LinkedIn 'Shakes and Gen Z Breaks
- Chad Sowash
- 2 minutes ago
- 33 min read
Survey Says: 2026 is Fucking Wild
Buckle up, kids. In an episode that feels more like a fever dream than a business briefing, Joel and Chad dive headfirst into the chaotic dumpster fire that is the year 2026. Between Hungary voting out an autocrat and the Pope apparently being "weak on crime" (seriously, where is the crime-fighting Pope movie?), the boys are wondering if anyone actually had "Vatican Vigilantes" on their bingo card.
The "Picks and Shovels" of Our Own Demise
The AI gold rush is officially entering its "Side Hustle Seduction" phase. While LinkedIn, Mercor, and Handshake are busy bragging about explosive growth and $150-an-hour gigs for humans to train AI, Chad points out the obvious: we’re just high-paid mentors for our own replacements.
The Pitch: You can make bank by training a chatbot.
The Reality: Once the AI learns enough Python, those "side hustles" dry up faster than a Chipotle bowl in Joel’s hands.
Silicon Valley: White Dudes Gone Wild
The Valley elites are currently oscillating between building bunkers and releasing digital clones of themselves.
Zuckerberg creates an AI version of himself to talk to his employees... Awkward!
Alex Karp predicts the death of all white-collar jobs.
Mark Andreessen is straight gaslight us into believing an employment boom is coming, despite the fact that people are literally throwing Molotov cocktails at Sam Altman’s house.
The Kids Are (Not) All Right
Surprising absolutely no one, Gen Z is over it. While 41% of "the utes" use AI weekly, a staggering 64% fear it will tank entry-level wages. Joel breaks down the Gen Z hate-list: AI kills the environment, kills jobs, and dilutes the one thing young people actually care about—creativity.
Industry "Meat" & Bad Puns
Humanly is on a shopping spree
Hackajob launches a solution for the candidate fraud absolute nightmare.
Shoutouts: Nobody likes Oasis, except Joel.
Enjoy!
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION
Joel Cheesman (00:28.842)
yeah. Base. How low can you go? Hey kids, it's the chat and cheese podcast. I'm your cohost Joel. thought it was me as a doctor cheeseman.
Chad Sowash (00:40.866)
And this is Chad, I'm a doctor, not a podcaster. So watch.
Joel Cheesman (00:44.5)
And on this episode of HR's most dangerous podcast, LinkedIn shakes, Gen Z breaks and Silicon Valley gets even douchier than it already is. Is that even possible? Let's do this.
Chad Sowash (01:00.942)
Dude. Okay. Before we get into Canada, 2026 is fucking wild. Fucking 16 years. 16 years, Hungary's had an autocrat and they finally voted them out, right? And we're finding that our autocrat thinks he's Jesus Christ. No, wait a minute. A doctor. A doctor. That fights popes. I mean, nobody had this on their bingo card. I mean, we knew he'd do crazy shit.
Joel Cheesman (01:07.018)
That's the understatement of the year.
Joel Cheesman (01:17.14)
Yeah.
Joel Cheesman (01:21.076)
Yeah. Yep.
Joel Cheesman (01:27.882)
Well, the Pope is weak. The Pope is weak on crime, Chad. And that, that just...
Chad Sowash (01:31.532)
Hahaha!
Joel Cheesman (01:35.348)
I'm just waiting for the, the movie about a Pope that fights crime because I, I wasn't aware that that was part of his, part of his duties. but some silver linings, the Artemis stuff going back to the moon that that is, I think as I'm an older person appreciating the engineering around what it takes to do that is just fascinating. and going back to the moon is, is,
Chad Sowash (01:42.766)
Oh my God, so bad. Oh, so bad. Yes, yes. That was cool, Yeah.
Chad Sowash (02:00.674)
I think it's important to clean the shitter when you're that far away too. And they, they, they were able to do that.
Joel Cheesman (02:05.45)
I mean, look, you and I both grew up in the shadow of the Apollo missions and going to the moon. And then we spent like our whole lives, no moon, just it's, uh, it's too expensive, you know, and, and now, now that I'm on the door, on the doorstep of death, we're finally going back to the moon. Uh, and I'm, I'm pretty, pretty happy about it. What else? There's gotta be more good stuff. Uh, world cups coming and they're excited about that. We got, uh, we got our taking the whole family.
Chad Sowash (02:10.05)
Yeah.
Yeah, no, just, we did that. we did that. Yeah.
Chad Sowash (02:21.496)
You
Yeah, word cuts coming. Wait, Iran's in it though. I don't know that they're going to be able, I don't know that they're going to let them in the country. They're like in a group, they're in the group session.
Joel Cheesman (02:37.546)
Didn't they appeal to play in Mexico? Because I think they were initially in Canada. Canada loves everybody. Yeah, they love everybody. I was there. The border is pretty empty, Chad. If you want to drive to Canada, it's a pretty smooth entry and exit if you want to do that. What else? the whole family is going to the Indy 500 this year.
Chad Sowash (02:41.71)
Uh, maybe Mexico and Canada. Why not? Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, you were there, so they love everybody. Oh, I bet this is the time to go to Canada.
Chad Sowash (03:00.974)
Jesus, looking crazy.
Joel Cheesman (03:06.356)
Which is the first time that we're doing that. Yeah. From cold, coal on down, tickets. Yeah. The third turn, I think it's usually our, our, turn at turn of choice. Dick Vitale, you know, Dickie V, you and I grew up on Dickie V, sadly his fifth bout with cancer. but in Dickie V style said I'm
Chad Sowash (03:06.471)
Enfield, got tickets? Tickets? Enfield? What?
Chad Sowash (03:16.416)
Okay.
Chad Sowash (03:22.757)
yeah. Yeah, of course.
