How about some good news?
- The Supreme Court of the United States protects LGBTQ people against workplace discrimination AND defended DACA.
and, well, OK, that's most of the good news.
Otherwise
and almost 20% of Americans are pouring Clorox on food, which they think will save them from coronavirus.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION sponsored by:
Intro: Hide your kids, lock the doors, you're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark. Buckle up boys and girls, it's time for The Chad and Cheese Podcast. Joel: Oh, yeah. HR's most dangerous podcast in beast mode, everybody. Hey boys and girls, you're listening to The Chad and Cheese podcast, I'm your co-host Joel, diesel, Cheesman. Chad: I'm Chad, it's pronounced GIF, not Jif, Sowash. Joel: On this week's show ... That's a hot topic. SCOTUS does the right thing. Employers say, "Don't sue me, bro," as states reopen. And Shaquille O'Neal dunks on the gig economy. Go grab this alley-oop while we grab this assist from Sovren. Sovren: Sovren parser is the most accurate resume and job order intake technology in the industry. The more accurate your data, the better decisions you can make. Find out more about our suite of products today by visiting sovren.com. That's S-O-V-R-E-N.com. We provide technology that thinks, communicates and collaborates like a human. Sovren, software so human, you'll want to take it to dinner. Joel: I'm ready for a little lighter show today. I had too much weight last week. It's too much. Chad: My chest was all tight after we were done. It's like, I need to breathe. Oh, fuck. Joel: Oh my God. Yeah. I had to just hang with my kids for a few hours. Like, good God, let's talk about SpongeBob or something. Chad: Well, there'll be some light points in this one. But I'm sure there will be some smack you in the face points. And I'd like to start out actually with a shout out to Baker Mayfield. Believe it or not, he says when and if let's say, the NFL actually starts playing games, he says he's going to take a knee. Joel: I think it's fine. And I think that the NFL tripped over its own dick by saying that players shouldn't do that. I think GMs and owners did the same thing. Chad: Right. Joel: America has changed more in the last three months than it has in the last, maybe 30 years. Chad: Taking a knee doesn't seem like a big fucking deal anymore. Joel: No. We've talked about this before the the black-gloved olympians. Chad: Yeah. 60's. Joel: That was a historic moment and nothing was wrong with it. Those guys were vilified for sure. But damn, 30 years on, we're still having these issues 40, 50 years on. And so much change has happened that's been positive. I say, let's keep it going. Chad: I just want to put in a little context though, a little history. Kaep was sitting at first, right? It was actually an army special forces dude, Nate Boyer, who had a conversation with Kaep and said that he believed if Kaep was going to protest, he should take a knee, which is one of the things that we do in the military when we lose a friend, when we lose a comrade, right? It's sign of reverence. And not to mention, this was never about the flag, it was about bringing awareness to Black Lives Matter protesting and obviously the treatment of Blacks. Now, the thing for me, personal story, Nate Boyer was actually one of my trainees in basic training. So he was one of my guys that we had prepped to send off to the special forces and to be able to see that, it's like, Holy shit, it's a small world. Joel: Well, the irony to me is, and then you're a military guy and I know you're sensitive to this possibly, but the flag to me represents the freedom to burn the flag. Does that make sense? Chad: Does. It hurts. Joel: There's a great pro historically of, I may not agree with what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it. Chad: Yeah. Joel: The flag represents the ability to disrespect it. If that makes sense. Chad: Yeah. Yeah. It's something I would never do, but this is one of the things that my seniors at the time, because I was a dumb, a buck sergeant, and we actually saw protests where individuals were burning the flags, and I got all flamed up and he's like, "Dude, this is why we're here. So they can do that." Joel: Wow. Chad: I was young. Yeah. It's one of those things that we have to understand as a people that is not something that we have to agree on, but that's what this country was built on, was, we don't have to agree, we can debate those things and have an opinion, but we have the freedom to be able to do that. And unfortunately, as we've seen with Black Lives Matter in this case coming full circle, Blacks over centuries have not had the same freedoms that we have, or privilege as we do, as White do. Joel: If Adam Gordon has trouble with Michael Jordan and LeBron James, he's going to be totally, totally miffed at Baker Mayfield. He's going to have to Google the shit out of that. Sorry, Gordon. Shout out to Reed Hastings, I know everyone out there has been binge watching. Netflix, Reed Hastings is the founder and CEO. Committed $120 million this week to Historically Black Colleges. Which is putting your money where your mouth is. And so shout out to Reed, another CEO with a lot of money putting it to good use. Chad: Shout out to Bill Mussman. He loves the podcast and said, "We inspire him to think, question and act." Thanks Bill, we'll continue to do just that. Joel: Scary world when we're pushing that envelope. Shout out to PepsiCo, who is eliminating the Aunt Jemima brand of pancakes. Many people have enjoyed Aunt Jemima pancakes in their life, maybe not knowing that it was sort of racially charged brand, built back in the 30's, I believe. 