Unlocking Tesla's Hiring Secrets - Interview with Ex-Chief People Officer, Gaby Toledano | EP #81

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Hardest thing for me is hiring and it's the most important thing.

How do you want to lead, attract, engage people? How do you want your customers and clients to see your company if you.

Don'T have that right? It doesn't matter how good your code is if your team is not marching the same direction.

If you have a very mission driven company automatically some elements of the culture.

Are there more than a mission. It's what defines you.

Every single one of us is either a leader that's open to ideas and alternative ideas to our own, or is not open. That element of a culture is critical and defines much of the culture and it needs to be transparent from the founder and CEO from day one. I have talked to so many entrepreneurs and they regret that you're trying to build a place where people want to work and do their best work.

Everybody. Peter Diamandis here. Welcome to Moonshots. I'm about to have a conversation with Gabby Teledano who is one of the most extraordinary HR individuals. She's head of People. She worked with Larry Ellison at Oracle, with Bill Gates at Microsoft, at Slack, for two years, with Elon Musk at Tesla. We're going to talk about how to hire people, how to fire people, how to Create a culture. How to deal with Glassdoor. If you're a moonshot engineer or a leader in a company, you need to understand how important HR is and how to deal with it. It can make or break your company. All right, let's jump in. This is one of the most important entrepreneurial conversations I've had in this entire Moonshot podcast program. Enjoy, everybody. Welcome to Moonshots. I'm here with a new friend, Gabby Teledano. Gabby, good to see you.

Good to see you, Peter.

Yeah. So full disclosure. Gabby and I are on a board of directors together for an amazing company called Vaccinity that's creating a whole slew of vaccines. Lou and Mei Mei. We've had Lou Reese on this podcast as well. Mei Mei Hu, who's the CEO. You've known them and I was so excited when they recruited you onto the board because of your extraordinary record. But it was fun to see you in Telluride, where I guess you are today.

I am, thank you. Great to see you and very, very fun to be on the vaccine board together.

Yeah. So, you know, you have been on an extraordinary terror of dealing with amazing moonshot companies, you know, from, from Slack and Tesla to, you know, to Lilium. It's amazing. And so I want to dive in, you know, I think as an entrepreneur myself and to the moonshot entrepreneurs we serve here in this podcast, dealing with the squishy human carbon life form issues is really hard compared to actually just algorithms and AI. And I have a lot of questions to ask that we got into a little bit in person while we were driving together. I was like, oh my God, this wisdom is awesome. And I can't wait to share it with people. So with that, if you don't mind, let's jump in. Do you often find that the CEOs, and again, we're in service here of the entrepreneurs who are trying to do some difficult things, some non traditional things, or trying to start companies never been started before and you've been been part of that. Do you find that that entrepreneurs coming into these sort of moonshot companies get how important HR is or are you having to like bring them up to speed?

It's a great question. I don't think they initially do realize how hard the people side of the business is, just the collective people side of the business. I think, you know, they'd spent years working on a product or service and they're intimate intimately into that topic and they know they've already come up with a go to market strategy usually, but the whole Idea of the difficulties of working on the talent side are not clear, but they quickly become clear. So most CEOs that I've talked to say the big surprise as a founder or CEO is the talent people side, because people are unpredictable and it's complicated and they didn't anticipate and they didn't have experience dealing with the stuff they suddenly have to deal with.

Yeah. And it can bite you really bad. You know, I've heard of CEOs who had, you know, entire groups walk out on them. You know, CEOs who are find themselves embattled in the human issues. And if you don't have that right, it doesn't matter how good your code is if your team is not marching the same direction. When I think about a team coming together to form a company, especially in the generative AI world, in the tech world today, you're talking about getting this kind of engineer and that kind of engineer and a marketing person and so forth. I don't hear people talking about, we need HR right away. When should a company that's getting going start thinking about bringing in ahead of people of human relations and such?