Chad Sowash (03:31.918)
Wow
Joel Cheesman (03:32.554)
I'm 4-0 against cancer. I'm about to be 5-0. That's the kind of strength that is just hard to find these days. My man's 86.
Chad Sowash (03:39.224)
Damn.
Chad Sowash (03:44.524)
Yeah, and going through that many bouts already. I mean, you talk about just like, fuck it, I'm out, you know, but not him, not Dickie B. He's not playing the games.
Joel Cheesman (03:53.096)
Yeah, dude. I'm, I'm, I'm one, one blue chew and a Chipotle bowl and I'm out if I'm, if I'm fighting cancer five times, I'm just goodbye world. Goodbye world. Yeah. Yes. So, so, so I was on spring break. you can still be on spring break with you have kids that go on spring break and you know, most, most people go to Florida, Texas, California, Colorado. No.
Chad Sowash (04:06.306)
You're going to need more than one Bluetooth. But yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (04:20.12)
Yeah.
Joel Cheesman (04:22.504)
No, we go to, we go to Canada for spring break and our families. Everyone knows that listens. My wife is Canadian. and, and they rolled out the red carpet because it fucking snowed when we were there. It fucking snowed for spring break in Canada, but I had a good time. Took a day trip to Toronto from London. If you know your geography in Canada and we got to see the blue Jays play baseball, played the Dodgers. got to see, Otani pitch and DH.
Chad Sowash (04:29.57)
Nobody's there, so.
Chad Sowash (04:41.454)
Cool.
Chad Sowash (04:49.486)
Very nice. How sweet. Wow.
Joel Cheesman (04:52.596)
So I got to see the, the, the blossoming goat, play, both positions, which was great. And then we literally walked down a couple of blocks and saw the maple leaves play the capitals. So we got to see Ovechkin who looks older than both of us. and is probably in worse physical shape than me. So it's, well, and he's Russian. He's probably bottle fed on wit on vodka. And, so I, yeah, the dude.
Chad Sowash (04:55.702)
huh.
Chad Sowash (05:12.12)
That's a hard game, dude. It's a hard game.
Joel Cheesman (05:21.716)
The dude looks rough. he starts and then he, and then he, and then he plays maybe four minutes. He comes in a little bit, skates around. has tons of fans there that love him. and the Maple Leafs are awful, but, we did see the Blue Jays win four, three, come back, which is great. But then the Maple Leafs, got killed. So that was Canada. That was Canada. And now, and now I'm back. And, as people find out in travel, we're going someplace, pretty nice, but I won't, I won't spoil that for you.
Chad Sowash (05:24.61)
No stereotypes here, Yeah, out.
Chad Sowash (05:43.448)
Canada, snow.
Chad Sowash (05:51.054)
We're getting ready to go. To go.
Joel Cheesman (05:52.33)
I gots to go. You're coming back to the States. It's been a while.
Chad Sowash (05:58.518)
Yeah, not looking forward to it to be quite frank. But yeah, mean, the people are great and you know, the money doesn't suck either. So let's go ahead and have some fun. be in Phoenix. Gonna be in Chicago.
Joel Cheesman (06:08.726)
The money's funny and the credit won't get it otherwise. I just hope there's enough jet fuel to get you back home because everything I'm reading is like jet fuel is at a premium right now. I'm gonna be lucky to get to rec fest this year at the rate this is going. Don't need don't need that shit. Don't need that shit.
Chad Sowash (06:18.735)
God. Yeah. God, I don't even want that. Don't even I don't even know my God. Yes.
Joel Cheesman (06:30.322)
All right, Chad. Who'd we agree was going first in the green room? Okay, I'll go first. So my shout out, give me some runway on this one. This one goes out to my favorite band Oasis, who got into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They're going to be inducted with the likes of Joy Division, New Order, Billy Idol, Phil Collins, which is kind of ironic because the Gallagher Brothers hate Phil Collins.
Chad Sowash (06:31.277)
Yes.
You, you go first. Yours is a happy one.
Chad Sowash (06:40.165)
no.
Chad Sowash (06:47.694)
Mm.
Chad Sowash (06:55.886)
Phil Collins.
Joel Cheesman (07:00.202)
So to have them in the same room, assuming everyone shows up is going to be pretty, pretty funny. But, uh, I, I just, I want to take, want a little history lesson for people. Cause not everybody, not everyone grew up in the nineties or remember the nineties. so just people asked me why I like Oasis so much. And I was just really quickly, if, if you were listening music in the U S from like, let's call it 91 to 94, five.
Chad Sowash (07:05.902)
They won't. They won't.
Chad Sowash (07:11.592)
okay. Okay.
Chad Sowash (07:17.752)
Mm, good.
Joel Cheesman (07:30.066)
Well, it was, it was, it was a thing and it was all the thing. was like Nirvana, Nirvana hit it off. And then you had Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Allison Chains. Like everyone sort of sounded grunge stuff. but, but it was, it got to a point where it was like such a downer. It was, you know, rape me. I want to kill myself. students shooting up school. Like it was just.
Chad Sowash (07:35.662)
That's why it was horrible.
Chad Sowash (07:41.588)
That was
Joel Cheesman (07:58.79)
a downer and I get it because it was, it followed the Reagan stuff in the eighties fun. So, but, but Oasis came out and the first song I ever heard, and you couldn't find music really easily back in the day, there was no internet, you know, you'd have to watch MTV, watch 120 minutes or headbangers ball or yo MTV, which they weren't, yo MTV raps. Like that's kind of where you found music that you hadn't heard, but I heard supersonic.
Chad Sowash (07:59.63)
I mean, that should still happen.
Chad Sowash (08:15.586)
or hope that the radio station was worth a shit. No.
Chad Sowash (08:24.322)
Mm.
