Will LinkedIn Burn Filament

It’s sweater weather in New England, bourbon season in Kentucky, and full-on chaos in the economy. This week on The Chad & Cheese Podcast with special guest J.T. O’Donnell, we’re talking:

• LinkedIn lawyering up (again) and suing the bots

• Moody’s, farmers, and the “cataclysmic” economy

• AI clones, fractional work, and Gen X’s looming UBI nightmare 😬

• And yes, chili, bourbon, and a few f-bombs — because that’s how HR’s Most Dangerous rolls.

  
  

From Portland protests to Netflix’s $700K AI job, this episode’s got more spice than Joel’s chili and more heat than Chad’s take on Ronald Reagan.

👉 Powered by FactoryFix, fueled by Chicken Cock Bourbon, and (barely) held together by caffeine and existential dread.

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Joel Cheesman (00:28.368)

Ohhhh yeeeeaaaaaaaah! We ain't afraid of no ghosts. Hey kids, it's the Chad and Cheese Podcast. I'm your co-host, Joel Dirty Sanchez Cheeseman.

Chad (00:42.489)

This is Chad, Hellscape Sowash.

JT ODonnell (00:45.838)

And this is JT, it's finally Fall O'Donnell.

Joel Cheesman (00:49.616)

And on this episode of HR's Most Dangerous Podcast, LinkedIn Lawyers Up, again, Moody's Reports Down and Gen X wants out. Let's do this.

Joel Cheesman (01:03.654)

Fall in New England, how awesome is that?

JT ODonnell (01:06.262)

It is, we had a really warm season, but now it's here. Look at me, sweater weather, sweater weather, sweater weather. You know it, you know it.

Chad (01:07.98)

She has a sweater on.

Joel Cheesman (01:10.512)

For the one month of the year that New England can make fun of the rest of the country and everyone is envious. Yeah.

JT ODonnell (01:17.44)

Not gonna lie, it's awesome. It's pretty, it's awesome. Apple picking, pumpkins, it's good.

Joel Cheesman (01:23.728)

Pumpkicker, do you do the whole Halloween thing or is that a passe?

Chad (01:23.948)

I've got my.

JT ODonnell (01:28.096)

No, no, it's a big deal here. I live in a cute little city and it's like the streets are decorated. It's awesome. Like just this time of year makes it worth living here, except for the construction, which you can hear, which is now like everywhere, but good times. Yep. It's construction. It's construction.

Joel Cheesman (01:29.797)

Okay.

Joel Cheesman (01:33.51)

Yeah, Portsmouth. Portsmouth.

Chad (01:39.446)

Yeah, that's a-

Joel Cheesman (01:39.792)

That's okay. There's a whole lot of shaking going on at the O'Donnell house. So don't, don't come knocking. Don't come knocking. You know the rules. Everybody don't come a knocking.

Chad (01:47.158)

Cause they're, cause they're already knocking. Yes. So I got to give love to the factory fix boys. got this, obviously when I got home and they actually, added a little, Matt Lavery, patch on there. So everybody remembers little, yeah. Little Matt Lavery. Yeah. Yeah. Love it. Love it. Love it. Yeah. I mean, the guys at factory fix are from Chicago. Matt Lavery was from Chicago. Definitely kindred spirits.

JT ODonnell (02:01.71)

is that what that is? love that.

Joel Cheesman (02:09.296)

Yep.

Joel Cheesman (02:14.628)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (02:15.994)

yeah, miss our boy. Miss our boy, that's for sure.

Joel Cheesman (02:18.278)

Love Chicago. Yeah. He, uh, he won a bet that he'll never cash in with me. His, uh, his Cubs got 90 wins. They're on the doorstep of being eliminated. We don't need to talk about that. And the bears are a hot mess, but, uh, definitely miss miss our homeboy, Matt Lavery, Matt Lavery.

JT ODonnell (02:18.456)

Yeah.

Chad (02:34.422)

Bears have been a hot mess for a very long time.

JT ODonnell (02:35.32)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (02:37.988)

Matt, Mark Sanchez is lucky he didn't pick a fight with Matt Lowry. That might have been that crazy.

Chad (02:41.292)

Jesus.

JT ODonnell (02:41.74)

What? I mean, that story, what the heck?

Joel Cheesman (02:48.934)

It's reached new England. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. I got the headline, Mark Sanchez stabbed in downtown Indy. And I was like, great. Like nice job, Indy. And then this then then facts came out and it was like, Holy shit. I mean, props to a 69 year old that can hold his own and like his care is carrying a knife and like some buoy knife comes out and man.

Chad (02:49.324)

Stabbed. Stabbed. Yeah.

JT ODonnell (02:51.296)

you know, stab.

JT ODonnell (02:57.378)

in the dangerous streets.

JT ODonnell (03:06.454)

Agreed.

Chad (03:11.98)

The guy that Mark Sanchez was starting a fight with was almost 70? Holy shit.

JT ODonnell (03:18.144)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And if you saw pictures, little guy, like little guy. Yeah, not cool.

Joel Cheesman (03:18.18)

He's 69. And that's not a joke.

Chad (03:24.852)

Yeah, yeah. Fucking bully.

Joel Cheesman (03:25.476)

Yeah. Now he was, was, he was a truck driver used to late night deliveries. So the dude was sort of ready for, I'm sure he's seen a lot of shit at midnight, you know, and every, so he had pepper spray, which didn't like, didn't work. you know, it, it didn't phase him much. And then, and then he had to, took out a knife and stabbed him. Like it's, that's crazy, dude. Crazy story, man. It's like Europe getting stabbed. But anyway, I think Mark is fired. And I think that, we won't be seeing him on TV.

Chad (03:29.665)

Okay. Yeah. yeah.

Chad (03:38.944)

Didn't phase him, yeah.

JT ODonnell (03:46.85)

Yep. Yep.

Chad (03:51.244)

Thank

Joel Cheesman (03:55.118)

Anytime soon. He might be doing some time in the pokey. Yeah. He may be the most famous, inmates since Mike Tyson did some time here in Indiana back in the nineties.

Chad (03:55.37)

Yeah, we're used to mass shootings, not stabbings.

JT ODonnell (03:59.663)

in. Crazy.

Joel Cheesman (04:08.944)

We'll see if Delta lets him on the, on the airlines, Chad. That's something you wanted to have in banter.

Chad (04:09.08)

Not a good look.

JT ODonnell (04:09.24)

There's a little fact.

Chad (04:11.998)

Not a good look. Not a good look, not a good look. Yeah, no. Let's go ahead and move on. This is a long show. This is a smorgasbord of stuff. So I'm literally cutting something out we were going to talk about because fuck it. Let's dig into shout outs because we got a meaty show coming.

JT ODonnell (04:22.094)

It is. There was prep.

Joel Cheesman (04:23.014)

Mm-hmm.

JT ODonnell (04:31.544)

We do.

Joel Cheesman (04:33.286)

So much red meat. Well, I'm going to not be red meatish on this one, but my shout out goes out to John Lennon. Assuming all the kids even know who John Lennon is. He was one of the Beatles. Anyway, today we were recording on October 9th. Today would have been his 85th birthday. Chad mentioned Marvin Gaye last week and 1971's classic. Also a classic from 1971 in addition to Chad and I.

JT ODonnell (04:34.071)

It is.

Chad (04:43.308)

Come on. Of course.

Joel Cheesman (05:02.37)

is imagine, from John Lennon, my favorite song of all time. not only the song, but also the album, is one of his best. I can only imagine. I can only imagine Chad. Yeah. The dad jokes are coming out a little, a little early on this one. I can only imagine what John Lennon might have to say in his, political bents on what 2025, has to hold. Remember this kid. If you don't know John Lennon, all you need is love. Shout out.