20's. 30's. To me, this is a layup for PepsiCo. This is long overdue, clearly racist, caricature, and glad to see Aunt Jemima gone. Shout out to PepsiCo for doing the right thing. Chad: Yeah. I would say when you talk about micro-aggressions, that might be a little bit bigger than a micro-aggression. Joel: Now, does Mrs. Butterworth get the axe next? Is the question. Chad: It'd be the easiest thing to do. A couple of shout outs, first to Adam Chambers, founder, CEO of Applichat and Joel's- SFX: Hell yeah. Chad: ... Spirit animal. Thanks for the thanks for the Evan Williams Single Barrel Vintage Bourbon, it goes down smooth. And thank you Shazam, from Joveo, for the second bottle of bourbon. That's right. The second bottle of bourbon in 30 days. A wonderful Woodford Reserve Double Oaked select edition. It is so good. Joel: I'm convinced people think we're better drunk. I don't know what that says about us, but keep the liquor coming folks. Chad: I'd say I agree. Joel: It's much easier to record these things and live with Chad, if I'm drunk. Chad: Ask Julie. Joel: Oh, man. Okay. Shout out to a Clorox, who's seeing increased sales. A new story this week says that 19% of Americans are putting Clorox and other bleach products on their food to kill COVID. I got nothinng. Chad: Yeah. I got fucking nothing. 2020 is going to be the year of the Darwin Awards. There are going to be so many people who die of stupidity. It's evolution. Right? It's thinning the herd. Okay. Have fun with that. Joel: Yeah. Chad: Big shout out to Przemek Berendt, who is the CEO of Talent Alpha, for the latest Firing Squad, did a great job. If you haven't heard it yet, go to chadcheese.com, just look for Firing Squads, they're all right there. Joel: Very nice. I just remembered this, because you mentioned the booze. Last Sunday was National Bourbon Day. I'm sure you celebrated as I did with a-
Joel: ... With a variety of the dark stuff, very tasty. Chad: Last but not least, James Ellis wrote a book, it's called Talent Chooses You. Find it on Amazon. And James is a friend and I think he's- SFX: Hell yeah. Chad: He's contractually obligated to put us in every book he writes from here forward. Joel: That's fake news. But I think we both are in the book, which is nice. Ellis is not a fan of Twitter, who's in my shout outs for launching audio tweets. I'm not sure how we feel about this. And recording a podcast, knowing that the variety of sound quality really varies based on what you use, I can't imagine that audio tweets are going to be worth listening to, it's just going to be a mass garbled piece of shit. Chad: Yeah. Joel: But it could be a thing. Another shout out from me goes to Trade Hounds, wanting to be the LinkedIn of the construction industry. Sure, they need LinkedIn too. Raised 3.2 million this week in seed funding. And I don't know if there's a shout out or a big boo, depending on the way you look at it, but Zuckerberg announced that you'll be able to opt out of political ads on Facebook. I'm guessing that finding that off switch is going to be really difficult, they're not going to make it super easy. And this to me is just window dressing to try to keep Zuck out of the news for not giving a shit about the First Amendment. Chad: Yeah. Well, we just need to shut all that shit down. This is a much larger discussion, but we need to shut all that shit down. And doing a recap, yesterday was a busy day on my schedule. Adam Gordon, Hung Lee, my brilliant wife, Julie and myself had a pretty awesome debate/discussion on the Facebook cost of living salary adjustment that they're doing for remote workers. One of the things that you and I disagreed on. Adam also disagreed, so we had a debate on it. It was pretty fun. And right after that, you remember, I was also in a discussion like two hours later with [Boss Von de Hartford 00:10:46.14], I can't fucking say her name. Boss, I'm sorry. Joel: Easy for you to say. Chad: And [Awana Ayochesku 00:10:52.07], that one was called Future of Recruitment Tech. That was fun. It was close to an hour. Joel: Any surprises? Any curve balls out there? Chad: One of the things that ... When we were talking about the Facebook conversation, Julie had some great points. She went off on her own, did her own research, we kind of did our own things, and she had some great points with regard to redistribution