Indeed's Pricing Black Box

Recruit’s at it again, squeezing employers with Indeed’s black-box pricing the second the market softens.

From there, it’s a whirlwind:

• a major HR tech shakeup,

• AI hype smacking SaaS stocks,

• job search getting hijacked by bots,

• and a legal storm brewing around how hiring platforms really use your data.

Throw in some Super Bowl ad shade, a little surveillance paranoia, and a job market that feels one bad headline away from chaos…

Yeah, it’s one of those episodes.

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION Joel Cheesman (00:52.086)

Stop collaborate and listen boys and girls this is the chat and cheese podcast I'm your co-host Joel Gordy Howe Cheeseman

Chad Sowash (01:01.056)

This is Chad Coelho Mao, Silt Wash.

Maureen Clough (01:04.706)

And this is Maureen aka Moe, the Seahawks saved 2026 Wiley Clough.

Chad Sowash (01:10.88)

Too early.

Joel Cheesman (01:11.116)

On this episode of HR's Most Dangerous Podcast, Workday says goodbye, Recruit says, Konnichiwa, and France says, fucka you! Let's do this.

Joel Cheesman (01:26.768)

That's about the only French I know. And it was taught to be bombed by my brother-in-law in French, French Canadian. Yeah, guard. So what's up everybody?

Maureen Clough (01:28.846)

It's beautiful. Wow.

Chad Sowash (01:31.712)

God fuck you.

Chad Sowash (01:38.4)

Well, Mo is on cloud nine. I think she's calling a win in 2026 a little early, but okay.

Joel Cheesman (01:39.855)

Mo's on her victory hangover.

Maureen Clough (01:42.423)

Yes.

Maureen Clough (01:47.436)

You know, hey, we didn't need even that. could have had something. We know what's so sad is I don't have any of my gear here in my cabin. So I didn't even get to watch the Seahawks Super Bowl rep in my company. I mean, rep in my crew, which sucked, but it was.

Joel Cheesman (01:49.468)

How are you not wearing like the Sam Darnold jersey?

Chad Sowash (01:57.321)

Chad Sowash (02:02.179)

OK. But you got to watch it.

Maureen Clough (02:05.422)

I got to watch it. Yes. And it was amazing. In fact, I made a really huge mistake though. have to tell you, my siblings went down to California and actually saw it in person. And I was like, you know, it just sounds like a lot of traveling and I don't know. I mean, I'm

Chad Sowash (02:15.232)

Joel Cheesman (02:16.092)

you

Chad Sowash (02:18.685)

first world problems, yeah.

Maureen Clough (02:20.494)

I'm up 5K, so at least there's that. But yeah, and you get kind of like better views from the TV, but anyway, it was so awesome and it did so much to heal my broken heart after the Mariner season just to see this happen and so good for the city of Seattle and there's gonna be a massive parade today. 750,000 people are expected, so.

Chad Sowash (02:22.848)

You

Chad Sowash (02:36.318)

yeah.

Chad Sowash (02:39.966)

And yet you're here. And yet you're here.

Maureen Clough (02:41.154)

And yet I'm here. I'm here because you guys, take my commitments seriously. I take my commitments to the Chad and Chi show very seriously. So yeah, but I'm very happy. And yes, it's a huge win for 2026. yeah, my condolences to JT.

Joel Cheesman (02:43.696)

She comes correct.

Chad Sowash (02:45.664)

She does, she does.

Ooh, setting the bar right there, right there.

Joel Cheesman (02:56.7)

Two guys who will never perform at the halftime show, by the way. Two guys.

Chad Sowash (02:59.36)

Dude, was, I, it didn't start till 1130 here. We were, we had, my buddy's apartment was full. We had hot wings. We had beer. We were, yeah. We, we, I didn't go to bed till after three, but it was, it was, is where I, I love a good, I love a good, I love a good defense. And there were two good defenses out there. It was a great defense out there. It was good. And then obviously, you know, Patriots had a really good defense. And then I did, I love me some bad money.

Maureen Clough (03:04.998)

my gosh.

Maureen Clough (03:10.146)

You did it up. Damn. Good for you.

Maureen Clough (03:20.94)

they came through. Yeah. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (03:26.364)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (03:28.924)

I do love me some Bad Bunny. Latin music always brings back great memories for me. I lived in Panama for a little while, visiting Puerto Rico, spending time in Miami. mean, great people, great food, great music. I had a blast. I loved it.

Maureen Clough (03:29.186)

Yeah, he was awesome.

Maureen Clough (03:47.214)

100%. I loved it too.

Joel Cheesman (03:50.086)

So you're not agreeing with the pushback from the other side on this one, I assume, Chad.

Chad Sowash (03:55.681)

I don't understand the pushback. mean, it's weird to me.

Maureen Clough (04:00.439)

So absurd. Kid Rock, come on. my gosh.

Joel Cheesman (04:01.244)

Hot Latinas will save the world as far as I'm concerned. don't know how anyone can watch just the sexiness of that halftime show and not think like, this is awesome. This is amazing.

Maureen Clough (04:10.157)

Oh boy. Oh boy.

Chad Sowash (04:16.074)

Yeah, I again, I don't understand it. You know, I was lucky enough my literally the first Puerto Rican I ever met, grown up in Mansfield, Ohio and North Central Ohio did not was not exposed to Latin music, Latin food, Latin people. No, go figure. Why? Because they all look like me. White people went to AIT, which was right after basic training. And one of my roommates was Peyton Pedro Benton Court from Puerto Rico and

Dude was amazing. Spent 14 weeks with him. He could barely speak English by the time he was done. I spoke a little bit of Spanish. He spoke a lot more English because there are a lot more English speakers around him. But we had a we had a we had a great time, had a great time. And then obviously, like I said, spending time down in Panama, the culture, the food, I mean, I just loved it. So, I mean, that kind of music in that halftime show. And if you have you ever been to Puerto Rico? Oh, it's

Maureen Clough (05:13.899)

I have. Yeah, it's beautiful. Very cool.

Chad Sowash (05:15.764)

I mean, it's cool. Just as long as, you know, there's no hurricanes or shit like that. It's old San Juan is fucking amazing. I mean, it was it was really cool. It really cool. So I just think those a lot of those people who are pushing back. Number one, they don't understand that, you know, more culture is good. Number one and number two, the NFL is a fucking private company. What are they trying to do? They're trying to expand base. And you're looking at 600 million Spanish speakers.

Maureen Clough (05:22.368)

I agree.

Joel Cheesman (05:44.282)

Yeah. Demographics is destiny, right? Demographics is destiny. And that's where the world's going. You know, I, I, if this whole Epstein shit hasn't has taught me anything, it's that, you know, there's a, there's a line in wall street where Gordon Gatko says, look, you're either on the inside or the outside. And I'm convinced there's a lot of rich fuckers on the inside that want everyone on the outside to hate each other, to fight each other, to argue each other, to like, just, just be, just be, just look over here.

Chad Sowash (05:45.344)

worldwide. Yes, yes, it's too easy.

Maureen Clough (05:47.167)

Yep, there you go. Let's talk about come on.

Chad Sowash (06:02.72)

Mm.

Chad Sowash (06:10.036)

Yeah, exactly.

Maureen Clough (06:10.285)

It's a distraction. Yeah. Yep. 100 % agree with you.

Joel Cheesman (06:13.712)

Don't look at the shit that we're doing. So I'm just kind of over fight everybody political division. Like it's all, it's all jazz hands for the rich to stay rich and do apparently really bad shit to people. so that, that's what Epstein has taught me. It's just, it's, it's gross obviously, but there's, there's clearly a bucket of people that we, we don't relate to.

Chad Sowash (06:15.85)

Yeah.

Maureen Clough (06:19.735)

Faux outrage. Yeah. Yep.

Maureen Clough (06:27.848)

really bad shit.

Yeah.

beyond.

Joel Cheesman (06:38.246)

that are either making the rules, doing all the shit, and we're not part of that. They want us to keep fighting. If you had two yachts and one guy was black and one was white, I bet there's no racism. It's two rich people. That's the difference between them and us.

Maureen Clough (06:40.717)

I mean.

Joel Cheesman (06:55.712)

And thank you for coming to my Ted talk. Everybody appreciate it. Appreciate it. How about the commercials? Did you like guys like any commercials?