Chad (05:02.668)

Yes.

Chad (05:14.972)

Mm. Very bad.

Joel Cheesman (05:30.534)

to my favorite Beatle and happy heavenly birthday to John Lennon.

JT ODonnell (05:36.27)

That sweet. That was really sweet of you. I do. I didn't know that was your favorite song. Yeah, yeah. We got, yeah, that's cool.

Chad (05:36.62)

Love me some Lennon, love me some Lennon and... It's a great, great song.

Joel Cheesman (05:40.41)

You like that? He was he was he was a cat lover, a little known fact about John Lennon. He had a cat. had many cats, pepper, salt and pepper. And he had minor and major, which was which are musical terms, if you know major and minor notes.

JT ODonnell (05:58.381)

my god.

Chad (05:59.796)

Everybody has their flaws, Cheeseman. That's okay. We won't. It's not a big deal.

Joel Cheesman (06:01.4)

Yeah, Chad's over. Chad is over over the cat talk. Chad's over the cat talk.

JT ODonnell (06:01.953)

Yeah. Gosh, love it. So I'm going to switch gears though. So my shout out, like, you know how, how many times we say AI in this show, we should be drinking. We'd be like hammered. Okay. I'm going to kick it off because I'm going to give a shout out. No affiliation whatsoever to Delphi AI because, um, I just completed making an AI tool that literally talks to anyone and gives them whatever free resource they want from me. So when you've been doing the stuff I've been doing for 10 years,

Chad (06:13.152)

Yes. Good call.

JT ODonnell (06:29.26)

Your DMs, your messages are always filled with, where's this thing that you did? Do you remember when you did this? You know, like I'm the personal, you know, assistant to that. And I feel so bad. Yeah. It makes you crazy. So I build this AI tool that literally talks to you and says, you want this one and gives it to them. And I am so excited. I feel like relieved that I don't have to do this anymore. It's it's text and voice. So you can, you can type and it'll give you text or if you voice, you have a conversation with me. It's insane.

Chad (06:33.164)

Alright.

Joel Cheesman (06:47.416)

Is it you visually? it a text based thing? It's okay.

JT ODonnell (06:58.862)

And it just, like the amount of hours it's going to save me. And I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner, maybe because I wanted to make sure it was there. But for the amount of time it took it to program it and how accurate it is, I just, feel lighter. Like there might be more time. It's my voice. Yeah. People have said they freak out. They're like, it is like, I'm talking to you, JT. I'm like, good, awesome. Cause I can't work with 10,000 people one-on-one.

Joel Cheesman (07:03.536)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (07:11.018)

Is it your voice? Is it your voice? Okay.

Joel Cheesman (07:11.078)

And does it sound like you or is it, yeah, is it kind of like a, it's, it's not a body, it's not a body, body snatchers kind of thing, or it's you, but not quite you. It's you. Yeah. Okay.

Chad (07:18.11)

Okay, I dig that.

JT ODonnell (07:24.846)

Exactly. mean, I'll take it though, because you know those people that say, can I just pick your brain? You can pick this brain. Let's go like talk to this thing, you know. So I'm very excited about it. So thank you Delphi AI. Saving my life. Give me some hours back.

Joel Cheesman (07:32.622)

Never happens to us. Never happens to us.

Chad (07:32.736)

But it.

Chad (07:38.728)

Now with AI, it's interesting because Joel and I actually had our voices cloned with AI through Veritone a few years ago, right? It took us three hours of training data to actually get it locked in. I actually had to do an additional three. Joel didn't because he's got this monotone approach. So now it is incredible that literally they can get a 30 second clip, probably even less than that now, but 30 second clip and they are like,

Joel Cheesman (07:56.942)

I'm, my monotone voice is easy.

Joel Cheesman (08:06.427)

Mm-hmm.

JT ODonnell (08:07.48)

Yeah.

Chad (08:07.996)

spot on almost. So if they would be able to train on all of the data, not just the text data, but also the voice data that you have out there, we have out there, it's scary how close this shit's getting.

JT ODonnell (08:20.878)

It is, it is, but I'll take it.

Joel Cheesman (08:22.342)

If I mentioned how excited I am to, to when we get to a point where we don't even have to work anymore, we just load the news into the, the machine and we come out and that's it. Yeah. Always, always about the money with JT. tell you, I was about.

Chad (08:26.292)

You You have,

you have. You have. You have.

JT ODonnell (08:32.526)

That'll be you printing money, Joel. Printing money.

Chad (08:39.306)

Yes. Well, I would like to give my shout out to, and get the, get the tape ready there, Cheeseman, to Supreme Leader President Trump for cleaning up the hellscape that is Portland, Oregon. And we have footage of said hellscape. Go ahead and play that footage, Cheeseman. Go ahead and roll the tape. Thank you. Thank you.

JT ODonnell (08:40.046)

Shut your...

Joel Cheesman (08:48.102)

tape.

Joel Cheesman (08:56.442)

Yeah, let me roll the tape, Chad. Let me load the tape in for you. Hold on, here we go.

Chad (09:13.29)

All right. So for, for, for those of you just listening on audio on the tape, there was an assortment of people wearing inflatable animal costumes, dancing in the Portland streets and protest. No, they weren't armed. No, they weren't throwing rocks. No, they weren't doing anything fucking crazy other than literally just being people and showing how fucking ridiculous this is. Now my son used to live in Portland. He was there for a few years and

I wasn't really into the vibe because I don't want, don't like the whole, you know, wannabe hippie vibe. If I want to real hippie, I'm going to go to fucking Seattle or, or, or the West coast or the West. mean, really anyway, I, I love Portland. Don't get me wrong. but just wasn't my vibe.

Joel Cheesman (09:50.987)

Ouch. Don't message me, Portland. Don't message me.

Chad (10:00.936)

And I get the whole, you know, issue with, you know, calling homeless unhoused and not focusing on like issues and stuff like that. But there's no reason to call this place fucking hellscape. I mean, these are great people. yes, they have issues, but we do all over the world, every city in the United States. So get the fuck out of our cities, people shout out to the stupid, the stupidity. Let's stop it. Let's stop it.

Joel Cheesman (10:26.438)

If you're in a red city, Chad, there's no problem. That's not about the hippies. It's about how they vote.

Chad (10:30.218)

Yeah, we don't have to worry about Indianapolis. We got fucking Mark Sanchez getting stabbed and you don't have to worry about.

Joel Cheesman (10:35.558)

Self defense, self defense, self defense. Yeah, we are walking the streets with guns and knives people, but hey, it's self defense. Self defense, Jesus. Let's get the free stuff.

Chad (10:41.804)

You

Yes. Yes.

JT ODonnell (10:46.924)

Yeah. My gosh, I always feel like the pressure is on in this moment, people. So let's just start with free stuff. I'm serious. We're going to begin with Van Hack. We love you for your whiskey. So on my whiskey boozers, you could win some serious Van Hack.

Chad (10:48.811)

Joel Cheesman (10:52.614)

You

Chad (10:59.19)

We do.

Joel Cheesman (11:01.264)

country you're from.

Chad (11:02.582)

Chicken cock maybe. Chicken cock. Mmm.

JT ODonnell (11:05.958)

seriously, I can vouch the t-shirts from Erin app are insane. Like you, you can sleep in them. They're really, really comfy and cozy. That's not normal with like free t-shirts. You know what mean? craft beer, like Aspen tech. Love you all. The craft beer is always a crowd favorite. ask them tech labs. And then you're going to get all this stuff before I say Chad and cheese.com slash free is where you get all this stuff, but I cannot miss out on the rum from plum.