of wealth, population density, those types of things. And that's why we have these discussions, just to at least spark it, and then they might grow. And this one definitely grew. The tech conversation, Awana, she is a talent acquisition leade in the organization that she works in and it's across the pond. And it was really cool just to have more of a global conversation about technology. And to be quite frank, we are growing so much closer together, between North America and Europe and Asia pack in how we're feeling and using tech. We used to be anywhere from three to five years ahead of everybody else in the world, but we're getting closer as much faster. Joel: Yeah. Did you say Julie did research before this podcast? Chad: Before the debate. Joel: I should try that sometime. Research before the interview. I want to know why you guys are on video, and she was a block image. Chad: I have no clue. I have no clue. Not to mention, this thing was at eight o'clock in the morning, she got up, did the makeup thing, the hair thing, she looked great. And then Hung Lee had like bed head, and it would have been great to see them next to each other, that would be awesome contrast. But for some reason, she couldn't get the Zoom video to work for her. Joel: Yeah. Hung Lee and I are going to the same barber apparently, here in the pandemic radar. My guess was, when I watched it, was that she didn't want any visual proof of associating herself with you three meatheads. But according to you, it was a little bit different than that. That was my first assumption, like, no way that she want to be associated with these idiot. It's enough that she's married to you. Chad: Yeah. There's nothing wrong with that. Joel: Says you. Chad: Says me. Joel: I'm your work wife, I might say different. Chad: Yeah. Well, I also have Jobg8 iSummit. I'll be moderating a panel on June 24th. Go to jobg8.com for more info. It's a free summit brought to you by Jobg8, So just register there, jobg8, J-OB-G-8.com. Joel: They love you over on the other end of the pond, man. What what's going on? You got like Scottish- Chad: I'm getting action. Joel: .. English. Like, what's the secret? Chad: Well, Jamie Leonard- Joel: Because you're moving there after Trump gets reelected? Chad: Yeah. Good call. Good call. Jamie Leonard, the end of the team that brought you RecFest, that's across the pond. Joel: Sure. Chad: They're bringing you TA Global Gathering. It's something new, they've never done it before. RecFest is still supposed to happen later this year, but because of the COVID, they had to make a digital change and they're going global instead of just, specifically they're in London. So it's called TA Global Gathering, July 8th and 9th. It supposed to be a shit ton of speakers from all over the world. And we've created a new competition called Feature Rama. Joel: Oh, that's so brilliant. That's so brilliant. Who came up with that one? Chad: Tell us about Feature Rama, Joel. Joel: Sure. Feature Rama. We love Death Match, everyone loves it, but we exclusively talk to startups. And the fact is that there are established companies that are releasing new features and products on a regular basis that frankly we think should be talked about and should have a platform to pitch their new stuff. So we came up with Feature Rama, which we're launching for RecFest. Chad: TA Global Gathering. Joel: taglobalgathering.com or something. Chad: Com. Joel: So, we're bringing Nexxt. We're bringing XOR, our most recent Death Match winner. We're bringing Jobvite. And we're bringing HiringSolved into the ring, fighting it out over the newest and best features that they each have. We had our first interview yesterday; we have three today. So I'm hopped up on coffee, and it's going to be dope. July 8th and 9th is when these things will go live, we're going to have a championship belt, the bad-ass belt of technology or something like that, we're calling it. We're excited to see how this turns out and I'm excited to see who wins this thing. There's going to be some really good competition. Chad: Yeah. And it's free. So go to taglobalgathering.com, register. Ton of content. And to be quite frank, I'm really starting to dig these digital events. I want to go to the real live events. I want to go to the real live events, don't get me wrong. But TAtech is really starting to get it down. Talent tech rising was damn good and Symphony Talent Transform had some ridiculous content- Joel: I'll give you that. Chad: ... And the experience box was over the top. So I think companies are really starting to understand that they can create an experience that goes well beyond that of what we're used to just doing, fucking webinars or Zoom calls. Joel: Yeah. And let me underscore the digital DJ that Transform had. All these things should have a DJ. Chad: Yes. And then they also had incense and candles and they sent us Blanton's. That was an experience people- SFX: Hell yeah. Chad: That's going to be hard to match. Joel: No doubt. Chad: Unless you're at