Joel Cheesman (08:26.378)
And it just, blew me away. Cause it was like, it was rock. was like, let's have gin and tonics. Let's, uh, there was, there was a maje, a maje to the Beatles with yellow submarine. And I thought this shit is, this is good. So I really connected because it came at a time where everything was kind of down. Everything was grunge. Everything was blah. I mean, it was either that, or you had to go to like hooting the blowfish or Dave Matthews or like there was no sort of rock.
Chad Sowash (08:35.714)
Mmm.
Chad Sowash (08:44.45)
You needed it. Yes.
Chad Sowash (08:53.226)
my god, awaits this take way too long on this fucking shout out my god.
Joel Cheesman (08:57.158)
Sorry, that's my shout out. But I do have a quick video of no Gallagher talking about sort of band hit when he when they were coming up in the bands today, which is if nothing else, their their interviews are fantastic. So check this out.
Joel Cheesman (09:50.804)
So no one gives interview quite like Noel Gallagher and I wanted to throw that out there, but yeah, excited for them, excited to see if they perform. Cause they are historically against the rock hall, hate it, think it sucks, but now they're sort of into it because they've been indoctrinated. And by the way, one of the fewest vote getters popular in the thing. So it's the critics and the people that voted them up.
Chad Sowash (09:55.694)
You
Joel Cheesman (10:17.93)
Cause America didn't necessarily embrace Oasis like much of the rest of the world. Shout out to Oasis. Welcome to the rock and roll hall of fame boys. Well, look, I think there's a lot of, you know, similarities between them and us. You know, we came along at most HR podcasts. Let's be honest, our snooze fast. We came on and said, fuck that indeed sucks. And everyone's stupid and Burson's a punk. And so like, I think, I think there's a, you and I don't always get along.
Chad Sowash (10:25.031)
We're assholes, but we don't like other assholes, so.
Joel Cheesman (10:45.384)
You know, we come on stage and we kind of forget about our differences. And, so don't know, you know, we're not, we're not for everybody, but the people who love us, love us. And that's awesome. What you got, man.
Chad Sowash (10:50.606)
to you,
Chad Sowash (10:56.046)
for you.
All right, my shout out. Well Joel, we're hearing a ton of crazy shit about candidate fraud. Not only is Indeed sending tons of unqualified candidates that you can't manage, you have no idea which ones are real. So this week my shout out goes to Mark and the team over at Hackajob that launched Archer, a solution to candidate fraud. Check out this video.
Joel Cheesman (11:11.017)
Mm-hmm.
No.
Joel Cheesman (11:23.54)
Love me some hack a job.
Chad Sowash (11:26.274)
little bump.
Chad Sowash (12:22.434)
Yep.
Chad Sowash (12:32.152)
What?
Chad Sowash (12:49.646)
That's the shit I'm talking about right there. And just to be transparent, I say this during the full-fledged video, I am an advisor to Hackajob, but I'm totally stoked about Archer. It's just one product that they've launched within Hackajob within a 90-day pilot, which amassed an additional 1 million in ARR off a pilot after 90 days. So this is how you launch AI without the need for lengthy ass integration. So big applause to those guys.
Joel Cheesman (13:19.518)
Big applause for our friends at Hack a Job. I just want to know, Archer has a really nice head of hair. Was I the inspiration for that image?
Chad Sowash (13:28.716)
I'm sure. I'm sure. I'm sure it you. I can, that and Johnny Bravo.
Joel Cheesman (13:35.114)
Probably not. All right, let's hear about free stuff from our friend, Stephen McGrath.
Chad Sowash (13:39.576)
Ooh, I like giving away free stuff.
Joel Cheesman (13:43.018)
So we'll need to put that in because I don't know why I deleted it or somehow, I don't know if you guys deleted it last year. It's not here. Unless I'm totally missing.
Chad Sowash (13:47.118)
It's not there? No way. I didn't delete it. Okay, put in the freestyle. Excellent, Stephen, that's awesome. And let's go ahead and jump over to events.
Joel Cheesman (13:58.442)
Oh yeah, events. Where the hell are we going, Steven?
Chad Sowash (14:04.846)
So as always, we're sponsored by our friends over at Shaker Recruitment Marketing who we're going to see in Chicago and I expect the dogs and I expect the Italian beef, Joe Shaker. I'm looking at you my friend. Later next week, I'm headed back or actually later this week, Jesus Christ, I'm heading back to the US because on the 20th through the 21st, Joe and I are going to be at Paradox's client board where they get all their clients together. I saw a list of clients.
that are gonna be there? Holy shit dude. It's freaking awesome. Anyway, we're gonna have some of those clients actually do some interviews with us for the AI sessions. We're rolling out another season. And then after that, on the 22nd, I'm heading over to PetSmart's HQ to an Ask Me Anything session with the National Retail Federation. Yeah, well, the National Retail Federation. That's something big.
Joel Cheesman (14:42.922)
Mm-hmm.
Joel Cheesman (14:58.759)
AMA.
Chad Sowash (15:04.43)
And last but never least you and I are going to Chicago April 28th through the 30th where it's another two day TA leader led event called the RLX gonna be rubbing elbows with Ford Nordstrom Johnson Controls ace Hardware KPMG and many many many more if you Want to see us go to Chad cheese.com events. Those are the events we're gonna be at this year and
Joel Cheesman (15:04.586)
you
Chad Sowash (15:34.04)
Get a ticket. Come see us. Come buy us a whiskey. Who knows? Let's go.
Joel Cheesman (15:37.278)
Let's go. Let's go.
Chad Sowash (15:43.395)
Whoo!
Joel Cheesman (15:44.138)
All right, Chad, the AI training business is off the chain, off the chain. Handshake and Mercor are experiencing explosive revenue growth due to surging demand for AI labs for human skilled contractors to train and refine frontier AI models. Shit's so good. LinkedIn wants a piece of that shit saying they're in the early stages of launching an AI labor marketplace where people can make up to $150 an hour.