Chad (11:16.684)

Yeah, it's not.

Joel Cheesman (11:16.687)

I concur.

Chad (11:34.964)

No, you, you, you, yeah, yeah. Anyway, it's Chadcheese.com slash free, but the Chadandcheese.com does redirect. Yes, because we had, we had to make sure that anybody listening to JT, which everybody should be, goes to the right place. So Chadandcheese.com does go to Chadcheese.com, but it's Chadcheese.com slash free. That's where you get your whiskey, two bottles, chicken cock, one person.

JT ODonnell (11:34.99)

Take it away, guys.

Joel Cheesman (11:37.422)

Edit that out Trish.

JT ODonnell (11:40.142)

Did I say it wrong again?

does work because I messed that up in the beginning of the season.

Chad (12:02.732)

Everybody's gonna be getting t-shirts. mean, come on. Let's just let's face it and craft beer on your doorstep, baby We've got Van hack Aaron and Aspen tech labs. I'm waiting for Aspen tech labs To come out with some fucking BLS BLS data, you know I'm saying

Joel Cheesman (12:18.47)

Yep, I know.

JT ODonnell (12:18.495)

Mm. Yeah, take it over.

Chad (12:22.06)

Okay, Stephen, chill the fuck out. So I'm picking Stephen McGrath up tomorrow at the airport and we're heading to the Cheeseman residence for a sleepover. That's right. Get ready. Social media is going to explode. Social media is going to explode. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that first night we're going to, you know, set the tone for the week and the rest of the week and who the fuck knows. But then, yeah, God, that's going to be

JT ODonnell (12:25.23)

You

Joel Cheesman (12:27.142)

Good luck with that, Tricia.

JT ODonnell (12:35.608)

There's so much that's going to go wrong with that. So much going to go wrong there.

JT ODonnell (12:47.31)

And they're having chili people. They're having chili. Joel made chili. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (12:50.79)

Chili's on the menu, baby. Chili with lots of cheese. You know what saying? Chili with lots of cheese.

Chad (12:52.0)

bad for Saturday and Sunday.

Then Monday we're driving down to Louisville, meeting up with our friends from Havas people. we are, what are we doing in Louisville Joel? This is your baby. Talk about it.

Joel Cheesman (13:09.456)

Well, Chad, we'll be starting off with a luxurious lunch at the Brown Hotel in downtown Louisville, where we will feast on what's called a hot Brown. If you don't know what that is kids, just Google it. Then we will walk down to the Evan Williams distillery where we will get a private tour of the distillery, how they make that Brown Brown goodness. And then we will do tastings of the fine bourbon that they make at Evan Williams. From there, we have a little bit of time to do our own thing.

Chad (13:14.021)

Ooh! A hot brown? yes.

Chad (13:30.507)

Mmm.

Joel Cheesman (13:35.93)

Might go to midsters might go to bar, maybe a shot of Pappy's for everybody who knows. And then around then around five o'clock, we have to be down at chicken cock. That's right. The unofficial official bourbon of the chat and cheese podcast. That is chicken cock everybody. We will be at their circa 1856 lounge, which the public doesn't even really know about yet. So if you're there, you're going to be able to enjoy that fine location with some bourbon of your choice.

Chad (13:39.2)

Who knows? Who knows?

Chad (13:55.274)

Nice. Speak easy, baby.

Joel Cheesman (14:03.406)

a myriad of selections will be on the menu. Then we will have some discussion. We'll talk a little shop, might have some surprise guests. Who knows? Who knows? From then we will probably stumble to the nearest taco joint or a burrito place. And then I think you're heading on to Nashville and I'm going to go pass out at my sister's across the river.

Chad (14:07.222)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (14:12.971)

Nice.

Chad (14:19.084)

You

Chad (14:26.156)

Thank God, thank God Julie is going to be there because she's going to be the designated driver taking Steven and I down to Nashville. It's only about two hours and change of way. So, and then it's time for rec rec fest, baby. That's right on Wednesday, day one, we are emceeing the disrupt stage all damn day. And here's some, some of the interviews we are showcasing starting early at nine 45, five must have AI agents.

at 1245 fraud detection screening sourcing at scale at 130 breaking the job board cycle and at 430 join our good friend Alex for less for plug in or fall behind. So big love to our showcase sponsors. Jovio, Covey, Dahlia and Veratone. Then, then we go to red neck.

Riviera for the after party day one after party from eight to 11 courtesy again of Havas people. They're going to be everywhere job pixel. Did I say John pixel Havas people are they're starting to plant some seeds in the US and partying with the Chad and cheese is not a bad way to start. Then last but not least kids on day two, I'll be on stage with Jeff Taylor. I'm going to be I know I'm going to be on stage talking about

JT ODonnell (15:39.042)

Mmm.

Joel Cheesman (15:46.244)

my god, there's two days of this?

JT ODonnell (15:47.756)

I know.

Chad (15:51.808)

talent disruption through the ages. And then Ethan Bloomfield, friend of ours, who's running an AI clinic at RecFest, took less than 30 minutes to put this little hype video together. Ted, go ahead and play it. That's not it. That's not it.

Joel Cheesman (16:04.473)

hope it took him less than 30 minutes. wrong. Uh-huh.

JT ODonnell (16:07.863)

Yeah

Chad (16:21.772)

Watch the, watch the bourbon glass. Watch the bourbon glass. It's there. It's there. And it's gone. Good one, guys. Good one. Apparently AI puts on 20 pounds of muscle. So I appreciate that.

JT ODonnell (16:21.934)

You

JT ODonnell (16:29.08)

can't even.

JT ODonnell (16:33.55)

You

Joel Cheesman (16:33.894)

20 pounds somewhere else on me, but we don't need to talk about that now, do we? We don't need to talk about that.

JT ODonnell (16:40.558)

I don't even know where to go with that. No, no you don't, not yet. You can't leave me hanging. No, only because I can't be lonely. So folks, if you're going to Talent Connect, which is the week after RecFest, if you are gonna be there, please hit me up. Hit me up in the messages on LinkedIn. I'm going there solo, I hate going to events solo. I'll be there the 20th through the 23rd.

Joel Cheesman (16:42.776)

God, I think we go to fantasy football after that, right? No, no, no, sorry, sorry. We got more travels than that.

Chad (16:46.25)

Hahaha!

Chad (16:51.744)

Yes.

Joel Cheesman (17:04.517)

Where is it? How can I learn more? Like, give me the deets. okay.

JT ODonnell (17:06.472)

San Diego, the Marriott Marquis. Yeah, 2,800 talent executives from around the world coming in, listening to some of the hot topics. I just hate going to these things alone. you know, message me, let's have coffee, let's have cocktails. Let's, let's, if you want the real dirt about Chad and cheese, you know, I'll go unfiltered. Yeah. Off the record and unfiltered if you message me.

Chad (17:14.123)

Nice.

Joel Cheesman (17:23.91)

What?

Chad (17:27.564)

All you have to do is listen every week. think you're going to get it.

JT ODonnell (17:30.35)

no, there's a few things I can share. There's something. Thank you.

Joel Cheesman (17:30.97)

Yeah, don't, don't tease me with a good time. I'll, I'll be in San Diego as well. November 4th and 5th will be at the ERE show. I too will be on stage slapping around Jeff Taylor, for, for all to see. he, he had tattoos in that AI rendition of him. We're going to find out if he really has some tattoos and where they might be, where they might be folks. Who knows where, who knows where that'll go? might also be on a boat at some point. Who knows?

Chad (17:39.882)

Nice.

Chad (17:43.444)

LAME LAME

JT ODonnell (17:51.213)

Nice.