the base of the Canadian Rockies, in Banff. Joel: True that. Ready for the news? Chad: TOPICS! Joel: SCOTUS. Dude, this is your lane. This is your jam. Supreme Court, United States. Chad: LGBTQ. Joel: SCOTUS did the right thing this week. What happened? Chad: Yeah. So, article by NBC News, Supreme court rules LGBTQ workers are protected from job discrimination, quotes by a vote of six to three, which was incredibly surprising. The court said, Title VII of the civil rights act of 1964, which makes it illegal for employers to discriminate because of person's sex, among other factors, also covers sexual orientation and transgender status, and upheld rulings from lower courts that sexual orientation discrimination was a form of sexual discrimination. I know it's hard to believe that we need SCOTUS to rule on equal protections, but they did. And now we can move forward because this was a big win. Joel: To me, this was like almost as much of a layup as the Aunt Jemima decision by PepsiCo. Chad: Yeah. Joel: And I was a little bit shocked to think like, man, really, it's now what? Really? This is 2020, and we're just getting to this now? And the fact that we have a conservative court, but apparently the majority of States favored or had laws on the books against this demographic of folks to make it illegal. So to me, it was like, wow, we live in a really fucking backward country sometimes. And I think that it was also a little bit of a celebration for the constitution. I know that we beat up on the constitution and the government and quite a bit of things a lot, but when you have a conservative core, you have a conservative majority of governors, and yet we still side on the right side of things because it's constitutionally prudent, I think says something about the institution of our government at a constitutional level. And that the judges don't just vote on party lines, and that we can do things that aren't political all the time in this country. So on many levels to me, this was inspiring, particularly in the world that we live in right now. And this is just great overall. I think for that group of people, we don't talk enough about the discrimination that they've seen, the challenges that they've had in their life. And this just was a great win for America, and for those folks and our institutions, at the federal level. Chad: Yeah. It's amazing that again, we focus on so many discussions, focus on how do we hire more diverse population of people. And then it was up for discussion, wait a minute, you can be fired because you're prospectively gay or transgender. Joel: Yeah. Chad: That obviously didn't level at all with me or many other people. But think of this though, the protests that are happening today, if this would have gone down and they would have lost, can you imagine the protests in the streets? Joel: That would have been bad. Yeah. That would have been another 2020 trend of disaster and inhumane activity. Anyway, I will also point out that for our younger audience, if you haven't watched the movie Philadelphia, starring Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington, it kind of covers this issue of being able to fire people for sexual orientation. And it's just a goddamn good movie, that has aged fairly interestingly, I think. I think people forget the AIDS scare, and what that meant to society. And I think it's beneficial to remember what the world was like so that we don't go back there. And Philadelphia to me is a great movie, that really highlights and frames what the world was like, wrapped up in some really good acting by the way. Chad: Yeah. Well, I just think it's fairly simple for us to say that, humans are just human. Doesn't matter who you go home to. Doesn't matter if you wear a dress or a pair of pants. I still don't think it's happening fast enough, but you know it's happening. Joel: Yeah. The world is changing very fast for the better, and that's a good thing. COVID in the news, it's still around. I don't know if you've heard people are still dying and still getting this thing - Chad: Yea. There's resurgence. Joel: .. tend to forget about it. Chad: Yeah. Joel: And by the way, Trump says, if we stop testing for it, we won't see spikes in cases. Duh. Chad: Yeah. You can't manage what you don't measure either. Right? So it's like, "Oh, we don't need to manage anything, because it's not there," the guy's just a fucking idiot. Now, from the, a associated press, businesses ask patrons to waive rights to sue if they get ill. As businesses reopen across the US after Corona virus shutdowns, many are requiring customers and workers to sign forms saying they won't sue if they get COVID-19. Wow. Joel: Yeah. So there's two sides of this, the employment side, which we focus on, obviously, people are going to get sued. Companies are going to get sued, there's no way around it. To have them sign something, I think obviously everyone is going to sign it, whether or not a court will uphold these agreements. I don't know. I think, although you hate