Chad Sowash (15:50.156)
Yes.
Chad Sowash (16:05.793)
you
Joel Cheesman (16:13.514)
Training chat bots to get better at everything from coding to nursing. Chad, give us a hot take on all things AI training.
Chad Sowash (16:23.886)
Yeah, so I'm going to break this down into two phases. The first phase is called the side hustle seduction coming to a platform near you. LinkedIn being the next one. This is about hubris because experts who enjoy the side hustle cash think they are mentoring the AI, but in reality they are training their replacements. Phase two. This is what I like to call thanks for the memories saturation point. This is when we hit a model saturation point.
which means humans have given all the intelligence we can into a specific expertise. For example, the AI has seen enough senior level Python code to know that 40 % of it is just copied off a stack overflow anyway. So this all of a sudden dries up and that $150 per hour training gigs, they go away. So where am I getting all this? Case in point, Anthropics newest model, Mythos.
was sidelined because it could become a global security risk as it exposed holes in software that were open for 27 years that us dumb humans missed. And remember Paul Price, Paul Price over at Codewall hacked Jack and Jill in hours using AI hackers because it's better and faster than humans. So if these systems can go well beyond that of human hackers, the question is,
Why do we think any other AI trainable job is safe?
Joel Cheesman (18:06.506)
so I know it's, it's funny that, I think the last time we, you and I talked about handshake, they were launching a LinkedIn killer and now LinkedIn is launching a handshake killer. How that, how that works. I'm not sure. and, and handshake and Merkle are, are quite the pivots. handshake was a college Gen Z platform for employment and they had quite a
Chad Sowash (18:16.174)
I'm just watching you.
I will see.
Chad Sowash (18:26.764)
yeah. yeah.
Joel Cheesman (18:33.812)
footprint around college campuses. And now apparently the business of AI humans training the models because what they have at their disposal isn't quite enough. So they have to have the humans continue to do that. But it was a brilliant move because do you remember Mechanical Turk? It's still a thing, but Amazon had this thing it's called Mechanical Turk. And if you want to have people do sort of these menial things for you, maybe go through a database for you, maybe click video.
Chad Sowash (18:53.774)
Mm-mm.
Joel Cheesman (19:03.558)
any, like masses of people will do little jobs for you. Those people don't have the experience to sort of train AI models, but Handshake shockingly, because they're in college campuses, have tons of people with PhDs, with master's degrees, with degrees in certain things that are in high demand. So they were able to pivot and get these people in their database to start working for an hourly fee for companies like OpenAI and Anthropic and the like. Mercor started,
Chad Sowash (19:19.534)
Mm-hmm.
Joel Cheesman (19:31.902)
by a couple of 22 year old kids who probably didn't still probably don't pee straight, but that's beside the point. They, they started as, basically a work anything remote solution when it was like 20, 23, everyone was trying to work from home and remotely and, like find your job as a remote person. And if you want, if you look at the tech crunch article about, think when they did their first raise, there were comments about
Chad Sowash (19:54.894)
Mm-hmm.
Joel Cheesman (19:56.938)
training AI models and the people who were who hired them were AI companies that needed that that work. So they pivoted. But I think they had in their mind that maybe this is something that was going to be an opportunity in the future. LinkedIn doing it. Obviously, they have a ton of PhDs and master's degrees. So to create a marketplace or like, hey, this AI company needs help doing work, going through content about certain topics makes sense. My question is, to your point,
Chad Sowash (20:10.158)
Mm-hmm.
Joel Cheesman (20:26.602)
How long does the gravy train run? Because at some point human training, our ability to add to what is already in the recipe. I don't know if that runs out or not. I tend to think it does. I think at some point we hit a ceiling and we don't need people as much anymore. So I don't know how long these businesses can go. Um, I assume they're there. The calculus is like sell the business before we hit the ceiling. Um, I also don't know.
Chad Sowash (20:36.942)
Mm.
Chad Sowash (20:53.527)
Yes.
Joel Cheesman (20:55.818)
If there's really much of a moat to other competitors, mean, could indeed do this? Yeah. And indeed being indeed could probably crush it and then it, and then it becomes, you guessed it, the race to the bottom. And instead of, you know, 50 bucks, we're going to pay you more. And so we're less profitable and it becomes a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy of failure. So, uh, I don't know how long that goes, but this is interestingly another story about picks and shovels.
Chad Sowash (21:03.264)
Yeah, apparently. Yeah.
Joel Cheesman (21:25.076)
There's a lot of AI gold, some of it's real, some of it's full, but to their credit, they are selling picks and shovels to these AI companies that have a lot of money. And for now, according to the data, these are, these are companies now that are making a billion dollars ARR. More than double, I think in Handshake's case of what they were making before. So these are profitable initiatives and we're here to talk about it, but where there's money, there's competition.
Chad Sowash (21:28.802)
Mm.
Chad Sowash (21:44.076)
yeah. yeah.
Yeah.
Joel Cheesman (21:52.231)
There's weird shit going. I don't know. You mentioned one like rent a human that's sort of flips the table on AI asking humans to do shit. Like 2026 is going to get weirder and it's going to get weirder in our space as well.
Chad Sowash (21:56.802)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (22:06.464)
It totally will. totally will. I mean, again, we get to the point where, you know, it's a hubris thing, you know, we can go ahead and make this side hustle cash for as long as we can. No, it's short term, number one, from a human standpoint. From a company standpoint, they're looking to try to drive ARR quickly to hopefully get somebody else to buy them and hope that that organization that's buying them doesn't understand this is a short term run.
Joel Cheesman (22:18.324)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (22:36.556)
Right? Yeah, this is this is a gold rush, they're the golden them. Our hills will dry up.