Joel Cheesman (18:01.082)

San Diego gets kind of crazy sometimes. You know what I'm saying? They let you play fantasy football in San Diego as well, but not like fantasy football with Chad and she's sponsored by our friends at factory fix. Chad's already talked about them. Here is your leaderboard for week four in the books heading into week five of fantasy football. Number one, again, McKenzie mad dog. Maitland is just killing it. Followed by Courtney Nappo, David Stifle.

Chad (18:03.914)

It does. It does.

JT ODonnell (18:25.653)

Ooh, ew.

Chad (18:25.834)

Killin' Killin' it!

Joel Cheesman (18:29.318)

Last year's winner. He's, uh, he's, he's headed for number one with a bullet followed by me who took a black eye, uh, from mr. Steven McGrath, uh, international black eye, uh, to boot, uh, William William Carrington follows me. Steven McGrath moves up to number six. Uh, he felt so empowered by that, that he, he left us a little video, Chad. I don't know if you've seen this or not, but let's check out what, uh, what Steven had to say.

Chad (18:33.292)

He's getting there.

JT ODonnell (19:02.798)

You

JT ODonnell (19:41.87)

That's a new clip right there. Buckle up baby. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (19:45.904)

Let me, I also, didn't, I don't, I don't want to reveal this because I don't usually kiss and tell, but Steven told me in confidence that, he's now an American football fan and that English football is shit or shite. I think is what he called it. so for whatever that's worth, by the way, I, if you remember Adam Gordon, last season, I think was in the top three, at least after like three or four weeks and made a comment like, this is so easy.

JT ODonnell (20:01.25)

Big words.

Chad (20:01.512)

I he said that, but go ahead.

JT ODonnell (20:13.326)

Right.

Joel Cheesman (20:13.946)

Where did Adam end up? So don't get too cocky. Fantasy football has a way of, of smacking you around and humbling you for sure. So anyway, Steven McGrath followed by Jason Putnam, Megan Rattigan, Jada Weiler, Chad Sowash and double digits at number 10 followed by Ginger Dodds and good God, Jeremy Roberts. How do you live in Texas?

JT ODonnell (20:16.426)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Massa moe via.

Chad (20:29.622)

Finally, get a win.

Joel Cheesman (20:37.506)

And come up short like this in fantasy football. I don't know how he lives with himself, but anyway, kids that is fantasy football with Chad and cheese sponsored by our friends at factory fix. Shall we get to some topics everybody?

JT ODonnell (20:39.886)

Love it.

Chad (20:51.372)

Let's do it! Meet! Meet!

JT ODonnell (20:52.046)

Yes.

Chad (20:58.376)

even again.

Joel Cheesman (21:00.484)

What all right guys, what do you want first the good news or the bad news? Okay, we'll do the bad news first. So the government the government shutdown marches on reports from ADP and Moody's suggest essentially no job growth in September with the few jobs added concentrated in healthcare and at large employers American farmers are on the brink of bankruptcy officials at the Bank of England highlighted the growing risk of that

Chad (21:04.342)

Bad news, of course, yeah.

JT ODonnell (21:05.262)

Let's go with it.

Joel Cheesman (21:24.55)

Tech stocks prices pumped up by the AI boom could burst soon. US recession odds rose to 40 % for the economy by year end says JP Morgan. But hey, Chad, your gold bars are crushing it. What stood out most in this no good, totally awful week in the economy?

Chad (21:43.82)

so much. I'm going to take a little time on the Moody stuff real quick. This is also an underestimate as tens of thousands of government workers are prepping for the prospect of layoff with the shutdown. And were we in day eight or some shit like that? Moody's analytics chief economist, Mark Zandi wrote on Twitter, this data shows the job market is weak and getting weaker.

Joel Cheesman (21:59.75)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (22:13.29)

Why? I don't know. Tariffs setting higher prices. That's strike one. Pissing off Europe because of Ukraine. And now Europe isn't buying hundreds of billions of dollars of defense from us anymore. That's strike two. ICE raids pushing talent out of the market. Strike three. Laying off hundreds of thousands of government workers strike for a hundred K per year for an H1B visa. What are they going to do? They're going to take that off.

Or guess what? Instead of bringing it onshore and getting geniuses onshore, guess what? We're pushing them away. I'm going to stop at strike five. I mean, I haven't even mentioned inflation, but we have to understand that markets do not thrive in chaos. And this environment that we're living in today, it isn't chaotic. It's cataclysmic. That's the biggest problem. The rest of it I'll get into later, but your thoughts on what was the biggest for you.

Joel Cheesman (23:07.323)

You can tell that Chad's been in Europe for too long when he's saying strike five. It's only three, Chad. You only get three in American baseball.

Chad (23:11.66)

I know I was trying to demonstrate that there were so many fucking strikes happening and I stopped at five.

JT ODonnell (23:21.71)

Yeah, mean, the silent rage for me is always going to be the jobs report because it's still wrong. It's so much worse than they're even predicting. It's so much worse. We're just not accounting. We need somebody to get this data right so people can understand. It's not weak. It's not maybe we're in it. We're deep. We're deep into people that used to make six figures and have an average income, have not had jobs seven months, nine months.

Chad (23:31.948)

Mm.

Chad (23:47.52)

Yeah. Yeah.

JT ODonnell (23:49.411)

and are hanging onto 3 % mortgages and using everything else they can to do that. And are probably going to lose those too. it's, you know, sitting there every day and just seeing it, it infuriates me. Like I can't believe, and it's not going to get better sooner. You know, companies are sitting here on the restructuring side of things still. I mean, we're coming into layoff season. Who are we kidding? It's Q4, you know? And so to me, like that it's rough to watch that and that we're not doing something more proactive about it, but here we are.

Joel Cheesman (24:16.934)

It's not even that the numbers are not there. If they are there, are they correct? Because we've politicized those numbers and I don't know how as a business you make decisions on numbers that you can't even trust. mean, it's bad.

Chad (24:29.718)

cataclysmic.

Joel Cheesman (24:37.36)

So my grandfather was not allowed in the military during World War II. He was not allowed in the military because he was a farmer. And the United States made a decision that it's pretty important to be able to feed the troops as well as the people back in country when you're in a war type situation. I have an uncle who served in Vietnam.

Chad (24:44.588)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (24:50.779)

okay.

Chad (25:05.196)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (25:05.958)

Went to Purdue, went to work at Purina after the military and became a farmer because of the lifestyle. wanted to, he was a farmer growing up. He wanted to pass that lifestyle to down to his kids, et cetera. The farmers and what's going on is not only mind blogging, mind blowing and boggling, but it's incredibly harmful to the country. Look, you don't want to live in a country.

Chad (25:20.972)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (25:35.878)

where everything is a factory farm. Just trust me on that. and I, I feel like Trump in particular who goes, who goes between New York and Mar-a-Lago has no sense of sort of what the Midwest and what the people, um, here are dealing with. just has no concept because, um, I was going to sort of encapsulate this, but there was a tick tock that I think we both reshare Chad. And I'm going to play that because this guy says what I want to say so much better than I could take a listen.

Chad (25:48.551)

god no. No.

Chad (27:13.584)

Meanwhile, real quick, they're also giving $20 billion to Argentina whose competition. sorry. My bad. My bad. He, he, missed it. So I wanted to go ahead and hit it.

Joel Cheesman (27:19.628)

steal my thunder. So wash. was. Yeah. Yes. so yes. So we're giving money to our number two competitor in soybeans, Argentina, who just did a deal with China as well. And it's not just soybeans, Australia, like China's moving all their meat purchasing over to Australia. this is really awful. And, and he touched on it, but, tariffs being a regressive tax.