Maureen Clough (07:02.925)

It was too loud at the party where I was, was to hear a single commercial, but I did see the one before. Yeah. I saw some, yeah, it was, it was rock is party, but yeah, I need to actually go that's on my to do list is to go and actually rewatch those commercials because I just missed out on all of them. The one that I did see was some like crypto one that had the lyrics to everybody from back street. And I was like holding myself back from singing, which was kind of funny, but like other than that, I was like, this is the most worthless. What are they trying to get from this?

Joel Cheesman (07:22.492)

Yeah, Coinbase.

Maureen Clough (07:32.889)

Like I didn't understand it. Maybe it just went over my head. But every millennial was like,

Chad Sowash (07:34.6)

It's like a karaoke.

Joel Cheesman (07:36.6)

I'm aged out of the karaoke ad. That was not for me. I was like, the music's too low. I don't get it. And my wife's like, no, it's supposed to be. So people can sing it's karaoke. I'm like, I didn't get it.

Maureen Clough (07:42.881)

Yeah

Maureen Clough (07:49.324)

I didn't get it either. But I was actually moved to do just that. I was moved to sing and I did keep it together because it was a little, it was loud but it wasn't that loud, right?

Joel Cheesman (07:59.728)

Yeah. Chad, did you like the Duncan Goodwill hunting inspired ad?

Chad Sowash (08:04.628)

Man, there's a lot of AI happening these days. Jesus. It was OK. I mean, it was just OK. My favorite was the Claude ad, Moe's, I think, probably favorite ads. The favorite one that I had, though, was the one where the guy is talking about trying to reconnect with his mom, I think it was. And the chat GPT is coming back to him and saying, well, you can try X, Y, and Z.

Maureen Clough (08:04.951)

That one was good.

Maureen Clough (08:10.285)

Gross.

Joel Cheesman (08:16.091)

Yeah.

Maureen Clough (08:18.454)

yeah.

Chad Sowash (08:32.14)

And if that doesn't work, well, we've got this 50 plus dating site where you can find, you know, older women and then Claude, no ads or whatever it was. But that was fucking funny.

Maureen Clough (08:36.845)

You

Joel Cheesman (08:36.848)

Right, cougars.

Maureen Clough (08:42.509)

was so funny. The other one that... I didn't see it. man, it does sound like that. That, I mean, the football reference, there you go. There was a rippling ad? I didn't even see it. Wow. The one that got me was the ring ad.

Joel Cheesman (08:44.988)

I did like, no one liked the tight end ad and I kind of liked it. The cancer screening. Like I thought that was, I thought it was clever. No one's talking about the rippling ad by the way. Like no one's top lists. Yeah. It's a, that's no one saw it. don't think.

Chad Sowash (08:48.456)

You just like looking at butts. That's what, yeah.

Maureen Clough (09:03.757)

Did you guys see the Ring ad where they're like, help find lost dogs. And I'm like, this is not at all about pulling the wool over all of our eyes. And it's mass surveillance, right? Exactly, like don't tell me that you're doing, exactly. was like, God, don't, we're not, come on, we see through that.

Joel Cheesman (09:08.921)

the dog finder thing. That was cool.

Chad Sowash (09:10.388)

The big brother. It's enemy of the state, baby.

Joel Cheesman (09:20.954)

You guys, man, like every pair of meta is recording everybody and every ring camera is recording everybody. Let's save some dogs, man. That's okay.

Chad Sowash (09:23.968)

Jesus.

Maureen Clough (09:27.293)

No privacy. There's no privacy. So performative. Come on.

Chad Sowash (09:28.736)

God. Yeah, that's that's how they get you. It's a slippery fucking slope. You ask Will Smith and Gene Hackman. Well, Gene Hackman's gone.

Joel Cheesman (09:34.222)

I know.

Did the Lay's commercial with the daughter and the farmer guy, the father, get you a chat or no? Yeah.

Chad Sowash (09:46.651)

yeah, where she's planting potatoes. Yeah, it's just like, I love it. Especially at the end, know, when he pulls down his visor and there's the picture that she had, just, that's good stuff. You can't go wrong.

Maureen Clough (09:50.285)

don't see it.

Joel Cheesman (09:58.884)

You know, every young woman just wants to take over the potato farm from their dad. You know, that's whatever that that is happening all over the place. I'm sure.

Maureen Clough (10:02.865)

Mmm, yes. That is my aspiration. Actually, increasingly so, that does sound lovely. Yeah, sure. Sure. Why not?

Joel Cheesman (10:10.8)

Does it lace, lace potatoes by the yeah, all these farms are factory farms. Like don't let the red barn and the like the Labrador foya. It's not, that's not how it works. Can we do some, are we sure we're done with the Superbowl? I mean, these are, these are important. All right. All right. Well, here we go.

Chad Sowash (10:18.492)

much.

Don't let him fool you. Okay, shout outs, Jesus.

Maureen Clough (10:21.805)

Fair enough. Fair enough. All right.

Chad Sowash (10:28.916)

Well, no, Mo's got a shout out. She's, she's shout out.

Maureen Clough (10:30.229)

I mean, I'm not done with the Super Bowl. That's my shout out the Seahawks.

Come on, it's just gotta be the Seahawks. I it was so awesome to see them come through. And the thing that I laughed so hard at was that the kicker wasn't even the MVP. And he had more points, the kicker alone, more points than the Patriots. Like I saw this amazing meme. Exactly, it was like Seahawks kicker, 17, Patriots, 13. I mean, incredible, so hilarious. But yeah, he's the unsung hero for sure. But yeah, I thought it was...

Chad Sowash (10:47.828)

Yes. Yeah, 17 to 13.

Chad Sowash (10:55.018)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (10:57.67)

Mm-hmm.

Maureen Clough (11:02.281)

I'm going to go ahead and be honest on this one. I didn't think it was the most exciting football game I've ever seen, but I frankly don't care because we won and that's all that matters. yeah, was. It's awesome. I'm so happy. Seattle is something you smile about. mean, 2026 we we gotta take what we can get, so I'm pumped.

Chad Sowash (11:08.432)

Nah.

Chad Sowash (11:12.706)

That's all that matters.

Joel Cheesman (11:16.252)

All

Joel Cheesman (11:23.664)

So Chad, were our draft party not so long ago, the draft that Sam Darnold was in. And I think you probably recall me having Sam at the top of my list. so for me, it's a little bit of redemption that back eight years ago, whenever it was, that he would have been, in my perspective, he's the only one of that class, Baker and Josh Allen, that has a Super Bowl appearance and a Super Bowl win. So a little bit of.

Chad Sowash (11:51.392)

and Lamar.

Joel Cheesman (11:52.668)

bit of shout out to, hasn't been to the Super Bowl. Lamar hasn't. So he's the first one. So yeah, Sam Darnold. A little shout out for me. I'll get in there for that.

Maureen Clough (11:53.838)

Yeah, and didn't... There you go.

Chad Sowash (11:55.861)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Sam Darnold. well, Joel. He just grinds.

Maureen Clough (12:01.995)

Love him. He did a great job. Doesn't let the noise get to him, just performs, just goes out and grinds. Good dude. I love that he got cut from four teams and then just went on.

Joel Cheesman (12:12.322)

It's bad to be a Vikings fan. It's bad to be a Vikings fan having let him go. JJ McCarthy, everybody. That's where it's going.

Chad Sowash (12:17.241)

We talked about that earlier. Yeah. We talked about that earlier in the year. It's like...

Maureen Clough (12:18.209)

that. And Jody Allen.

Chad Sowash (12:24.53)

He was on fire. He was on fire. It made no sense. It made no sense. Anyway, anyway, So on to my shout out. So so questions first, Joel, have you ever protested something? I mean, you know, maybe smaller servings at your local Chipotle or something like that.

Joel Cheesman (12:38.736)

Well, Chad, my earliest memory of boycotting and protest was when my mom put broccoli on my plate and I think I protested for a week because of that. So that's my earliest memory of protesting. So I have a long history, Chad, of fighting the power, if you will, fight the power.

Maureen Clough (12:46.305)

Mmm, yeah.

Maureen Clough (12:53.363)

Hehehehehe

Chad Sowash (12:54.921)

Okay, that's amazing. What about you Moe? You're there in Seattle. mean, you're known for the protests up in Pacific Northwest. Do do any protesting?

Maureen Clough (13:02.089)

Yeah, I have not really been a part of it, if I'm honest. And I say that with a little bit of shame. So I'm looking forward to getting on board with some of these ideas that are floating around.