everything about Amazon. Amazon is spending a lot of money to try to protect their employees and try to make the environment as clean as possible and as antiviral as possible. And I think they're going to set the standard for companies, particularly enterprise level companies to keep their workers safe, because lawsuits are going to happen. It's the right thing to do, of course, but companies hate getting sued. The other side of this I think is patrons. And what it made me think immediately was, when they have football this season, there seems to be a growing consensus that there won't be football. But if there is football with fans, every fan is going to have to sign a waiver saying that they understand that there's this virus and that they could get sick and potentially die. Chad: That's the stupidest thing ever. Joel: But if they're going to ... Don't, you see that happening? That's immediately what I thought about. Like, they're going to have concerts, you're going to have to go in and sign some shit. You're going to have to sign something for anything that you do that has like more than a thousand people. Chad: I don't think so. I don't think so. I think there's going to be a precedent that, if you choose and that's you at free will, to go to a concert or go to a football game, you therefore could catch something. And that's on you, it's not on anybody else, you know what the risks were. So in this case, I get why companies want to reopen and people want to get out of the house. Companies need to make money, and the economy doesn't work without people spending money. Critics argue that liability waivers open the door for corporations to skirt protocols, like the plexiglass barriers, providing face masks and other equipment and keeping people a proper distance apart, which again, would provide more spikes of this virus. What I can't, and I don't think anybody should ever stand for, is firing an employees because they decide to stay home during a pandemic. Not coming to work because they don't want to risk it, they might be in one of those groups, right? Joel: Sure. Chad: And there are individuals who have been fired because they won't come to work during a pandemic. Not to mention all these idiots that are out there, who won't wear a mask because it's their right not to wear a mask. Well, this is not about you, this is about protecting you and everybody else around you. This is about community. I think we think too much about this as an individual decision. Well, no, it's not. This is a decision to protect those around you. That's what this is. This is not about you asshole. This is about all those other people that you should help protect, and they should be protecting you as well by wearing their own. Joel: Sure. But I guarantee you in the NFL offices, there have been meetings with lots of lawyers about how do we have fans by signing some shit getting us off the hook. Chad: They will put up signs. Joel: Yeah. It'll be like smoking. Entering this arena could kill you. Thank you very much. And that's protected the cigarette industry, I guess it might protect a sports industry and concerts and everything else. Chad: Yeah. And there was also a report of what 25% of employees could be at risk of catching. Joel: Like, how fucked up is that? So yeah, a new report, one in four employees are going to be at serious risk, not minor risk, but serious risk, going back to work in the face of reopening the world. And that's a lot. I was walking the dog today, beloved Peepers.
Chad: Mr. Peepers.
Joel: And they're doing some construction work near my house. And there are probably 12 to 15 construction workers, working pretty closely together, none of which had a mask on. So I think that we forget about a lot of the world, but there's a big chunk of the world of workers that are lower level, entry-level, construction, service industry that are close together, not wearing any protection whatsoever. So that made me think this one in four maybe wasn't so crazy because so many people are working in this manner.
Chad: And also, I thought it was interesting, big thanks to Holland Dombeck for pointing this one out, Salesforce has a contact tracing platform, or I should say app, let's say, within the Salesforce platform, which helps companies identify individuals who have come in contact with somebody with COVID. So if you test positive for COVID, then they can use this platform to contact trace within the actual organization itself, which I think is really fucking cool. And it makes sense for now everybody to say, "Okay, I need to get in and start managing this to ensure that we don't have that one in four happen."
Joel: Holland is a proud millennial. I want to point that out as well. This research by the way is from the Kaiser Family Foundation. And a quick summary, the analysis estimated 37.7 million workers in the US, that's roughly 24% of adults, are at high risk, including 10 million who are 65 years or older, and an additional 27.7 million with pre-existing medical conditions.