Chad (27:33.238)

Yes, and Brazil did.

Beef. Yep.

Joel Cheesman (27:47.78)

means that it's the poorest among us who are most hurt by these tariffs. So poor people who need food are now paying more for food and their taxes are going to pay Argentina who's selling their soy. I mean, it's like so ass backwards that it's just very frustrating for me. the farmers was what I wanted to have a second to talk about. It looks like you have some thoughts, Chad, but I think we do not want to live in a world where our farmers are gone or everything sold to big

Chad (28:12.15)

Great.

Joel Cheesman (28:17.722)

big farm or big, big farm.

Chad (28:18.784)

When people can't afford a Big Mac, we've seen that McDonald's is having problems, right? Because people can't afford to buy fast food now. I mean, this goes to exactly what JT was saying. We are much further down this fucking rabbit hole than everybody is letting on. We are much further down. And that is why we have so much division. we are pushing all the money into

Joel Cheesman (28:30.064)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (28:48.14)

greedy CEO shares and salaries and bonuses and shareholders and stock buybacks. And that's not going to the people who actually buy your fucking product. I don't understand how this doesn't implode. I mean, it feels like it is.

JT ODonnell (28:49.39)

you

Joel Cheesman (29:08.262)

And it goes back to what I said. The richest 10 % of us is doing 50 % of the consuming and the next, the next thing, the next leg to go is the stock market. God help us if AI, if, if Nvidia falls, if something bad happens and the stock market falls and the rich people don't feel like they're rich anymore and they don't spend anymore, then the shit really hits the fan. think that's the next.

Chad (29:12.459)

Yeah.

Chad (29:29.472)

What?

Chad (29:36.928)

They still can't spend at that rate. It's unsustainable. They cannot spend at that rate because you have few people spending a shit ton of cash. That's not sustainable. You have to have the mass population spending little bits of money, which actually equal that big part, that big bubble of cash, right? That's not going to happen. So even what you're talking about Cheeseman is not sustainable.

Joel Cheesman (30:03.576)

It's sustainable if things keep going the way that they are. Historically, never happens. So unless it's different this time, no, something is going to break. And I fear that when the dam breaks, it's going to be really bad for everybody. Jamie Dimon warned this week of a stock market correction. Jamie Dimon, no matter how you feel about him, pretty smart guy that kind of knows what's going on in the economy. So when the rich stop propping up that economy.

Chad (30:06.624)

they won't, they can't. No!

JT ODonnell (30:08.91)

Right.

Chad (30:13.803)

Nope.

Joel Cheesman (30:33.338)

The pain is coming. The pain is coming in a big way. I fear, time for a break. Let's catch our breath kids. And when we come back, we'll talk about some, some good news. If we can pull some silver lining out of this asshole.

JT ODonnell (30:34.678)

Mm-hmm. Agreed.

JT ODonnell (30:42.35)

Woo.

Chad (30:49.196)

you

Joel Cheesman (30:53.382)

All right. I already mentioned Chad's gold bullion stash hitting all time highs, but that's not the only good news. Upwork CEO Hayden Brown says, quote, there will be plenty of work for humans. End quote, as her firm sees growing demand for AI talent with searches for skills like prompt engineering up over 50%. Brown highlights the rise of adaptable AI generalists and notes high Gen Z will benefit most of all from AI.

Chad (30:57.44)

Mmm. Thank God.

Joel Cheesman (31:21.126)

Also a Yale university study found that chat GPT has not, not significantly disrupted the U S labor market since its launch in 2022 workday is upgrading its commercial real estate footprint by three X and Netflix. God is paying $700,000 a year for an AI product manager, JT, put your rose colored glasses on and give us that silver lining.

JT ODonnell (31:46.72)

No, I need to go because I got to get my application into Netflix. So just hang on while I go apply for that job. OK, I do like Upwork because I am seeing that same synergy, which gets me excited. So the people at the more executive or higher level, professional level inside work at Daly are moving towards fractional. And the reason for that is that we're coaching everybody. There isn't headcount, but there is budget. And those of us that come from the staffing industry know and Chad, I know you were raised on this too.

Chad (31:49.76)

Yes.

JT ODonnell (32:13.112)

We always started to see the uptick in staffing requests because companies are like, look, I don't have headcount, but I've got budget. I can hire those temporary workers. Right. So I remember that coming out of 2009 and we would see that trend. We are already seeing it with C-suite going, Hey, there's a lot of work slop that's come out of AI, but we don't have headcount. So let's go hire some higher level people to come in fractional. I got budget. got a fund here, fix this, figure out.

you know, what works, create this. So we are seeing an uptick there. That gets me excited. And that helps a higher level professional, you know, somebody who's more seasoned, 15, 20 years, those folks are starting to see those opportunities. The one thing I will say is this to everybody that's listening, they are not on job boards. So it's exciting what they were saying at Upwork that they're seeing traction there. Because most of the companies I'm talking to are saying, I'm not going to put that kind of role on a job board. You know, I'm going to have somebody back channel their way to me.

who presents the concept or, you know, it's definitely going to be one of those types of networking and connecting things. So if you were out there looking for work right now, fractional is the way to go. Backchanneling to the companies where you could provide those services through a tool like LinkedIn is by far ideal and it's working. And, you know, that's, I've seen people who've been out of work at the executive level, literally nine months to a year, who are now redeployed in a fractional role, making some decent cash.

Joel Cheesman (33:18.064)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (33:33.304)

Okay, that's sexy. That's Chad. You feeling better now? No.

Chad (33:37.254)

No. Yeah. Yeah. So, of course, the economy is great for upwork because you've got all these people that are laid off who are used to full-time gigs and they're looking for anything and they're finding themselves on these platforms, which is great. But then let's jump down to the CNN article we're talking about how, you know, AI is not taking over jobs. Well, Skynet...

Skynet didn't take the world overnight. Okay. So we're training AI on specific tasks. For example, interview scheduling where Gerald Motors and we've go take a look at this interview with Eileen Kavosky when she was at WGM. They were able to use technology for scheduling instead of people. Over 100 jobs were used just for scheduling. Shitty jobs, but they were jobs.

Those individuals were quote unquote redistributed out to the business, right? But those are over a hundred jobs that are gone, right? That technology did take. Now you have to understand that it's only the beginning as models are being trained every single day on new tasks. So to say AI hasn't taken any jobs is bullshit. Plus any white collar job that deals in several routine tasks, it's going to be automated.

and it may already have been. So at the end of the day, yes, Upwork's gonna get some of this work, but as these models start to train through and they get better, we just talked earlier about how it took us three fucking hours, Cheeseman, to get our voice modeled by AI a few years ago, right? It takes like 30 seconds now, right? If we extrapolate that, okay, we have to understand that...

Joel Cheesman (35:19.198)

huh.

Chad (35:27.198)

Everybody who's saying AI is not going to take jobs, they're full of shit or they're just dumb. Okay. They're full of shit because they don't want to scare people. And I totally get that. You don't want to scare people into buying your product and whatnot. But at the end of the day, it is going to. The big question is there's going to be a transition from these new jobs that people are talking about and the jobs that we have currently. That usually takes a couple of decades.

We're not going to have a couple of decades. If we do, we're going to have much more than a recession. It's going to be a deep depression.

Joel Cheesman (36:09.946)

Are you guys hearing the sounds? Okay. I'm not. Okay. I'll just pretend that they're they're playing. sorry. I, so I needed a bridge there for angry, grumpy old men, cause I'm going to be grumpy on this one too. I will say that the U S economy is ridiculously resilient. The fact that it hasn't just fallen by now is pretty, as a miracle, to me and I guess, I guess a hat tip to, capitalism. Yay. good job. So,

JT ODonnell (36:11.895)

I do.