Joel Cheesman (13:02.534)

Grab a flannel and let's protest.

Chad Sowash (13:07.808)

Hmm.

Joel Cheesman (13:11.58)

It's not too late.

Chad Sowash (13:14.368)

Well, I'm gonna tell you right now, some people march, some people tweet, but my shout out goes to Scott Galloway. You might know him as Prof G. Let's listen to what he has to say.

Joel Cheesman (13:25.487)

Love them.

Maureen Clough (13:26.827)

do.

Chad Sowash (14:34.56)

Boom. Yeah. because of that, it is, it, in, Joey, we always say vote with your feet, vote with your wallet, right? This is exactly what that is. You don't, you don't have to unsubscribe, but you can pause your subscriptions, right? Pause it for a few months, allow Amazon and Netflix and, and Claude and, and chat GPT to feel a little bit of that pain. but a shout out to resist and unsubscribe.com.

Maureen Clough (14:42.701)

We have power.

Maureen Clough (14:48.439)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (15:02.954)

We don't have to get out there in the streets. We can if we want to, but we don't have to. We can resist and unsubscribe.

Maureen Clough (15:07.373)

Probably should too. I mean, look what happened with Disney. Remember back when Kimmel was suspended, everybody pulled away from Disney and actually I was in the mid, I was about to protest. I was actually about to have the conversation with my husband like, hey dude, we gotta cancel Disney Plus because like our kids can survive like however long it takes to get this guy back on the air and support a free speech. That fucking works. It worked. So we have more power and we can't forget that. We have to work together on this stuff. So I love, I love that shout out.

Chad Sowash (15:13.886)

Yeah. Yep.

Joel Cheesman (15:37.382)

Fair enough. It would behoove me as well to mention that we have an election coming up in about eight months or so. And real change is driven by voting kids. I recommend everyone go search whatever AI of your choice, find out where the most competitive congressional seats are coming up and give money to those candidates. If you want to make some real significant change.

Chad Sowash (15:43.316)

Yep. Mm-hmm.

Maureen Clough (15:45.211)

Yeah, hopefully.

Joel Cheesman (16:04.572)

Go campaign for those, volunteer for those campaigns. That's where some real change is definitely going to happen. I encourage you to do that. In addition to canceling your Amazon Prime or whatever subscription. Very nice. Very nice. All right. All right, Chad. Well, I'm going to give a little bit of advice to the kids out there. Now, if you're a listener, if you're a listener, know times are tough. Times are tough. And we, we, talk about the hustle. We talk about thinking outside the box.

Maureen Clough (16:14.71)

you

Chad Sowash (16:16.372)

which we have done, by the

Maureen Clough (16:18.069)

We'll survive it.

Chad Sowash (16:23.174)

nice, I like that.

Maureen Clough (16:23.789)

you

Chad Sowash (16:31.328)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (16:31.632)

going the extra mile and I saw a new story this week that really, really puts it into perspective the kind of out of the box thinking some employees and past employees and people looking for work are doing out there. I just, was so impressed by this. Please, please take a look.

Chad Sowash (17:11.983)

Yes!

Maureen Clough (17:12.654)

It's bald. It's bald.

Chad Sowash (17:14.784)

Yes!

Maureen Clough (17:22.157)

Are they throwing dough at each other?

Chad Sowash (17:24.096)

It got greedy.

Joel Cheesman (17:30.786)

boy. boy. the, the look, this guy should be CEO of Caesar's as far as I'm concerned. This guy is he goes the extra mile. He thinks, thinks creatively, like make this guy CMO something. But I just shout out, shout out to this out of the box. I won't call him a job seeker, but an enterprising young man that found a way to hustles himself to some extra cash. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. He should get a free t-shirt.

Chad Sowash (17:31.424)

I got too greedy.

Maureen Clough (17:31.967)

Impressive. It's bold.

hahahaha

Chad Sowash (17:37.502)

Ha ha.

Chad Sowash (17:42.755)

shit.

Chad Sowash (17:51.796)

Hustler.

Joel Cheesman (18:00.166)

from Chad and Cheese. He should get a free t-shirt. Yeah, he's got to know about that. Let's check in with our friend, Stephen McGrath on how to do that.

Chad Sowash (18:00.938)

He should, he should. He's got to sign up though. He's got to sign up.

Maureen Clough (18:03.296)

you

Chad Sowash (18:08.421)

I love that guy.

Chad Sowash (18:14.27)

Mo's favorite.

Maureen Clough (18:15.861)

Never not. Shocking.

Maureen Clough (18:21.249)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (18:22.111)

What?

Chad Sowash (18:28.276)

think he needs more than one, apparently.

Joel Cheesman (18:32.348)

He's got a favorite, you know?

Chad Sowash (18:42.976)

Of

Chad Sowash (19:06.141)

yeah.

Chad Sowash (19:24.096)

You

Joel Cheesman (19:24.316)

Shout shout out again to our new whiskey bourbon sponsor Proven Base. We appreciate you guys. appreciate you guys.

Chad Sowash (19:28.53)

He wasn't sure if it was proven bass or proven bass. That was funny. I like that. That's Scott's, you know.

Joel Cheesman (19:32.196)

Well, yeah, they invented the language. No one there seems to speak it. It's crazy. It's crazy.

Chad Sowash (19:38.272)

You

Joel Cheesman (19:44.604)

All right. This has been a turbulent week for Workday, Chad and Mo. Their CEO, Sep Down and Anil Bhusri, co-founder and current executive chair, returned as CEO his fourth time in the role. Fourth time is the charm, saying it was a pivotal moment for the company. They also disclosed plans to cut about 2 % of the workforce or roughly 400 folks following the 8 % haircut from about a year ago. yeah.

Maureen Clough (19:49.067)

Rough year.

Maureen Clough (19:57.902)

Damn. Damn.

Maureen Clough (20:05.717)

playoffs!

Joel Cheesman (20:11.228)

And the stock is down over 25 % year to date. Chad, give us your hot take on the no good rotten week at work day.

Maureen Clough (20:19.661)

You

Chad Sowash (20:19.744)

Man, talk about a relief pitcher. Man, that guy, he's there. So the big question is, why did this happen? It's simple, yet not so simple. I'm going to start with the simple part. Workday stock has been punished over the last year, falling about 44 % due to investor anxiety over the software sector's ability to monetize AI. To me, this is a SaaS knee-jerk reaction.

Here are the numbers and what I like to call reality. Fiscal year 2025, last year total revenue reached 8.45 buh buh billion USD driven by 16.9, oh like 17 % let's call it, increase in subscription revenue. The year before, the year before, 2024, total revenue was 7.25 buh buh billion, right?

And it was a 16.78 increase from 2023. Over the last two years, workday revenues have been over 32 % of an increase. 32%. The stock market today is not reality. It's speculation at best. And investors wet their pants because SaaS is dead in AI rules. That ain't reality today. Refer to the aforementioned sales numbers I just went over, okay?

Maureen Clough (21:36.661)

you

Chad Sowash (21:43.403)

How much profit does open AI perplexity and Gemini have right now? Where's the cricket sound bite? Yeah, they have fucking none, right? Here's the not so simple part. This whole thing feels like the way the US knee jerked into electric vehicles without having charging infrastructure in place instead of just selling the hell out of hybrid vehicles. Now, are hybrids the best for the environment? No, but there are.

in just gasoline only environment, right? Plus you can't force buyers to change habits in the blink of an eye. SaaS companies like Workday, Salesforce, ServiceNow, and many other companies will buy hybrids that everyone keeps buying. What happened to my fucking camera?

Maureen Clough (22:31.853)

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

Joel Cheesman (22:32.252)

It says it's switched to a different app using a different camera.

Chad Sowash (22:37.245)

have more than one fucking camera on.

Chad Sowash (22:46.579)

That's kinda creepy.

Maureen Clough (22:47.063)

Tech man.

Joel Cheesman (22:48.22)

I mean, you can try to reload.

Come back in.

Chad Sowash (22:52.859)

You can turn off the camera while recording, can't switch cameras. Yeah, I don't get it.

Maureen Clough (22:57.503)

It told me my camera was playing in multiple places too earlier, which is one of the reasons I shut down my computer, because I was like, what the hell? So, creepy.