Joel Cheesman (22:36.564)
Yeah.
Joel Cheesman (22:45.726)
Yeah, it's only going to take, you know, let's assume open AI, somebody goes public, has the funds, they go buy a Mercor, they buy one of these companies. mean, I could see Microsoft come in, buy one of these companies and then plug it into open. Yeah. Like, so yeah. So acquisition is certainly going to happen. The question is, will there be a
Chad Sowash (22:51.982)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (23:01.378)
I mean, they already have LinkedIn.
Joel Cheesman (23:12.468)
small amount of companies to gobble up or will more and more come around. So their evaluation goes down because there's more competition. I don't really know what separates everyone from everyone else other than being able to access PhDs and people that are smart enough to kind of do, do these jobs. But yeah, I think this is a short, short story. that probably doesn't last longer than like 27 or 28.
Chad Sowash (23:35.278)
Yeah, this this LinkedIn play. I mean, I would think it's more of a Microsoft play as well. I mean, and Microsoft being able to dip into LinkedIn's database and put jobs out there to be able to again do these side side hustles to train their their large language models. Yeah, there it is.
Chad Sowash (23:57.541)
they are. they are.
Joel Cheesman (23:59.082)
All right, guys, let's take a quick break. If you like what you've heard so far, subscribe, tell a friend, check us out on YouTube, youtube.com slash at Chad Cheese. Leave us a review. We'll be right back.
Joel Cheesman (24:21.514)
Chad, the Silicon Elite have spoken quite loudly this week. The Silicon Valley elites, well, they're in the headlines again, but considerably spicier than usual. OpenAI Sam Altman had a 20-year-old Texan kid hurl a Molotov cocktail at his home. Mark Zuckerberg is busy creating an AI version of himself that specifically engages with employees.
Chad Sowash (24:41.294)
Mm.
Joel Cheesman (24:49.052)
And in opposing views, Palantir's Alex Karp says working at his company is better than an Ivy league education and doubled down on AI destroying all white collar roles. While Mark Andreessen said mass layoffs aren't AI's fault and that there would be a quote major employment boom around the corner. It's white dudes gone wild, Chad. What's your take on all the Valley insanity?
Chad Sowash (25:14.286)
I think the problem is that all these bastards have the ability to get on a mic, get one in their face whenever they want it because they're so big, powerful and they're big names. And they're just looking for a sound bite. I mean, if Zuckerberg never talked to another human in his life, he'd be happy. So this chat bot makes sense. On the carp side of the house, this guy's a nut job. He spouts things out that...
Joel Cheesman (25:21.215)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (25:39.512)
People can get behind. mean, we need more vocational talent. We need plumbers and electricians and yeah, we've been saying this shit for fucking years, dude. And those are very well sought after skills. But then he says some stupid shit about how, know, liberal arts degrees and women are screwed and blah, blah. So he's, mean, you never know what is up with that crazy dude. I think he needs to get off the special K. Then there's Hendriessen.
Joel Cheesman (25:57.908)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (26:08.416)
And I don't believe Mark Andreessen even believes the shit that's coming out of his own mouth. totally, I think he's totally gaslighting a narrative and he's trying to manage that narrative and stick with me here. He needs positivity in the market or his fund loses millions. More importantly, he won't be able to raise more capital for the fund if he doesn't have a great story and the market doesn't look great. At least the outlook doesn't look great. Not to mention Andreessen wants to see cuts.
Joel Cheesman (26:31.082)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (26:38.658)
by companies to prop up higher margins so that enterprise companies can buy more of a startup tech shit, right? So these guys are like politicians. They don't believe what they're saying or if they do believe it, they're not gonna use their money and power to actually make something to happen. And the whole Altman thing, shit dude, this smacks of the assassination of United Healthcare CEO, Brian Thompson. I mean, the pitchforks are already coming out for these CEOs.
Joel Cheesman (26:51.05)
Mm-hmm.
Joel Cheesman (26:58.559)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (27:08.29)
I mean, Zuck built a fucking bunker for God's sakes, panic room house for fuck's sake, and AI really hasn't even started to impact jobs yet. So imagine the pitchforks that are gonna happen, especially when you live in a country with more guns than people. Scary shit, apparently scary enough to build a bunker. yeah, they're saying a bunch of crazy shit. I don't know that we can believe much, if any of it.
Joel Cheesman (27:13.406)
Yeah.
Joel Cheesman (27:43.21)
This, this actually there's, there's a story here in Indiana. I know you've been gone a while, but data data centers are big news here in Indiana and rural communities are pushing back on data centers that, increase, increase energy costs and don't actually add a lot of jobs to the local community. I think a county commissioner or something had, shots taken at his house. Don't know exactly what kind of gun.
Chad Sowash (27:51.467)
God, Yeah.
Joel Cheesman (28:10.922)
but basically someone left a note, said no data center or say no to data centers. So there are local stories that are popping up, I'm sure all around the country around sort of anti AI sentiment. The problem is like, you can't have it both ways. You can't tell the street we're cutting every head possible and replacement of AI and appease wall street and think the people.
Chad Sowash (28:30.51)
Mm-hmm.
Joel Cheesman (28:35.902)
that message is going to resonate with them on Main Street as it does on Wall Street because it doesn't. these cats are like, Wall Street loves me, but Main Street hates me. Well, no shit, you can't have two opposing messages and think that both of them are going to take them both equally. So we'll talk more about, think, how particularly the young people think about AI, but as a general rule,
Chad Sowash (28:59.661)
yeah.
Joel Cheesman (29:00.874)
If you tell people like, your job's gone. your, bills are going higher. And, for that, get some, AI videos about George Washington fighting Mike Tyson. Like that's really not a great trade off for most people. the, the, the Zuckerberg thing, I mean, that's, that's straight science fiction. I don't know what this is going to look like. I don't know. Is there going to be a holograph of
Chad Sowash (29:11.075)
Yeah.