Chad (36:15.052)

Bye.

Chad (36:22.124)

You

JT ODonnell (36:32.354)

Mm-hmm.

JT ODonnell (36:38.286)

Creator Economy.

Joel Cheesman (36:39.266)

long, long term though, just, we're counting on, on lower fed rates, which will hopefully spur investment. We'll, we'll spur cheaper money. problem with cheaper money is inflation. And we just talked about farm prices and everything else becoming more expensive tariffs for making everything expensive. So like we are, we are royally screwing, the bottom 50 % of this country. And if the stock market goes with it, the rest of America is, going to be in a world of hurt as well.

Chad (36:53.452)

which we already have. Yeah, do it.

Chad (37:03.692)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (37:08.676)

All the Upwork stuff. If you throw AI generalist at me as an opportunity, I go back to the nineties when webmaster was like an awesome position because we needed, we needed someone that could spell HTML to get us to get our website, you know, page up. And, and that didn't last very long because we created tools like WordPress and whatnot to do that. I don't think prompt engineer is a long-term, career choice for anybody. So these.

JT ODonnell (37:19.394)

hahahaha

Chad (37:23.084)

success.

Chad (37:35.21)

No. No.

Joel Cheesman (37:38.106)

These things on Upwork are stop gaps. And if you, if you step back and look at the bigger picture, those jobs are going to be gone. Like those prompt engineer, those are old people that know they need AI and they're going to hire somebody to figure out what's this prompt thing until the AI figures it out and they can just buy, buy something to do that for them. I also have a hard time thinking that those jobs in AI are going to thrive within a environment of AI.

To me, it's just training AI to eventually take those jobs, which leads me to the Netflix position. This guy's making 700K, Gyro Gal, is making 700K great. You know what the job is? You know what the job is? Basically training the company to be more efficient with AI. It's essentially a hatchet person.

Chad (38:17.792)

short term.

JT ODonnell (38:19.384)

My job.

Joel Cheesman (38:25.68)

to like get rid of jobs. How do we cut corners? How do we get more efficient? And eventually you know whose job is going to go away? The $700,000 a year guy who created all the efficiencies around AI. So none of this stuff rings long-term prosperity to me. So as much as we want to bring some good news to the people, well, God damn it. This is grumpy old man and JT who does bring some sunshine to this thing.

Chad (38:30.412)

Mm-hmm.

JT ODonnell (38:48.14)

Wait, it's too grumpy old men and an optimistic gal because I told you last time I was on the show, the second Renaissance is here and this is going to force so many people to go look outside of themselves, get creative and stop looking for traditional one job, one paycheck, golden handcuff types opportunity. Right. We didn't have this type of work until the 1850s. It's coming full circle, whether you like it or not. And we already have Gen Z who's doing it already.

Chad (38:51.425)

yeah.

JT ODonnell (39:15.458)

They are, they are not looking for those full-time traditional jobs. They're already doing the freelance model, which means they're more comfortable with it. get that they're living off of mom and dad's insurances and cell phone bills and other things, but they're also building up a tolerance level to that kind of. It is, but you know, if, you're, if you've got seven years. right. Fair. But if you've got seven years to figure it out, Joel, if you've got seven years to figure it out, Joel, you might get there.

Chad (39:28.278)

That's pretty important. That's pretty important. That's pretty important. You're downplaying something that's important. You're downplaying something that's incredibly important. I don't want my kid in my goddamn basement. I want my life, okay? I don't want my kid in my fucking basement. Number one, okay? I want independent kids. And what we're doing is we're training our kids not to be fucking independent. They're having to keep their cell phone.

Joel Cheesman (39:29.19)

Just slid that one in there.

JT ODonnell (39:50.722)

You

Chad (39:57.93)

their insurance, all of the insurances, everything, buying cars, all that other bullshit. I get what you're saying and it is wonderful, but stop blowing sunshine up my ass when we all know this economy is really getting fucked right now. And healthcare at the end of the day, because of if we had universal healthcare, I'd be a little bit more bright about this, but we don't. And how many Americans per year go into bankruptcy because of

Medical. Hundreds of thousands.

JT ODonnell (40:30.766)

I hear you, somebody's gotta be here saying there are opportunities. You're making it sound like there's no future and everyone's dead.

Joel Cheesman (40:34.278)

JT, real question. I'll be objective here for a second.

Chad (40:38.56)

There are opportunities, but I'm saying they're not in my fucking basement.

Joel Cheesman (40:41.638)

What percentage of Americans can make a living off being an influencer?

JT ODonnell (40:48.696)

But you're, just calling it an influencer, right? Like you're really overgeneralizing when they're talking about this economy off of what they know. It's monetizing your knowledge. So whether it's fractional work, right, or you're creating your own thing, like you're being too general and saying not everyone wants to shake a booty on TikTok. It's not what I'm talking about, right? That that's the first thing that came along, but there are so many people making money off of what they know, whether it's creating AI apps, automation, fractional work. We're just there.

Joel Cheesman (40:52.004)

make money off of what so.

Joel Cheesman (40:58.64)

Fractional work.

Joel Cheesman (41:10.832)

the... okay.

JT ODonnell (41:14.518)

it's there, I get that it's not there for everyone. And as we've talked about, yes, the doom and gloom is a large amount of people do not even understand how to make that shift. And that is what is going to suck, right? Because there's not gonna be enough jobs for those people. They're gonna suffer. I'm with you. I'm not like underplaying that at all. But to think that there is an opportunity here as well. And if we don't start telling people that and showing them the way, then they are gonna continue down that path. So we have to do more around that. And that's, know.

Who does that? I mean, it's going to end up being us, right? It's not going to be government. It's not going to be corporations. And that sucks. I agree. But there are possibilities and, you know, we will see those and I want people to know about those.

Chad (41:54.708)

It has to be more than fractional because we do have, as Jim Farley said, they need 6,000 mechanics. We need plumbers. need, I mean, we need all of these individuals to get back into the trade. this can't just be a one trick fractional pony here. We have to focus on, we have to focus on getting the companies who used to be responsible.

JT ODonnell (42:11.672)

That's fine.

Chad (42:17.75)

for investing in their communities and in their workforce who don't do it anymore. They need to start fucking doing that shit again. We wouldn't be in this huge ass mess where literally employees are disposable if we focused on developments. Not to mention we've got countries like fucking China who are actually outdoing us in technology, in cars. I mean, it's fucking crazy. Who thought?

we would be in this fucking position.

Joel Cheesman (42:50.114)

Chad, Ford's going to spend $5 million to solve the problem.

Chad (42:52.628)

Hahaha

JT ODonnell (42:56.466)

god.

Joel Cheesman (42:56.72)

We're good. We're good, man. We're good.

Chad (42:57.26)

Here's a nickel. Here's a nickel, young man. Yes. Jesus Christ.

Joel Cheesman (43:04.262)

JT, remember when you said you liked debate? You got it, baby. You got it, baby. You got it.

JT ODonnell (43:08.374)

I love debate with the show and I love you guys finally took the kid gloves off, right? I can own my own.

Chad (43:08.554)

Hahaha!

Chad (43:13.676)

You can, you can.

Joel Cheesman (43:18.346)

All right, what would a show be without a little LinkedIn? Lawfare alert, everybody. LinkedIn is suing pro APIs, alleging the company uses millions of fake accounts to scrape data from LinkedIn profiles and sell it to third parties. With the rise of artificial intelligence, companies which can scrape LinkedIn at scale are proliferating and are increasingly becoming a pain in their ass. What's more, a new LinkedIn killer.