Chad: Yeah. I'd like to say, in the state of Indiana, we don't have a dense population, which helps out. Right?
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: But the problem is, we do have a bunch of people who are the types of the Trump supporters who are individualism, and you can't tell me what to do, and carbon dioxide and all that other bullshit.
Joel: Clorox.
Chad: Yeah. It's one of those things where we just have to stop thinking about ourselves, quit being assholes, and think, how do we get through this faster and better and at less risk? Not just for us, but everybody around us. We have to think more about the community, which we have stopped doing in this country. We've been more rugged individualists, which we need to stop that shit.
Joel: Yeah. And it starts with the guy in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, who refuses to wear a mask ever.
Chad: We can never look at that asshole.
Joel: Yeah, I know. I know. Well, who's not an asshole is our friends at Jobvite. Let's take a quick break, and we'll talk about Shaquille O'Neal for the first time.
Chad: I love this commercial.
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Joel: Nice.
Chad: This just came in. This might be the best day, best podcast ever. We just talked about LGBTQ, the Supreme Court today, just minutes ago, blocked the Trump administration's attempt to end DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. This is an Obama era program that protects hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought to the US as children, from deportation. So maybe it's not all bad, the SCOTUS is looking at stuff saying, okay, Trump's a dumb ass. Everybody sees it. Got this new Bolton book that's out, that even demonstrates that he's a bigger dumb ass than we thought before. But this was a five to four ruling, and this is great stuff. So we've had two big wins just in this podcast.
Joel: Wow. This is inspiring. This is nice. This is nice. So freelance explosion in the news this week. Got a story out of Forbes talking about the coming growth around the freelance economy. It is quoting a survey from Upwork, which I guess we should disclose, is a freelance platform.
Chad: It might be a little bias. I don't know.
Joel: A little bit of self-interest going on here, but the research showed, 73% of hiring managers are continuing or increasing their use of independent professionals. 56% of hiring managers said working remotely has exceeded their expectations. And 62% said their workforce will be more remote than ever before because of COVID. 32% of hiring managers say remote work has increased-
Chad: Productivity. Yep.
Joel: Yes. My screen just went crazy. A 59% of hiring managers agree that organizations that aren't adopting a flexible workforce are falling behind. And this is a trend that you and I have talked about for quite a while. We knew it was the future or thought it was, and COVID is putting it on steroids and making this stuff happen.
Chad: This research makes it sound like just freelancers, but they're actually talking about remote, in some of this. So it's kind of blurry to an extent. I do believe that there's no question, we're going to see more remote work, but those are going to be full time employees. We will probably see an uptick, there's no question in freelancers. But the biggest problem is I don't think we will see a boom because we don't have the protections, we don't have healthcare, we don't have benefits. And we want so badly to move in this direction, but here in the United States, we are not set up for it. So yes, I think this is definitely kind of like massaging the data to make it work for you because Upwork is a freelance platform, but I think what this does, is this unveils more about remote work than it does freelancers.
Joel: Yeah. They are a public company that's seen a nice rebirth in their stock price, recently. I think the interesting side, which we don't know yet is, with 40 something million people unemployed, how many of those folks are migrating over to Upwork, Fiverr, Communo, et cetera, trying this stuff out for the first time. Right?
Chad: Oh, yeah.
Joel: They have no choice. It's like, why don't I just get on and see what happens?
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: Your brother-in-law is a recent sort of diving into this freelance world.
Chad: Yeah.
Joel: So when the world gets back to normal, do these folks say, "Hey, this freelancing thing works for me," or "No, it doesn't. I'm going to go back to full time employment." Obviously a percentage are going to find freelancing, quite amenable and preferable to the full time employment stuff. So companies, I think we both agree are going to have to realize that more and more people want to be freelance, and they're going to have to find out ways to contract with those people, to manage those people, to engage with folks that are on Upwork and other platforms. So a lot of this story has yet to be written in terms of what people do, who are unemployed to find work and get money. But when you mentioned the healthcare thing, I think that's a huge piece of this puzzle.
Chad: Right.