Chad Sowash (29:14.494)
No.
Chad Sowash (29:24.482)
you
Joel Cheesman (29:28.26)
Zuck walking around the, or like maybe a hundred Zucks, each employee has their own Zuck. He's in, he's there working with you. don't, I don't know what that looks like. It's, it can't be appealing to people to have like a digital CEO walking around. And, and you might, you might remember, Meta did this, I think with Pepsi, there was a Pepsi commercial with one of the Kardashian girls that was AI generated. whole commercial was, and there was put like, so I don't,
Chad Sowash (29:28.792)
Probably.
Joel Cheesman (29:58.11)
This is weird and Veritone is a sponsor. They're doing a lot of like celebrity AIs and how all this looks. It's just kind of creepy. And I guess I'm probably too old to give a shit about what this looks like, but the young people, maybe it'll be normal for them. The, the, the Andreessen thing really got people stirred up in our space. I saw this all over LinkedIn, people commenting. And I agree with you. My initial thought was, okay, he's, he's talking his book. He may, maybe, maybe the, the,
Chad Sowash (30:05.198)
Mm-hmm.
Joel Cheesman (30:27.582)
The Silicon Valley later said, you know, we can't keep talking about jobs getting cut because the people get pissed off and throw Molotov cocktails at our houses. So we have to talk about more jobs. It's going to create more opportunity. And his tweet that he put out on X was quote AI drives productivity, productivity drives demand, demand drives jobs. So it's a good story, but I wanted to see the data. So if you go to Andreessen Horowitz, his website, they have a job board.
Chad Sowash (30:52.834)
No, Jesus.
Joel Cheesman (30:54.25)
The job board has all their companies that they've invested in and all the jobs available at those companies. Maybe not all the jobs, but at least the jobs where they think they should put them on injuries. And so I went back in time. I went back to 20, 24, early 24. Uh, they had 630 companies and 8,729 jobs listed. That's about 13 jobs per company. Fast forward to 2025. It went up to 15 jobs.
Chad Sowash (31:00.59)
Mm.
Joel Cheesman (31:24.042)
per company 2025 later, still at 15 and 2026 744 companies, 14,000 43 jobs or 18 jobs per company. And today when you go to the site, there's 753 companies and over 15,000 at 20 jobs per company. So in short, in 2024, there were 13 jobs per company today. There are 20 jobs per company. So at least the data is telling you.
that the companies that they're investing in are hiring more people. I thought it was going to be the opposite. I thought it was going to be more earlier. I thought I was going to trail off as we went into the future. at least data-wise, the companies they're investing in, they are hiring more people than they were two years ago. So maybe there is a little bit of ray of hope about more jobs being created from this time.
Chad Sowash (32:15.192)
But you also have to remember they've they've had money that they haven't been spending. We I mean, we saw a huge dip and, you know, firms not spending and getting into that next round, that next round, saying had no clue what the fuck Trump was going to do. Now they're spending that money. So they're again, they're they're they're they're pushing it out there. So, yeah, I don't know if it's artificial, especially when it comes to, you know, this this firm.
Joel Cheesman (32:24.447)
Mm-hmm.
Joel Cheesman (32:31.252)
Mm-hmm.
Joel Cheesman (32:42.346)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (32:42.37)
But at the end of the day, the thing that gets me, I'm going to say it, and we've said it over and over and over again. We've heard Sam Altman. We've heard all these, these dudes talk about the jobs that AI will create. Okay. What are they? I mean, you guys are the fucking geniuses around here. You're the ones creating this stuff. you're the ones pontificating on all this yes, no, maybe so jobs.
Joel Cheesman (33:02.41)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (33:11.756)
What is it? If that's the case, history shows this is, dude, this is bigger than anything we've ever seen in history. So what is it? That's all I wanna say, I wanna see that. So I don't believe them until they can actually come back and start to talk through these different things, infrastructure builds or what have you. Then that makes sense to me, that's awesome. But yeah, I'm cynical as fuck. No, I don't believe them.
Joel Cheesman (33:18.836)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Joel Cheesman (33:29.065)
Yeah.
Joel Cheesman (33:37.724)
And to be clear, this was not an extensive research assignment by me, but I was, I was really just curious. was like, okay, let's, let's look at the jobs and the companies that they have. And there may be one or two companies in their portfolio that hire a lot of head count and brings the number up for everybody. Again, this was not an extensive research project. And there's also a story I think in the journal or the financial times this week about how people, particularly younger people are getting sick of the job search thing and the whole like.
Chad Sowash (33:37.87)
You
No, it's a good sample size though. It's a good sample size. Yeah, that's a good one.
Chad Sowash (33:54.03)
Yeah.
Joel Cheesman (34:07.05)
ghost job. So they're starting their own businesses more and more. We're seeing an increase in new businesses. Ultimately, 90 % of those are going to fail, but 10 % will be successful. There may be an Uber in there. There may be an Airbnb, but that's kind of where the jobs of the future may be created. And we've talked about that before, but AI has a problem, Chad. They got a little bit of a problem. They don't look so good.
With the kids, which brings us to our next story, uh, call it a metaphorical Molotov cocktail. The Utes are progressively not all right with AI. A new Gallup study reveals 41 % of Gen Z now use AI weekly, though only 11 % trusted for career advice and 64 % fear it will decrease entry level wages. Furthermore, while 61 % of Gen Z believe AI will transform their industries over half report feeling unprepared.
for this shift. Chad, the kids are not all right. What's your advice to them?
Chad Sowash (35:10.574)
I think we do a lot about making things around generation when we don't need to. So I think it's time for a history lesson. Caught you off guard.