Chad (43:21.205)

Joel Cheesman (43:44.708)

Stop me if you've heard this one before has raised 10.7 million to launch filament, an invite only professional platform, hoping to make business networking more private and exclusive. Chad, your thoughts on all things LinkedIn this week.

Chad (43:59.636)

Yeah, I think for companies who aren't looking into their internal databases on, on individuals that they've already paid for and they are heavily, you know, focused and leaning on and indeed are linked in, you're the problem. You are the problem. You've spent millions of dollars building databases with qualified candidates that many of them have already been through a lot of the screening and hoops and bullshit that you've already sent them through.

That's where you're first. That's where you should be at first, right? From a LinkedIn standpoint, yeah, you need to squash these fucking bugs and they're going to come up left and right. The problem is this is not going to stop. Every company that we talk to that's looking at external instead of the internal databases, they all say that they have hundreds of millions of candidates. Where do you think they got them from?

They got them from scraping the Indeed databases, the LinkedIn databases, et cetera, et cetera, et The shit's already out there, kids, okay? On the filament side of the house, this is a quote from their CEO, the future of professional platforms is not feeds, it's group chats. The invite only model preserves trust, end quote. So you're already losing the battle with WhatsApp and Slack.

I can't tell you how many fucking WhatsApp groups I'm already in. Okay? I don't need another fucking app to have groups. They're already there. So this to me is a non-starter. But again, at the end of the day, employers need to focus on what they've already, already spent a shit ton of cash on and not worry about what's in LinkedIn right now. Anyway.

JT ODonnell (45:46.415)

Yeah, I'm happy to, I'm glad they're going after them from the bot standpoint. mean, you know, they claimed to have 1.1 billion users on the platform that seriously messes with that. Right. And like how many fake profiles are we talking about here? It, it infects the effectiveness of LinkedIn's hiring assistant. You know, people pay good money for that. So I understand. And I'm, I back them 100 % go after them because it helps everybody job seeker, you know, everyone to have real on there and to get rid of that. It's filament. Is that what they're called?

Chad (45:58.46)

yeah.

Chad (46:12.556)

Mm-hmm.

JT ODonnell (46:16.472)

the filament. you, you literally stole my words, Chad. Like nobody wants to spend, right? Yeah. I'm, sorry. Nobody wants to spend more time in group chats. Nope. Nobody, nobody. If I'm going to spend time in group chat, it's with my 19 friends and my party people chat that goes on my, my, my phone. Like it just, I don't know where that came from. And, I think it's like an idea in theory, but I don't see it being super successful on that sent. So yeah, I'm, I'm.

Joel Cheesman (46:17.094)

Filament, yes.

Just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? Have you joined filament yet? Got to get on filament.

Chad (46:22.38)

You

Chad (46:28.192)

No! No!

Chad (46:33.505)

Yeah.

JT ODonnell (46:45.442)

I hope LinkedIn cleans it up and gets rid of the bots.

Chad (46:47.884)

You know how many group chats I've muted? Because I'm already in so many fucking group chats.

JT ODonnell (46:50.38)

Yeah. Thank you. Like exactly.

Joel Cheesman (46:52.966)

That's why you're not answering my messages. That's why you're not answering my messages. By the way, I have my crystal ball out. I want to see how the court case goes against a pro API.

Chad (46:56.042)

My bad.

Joel Cheesman (47:10.414)

So we've been covering lawsuits with LinkedIn pretty much since we started this podcast. They never end well for the firm that LinkedIn goes after. I don't know why companies still make businesses like this. mean, eventually you're going to get pinched. You're going to get destroyed because you can't outspend LinkedIn and Microsoft's lawyers. They live for this shit. So the AI component is interesting to me because before AI became what AI is today.

JT ODonnell (47:15.704)

from the beginning.

Chad (47:19.98)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (47:40.186)

It was probably very intensive to scrape LinkedIn, probably to hide yourself to, to get them off the scent was probably much harder. This is a real war of attrition that LinkedIn is going to have to deal with. I mean, these guys were creating, millions of profiles. They were creating a premium accounts, which typically sort of gives you a little bit more leverage with being on the side a lot with fake credit cards.

So they were, they were gaming the system with like fake profiles with fake credit cards, had a 30 day free trial or whatever it is to totally rape the system. And then here we are today. So these scams and, are going to only get worse with AI. what happens when there's a bunch of AI profiles and for like 60, 90 days, these fake profiles are on LinkedIn. They're creating content. They're commenting. look like human beings.

JT ODonnell (48:21.944)

sophisticated.

Joel Cheesman (48:35.846)

And then bam, oh shit, they just stole 80 million profiles and we didn't even notice it. So this is going to be a big problem for, uh, for LinkedIn. And to Chad's point, as long as you suckers are willing to write checks to these companies, they're going to keep doing this shit. mean, these guys are getting tens of thousands of dollars a month, uh, many requests per second. Like I can't imagine it's worth it to get that kind of money knowing that you're going to get shut down at some point. The site is still up. So if you want to use this service, uh, have at it. Good luck.

Chad (48:51.168)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (49:05.573)

On the filament thing, these names are always so great. I think for me, this is a great opportunity for a history lesson.

JT ODonnell (49:17.408)

I thought we were going to get away with one episode without a history lesson. We're there.

Joel Cheesman (49:19.11)

No, no grumpy old man, grumpy old man, uh, uh, crazy pills and this one. um, you guys, do you guys remember signing up for Gmail when it first came out? You remember you needed an invite. Do you remember that? So, so you were like on the prowl for who has invites. And I think you only got six when they, when it first came out and, and I remember when someone had it and was like, was willing to give it to me. I was so excited to be a Gmail member.

Chad (49:23.433)

in a history lesson.

Chad (49:29.418)

Yes. yeah. Yep. Yep.

JT ODonnell (49:30.275)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (49:47.864)

And to send that first Gmail out to somebody and be like, ha ha, I got a Gmail account. they were selling it on eBay for, for big money. so the invite thing, the exclusiveness, the, how do I get that is powerful historically. And there's, go more meta on you guys. There was a site called notch up back in the day that doesn't exist anymore, but this thing was a, was a brush fire of, of like buzz.

when it first came out. And the idea was essentially that you would, it was an invite only, and then you would get invited and then you had to get certain people to join and then you could be a member and then you would get paid for interviews. So, so it became like a viral thing. And then when you joined a company, like it was mostly for tech people, right? Tech people who you couldn't find, like, Hey, we'll give you a thousand dollars if you interview with us or $500. So it was a huge deal. So this sort of like exclusivity.

invite only, does work historically. You know, it doesn't work historically though. LinkedIn competition. Google plus has been there LinkedIn or Twitter. Remember Elon was going to kill LinkedIn. That hasn't really come to fruition. Like so many of these things want to kill LinkedIn at this point. It ain't happening folks. It ain't happening. This thing needs to pivot to something else because going after, going after LinkedIn and thinking that you're going to take the, that mantle is just.

JT ODonnell (50:53.614)

You

JT ODonnell (51:05.891)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (51:14.15)

silly because you know what they ain't leaving they ain't leaving but we're leaving for a little bit to take a break and when we come back we're going to talk about gen x which is something the three of us know a little bit about

JT ODonnell (51:17.038)

Hmm.

Agreed.

Chad (51:27.925)

little bit about.

JT ODonnell (51:29.068)

Yes, we do.

Joel Cheesman (51:36.846)

All right guys, reality bites. We've talked about how screwed Gen Z is in the world of work. Goodbye entry level jobs, but Gen X now faces a higher risk of financial hardship from job loss and debt burdens compared to their baby boomer brethren. Quick fact, only one in four Gen Xers have a retirement account at all. A new book, a new book entitled retirement bites. Pretty clever, huh? Retirement bites.