Chad Sowash (23:04.265)

All right, let me go out and come back and then I'll just start from the beginning or I'll just start from that spot and then. Who son of a bitch?

Joel Cheesman (23:10.81)

Okay.

Maureen Clough (23:11.821)

Cool.

Solve!

I did it better last time. my God. I'm so fucking ready. Joel. Dude. Dude. Yeah. Both of us. Both Chad and I, going through it. But yeah, no, I'm.

Joel Cheesman (23:18.372)

Nice when you guys get, get settled. You guys, you guys are so nomadic. like different wifi's and I'm on this and this mic is like.

Maureen Clough (23:34.335)

I'm like, I think I'm starting to realize how much of a toll it's taken on me kind of living in two places, having one foot in one place, one foot in another. And I'm like, I don't know where fucking anything is. I am just, and you know, my husband is like the world's worst planner. So he'll just be like, yeah, I've got a doctor's appointment in town. I'm like, so you're leaving. And like, that means I have to take care of both kids and like, my God, you know, like he's just that kind of thing. Ridiculous. You're back.

Chad Sowash (23:54.937)

That's ridiculous. Okay. Not from the top. I'm just going to go from where it's simple. Okay. All right. This is where it's coming in. Sergey and in a in three, two, one. Okay. Here's not the so that here's the not so simple part. This whole thing feels like the way that the U.S. knee jerked into EVs, electronic vehicles, right? Electric vehicles.

without having charging infrastructure in place instead of just selling the hell out of hybrid vehicles. Are hybrids great for the environment? No, but it's better than gasoline. Plus you can't force a buyer to change its habits in the blink of an eye. So SaaS companies like Workday, Salesforce and ServiceNow and many others will be the hybrids that everybody keeps buying until the infrastructure and concepts are actually proven with full AI companies, right?

And by that time, Workday, Salesforce, all those companies, they're going to become these full AI companies. But last but not least, the optics are even worse as Workday just cut about 400 people talking about layoffs while giving Eschenbach, their last CEO, a $3.5 million golden parachute severance package. That's just the icing on the cake to his total comp.

Maureen Clough (25:14.656)

they did.

Chad Sowash (25:19.193)

in 2025, which was $26 million USD. Okay. So you're cutting loose 400 people. Now I'm sure they got severance packages. Don't get me wrong, right? But come on, man, the guy earns 26 million a year and then gets a $3.5 million kicker. It's just bad optics all around. So it's really hard on workday because the market is treating them like shit, but it's all speculation.

Maureen Clough (25:23.821)

It's getting ridiculous.

Joel Cheesman (25:46.054)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (25:47.531)

and Eschenbach gets kicked to the curb because you got all these fucking bed wetters that are out there.

Joel Cheesman (25:57.424)

You're it's this is totally market driven. I can't believe what's happening to Salesforce, ServiceNow, Workday, Microsoft. I mean, the fear, uncertainty and doubt on these companies is past emotional and algorithm. I mean, this is like COVID holy hell is this the end of world of of times kind of drop in these stocks? I mean,

Chad Sowash (26:00.429)

Yeah, yeah.

Chad Sowash (26:07.939)

should be.

Maureen Clough (26:12.845)

blood baths.

Maureen Clough (26:21.1)

I agree.

Joel Cheesman (26:23.482)

You can, you can, can debate about whether it's real or not. If AI is going to, you know, if Claude is going to do all this shit for a company, I think we can all probably end up somewhere like, no, that isn't going to be the future. Maybe it's somewhere in the middle, but it's definitely not the end of Salesforce. I don't think anyone thinks that, but the market has said we're out, like we're the hell out. We're out of this. And the only narrative that I can find that makes sense for these companies is they need to prove that they can integrate AI to

Chad Sowash (26:37.688)

now.

Joel Cheesman (26:53.887)

restart growth for the future, like long-term future. All these companies that reported are doing great. They're doing great, but the market's saying like, we don't believe in the future. The future is screwed for you guys. And I think if you don't have a CEO who's, let's call them colorful, a Benioff, the CEO at ServiceNow looks like every cocaine dealer in every 80s action movie.

Chad Sowash (27:00.653)

Yeah. Yeah.

Maureen Clough (27:05.357)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (27:17.721)

You

Maureen Clough (27:18.359)

Gosh.

Joel Cheesman (27:19.388)

Elon, course, Elon. Like if you can't tell a story that people will listen to and sort of be intrigued by land on the Mars, build robots, like whatever, if you can't get some diversion and attention. And clearly Workday was not doing that with, with co-CEOs, who's the CEO? I don't know. He's not, he's not in the public eye. They brought this guy in, the stock went down. So clearly the market has said, okay, we're not convinced you guys can integrate AI. We're not convinced that this new

Chad Sowash (27:26.691)

can't bullshit.

Joel Cheesman (27:48.016)

four time CEO is the guy that's going to take you into that future and they're getting hammered for it in the marketplace. The layoffs I think are just sort of you know, par for the course. Yeah, we have to lay off some people. Let's pick a number one or two. Let's go to fuck it. They have to prove. What's that?

Maureen Clough (28:00.91)

standard.

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Chad Sowash (28:04.995)

They're playing to the market. They're playing to the market. mean, because when everybody. Yeah, I know. I know. Crazy. It's crazy.

Maureen Clough (28:07.777)

That's what everybody's doing. Yeah. They've got cover.

Joel Cheesman (28:09.53)

But the market's saying we don't believe it or we don't care. So what's next? Like laugh some more people. mean, the companies I've heard mentioned of companies that are SaaS that sort of get AI in a way that we like is like a Databricks. Zoom is doing pretty well still. companies are gonna have work really hard to improve the narrative and where they're going in the future. I think we all agree that the paradox acquisition, the companies that they brought in,

Maureen Clough (28:15.061)

Yeah, probably.

Joel Cheesman (28:37.446)

for AI will help them get to where they need to go, but the market doesn't seem to be buying that either. This just seems like it's just rotten all around until these companies can prove to the market that we know AI and we're going to integrate it and grow it away at rate that we hope that we will.

Maureen Clough (28:53.459)

None of this is good news for workers either. And I think it's also interesting when you're looking at these layoffs to see actually who is impacted at the organization. And in this case, it sounds like it was a lot of customer support. We already know that Workday doesn't give a damn about user experience because you have to re-put your fucking whole resume back into the system after you upload your resume.

Chad Sowash (28:53.675)

Idiots. No.

Chad Sowash (29:05.113)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (29:11.046)

Preach.

Maureen Clough (29:13.345)

they're also signaling that they don't necessarily care about customer experience the way that they should in that situation. In my estimation, it's like, have you guys had experiences with only like automated customer support? Because I have, and it is so freaking miserable. And I hate that we're moving in this direction as a society to having these agentic experiences, these touchless experiences, these completely inhuman experiences. And

it just to me it signals that of course again and we always knew this right shareholder value creation is the only thing they care about they don't care about the employees they don't care about optics they're paying their executives insane pay packages like this is this is how it's going but when it comes to the humans impacted I think that signals a little bit more what they care about as well and

I will say one thing that I was was heartened by was the layoff did not make mention of AI as the reason behind what happened at workday because so many of them are a wash AI washing their layoffs and just saying it to signal to investors that they're, on the up and up with AI, which is total bullshit. But yeah, it's it's super concerning. I think we're going to see a lot more layoffs. I think people are going to be in a world of hurt. Like you said, it feels like a complete catastrophic meltdown about to happen. And I just.

hope that people are going into it with eyes wide open and reading the room because it's rough.

Joel Cheesman (30:35.868)

Well, I the perspective of employees because who's going to go to work for any of these companies? I mean, the stock options aren't exactly a lure to get you there. Who's going to stay at these companies if their options are worth shit? Like this could become a vicious cycle of we can't recruit anybody and everyone's leaving and like, how are they going to sort of adhere to the marketplace demands of get better at AI when we can't keep people and we can't recruit people.

Maureen Clough (30:40.233)

Right, because they need people.

Mm-mm. No.

Maureen Clough (30:52.054)

Yeah.