Joel: And we have Steady, a company called Steady in the news this week, and this is where our buddy, Shaquille O'Neal, the big Diesel, comes in. They raised 15 million in series B funding. And interesting about them, Recruit Holdings, who we know from Indeed and Glassdoor and others, was a leader in this, and Shaquille O'Neal is an investor as well as a, I guess an ambassador. If you go to the steadyapp.com website, there are a lot of videos with Shaq. But the goal of these guys is to find people steady work, not necessarily full-time employment, but also provide discount insurance, education, expanded training and things like that. So Steady is sort of gig freelance work, but we're going to wrap it into helping people get insurance, to get educated, et cetera. It's targeted to inner cities and lower income demographics. So I'm really interested to see how this thing takes off. Clearly some smart people are backing it, and it has a pretty good chance of success, I would say.
Chad: Yeah. They're looking at areas in which our economy, and policies here in the US are failing human beings. And that's the issue, unfortunately, that we have. Capitalism looks for different ways of making money, where to be quite frank, there shouldn't be a way to make money. Everybody should have healthcare, right? It shouldn't be a low cost way to get healthcare. When it comes to education, we obviously are having our issues with education and hopefully, through COVID and what we're seeing now, that's going to change.
Joel: Yeah. Colleges, by and large are in dire states right now. Obviously the Harvards and Stanfords are going to be fine.
Chad: Yeah. Tier 3 schools are going to be having issues.
Joel: Yeah. Big issues. And my wife is a professor and this is an ongoing discussion at the university level, and this is a publicly funded university, that she works. The liberal arts colleges, the little guys, it's going to be really challenging. And most of them are talking about opening up because they don't want to lose the money that they get through students coming on campus. But if they run into the buzz saw of COVID outbreaks, that's a really, really catch 22 hard situation. So there's a story in New York Times, that if you're interested in this topic, go check it out. They talk about it pretty extensively. But yeah, universities by and large are going to be in big trouble in the next year or so.
Joel: Target workers are getting a raise. I'm sure you're happy about this. At $15 an hour.
Chad: Yeah. $15 an hour still ... And the thing that's still bothering me is that these are the types of workers that we see as the necessary workers during a pandemic. Right? And we can pay them a couple of dollars more, but now when we start to kind of like reopen, and it's not a big deal, it's like, "Let's give him $15 an hour." Let's pat them on the head, give them $30,000 a year before taxes. Yeah. Okay. I dig that Target. Good job. I think we can do better. And I definitely think organizations like Chipotle are ones to follow. Ones who have, for part-timers, benefits. And I know there are different benefits package for Target and whatnot, but benefits for health care, for part-timers. The college programs, the degree programs that Chipotle has. I believe everybody should look at what Chipotle is doing and they should be there now. They should mimic, copy, whatever the fuck they need to do, but do what they are doing. That is the starting point, I think, of what right looks like right now.
Joel: I think there is some warm and fuzzy to this obviously, but I think most of this is market driven. You have two, 800 pound gorillas named Amazon and Walmart, that are actually benefiting from a lot of the closures of the mom and pops and small organizations. And companies like Target, which are sort of the Dr Peppers and Fantas of the retail world, are having to do things like this, just to compete to survive. So to me, it's part warm and fuzzy, part PR, but a lot of it is just survival in retaining and recruiting talent that would normally otherwise go to Walmart or God forbid, Amazon.
Chad: Yeah. Is Target losing money? I don't think. I think they've got plenty of money.
Joel: You've got to grow, baby. It's not about making money, it's about growing.
Chad: Yeah. It's about fucking all those essential workers. Again, making everybody feel good.
Joel: For God's sakes, Hertz is going out of business, Chad. The world is ending.
Chad: Yeah. I saw.
Joel: Hertz, 1918, it was founded. It survived the great depression. It's not going to survive COVID. Let's take a quick break, and we'll talk about layoffs at ERE.
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Chad: Whew. I'm in a good mood now.
Joel: The Hertz story is cool by the way. I don't know much about it, but it was, they say a kid, it was 1918, his name was Hertz. He bought a bunch of Ford model T's in New York and made Hertz out of it. So anyway-
Chad: There you go.
Joel: Layoffs at ERE.
Chad: Yeah. Tell me about that.