Chad (51:41.889)

Mm-hmm.

JT ODonnell (51:57.816)

Yeah.

Chad (51:59.596)

Fuck.

Chad (52:04.17)

Yeah, very nice, very nice.

Joel Cheesman (52:05.41)

argues a universal basic income program could be necessary to provide a safety net for Xers, especially as AI advancements march on and threaten white collar jobs. JT, you're an Xer. Tell us your thoughts on UBI.

JT ODonnell (52:18.902)

Yeah, I am an Xer. Yeah, I mean, can, you know, I can vouch that that's a group that's sitting on unemployment right now. And doesn't have the savings like you're talking about. And if they are, draining them in other ways. It's interesting to me. So when I first heard about universal basic income, I thought we'll never get it until Social Security is gone. Like once like once that plays out and it's not there anymore, then they might move to that model. But then when you think about

what would happen if we started giving Gen X that money to put back into the economy and everything that we've been talking about on the show here today, you start to think about the fact that that could actually help keep things going, especially if it gave them the opportunity to transition, you know, and find the second act career, whatever it is that they want to do. You know, I think, you know, most of the Gen Xers I know, they don't envision a world where they retire, you know, like they need, they need to do something.

Chad (53:09.374)

Mm-hmm.

JT ODonnell (53:18.318)

It's not going to be what they've been doing, but they sure as heck aren't going to sit around because they just feel like they're going to drop dead of a heart attack if they're not doing something. And I would agree. And so if there was a way to do that and afford them the ability to go pursue passions or do things that they wanted to do and not be so hung up on it had to make a certain amount of money, then there's a real opportunity there. I can see it for the first time. I just don't think we're going to see anybody move on that until Social Security is gone.

Chad (53:18.528)

Mm-hmm.

JT ODonnell (53:48.13)

It could be a cool idea, but will it happen?

Chad (53:52.236)

The transition that we talked about moving from different positions to new positions, mean, there's going to be that gap. Who knows how long it's going to take? It's not just social security, it's also unemployment, right? The entire system could fold underneath the pressure. And it's not just Gen Xers, right? It's everybody. I think the biggest problem with Gen Xers at this point is that we've been waiting for these

fucking baby boomers to get the god their asses out of the fucking workforce so that we can actually progress right and to get into those those positions. It's taken longer. They're literally having to die out. They're not retiring in many cases. They're dying out of positions. So yeah, I mean when it comes to UBI, we've been talking about UBI for years on the show. How do we how do we get

a population that can actually afford Big Macs again. They have to have money in their pockets, right? So when we're looking at like stimulus checks versus during COVID, that actually boosted the economy. Did we give too much? Did we not give enough? Who the fuck knows? All I do know, all I do know is that we actually had Americans with money in their bank account, which we don't today. And if we don't, then guess what? Even the Big Mac, which doesn't cost a lot.

is going to be in trouble and it's in trouble right now. So we've got to figure out something.

Joel Cheesman (55:24.294)

Like, you know what a big Mac costs. So wash you haven't had a big Mac since 1994. Speaking of gen X guys, I don't, I don't know, man. Like, I don't know how the latch key generation, the, the, the kid that grew up, the kids that grew up on water, you know, like water hose water, uh, was kicked out of the house in the morning and like, come back when the lights are on.

JT ODonnell (55:27.246)

When's the last one you had one? 1989.

Chad (55:29.287)

Let me ask. Let me ask. Let me ask.

Chad (55:43.36)

yeah.

JT ODonnell (55:46.658)

Ring the

Joel Cheesman (55:49.498)

the thought of us being the poster children for the beginning of UBI just makes me want to puke because we have lived our whole lives independently. Fuck authority. yeah. I mean, and part of that is cause that we had no other choice, generationally and our parents were stuck in the middle and like everything else, we're, we're screwed. you know, when we grew up, drugs are going to kill us, sex was going to kill us and now retirement's going to kill us.

Chad (56:00.97)

Rebels, yeah.

JT ODonnell (56:02.542)

It's snarky. Yeah. Yeah.

Chad (56:06.154)

Yeah. We had boomers as fucking parents.

Joel Cheesman (56:19.16)

It's pretty depressing, but I like to think that we have, some, some chutzpah left, some, some spirit left to get through it. am shocked that one in four, the numbers that don't have any retirement account at all is incredibly frightening. but look, we.

Chad (56:32.652)

25 %

JT ODonnell (56:33.134)

scary.

No, one in four do or don't. Say that again.

Chad (56:38.954)

Do not.

Joel Cheesman (56:39.28)

Sorry, let me, let me get it right. one in four don't have a retirement account. So 25 % of us don't even have any kind of retirement account, which is scary. So look, we had parents that had, you know, retirement. we had also parents who got divorced and lost all their money. parents about RVs and you know, the great me generation. So I'm taking care of one parent. so that's a drain on me. so I'm burning the candle at both ends.

Chad (56:41.568)

Do not.

Yeah.

JT ODonnell (56:48.814)

crazy.

Chad (57:04.012)

Hmm.

Joel Cheesman (57:06.822)

I know it's tough. just can't stomach us being the poster children for UBI. We have made such a fuss over being the independent, uh, get out of my, you get out of my house, uh, get the fuck out of the house generation. It's very hard for me to stomach that we would be a UBI. And I don't think that social security is going to be what it is today when we're retiring. Take a 20 % cut.

Chad (57:15.766)

Mm-hmm.

Chad (57:20.436)

It's not us. It's not us.

Chad (57:28.832)

Well, I think the biggest issue.

Another Reagan issue is when he, uh, he signed in pretty much the anti-pension law, which moved everybody over to 401ks. And that allowed companies to go ahead and just raid the fucking pension funds. Right? So they were setting up decades ago, over 40 years ago for this shit to happen today. They didn't give a fuck. Ronald Reagan's fucking dead. Okay. He didn't give two fucks what was going to happen after he died. This is what's happening. Pensions are gone.

401ks are not everybody's into them obviously 25 % of of Gen Xers. I'd love to see that that number on Millennials I'd love to see that that for all the different demographics because I guarantee you They don't they don't have money

Joel Cheesman (58:08.326)

A lot of companies don't offer them.

Joel Cheesman (58:18.214)

What shocked me from the, as you read in the book and whatnot, like student debt has killed us. I mean, I took debt, it was manageable, but apparently a lot of us took loans that are just crushing. Got MBAs, got doctorates, et cetera. I didn't expect that from the book, that that would be, that is the thing now. mean, people, are paying ridiculous amounts of money to go to school. I don't think we had that. So the fact that it's killing us, what is it going to do to millennials in Gen.

JT ODonnell (58:28.152)

facts.

Chad (58:42.731)

Yes.

Joel Cheesman (58:47.864)

and Z's because they're taking out a lot more money than we did. That's scary. That's scary. The feel good show of the year everybody. Time for a dad joke, don't you think?

Chad (58:49.419)

Yeah.

JT ODonnell (58:51.05)

Agreed. Agreed.

Chad (58:52.456)

Agreed. Agreed. God damn it!

Chad (58:58.476)

You

JT ODonnell (59:04.3)

Always, always time for a dad joke.

Joel Cheesman (59:07.748)

Alright guys, what do you call it when Batman skips church? What do you call it when Batman skips church?

Chad (59:16.812)

I don't know.

Joel Cheesman (59:18.086)

Christian Bale. Christian Bale. I need a drink. We out!

Chad (59:20.108)

Oh, that's good. That's good.

JT ODonnell (59:23.822)

Good!

Chad (59:26.794)

We out!

JT ODonnell (59:26.85)

We out.