Maureen Clough (30:59.723)

Right, right. And I feel like employees are getting increasingly vocal. I know the other day, Mark Benioff allegedly said, wired did broke a story on this actually that Mark Benioff was at an international gathering of people from Salesforce. And he stood up, welcomed the international team and then made a joke. Hey, ice is watching you guys. And it's like, my God, what on are you kidding me? And so there is a huge contingent of Salesforce employees who are up in arms about this and they're all over Mark.

to make an apology and to withdraw from any sort of engagement with ICE. it's, I guess I say this because of the resistant unsubscribe being stuck in my head. Like people do actually have power. If all of those people at Salesforce walked out the door in protest, they'd be fucked. I mean, I just, I feel like we need to remember that we have that and it's something that they can't take away from us. So yeah, it might be a little short-term pain and yeah, it's risky.

But I'm sorry, you're probably on a layoff list anyway at this point. So no one's safe.

Joel Cheesman (32:03.64)

By the way, Amazon, Amazon's in the shitter too. mean, right in your backyard, Mo, I mean, these are two huge companies, stable companies that are falling off a cliff and it's concerning.

Maureen Clough (32:14.029)

It's scary. It's really scary.

Chad Sowash (32:15.225)

Well, and back to work day, it's it. What the fuck? It's just it's not real. The revenues are there. The subscriptions are there. They're there. It's like Elon talking about back in 2015 that they're going to have fucking robo taxis on on the streets next year. Right. It was all fucking bullshit. So it's like you have to have an elixir salesman as a CEO who's who's literally just spinning.

Joel Cheesman (32:37.27)

You do.

Chad Sowash (32:41.751)

the bullshit, right? That's all they do is just spin the bullshit as opposed to what reality is. And that drives me crazy because to be quite frank, work they didn't do anything wrong here. They are making fucking money. They're buying AI companies. But wait a minute, they're not flipping into AI monetization fast enough. Fuck you. It's just bedwetting. Jesus Christ. God. Yeah, yeah.

Maureen Clough (32:56.77)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (33:02.032)

Yeah. I mean, Palantir CEO, Sideshow Bob, you know, that's another like large, large in life character.

Maureen Clough (33:06.739)

gosh, that guy. Kill me.

Chad Sowash (33:12.921)

Uh, that's a good one. Sideshow Bob, definitely.

Maureen Clough (33:13.783)

Dude, that guy.

Joel Cheesman (33:16.188)

All right, guys, if you like what you've heard, please give us a like, a follow, share us with your closest 100 friends. We will be right

Chad Sowash (33:28.057)

Mmm.

Joel Cheesman (33:28.73)

Recruit Holdings. Earnings revealed their HR tech segment, including Indeed and Glassdoor. Saw an 8.9 % revenue increase in their earnings report this week, driven by strong performance in America and Europe. A little bit more on Indeed, they launched an app with ChatGPT this week, allowing users to access job recommendations directly from the AI interface. This integration marks a shift in Indeed's partnership with OpenAI.

Chad Sowash (33:42.745)

Berkha.

Maureen Clough (33:53.085)

you

Joel Cheesman (33:56.731)

Moving from back-end collaboration to a user-facing product. Chad, your thoughts on the news out of Tokyo and Austin this week.

Chad Sowash (34:05.111)

Yeah, mean, Indeed's doing exactly what they plan to do when jobs go down, prices go up, right? Because you can't go off of you can't go off the transaction. You can't go off the transaction. So it's it's it's interesting. And this is what you might as well call black box pricing. And this is what it looks like. The big message is that if you're an enterprise hiring company and you're using indeed in this market.

Maureen Clough (34:25.165)

Mm.

Chad Sowash (34:31.917)

when there are tons of candidates available and you're not engaging candidates that you've already bought and paid for in your CRM and or ATS, just fucking fire yourself. What are you good for, for God's sakes? It's like in CMO who paid millions for leads and never gave them to the salespeople. I mean, you're fucking fired. So we've been talking about this for a while with their new engineering of sorts, their financial engineering of sorts.

Maureen Clough (34:51.619)

You

Joel Cheesman (35:00.124)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (35:01.207)

It's working. I mean, and good for them, but enterprise companies need to understand they're getting fucked over.

Joel Cheesman (35:04.912)

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (35:10.65)

and 80 % of them don't care, apparently. We always knew 20 % would, but indeed knew that 80%, you'll just keep taking it as we give it to you, no matter what.

Maureen Clough (35:13.132)

Ha ha ha!

Chad Sowash (35:13.209)

And they don't. They don't.

Chad Sowash (35:20.259)

Yeah, yeah. The the open AI stuff. mean, it feels so lazy. It feels much like when Google anointed indeed with all the top search engine results starting back in the the in the late aughts. There was better content out there. There was more pure content out there. There were trusted sources that were out there, but they just went straight to indeed because it was easy. It was one site, right? They could have easily just went directly to the corporate sites where the jobs were actually at.

Joel Cheesman (35:34.609)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (35:49.38)

but they didn't do that. this feels lazy. It feels easy. But I thought, okay, let me go to chat GPT. Let me play around a little bit. I didn't go to the app, but I went into inside a chat GPT and I did a search in Indiana for a sales position and it I received suggestions from indeed zip recruiter and built in. I thought it was interesting that I got built in.

Maureen Clough (35:51.085)

too tough.

Joel Cheesman (36:04.027)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (36:12.177)

Hmm.

Chad Sowash (36:13.547)

So I responded back and I said, why aren't you serving jobs up from actual hiring companies? and ZipRecruiter forced people to share their information. And then chat GPT said this back to me, which really surprised me. You're right to push on that. Job boards like Indeed and ZipRecruiter are lead gen machines. They monetize candidate data. If you want jobs from actual hiring companies, the move is to go straight to the employer career pages and bypass the aggregators and bypass

Maureen Clough (36:37.322)

That's amazing.

Joel Cheesman (36:38.012)

Ha ha ha.

Chad Sowash (36:42.615)

The aggregators. So, and then it says, are real companies hiring sales roles in Indiana right now, apply directly on their sites, no job board gatekeeping. And then they had links to the actual career sites. And I thought, well, wow, know, that interaction tells me a lot. ChatGBT knows that their jobs from specific companies

Maureen Clough (36:56.723)

Okay. All right.

Joel Cheesman (37:02.961)

haha.

Maureen Clough (37:08.013)

You're a good prompter right there.

Chad Sowash (37:11.513)

It knows the links from the career sites. Um, uh, then I was, I was on LinkedIn cause I was kind of playing around to see what, people are saying about it. And, Ben Groves did a really good post on this. Um, he's the founder over at apply call. And, uh, then I saw a comment from our friend, uh, Sam Fitzroy founder and CEO of Dali. He's also a chat and cheese sponsor. Sam writes quote, well, you have open AI taking the indeed CRO Maggie Hulsey.

Joel Cheesman (37:13.275)

Hmm.

Maureen Clough (37:14.242)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (37:41.242)

about AI innovation in job search. Yes, the chief revenue officer of indeed leading the charge here on innovation. Definitely not revenue. I think Sam's being a little sarcastic there. Anyways, back to the comment. It's not surprising that their ideas lack imagination, which is the key ingredient needed to harness the power and opportunity of AI. What a waste for job seekers, end quote. And Sam's right on all counts.

Maureen Clough (37:51.245)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, a little bit.

Joel Cheesman (37:53.926)

Mm-hmm.

Maureen Clough (38:08.833)

Love that.

Chad Sowash (38:09.411)

This isn't just lazy, it's unimaginative, but what is it? It's a way for Indeed, but also for OpenAI and other powerful models to train off these data sets and interactions. So I don't know if this is a smart move for Indeed or not.

You

Joel Cheesman (38:28.412)

Chad, I was hoping that you would give us a history lesson. So I'm gonna try to use it as you would give us. You were at OCC when the company announced that they were a sponsor of AOL. And correct me if wrong, but when you search the job on AOL, OCC would come up, or maybe it was Monster, sorry, Monster. keyword Monster, and then the jobs would come up.

Maureen Clough (38:28.644)

Smartest.

Chad Sowash (38:33.474)

Okay, go ahead.

Chad Sowash (38:39.438)

Yes.

Maureen Clough (38:45.813)

a throwback.

Chad Sowash (38:49.817)

I was monster as monster as monster. Yeah, keyword monster. Yeah. Yeah, that was the big thing. Yeah.

Maureen Clough (38:53.965)

Mm.

Joel Cheesman (38:56.56)

This is what I thought of when Indeed said, we're going to be integrated with ChatGPT. Because I still think ChatGPT is the new Netscape. I think it's not long for this world. So we may have a good laugh someday saying that what a stupid thing Indeed did to partner with ChatGPT. I appreciate your job search. I did similarly. They actually served me up simply hired, which I thought was pretty interesting. I did the same on Gemini and Agroch.