Joel: So this one hits this one hits somewhat close to home for me. I wrote ERE for years, fairly recently. You and I both know David Manastir very well. We know a lot of the folks that have been there, source con, the conferences that they put on used to be a must go to conference before HR tech sort of took that mantle. But they're in the publishing business, which is the ad business basically, and they're in the conference business. And word out is that they had a bunch of layoffs, a majority of their employees are now out of the company. Sad for them. We know probably all of them, we've met them at some point, hope that they land on their feet. But it's obviously tough times if you're doing conferences, even if they're virtual. And if you're in the publishing business, particularly in this business to have people, that are vendors that rely on people hiring to make money, their ad dollars are certainly shrinking up or going away.
Chad: Right.
Joel: So it's hard to make a living on that end. So, yeah, I expect them not to be the first. David is pretty savvy from a business perspective, so I know that he acts quickly on these things. But I also expect them to bounce back when the world comes back and make their way into our schedules every year as a must see event, as they put on their conferences.
Chad: Yeah. This is really kind of nostalgic, right? Because 10 years ago, or what have you, ERE was the place, that's where you got your info. That was the one of the major places, right?
Joel: Yup.
Chad: And ERE, the actual events, that was the go to events for the industry. I have to, and this is a hard question, man, because I love David and the group, and I think they've done just a great job over the years, but they had competition come in and take market share, and I just didn't see the kind of evolution that a company needs to have within their organization. Obviously there's still a ton of content, that they've been putting out and events, but it just really to me, and this is me, you tell me different, because you're definitely closer.
Joel: Sure.
Chad: They just don't feel much different than they did 10 years ago.
Joel: Yeah. I think there was a time, before HR tech and back in the 2000s, there were maybe four or five shows. Kennedy and [Onrak 00:42:56.20] and a few others that have also gone by the wayside, ERE was a must go to event. And they had shows in San Diego, in Florida, they were great destinations sites. I think Vegas, they had it one year. But David stepped down for a short period and things really changed from a strategy perspective.
Chad: Yeah. Good point.
Joel: It used to be a place where, hey, if you had a blog or a Twitter account, you wanted to be there, either it was free to go or cheap to go. These are the people that spoke at those events. Vendors wanted to be interviewed by those folks and put on their blogs and whatnot. And those folks who were the taste makers, so to speak, were sort of pushed out. It was a pay to play. It was executive level type stuff. And it really lost, I guess the cool factor. And people went to HR tech, they went to LinkedIn's event and company sponsored events. And then when David came back a few years ago, I guess it was maybe '13, '14, '12, somewhere around there, it started to get back to what it was. SourceCon was always pretty cool, which they had acquired at one point early on. But I know that some of the latest events were as well attended and registered attendees were as high as they were back in '06, '07, '08, during the heyday. So they were certainly on the way back, obviously still a lot of competition, but there were obviously people that had money and budgets to go to a lot of shows.
Chad: Right.
Joel: And that just dried up overnight. So it's sad to see a conference sort of on the way back have to face the tsunami that is coronavirus. Whether they make it back or not, I guess time will tell.
Chad: We can only hope that, obviously they can find either some way digitally, or maybe live events some day, to find their way back to that path. But again, I forgot CEO change, that was a huge riff in the industry.
Joel: Yeah.
Chad: It pissed a lot of people off. And it was good that Dave did come back, because he knew what the original vision was. And that was something that the community embraced. They did, they embraced it whole-heartedly. And yeah, I agree that, unfortunately that change, that CEO change and the change of vision did create some impact.
Joel: No doubt. No doubt. Which is why we can't get rid of each other, because the show would never be the same without both Chad and Cheese.
Chad: Yes.
Joel: And with that, we out.
Chad: We out.
Outro: Thank you for listening to, what's it called? Podcast. With Chad, with Cheese. Brilliant. They talk about recruiting, they talk about technology, but most of all they talk about nothing. Just a lot of shout outs of people you don't even know and yet you're listening, it's incredible. And not one word about cheese, not one, cheddar, blue, nacho, Pepper Jack, Swiss, there are so many cheeses and not one word, so weird. Anyhoo, be sure to subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that way you won't miss an episode. And while you're at it, visit www.chadcheese.com. Just don't expect to find any recipes for grilled cheese. It's so weird. We out.