:26.892)

Yeah.

Lieven (45:31.534)

probably.

Lieven (45:35.33)

They won't sell, but they'll see the IDs and they'll see what is popular and how it works. And they'll come up with something similar. Yeah, but it's, it's, can't stop it. It's happening. So just make sure you're the best. always tell my students, some of you will get screwed, but the best will stay. So be the best.

Chad Sowash (45:37.37)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (45:43.986)

Yep. Yep.

Joel Cheesman (45:54.054)

Yeah. Well guys, you'll, you'll never get screwed listening to the Chad and cheese. So make sure you, if you like what you've heard, plug in, get, get the feed from us on whatever your favorite podcast platform of choices. You can also check us out on YouTube. We'll be right back.

Lieven (45:57.582)

Thank

Joel Cheesman (46:13.694)

All right, guys, let's go big picture for a second. Microsoft and 22 retired US military leaders came out in support of Anthropics lawsuit against the Trump administration's Pentagon designation of the AI company as a quote, supply chain risk. This followed Anthropics refusal to allow unrestricted military use of its Claude model, prompting a ban on federal use. A court hearing is set for later this month.

Chad Sowash (46:30.47)

Mmm.

Joel Cheesman (46:41.0)

Here's CNBC's coverage of the issue.

Chad Sowash (46:50.051)

and nothing.

Joel Cheesman (46:57.566)

Okay. Chad, a lot to digest there. Your thoughts.

Chad Sowash (47:03.31)

Okay, so big question is, what has this got to do with hiring? If you're a vendor in the TA and HR space and your clients are government contractors, you have a problem. For better understanding, there are roughly 109,000 to 200,000 unique firms that receive federal contract awards annually. And then there's a rough estimate of another 80,000 companies who are on the subcontracting side. So if you're a vendor,

in the hiring and talent management space and you're using Claude in your products, this is a what the fuck moment, right? Yes, you can switch models, but some are just better in certain areas than others. So if your platform is going to perform as well with another LLM, no. I mean, you choose what's best for whatever feature or process you're trying to put in place. And in many cases, that's Claude.

So do vendors move away from Claude entirely or do they have a different setup with a not as good substitute for government contractors? So there are wrinkles that are popping up with AI on the daily. And just when you think it doesn't touch you, what did the five fingers say to the face? Slap.

Joel Cheesman (48:27.708)

Yeah, I'm sure the bourbon business didn't expect banning in Canada when they when they gave money to Trump. Look, there's there's a long storied history of governments going against businesses. And governments usually win. Unfortunately, if you've seen the movie Aviator about Howard Hughes, his spruce goose was government, and they decided to give him the big smack. There's also a lesser known movie called Tucker.

Chad Sowash (48:33.584)

Yeah, consequences.

Joel Cheesman (48:55.838)

Chad about a car company that was developed and the car lobby basically squashed that business as the government came out against that. Jeff Bridges. Yes. It's a good movie. Good movie. It's probably streaming somewhere. And look, the Trump administration is a special kind of vindictive. Look, there was some positives on this for sure. They became the number one used app in app stores. They brand recognition. A lot of people know Anthropic, but didn't know Anthropic before this whole Trump.

Chad Sowash (49:03.376)

Jeff Bridges, wasn't it? Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (49:25.726)

uh, Trump dilemma. Um, and if, if, if Trump was in his first sort of go around, I would be much more worried about anthropic than I am in a second term of Trump. Um, look, I, I would bet more that in eight months or whatever, when November hits that he'll have a lot less power and be a lame duck. And a lot of these things are going to go by the wayside. Then I would think that he's gonna, uh, you know,

that he's going to have a majority in the house going into next year. So I think Anthropic, the history lesson on this is going to be good for them. think more or less anyone that is in the Trump sort of universe is toxic and they're going to get thrown into the woodchipper. And we've already seen a lot of administration, the people from Mike Pence and on that get thrown in the woodchipper. I think, I think they're probably going to be on the right side of history, which historically doesn't happen.

Lieven (49:58.574)

Thank

Joel Cheesman (50:21.97)

I think Microsoft has financial reason to come out in support. also think Microsoft sees that Trump is on the lame duck side of his presidency. So they have a financial reason to support, but also I think politically they're not going to get hit too much. think the Trump administration is going to have a lot to deal with after November with impeachment trials and who knows what to worry about contracts with Anthropic.

Chad Sowash (50:49.12)

If these companies don't step up now to be able to defend this type of action, it could come against them.

Joel Cheesman (50:59.826)

Leave any thoughts?

Lieven (50:59.886)

I think this isn't going to make the European policymakers more positive about using foreign large language models for high risk activities like hiring or firing people. They're already very anxious and they call hiring people a high risk activity when it concerns using AI. And if you hear these kinds of stories, then I think they're going to try to switch as fast as possible to something like Mistral, the French version of a French large language model.

Chad Sowash (51:10.618)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (51:28.861)

Mm-hmm.

Lieven (51:29.164)

or maybe new ones coming up, supported by European government, think. And Anthropic is supposed to be the ethical large language model. The others are worse. At least they claimed to be ethical.