Chad Sowash (39:11.865)

That's a one. That's good.

Chad Sowash (39:20.248)

Wow.

Joel Cheesman (39:25.008)

I know you guys hate me for that, but that's okay. I like my porn, my Nazi porn bars, just like every good American. So, so Grok was, and Gemini was pretty good. like it gave me career events that were scheduled in my area. It was pretty, it was good. And you gotta think it's going to be super easy for Gemini to plug in Google for job stuff and just be like, do this way better than chat GPT and indeed do. So,

Maureen Clough (39:26.093)

Mmm, yeah, I do. You and your AI glasses from Meta. Come on.

Chad Sowash (39:33.196)

Eheh

Maureen Clough (39:37.837)

Gemini is awesome, actually.

Joel Cheesman (39:54.138)

Will people search for jobs in this way? Sure. I still think if people can automate the job search thing, they're going to do it. They're going to have agents, whether it's apply AI apply or lazy apply. So like, just, I don't know how, what kind of growth we're going to see an actual human being searching for jobs. It's like, release the agents. Let me let it do it 24 seven and let it apply for me. So in that world, this indeed collaboration.

Maureen Clough (39:57.207)

Definitely.

Maureen Clough (40:05.325)

Absolutely. It's a slog. Job searching sucks.

Chad Sowash (40:05.849)

They'll build them in Gemini. They'll build them in Gemini.

Maureen Clough (40:15.149)

Mm.

Joel Cheesman (40:23.482)

doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot. The agents are going to find those jobs anyway. And what I'm seeing from AI companies or agents companies to do this, they go directly to the job site. They don't do the whole job board LinkedIn thing. They find the real company and apply right to the ATS, which is a bad future. Yeah, they should. That's a bad future for the job sites. yeah, I

Maureen Clough (40:38.387)

interesting so that's a risk for them yeah that's sure is yeah bye bye revenue

Chad Sowash (40:40.301)

They should.

Joel Cheesman (40:47.684)

I just thought it was kind of funny. It reminded me of your, your commentary about Monster and AOL and how cool that was back in the day. This may have a, this may have a similar narrative in 10 years.

Maureen Clough (40:54.126)

That's awesome.

Chad Sowash (40:57.305)

We had a whole meeting for that one thing and I remember we all came into one room and this is right when we did the transition from OCC and Monsterboard to Monster.com and everybody's like, then there was one slide and it had AOL and it had the search bar and it had monster in it and it was like, we own keyword monster and we're all like.

Joel Cheesman (41:20.304)

And everybody went crazy. We're number one.

Maureen Clough (41:21.933)

You

Chad Sowash (41:23.51)

We're all like, I got work to do. Why are you telling me this stupid shit?

Joel Cheesman (41:30.492)

And then the next question was, how many searches are done like that in AOL? Like four? Yeah. Yeah. But I bet you went to every customer in Prospect and told them that and they're like, awesome. We'll buy a job posting.

Chad Sowash (41:33.751)

Yeah. How much money did you spend that you could have given to us?

Chad Sowash (41:44.388)

Dude, at that point, I was still trying to teach them what the internet was. So, you know, if they weren't on AOL, I didn't matter.

Maureen Clough (41:48.566)

You

Ancient Gen Xers.

Joel Cheesman (41:52.377)

my God, we are so old, Chad.

Chad Sowash (41:54.101)

Yeah

Joel Cheesman (41:57.957)

Let's hear from someone younger about this whole integration with ChatGPT. are you buying or selling this?

Maureen Clough (42:02.085)

man, I mean, I'm definitely not buying this, but I have to say my favorite thing that Anthropic has ever done was shade chat GPT, shade OpenAI so hard. Did you guys see that commercial? It dropped before the Super Bowl. It was epic. They basically were like, they had this whole scene play out and then they were like.

Chad Sowash (42:13.877)

yeah.

yeah, was great. It was great.

Maureen Clough (42:23.853)

at the end of the scene, this woman in the scene started doing an ad. And then they basically came in and were like, hey, we're not gonna do this to you. And the funniest part was they didn't even have to name OpenAI. It was obviously very implied. And if anyone was familiar with any of these AI tools, you knew exactly what was happening. It was this awesome moment. And Sam Altman went and like blew up on the internet and had all these tweets and he sounded like such an idiot. It was unreal. It's like, do these people have zero PR training or media training?

Joel Cheesman (42:30.544)

Mm-hmm.

Maureen Clough (42:51.885)

He didn't even have to address it. It just it blew my mind. But yeah, I mean I I'm not bullish on that tool whatsoever in any way shape or form for all the reasons that you've described I mean, it's just and I also I'm not bullish on opening eye being one of the winners out of all of this so

Joel Cheesman (42:54.342)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (43:09.38)

It sounds like we're saying there's a chance indeed. We're saying.

Maureen Clough (43:11.725)

One in a million talk, right?

Chad Sowash (43:12.205)

Yeah

Joel Cheesman (43:17.244)

All right, next up guys, we have, we all know about the eightfold lawsuit, but that may just be the tip of the iceberg. According to our friends at classaction.org, attorneys are investigating potential class action lawsuits against companies using AI for job screening and interviews, including some of the names that we know and love, HireVue, Workday, Greenhouse Lover, and Ashby, to name a few. They believe these companies may be violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

Maureen Clough (43:21.202)

yeah.

Chad Sowash (43:22.157)

What? What?

Maureen Clough (43:23.821)

Tip of the iceberg.

Maureen Clough (43:37.037)

You

Joel Cheesman (43:44.144)

or FICRA as the kids call it by providing consumer reports about job applicants without proper procedures. Looks like the sharks smell blood to me, Chad. What are your thoughts?

Chad Sowash (43:45.785)

Mm.

Maureen Clough (43:54.114)

Whoo.

Chad Sowash (43:56.631)

So we taped an episode earlier this week that's going to come out next week that focuses on class action suits. I'm going to tease you about it. you've got this is it's with an organization that literally leads class action lawsuits. And they said, this is the tip of the iceberg. So get ready, kids. I've been talking to Julie a lot about this and really the lack of regulation leads to litigation.

Maureen Clough (44:06.029)

you

Joel Cheesman (44:06.182)

Such a tease.

Chad Sowash (44:26.391)

So when there's no rules, there's no guardrails, and that's exactly what this administration is calling for, people are going to want answers, which means they're going to get them in court. And this ain't corporation against corporation. It's the little guys. So they'll be banding together to create class action suits. Now on the vendor side of the house, because there are a lot of vendors that listen to us, this comes straight from an article that Julie wrote entitled Eightfolds Lawsuit. She writes, quote,

There are too many vendors influencing decision-making in hiring without transparency, without the opportunity for correction, and with the expectation that they are beyond being held accountable.

you gotta be fucking kidding me.

Maureen Clough (45:12.237)

Always when you're talking too.

Joel Cheesman (45:14.396)

Sorry, Sergey.

Chad Sowash (45:17.027)

I'll be right back, you sons of bitches. Fucking... Riverside!

Maureen Clough (45:23.405)

man, I heard something the other day about Riverside being a place where people kind of grift and ask people to pay to be on podcasts and I was like, have you heard anything about that? It sounds so weird to me. It's like I've never had any weirdness with Riverside. Yeah, and just like asking, yeah, and like using it as a scam to get people to like be on podcasts. don't know, that was like this strange, strange.

Joel Cheesman (45:38.62)

people using Riverside to sell.

Joel Cheesman (45:48.742)

I mean, do like a live streaming thing. don't know. I mean, if there's a scam to be had, someone will do it. I won't necessarily say Riverside is responsible for that. Yeah, but.

Maureen Clough (45:53.421)

Yeah, I've never used that.

Maureen Clough (45:58.903)

Hahaha!

Maureen Clough (46:02.605)

Right? That's what I was thinking too. I was like, why are you guys putting us on riverside, man? They're just the conduit.

Joel Cheesman (46:07.63)

And why Riverside is, I mean, Riverside is probably the most well known and best Spotify relationship and all that. or not Spotify, that's megaphone, but all right. Where do you want to kick it off from Chad?

Maureen Clough (46:11.297)

Yeah, they're good. Yeah. What's up, you're back.