Joel Cheesman (35:16.458)
dude, didn't you didn't you didn't queue me up on that one. where are you, Steve? here we go.
Chad Sowash (35:28.118)
That's right. So before we had computing in the cloud, AKA cloud computing, you needed to have your own servers to run your own software. Yes, you received disks and downloaded that software onto your own server so you could do things like email people. No shit. To email people, you had to do that, right? So then cloud computing made it a mainstream push on the commercial space in about 2006 with the launch of Amazon Web Services.
Joel Cheesman (35:47.55)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (35:58.286)
which introduced scalable on-demand infrastructure to businesses while early software as a service, the SaaS providers like Salesforce introduced the concept around 2006, 2008, which marked the shift where cloud became a viable replacement for traditional enterprise IT infrastructure, AKA building a fucking server farm. much like cloud computing, once AI is baked into products,
Adoption won't be a concern. It's just part of using the product. And for example, currently Gemini is partially baked into Google search. But when it's fully baked into Google search, that means the results in the entire experience will be AI driven. Adoption isn't a worry because the platform is AI. So is there a survey question out there that says, your company adopting cloud computing? Well, fuck no.
That's because it's already baked in, right? So we're having these generational conversations that I think, to be quite frank, is this total fucking misdirection. Look at cloud computing, look at how that progressed, and it's gonna be baked in. So we're not gonna be saying, do you use AI? Yeah, we do, because it's baked into everything we fucking do.
Joel Cheesman (36:58.815)
Yeah.
Joel Cheesman (37:19.518)
Yeah, yeah.
Joel Cheesman (37:26.026)
So I found this really interesting. And I'm glad we talked about it or talking about it because I dug in a little bit. looking back when you and I were a younger, younger version of ourselves, the internet was first coming out and it was promising. It was exciting. I can send an email. I don't have to put a stamp on a letter to send it. that was transformational. Digital cameras. Really? I don't need to go buy film.
and go to the hour, you know, the one hour like that was transformational and then, and, and then continually with, social media, like what I can have on my friends. So it was curious because technology, think is generally aspirational or inspirational. And the fact that the kids are turning on this is, is really fascinating to me. But as you look, as you dig a little deeper, you know, there's three points here to talk about.
Chad Sowash (37:56.462)
That was big.
killed Kodak.
Joel Cheesman (38:23.626)
why the kids might not be that excited about AI. Number one is AI is shit for the environment. I'm not an expert on this, but just go Google like water. The amount of energy it takes to run these data centers is really not good for the environment. Number two, it's a technology that apparently is gonna get everyone fired. No one's gonna have jobs anymore, especially the kids. When you're a kid or when you're in 20s, whatever,
What am I going to do is a huge weight on your shoulders. And if I had had the world telling me at 19 to 22 that, know what kid, sorry, all the jobs are to be gone. I might be a little bit down on that technology. Um, and then, and then number three, I think that AI waters down creativity. And when I think about who are the most creative people on the planet, it's young people.
Chad Sowash (39:07.244)
Mm-hmm.
Joel Cheesman (39:22.962)
It's young people that make the music that do the art that, you know, design clothes, like creativity is where you as a young person, find out who you are. What are you, what are you good at? What, you know, what is it that you're going to, what's your life going to be like? And AI right now, it writes, it does images, it does video, it talks, it walks. All the things creative that
Chad Sowash (39:39.096)
Mm-hmm.
Joel Cheesman (39:51.89)
You and I as older people are like, cool. writes a summary or cool. can make a image for our podcast. Like young people look at that and go, okay, the creativity that I would have put in that is now gone. So you have something that's bad for the environment. It's going to take all the jobs and it basically extinguishes or dilutes creativity. Well, no shit. The kids don't like it. So, will they grow into it and it'll just be acceptable?
Chad Sowash (39:58.359)
huh.
Joel Cheesman (40:19.442)
To your point, sure, probably, but I totally understand why kids would look at this, young people, go, man, this is some bullshit. Why are we getting behind this? This sucks. This sucks.
Chad Sowash (40:32.11)
Yeah, well, they're going to be happy for a minute because they'll be able to train the AI and get a little side hustle cash and then it's going
Joel Cheesman (40:42.228)
Well, when OnlyFans is 99 cents a month for like all the AI girls and boys and nakedness, like maybe, maybe people will be okay. Go have a Chipotle bowl kids. You'll feel, you'll feel a lot better. You'll feel a lot better. All right guys, another quick break. And when we come back, we'll, talk some specific industry news, which I know, I know is the meat you've all been waiting for.
Chad Sowash (40:56.974)
I'm sure you will.
Joel Cheesman (41:14.706)
All right, Chad, call humanly butter because they're on a roll after raising 25 million earlier this month. They've gone shopping again. The Seattle based company has acquired Ant Hill to combine AI driven automated recruiting with mobile first employee engagement tools tailored for deskless workers. Humanly says the acquisition expands their platform to manage the full employee life cycle, aiming to improve retention and reduce turnover for companies with large frontline workforces.
Chad, is this a big deal or are we making a mountain out of an ant hill? See what I did there? See what I did there? Come on, come on, that's awesome. That's awesome, man.
Chad Sowash (41:52.302)
Does that mean we don't need a dad joke? We don't need a dad joke now. That's awesome. Okay, so before I dig into kind of like the expansion piece here, a quick question, because in reading into the blog post, I did find something incredibly interesting that I think is telling, quote, humanly will continue operating the 8 Hill platform as it explores how to integrate its capabilities into the broader humanly platform, end quote.
So it's not a question about running under two brands, rather it's a tech question, which I feel is something that they should have covered during the technical aspects of due diligence. So this feels like it needed to happen fast. You see what I'm saying? mean, it's like that conversation should have happened during due diligence and generally would happen during due diligence. Not running under two, you know,
separately or what have you for later integration, this was, we'll see if we can. So it almost feels like it was a fire sale.