Joel Cheesman (51:34.12)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (51:41.116)

And they've captured that brand by saying, we're going to say no to our shit being used to kill people and blow shit up. So, I mean, good on them. It may not work as well for Palantir. I mean, Palantir historically may be the bad guys in this story. yeah, just openly kill everybody.

Lieven (51:47.043)

Yeah.

Lieven (51:52.056)

Hmm.

Lieven (51:57.728)

Yeah, they always, they never even claim to be good. Yeah, sure. We do it more efficient than the others. use us. Yeah, that's true.

Chad Sowash (51:58.459)

go very much.

Chad Sowash (52:04.858)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (52:07.644)

The checks are clearing. Let's go. Let's go, baby. And Chad, you and I talked about recently on a show about European, embracing European technologies and like, you know, getting those out of the government contracts and Mistral is a great example of technology in France, right? France is a Mistral. So there are examples that can take hold.

Chad Sowash (52:10.042)

Yeah.

Lieven (52:20.366)

That's really Trump.

Lieven (52:27.924)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (52:32.668)

So we'll, we'll see. It's either like we're American, Chinese, or we're going to try to build our own and prop up our own companies. The future is interesting guys. May we live in interesting times. Boring times. Let's take a quick break guys. Leave us a review guys. Give us a star, whatever, words of wisdom. Whether you, whether you love us or hate us. We love, we love the feedback. We'll be right back.

Chad Sowash (52:42.214)

Good day.

Lieven (52:42.528)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (52:54.864)

Lots of stars.

Lieven (52:56.462)

Fuck.

Joel Cheesman (53:05.246)

All right, guys, Jack and Jill went up a hill to fetch a pail of water. Codewalls, autonomous AI agent, exploited for seemingly harmless bugs in the Jack and Jill hiring platform, gaining admin access and probing its AI defenses. The agent demonstrated unexpected behavior, including social engineering and masquerading as one of our favorite people on the show. Donald Trump to gain access to company data. This experiment highlights the potential for AI agents to become proficient.

at hacking other AI agents posing a significant threat to cybersecurity. In case you missed it, Jack and Jill is a job search employment agent for companies used to hire. Chad, your thoughts on the breach of CodeWall.

Chad Sowash (53:55.621)

Yeah, mean, attention founders, your burn rates about ready to go through the fucking roof. The days of quarterly security checks are going to be as effective as a screen door in a submarine. I mean, if your AI is always on the hackers, AI is always on. You're going to have to buy defensive AI just to babysit your product AI so that it doesn't get gas lit.

Into giving away the API keys by a Donald Trump impersonator, right? But you've got to admit it It's it's a beautiful racket the VCs fund the fire. They also funded the extinguisher and Founders become the middleman burning cash in the center of the room It does not being a founder right now with shit like this happening does not seem like it's gonna be fun

Joel Cheesman (54:51.838)

Yeah, it's funny as you read the story when Jack, the hiring agent knew that it was Donald Trump actually addressed it as Mr. President. So the LLM actually connected the fact that Donald Trump is Mr. President. Also Anthropic uses Jack and Jill apparently, so we're sort of coming full circle on this Anthropic thing, just a little endorsement for them. I'm not a paid sponsor or paid spokesman for them.

Chad Sowash (55:12.938)

wow.

Joel Cheesman (55:19.374)

In fact, I don't think I liked their business when we talked about them on the show.

We talk about businesses and opportunities are created because of problems. Well, here's a problem kids. The AI is going to with scale, hack your shit, find weaknesses and, take advantage of those. All that creates new opportunities for businesses and technologies to fight those things. So we talk about the unemployment rate and taking jobs, cetera. Like humans are going to have problems to solve forever.

And AI is creating new problems that we've never had before enter this problem of getting hacked. Every company that has a forward-facing solution is going to get hacked is going to like, the bots are going to come in North Koreans. mean, it's going to be like mass hysteria and you're going to need tools to figure out how to protect yourself. And this is an example of that. This was not a hack. This was not a breach. This was a friendly sort of exercise.

Lieven (55:53.612)

Hmm.

Lieven (56:00.046)

you

basic solution.

Joel Cheesman (56:21.99)

So we don't mean to sort of put any more importance than we need to, but these things are going to happen to you if they're not already and you need to be prepared for it and have the tools to protect yourself. Leaven, I'm sure you guys get attacks quite often, whether they're friendly or not. What can you tell us?

Lieven (56:39.722)

Nothing, nothing at all. We keep quiet about it and it didn't happen. But talking about Jack and Jill, I was surprised in fact that the whole Coldwell stuff was published because I was actually testing Jack and Jill and our CIO, my colleague was enthusiastic about it. liked the whole idea. But after the hack, mean, reputation damage is real. And we don't want to get involved with companies that are hacked so easily. Not sure if it was easy, but so publicly. So we'll look into it twice now.

Chad Sowash (56:42.98)

Thanks

Chad Sowash (56:54.148)

Mm-hmm.

Lieven (57:09.334)

I just wondered, Joel just said it was a nice and friendly hack or something. not sure what words he used, but it was something like that. wasn't a...