Chad Sowash (46:17.098)

my God. Let's do this. I'm going to do it from the vendor side. OK, here we go, Sergey. We're going to go now on the vendor side. Now on the vendor side, this comes straight from an article Julie wrote entitled Eightfolds Lawsuit. She writes, quote, There are too many vendors influencing decision making in hiring without transparency, without the opportunity for correction and with the expectation that they are beyond being held accountable, end quote. So there are three things here.

for all of you to think about and to also plan for. Number one, candidates need to have transparency and control of their data. That's the big issue in this lawsuit. Black box is a problem unless you can prove real-time analytics and more importantly, real-time audits. Yes, real-time audits. We've got the data or at least pre-audit signals that shows whether you're going off course or not. You can do this.

And then obviously vendors are going to be held accountable. So as you feel and think that everything's okay, don't do that. Always think that you're under the microscope. And again, what this all means, lack of regulation leads to litigation, which I mean, leads to my favorite four top song, Get Ready.

Joel Cheesman (47:38.224)

was that the song get ready? Another another old man. Another old man reference there. Another old man reference. I think there's a there's a gag reflex when we talk about lawsuits and legal shit and people think well it doesn't impact me or that's just LinkedIn suing somebody else and I mean this this has the chance of being huge.

Chad Sowash (47:39.674)

Yeah, it is.

Maureen Clough (47:40.461)

Oh, I was like, I'm waiting, man. I'm waiting.

Chad Sowash (47:44.548)

Love me some Motown, man. Love me some Motown.

Chad Sowash (47:55.386)

There is,

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (48:07.708)

Think so. I won't ruin the interview, but think about your credit report. It tells your, you know, your job late on payments. You know, every, every, everyone knows credit karma or probably seen a credit report. What they are arguing is that all these AI tools that are ranking candidates, in an A like with AI they're doing in a way that is blind black box to the consumer. So the case is basically saying

you're using someone's data without their knowledge and maybe putting shit in there that isn't true or stuff that is irrelevant or whatever. And the consumer has no way to see what is in that quote unquote consumer report in this case candidate report, I guess. So who in our space isn't doing some sort of AI matching grading something, right? So, so, so now you have a situation where

Maureen Clough (48:43.681)

recourse.

Maureen Clough (48:57.375)

Exactly. That's what I was going to ask.

Joel Cheesman (49:05.596)

Not only is just about every company in space doing this, but everyone who's a customer of these businesses is using this stuff. How many applicants do you think these companies have had over the last five years? Millions, millions, tens of millions. I mean, a lot of people.

Chad Sowash (49:08.389)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (49:18.442)

hundreds of, well, workday billions. Yeah.

Maureen Clough (49:18.989)

I mean, Workday alone was hundreds of millions. mean, hundreds of millions for Workday's case, yeah.

Joel Cheesman (49:27.406)

If they market this thing well enough and there's millions of people in a class action lawsuit against all these companies that we know and talk about on the show, it could be a really, really big deal. mean, if everyone, yeah, there might be like a credit karma thing where like, I'm to see what every AI company and do you have to standardize it? Because all the reports have to say the same thing. Does every company have to publish what their algorithm is and what they're looking at?

Chad Sowash (49:39.749)

Mm-hmm.

Maureen Clough (49:40.575)

Everyone could get like 35 cents each. It would be awesome.

Chad Sowash (49:43.448)

you

Maureen Clough (49:52.119)

Right.

Joel Cheesman (49:57.55)

If that's the case, then it's like, everyone has to, you know, let I know you love this one, you know, open the kimono, right and show everybody what they're doing. I know I didn't think I didn't plan on that mo but it happened. It happened mo it happened. So so so it's like whose algorithm is shit whose is actually kind of good and then so it's like the you the water on the beach goes out and we see you as a bathing suit on I'll use that one as well mo like this could be a huge meteorite.

Maureen Clough (49:57.943)

really interesting.

Maureen Clough (50:03.789)

God, I thought I trained you better, man. You don't learn. That's why I'm here, Joel. mean, man, just, trying everybody.

Chad Sowash (50:09.733)

But it came, but it came.

Maureen Clough (50:21.803)

Well, wow, didn't know that one. Yeah, good.

Joel Cheesman (50:25.468)

crash into our industry. you don't if you're listening, don't put don't shelve this is just another lawsuit that doesn't impact me like this could be very, very interesting as it plays out. I don't think this is just a pay a few million bucks and make it go away. I think this could be a really, really big consumer play in America and have ripple effects all over the globe.

Maureen Clough (50:42.689)

bombshell.

Chad Sowash (50:48.301)

Yes.

Maureen Clough (50:49.035)

I mean, I'm here for it. I don't want someone putting a dossier together about me without my knowledge. mean, like you said, with credit reports, you can go and check it out. You see what's on there. You can go and contest things. You can take action. And this blind sort of situation is just deeply unfair to applicants in a job market that's taught trash. So like we need some protections and we need regulations. And this will, I believe very firmly that if we...

Chad Sowash (50:59.525)

Mm-hmm.

Maureen Clough (51:13.825)

don't do this, we're gonna continue to see this type of huge class action, we're gonna see this type of situation arise over and over again. boy, boy, boy. I mean, at least it's on me now. So yeah, where was I? I got distracted because of that. Sorry, Sergey, this is gonna be a real dream to edit this time. As long as you're editing, maybe I can add it. I forgot to mention how excited I was about Jodi Allen beating Robert Kraft.

Chad Sowash (51:24.393)

Keep going, keep going.

Joel Cheesman (51:39.578)

be a great blooper reel from this episode. There's that.

Maureen Clough (51:41.686)

Yeah, totally, totally like, fuck. yeah, like my light went out. it's funny. But if we're editing, maybe I'll redo the Jodi Ellen part because I forgot to mention how like deeply satisfying it was to see her hoist the Heisman instead of seeing fucking Robert Kraft. God, thank you. See sports. Fuck.

Joel Cheesman (51:56.762)

Yeah, it was the Super Bowl trophy, not the Heisman, but yeah.

Maureen Clough (52:03.277)

I didn't want to go too deep. My lack of knowledge would have been on full display. Sports ball, yeah, yeah, my god. Where was I? I don't remember what I was saying. I like blacked out per usual. Not from drinking, by the way. To be clear, zero alcoholic beverages have been had this morning. What did I say? Where was I? Shit.

Joel Cheesman (52:04.4)

Yay sports. Focus on the kimono Mo, focus on the kimono.

Chad Sowash (52:06.884)

Sports ball.

Chad Sowash (52:18.5)

this time.

Joel Cheesman (52:28.284)

credit reports, consumers.

Maureen Clough (52:29.591)

Credit report, don't want to be blah, blah, blah. Yeah. I wanted to kind of ask you guys, I mean, at this point, like you sort of hinted at Joel, mean, do any companies in the space not use AI? will it include, will this class action be against all companies with any sort of hiring? Because I can't even imagine. Yeah, but I can't.

Chad Sowash (52:48.666)

I don't think it's just AI. Yeah, I don't think it's just AI. mean, you can go out and scrape data without AI and then enrich profiles. People have been doing that for years. The thing is now I think AI literally is is scaring the shit out of people and they're like, oh shit, are they are they AIing us? then they're then you're saying, wait a minute, there are processes that they have in place that if they do use AI per se,

Maureen Clough (52:55.711)

Yeah, good point. Yeah.

Maureen Clough (53:00.973)

Yeah.

Maureen Clough (53:07.81)

Yeah.

Yeah, that's such a good point.

Chad Sowash (53:18.618)

This could be incredibly impactful and we're talking about actually impacting somebody's life because there could be invalid data in their quote unquote dossier or their profile or whatever you

Maureen Clough (53:27.039)

yeah, absolutely. And the bias is baked into these systems.

Joel Cheesman (53:28.887)

It is not a stretch to say if I apply for a mortgage or a credit card and I don't get it that the company is required to tell me why. If I don't get a job because of whatever this algorithm or screening thing is telling you, then that's something wrong. Like I should be able to see is there something wrong in it? Can I refute something? None of that happens today.

Chad Sowash (53:33.614)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yes.

Maureen Clough (53:41.825)

Right?

Maureen Clough (53:46.774)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (53:53.924)

It makes sense that people should be able to do that. Like some of the most impactful lawsuits are like people go, yeah, they should be able to see what this algorithm is telling the employer about them if they're not getting a job.

Chad Sowash (53:56.237)

Yes.