That's what it feels like. So that's what I got out of the blog press release. On the expansion side of the house, this expands human release capabilities both up and down the funnel with hiring, onboarding, retention. It's smart because much like we talked about last week, you missed it, grayscales acquisition by Paylocity, many bigger systems are going to need an AI and agentic company working inside of them.
Joel Cheesman (43:03.092)
Yeah.
Joel Cheesman (43:10.858)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (43:27.798)
strip away all of the old UI that kind of connected the processes and systems before, replace it with better automation, a chat interface and agents that can, they can actually enter entire and multiple databases like filing systems, grab some information, place some information and then move on to the next task, right? So instead of using these databases like we've tried to over the years, we have agents and we have
Joel Cheesman (43:54.804)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (43:56.654)
We don't have to even fuck with UI really anymore. This to me is a very smart positioning move by Humanly because if they become more of an up and down funnel agentic player, orchestration player, they're looking for acquisition, my friend.
Joel Cheesman (44:14.216)
Yeah. acquisition is their middle name. we were doing firing squad humanly was one of the companies we talked to talk to and, our work qualify and sprockets were all acquisitions last year for humanly. Well, we know the qualify guys pretty well. We know our work. we talked, we've talked about sprockets. So if nothing else, whoever's doing the and a over at humanly is doing it.
great job. I don't know whose job that is, but they are doing a fantastic job of, think, consolidating a lot of the players and pieces that sort of complement what, what humanly is trying to do, which is essentially be the, the, from hire to fire, process of the entire, hiring that entire process, excuse me. So I got to think this is a mix of companies that either
the runway was close to being ran out. People who are smart at those companies and you and I know quite a few of them that so to basically bring those into the humanly ecosystem to take whatever tech and companies and clients that were there, customers bring those into humanly. I think is the strategy around here. I think that they're very good discount hunters, humanly in terms of the acquisitions to your point, Anhill.
I only got to ever heard of them until this acquisition. We'd never seen them at a conference. We've never had a call from them like, we want to talk to you. So they're not exactly set in the world on fire. This is not workday buying paradox. This is a clearance rack sale. Now, Anhills founder is a PhD. All the people at the top of Anhill have a pretty good robust CV. So assuming that they come into the humanly...
Chad Sowash (45:42.818)
Nope.
Joel Cheesman (46:05.418)
ecosystem, they're going to add value, I think, to what's going on. But Humanly is quietly creating a platform that's on level with just about anyone in the space. And they seem to have a really nice niche around the high frequency seasonal hourly workforce. their secret isn't so quiet anymore because they've been successful enough that you and I are probably going to be talking about them on a fairly regular basis going forward.
Chad Sowash (46:21.442)
Yep.
Chad Sowash (46:30.604)
Yeah, frontline, grayscale, big on the frontline hiring side of the house. This is frontline hiring management as well. And as we talked about Paradox and Workday and Smart Recruiters and SAP and actually sitting down with, know, Sharon and Mikael over at Smart Recruiters and talking about literally being the connective tissue between systems. Because a business suite like SAP,
Joel Cheesman (46:37.374)
Mm-hmm.
Joel Cheesman (46:56.447)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (46:56.654)
they have many, many systems that are a part of that business suite, up and down the funnel. I mean, all the way from the Intel acquisition through the entire employee life cycle, payrolling, et cetera, et cetera, even the business side of the house. But being the connective tissue to be able to literally, instead of having these crazy, as Mark talked about on the hacker job, if you guys haven't seen the bump, go take a look at the bump. Integration.
Joel Cheesman (46:59.412)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (47:25.216)
is not something that is hard anymore when using these systems. It becomes much easier. Again, it's more orchestration than it is integration. And it's so smart. And a lot of these legacy companies, they don't have the ability to do this stuff. So if they do have an aqua hire in this case, I think it's incredibly smart.
Joel Cheesman (47:42.164)
Yeah.
Joel Cheesman (47:46.44)
Yeah. And, and of course the, fly in the ointment or the ant in the ointment, if you will, Chad is the, the impending eightfold case and the black boxes and how that's going to impact all these companies going forward and who's better prepared. And I like to think humanly is maybe better prepared for a future. think they're more or less vulnerable to a case like that than, than others. But yeah. but we'll see. Here's about the gray scale stuff.
Chad Sowash (48:09.058)
Like a Ficro, yeah.
Joel Cheesman (48:14.29)
As far as I can tell, Kiara is like the last text recruiting solution standing. Did you guys talk about any others? Yeah, they're like, yeah. So,
Chad Sowash (48:19.758)
No, no, no, I mean, because they they I mean, they pivot, they evolved to be even more than just SMS. So when I think in grayscale did and again, I think a lot of that had to do with marketing and obviously development. But I mean, SMS still backbone, there's no question, but to be able to be that company that can that can float across platforms.
Joel Cheesman (48:33.417)
Mm-hmm.
Chad Sowash (48:49.172)
instead of just just a you single point solution is huge now.
Joel Cheesman (48:54.666)
Well, gray scale of all, but you know who's not evolving Chad. Me and dad jokes. All right. We know that we know that the poke is the Pope is weak on crime, but what do you call an aunt that fights crime? Chad? What do you call an aunt that fights crime? Vigilante. What do you, what do you call an aunt that lives in Vatican city?
Chad Sowash (48:59.444)
us because we have dad jokes.
Chad Sowash (49:10.806)
A sergeant?
Chad Sowash (49:18.944)
Hello.
Joel Cheesman (49:19.786)
Tenants, where do ants go on vacation?
Chad Sowash (49:26.658)
The Vantican, I don't know, France.
Joel Cheesman
See you in Phoenix, we out.
Chad Sowash (49:35.543)
We out.