Joel Cheesman (57:18.258)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (57:18.438)

or like a white hat, you could call it, I guess. They didn't get in there and actually do anything malicious. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (57:21.31)

It was a controlled test.

Lieven (57:21.322)

Yeah, it's ethical hacks. A control test, yeah. But normally, control tests are something you keep hush-hush. Yeah, it's test. It's pen testing, penetration testing. But you don't publish the results if they're not good. And in this case, mean, reputation damage must be huge. So this was my first thought when I read it. But the whole AI stuff, of course, is amazing.

Chad Sowash (57:30.265)

your hat.

Joel Cheesman (57:45.746)

That is a great point.

Lieven (57:50.05)

We use lots of tests to constantly try to find weaknesses in our own systems. So for pen testing, it's great, but the bad guys use it as well. And they probably are better at it than some others.

Joel Cheesman (57:57.128)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (58:04.958)

It's a great point. don't know. I don't know what agreement they had to publish this stuff. Um, if it was part of the reason why they would do it, but you're, you're right. If anyone that goes to Google and says, is Jack and Jill safe to use or Jack and tell me about Jack and Jill, ultimately this is going to come up and people, whether it was a breach or controlled or whatever, they're going to automatically say, Oh, great red flag. Not you. You know, I'm not going to use Jack and Jill because of their history with this kind of stuff.

Chad Sowash (58:21.894)

Hmm.

Lieven (58:29.39)

Hmm.

Lieven (58:34.254)

But we are attacked constantly, Korea constantly each day. And sometimes they try to, sometimes they get a bit further, but until now we've always been able to stop them. And we never had sexual ransomware active, but it's a matter of months, years. I don't know what's happening. Here in Belgium, we had a few big hospitals which were totally unable to work for days because of ransomware. It's evil.

Joel Cheesman (58:47.677)

Mm-hmm.

Lieven (59:00.204)

And they're coming, they're coming for the money where it is. I think they're just going to attack big companies and it's a, it's like a lottery one day or number.

Joel Cheesman (59:00.306)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (59:05.946)

And, and look, historically, historically, the job search space is ground zero for scams because people are vulnerable. People are, you know, they're desperate and scammers will come out. Yeah. I mean, imagine the number of bots that are contacting people to interview for jobs and getting data from them. And like, I mean, there's, there's a whole level of evil in our space that is unique to us historically, unfortunately.

Lieven (59:13.24)

Hmm

Yeah. Private information, lots of it.

Lieven (59:25.538)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (59:25.691)

Yeah.

Lieven (59:34.326)

Yeah, but the good thing is we have a very big team working on cybersecurity. They're very active and they're constantly training people to be aware, to be vigilant. So I think maybe those hackers will try to find a target which is easier to penetrate and they'll leave us alone. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (59:42.952)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (59:49.958)

I think that's the point, Levin. I think that's the point is that you guys are a bigger organization. You are focused heavily on, you know, obviously being able to deter these types of attacks. And the only way you can do that is actually have teams to be able to be, you know, very vigilant around this, where a lot of these new companies like a Jack and Jill, they're just, they just don't have, yeah.

Lieven (59:55.63)

Hmm.

Lieven (01:00:11.214)

Yeah, they just launched the product and they weren't thinking about security in the first place. Yeah, of course.

Chad Sowash (01:00:15.974)

Yeah, they spent they spent money on getting the MVP not on protection, right? And I mean, that's what I'm talking about burn rate for these founders. They're going to have to actually spend a lot more money on protection. The defense AI is what they're calling it instead of just sitting back and trying to do these quarterly audits.

Joel Cheesman (01:00:18.993)

Mm-hmm.

Lieven (01:00:29.294)

Mm.

Joel Cheesman (01:00:32.252)

Mm-hmm.

Lieven (01:00:36.818)

But it's such a waste of energy and money if you have to spend it on such a thing, but you have to, you have to. New jobs.

Chad Sowash (01:00:38.914)

It is. But as Joel had said, AI is going to create problems and it's going to create cottage industries. It's going to create a lot of different things.

Joel Cheesman (01:00:45.566)

Mm-hmm.

Lieven (01:00:50.786)

Hmm.

Joel Cheesman (01:00:51.198)

Well guys, speaking of working round the clock, our crack team of dad joke experts have come up with a real doozy this week. No, no, no. He's taking a break this week. What do you call an Irishman who bounces off walls? What do you call an Irishman who bounces off walls? Rick O'Shea. Rick O'Shea. That was good, right? Happy St. Patrick's Day.

Chad Sowash (01:00:53.493)

Lieven (01:00:54.52)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (01:00:59.31)

Is this from Jeremy too? Okay, okay. Damn.

Chad Sowash (01:01:13.863)

that was good. That was good. That was very good.

Lieven (01:01:14.294)

No.

Lieven (01:01:18.846)

Okay.

Joel Cheesman (01:01:21.01)

Pass the Tylenol. We out!

Chad Sowash (01:01:22.725)

We out.

Lieven (01:01:23.223)

We're out!