Maureen Clough (54:01.282)

Yeah. Yeah.

That totally makes sense. When it's systematized like this, I think it just heightens the concern for everybody. I of course, since forever, we haven't been able to find out why we weren't picked for a job in most cases, right? We get ghosted or they give us some bullshit excuse for why we didn't get it. But in this case, when you have all these systems that are just baking in the bias and pulling things from who knows what, I you just literally don't know. yeah, mean, I'm glad that they're taking action.

Joel Cheesman (54:29.34)

And by the way, this is all falling on their heads potentially as they're dealing with probably the same software valuation problems that Workday and Salesforce and everybody else is doing. I if you think those companies are down 30, 40%, what do you think eightfolds value is to their investors?

Maureen Clough (54:38.247)

Mm-hmm, absolutely.

Maureen Clough (54:45.169)

man, brutalized, It's rough times. Like you said, it's kind of apocalyptic right now.

Joel Cheesman (54:52.348)

Rough times. I'm gonna tie up my kimono and be back.

Chad Sowash (54:54.307)

Zombies.

Maureen Clough (54:54.734)

god, god.

Chad Sowash (54:56.953)

Please do. Please do.

Joel Cheesman (54:57.326)

zombies.

Joel Cheesman (55:03.142)

Vive la France. Did I say that right, Chad? France announced that its 2.5 million civil servants will phase out US video conferencing tools like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Cisco WebEx, and GoToMeeting by 2027, switching to the domestic alternative Vizio. The move aims to boost digital sovereignty, security, and confidentiality of government communications.

Chad Sowash (55:04.729)

Hmm, I think so.

Maureen Clough (55:05.549)

Hell yeah. Hell yeah.

Maureen Clough (55:15.041)

Bye!

Joel Cheesman (55:28.272)

They also raided the ex-offices while the UK also investigates GroK. Chad, you know a little bit about dumping the US. What are your thoughts?

Maureen Clough (55:36.299)

Hahaha!

Chad Sowash (55:40.442)

that hit home. We asked for this, dude. When you you fuck with your customers, they stop buying your shit. Right. And where does your GDP go when countries stop buying from you? Capitalism in the US is broken. We've been talking about that for a while now. It needs to be fixed. It desperately needs to be fixed. But this this is about as far away from capitalism as you can go.

Maureen Clough (55:44.226)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (56:09.015)

when you start pissing off your customers, Zoom, team, defense contracts, losing billions, not buying, you know, F-35s or whatever, you know, military instruments that we actually send their way, tourism, not buying flights, not buying hotels, local tourists, know, areas. I mean, all the money that's being lost, bourbon, hell, freaking Jim Beam shut down their main facility, plus...

Maureen Clough (56:11.458)

Yep.

Joel Cheesman (56:35.928)

Everyone's resisting and unsubscribing. It's chaos.

Maureen Clough (56:36.479)

Wow. Wow.

Chad Sowash (56:37.995)

It's fucking crazy. Yeah. Plus, as you're talking about, France and Spain are going after social media platforms. That's billions of dollars. Now, we have built the strongest country in the world off the cash flow of these other nations because they buy our shit. We're not talking about we don't sell cheap.

Maureen Clough (56:41.271)

I don't resist and unsubscribe from alcohol, personally.

Maureen Clough (56:51.433)

Mm, yeah.

Chad Sowash (57:04.877)

Tmoo shit, right? We sell the really expensive shit. We sell fucking f-35s and you know fucking Big companies, right and we do the big shit So when countries say we're not gonna buy from you anymore We're doing this to ourselves and that fucking pisses me off. That's not capitalism Yes

Maureen Clough (57:26.433)

Yeah, it hurts American workers too. I mean, that's gonna have a doubt a lot. It's gonna be very painful, very painful times ahead.

Chad Sowash (57:33.645)

Yes.

Bastards.

Joel Cheesman (57:37.264)

I mean, I think this all sounds good and makes great headlines. I quote Warren Buffett who says, countries that do well, what they do well should keep doing the things they do well and let other countries do what they do well, keep doing that. Like we're not going to make scotch in America. We're not going to like, we're not going to make high fashion in Toledo. mean, look, I don't know this Vizio company. Maybe they're great, but

Maureen Clough (57:54.177)

You saying you don't like Vizio?

Chad Sowash (57:58.923)

not allowed.

Maureen Clough (58:00.622)

Toledo.

Chad Sowash (58:03.971)

could. Yeah.

Maureen Clough (58:05.921)

Maybe he's not half bad, you don't know.

Joel Cheesman (58:07.206)

But I know historically, like the Yugo wasn't a great car. I know Nokia doesn't make phones anymore. So if it works great, I think it's just very wishful thinking that we can just throw out all the American tech, which I would argue is top tier in the world for like a homemade Joey bag of donuts, know, teams meeting copycat. I don't know, maybe it'll work. I think it's a stretch.

Maureen Clough (58:31.243)

Might as well try though. Sending a signal. It's sending a signal for sure.

Chad Sowash (58:34.585)

Real quick.

Joel Cheesman (58:34.652)

I didn't own a, I didn't own a, I didn't own a Le Car in the eighties cause it was a piece of shit.

Chad Sowash (58:39.391)

If you remember, Kia was a piece of shit, right? When it first came out from South Korea, you take a look at Kia now, they put out some really nice fucking cars. So we're seeing the globe catching up to us. You take a look at China. They say we say that they stole our RIP. No, we actually gave it to them because we wanted millions and millions of people to buy our shit over there. Right. So to say that we have the best shit in the world.

That's the gap has closed if not being closed. It's been closing. So I'm not sure. I think they're just going to go to China for some of that shit.

Joel Cheesman (59:17.276)

A lot of this shit sounds good. The whole like, the whole second tier countries are going to unite together. Let all sounds good. It's just, it's hard to do. It's hard to do.

Chad Sowash (59:18.646)

It sucks.

Maureen Clough (59:23.245)

It's fascinating, but not only are they doing all this stuff, guys, did you know they're also actively trying to recruit, laid off, and burn out corporate American workers? Yes, it is amazing. I did a video on how Denmark has this program. It went completely viral. Denmark is literally asking people to come over because they are burned out. They created this whole program called the, wait, the Friend Ref-

Chad Sowash (59:33.274)

they are. Yeah. Yeah.

Maureen Clough (59:50.68)

Friend Recruiter Program, there we go. I was on the tip of the tongue, Friend Recruiter Program. And they had even a playlist that was like from burnout to balance. And they were shading corporate America and our work culture and pulling people over. Now, of course, there are only so many positions that they actually will actively recruit people and give foreign visas because they want, you of course, those to be specialized positions that they can't recruit from within a board. But they're shading us. So they're dumping our stuff.

They're trying to pilfer our workers and pull them over. There's this corporate brain drain coming from corporate America. And I think the shade is very much deserved. I kind of love to see it, I gotta admit it. Not only that, but what's happening with the Grok situation? I mean, we're embedding it in our freaking Department of War, and they're actually investigating and raiding offices and holding their feet to the fucking fire.

for what they have done, the harmful images that they have made possible. They're complicit in everything, if not proactively making it possible, right? And it's just, it's refreshing to see a country give a damn and actually do the right thing. So let's hope that that creates a wildfire effect and that we see more accountability because I'm done reading about these horrific things and seeing absolutely positively nothing happens. So go Europe.

Joel Cheesman (01:01:12.592)

Guys, you know what never fails in quality?

Chad Sowash (01:01:16.227)

Your dad joke. geez.

Maureen Clough (01:01:16.668)

boy.

Joel Cheesman (01:01:17.232)

My dad jokes, my dad jokes, accepted all over the world, by the way, accepted all over the world. Valentine's Day is coming up. Let's feel some love, shall we? What is Cupid's favorite band? What is Cupid's favorite band?

Maureen Clough (01:01:19.085)

I'm bracing myself bracing myself bracing

Chad Sowash (01:01:21.313)

except...

Chad Sowash (01:01:26.539)

okay.

Maureen Clough (01:01:27.957)

least favorite holiday.

Joel Cheesman (01:01:38.054)

Kiss!

Chad Sowash (01:01:39.571)

Yeah.

Maureen Clough (01:01:42.958)

I approve that one. It's Mo approved. We out.

Joel Cheesman (01:01:46.99)

Resist and unsubscribe everybody. We out.

Chad Sowash (01:01:49.805)

We out!