Yeah, I mean, in my opinion, it's often done too late. So it isn't unusual for a company very early to bring in a recruiter, a talent acquisition recruiter in house. It's usually the first job they fill because they are hiring people, but they're often late, sometimes waiting until after IPO to really get a seasoned head of people. And I have talked to so many entrepreneurs and they regret that. And many have talked to me before they've gone public. And I gave them that advice to start earlier, they didn't do it. And they've always come back to regret it. And I think as much as you need a cfo, head of your finance department, head of your legal department, it is at that point you should be thinking about ahead of talent, ahead of people. And if you do it right, that person really can be a consigliere to you. That can be quite important. You are building out your organization team, and that is their expertise.

Yeah, that's fascinating. And I remember someone said, listen, you need your head of HR to report directly to the CEO. And at first I was surprised by that idea and I was like, actually, I totally get it. And the term you just use, a consigliere of someone who can whisper in your ear like, we're weak over here, that person's being majorly underutilized, or there's a forest fire about to start over. Here. Oh my God.

Really valuable. Really valuable. Because your head of legal is keeping you out of legal trouble. So they're not focused in that sort of area. You just described this. The cfo, the head of finance is focused on the financials as they both should be. And you really don't have anyone just advising you as you're building out this company. A company's build out, built out with the people. So it isn't, it's just a critical role. And it, I believe, I mean, I see it again and again. People wait too long, sometimes they hire a junior person and that person often can't scale as the company grows. And then you have to restart.

Yeah, I totally get that. You know, I want to hit with you on all the key subjects of building culture and hiring and how to hire and if you're in hypergrowth and then firing and then if you miss a financing, what do you do? And incentives. I mean, these are the things that are the soft side and the hard side. That's the soft side of the business. And the hardest part, that if you don't get it right, it doesn't matter how good your tech is, you could crash and burn really fast. So let's jump into culture. It's often said the founder, and really we're speaking to founding entrepreneurs here, listening to this podcast to a large degree that in the founding is when you set the culture, what's your experience there? What advice do you have for the, you know, the founding team in creating their culture? I mean, you've been part of amazing companies, right? It's like I'm looking at the list of the places you've been chief people officer or you've consulted or you've been on the board. And you must have some incredible stories there. Can you share something about culture and about where you've seen it done really right and where it's gone amiss?

Well, I mean, I would start with. It's been said that some leaders who built great companies don't care about culture. So it's a really interesting question if you start there. And I think what people mean by that is when you talk about culture in a positive way, you're talking about, I mean, the assumption is you're trying to build a place where people want to work and do their best work and they're motivated to do their best work. So if you have a very mission driven company, automatically some elements of the culture are there by virtue of what work are we doing, and that in and of itself can define the culture. In beautiful ways. And you may even in such a place have a founder, CEO who really doesn't care about other aspects of the culture. They believe maybe the mission in and of itself is enough to attract really smart, hard working people. And there's truth to that. So you know, the culture is defined by the mission of the company. So that's one element that is all about what your company does versus who runs your company. And then there are other elements of culture which have a lot to do with, with the founder, with the early leaders. And those other elements have to do with really defining intentionally how do you want to lead, attract, engage people, how do you want your customers and clients to see your company? And again, outside of what the product provides, obviously customers are going to really be centered around the service or the product, but they're also going to be looking at the company as a brand as to whether they want to buy from that brand. So you do want to define all of these elements so that the people you're attracting to the company and keeping of the company, as well as your customers see you in the way that you think is important. So you have to define it. And it basically comes down to the behavior and the norms that are created in that day to day environment. Right? It's how to, how do the people who work at the company treat the customer that's going to define your culture and how you're perceived outside the company. Culturally, inside the company, it's the same thing. How leaders behave, how they communicate, how they don't communicate. Communication is a huge part of culture.

I would also imagine how hard the founder or founding team work sort of sets the bar, right? So when I hear about Elon sleeping on the factory floor at the Tesla plant to hit deliveries, I mean that's got to sort of set the bar of, okay, we're a company that works hard.

That's exactly right. Like if he, if he says, if he doesn't take vacation, then he's telling everybody else, I'm not really a fan of vacation. Or if he sleeps on the factory floor, to your point, he's saying, I expect that of you. You know what's funny is that a lot of founders do that sort of thing, but the people inside the company, that might be once a year, that happened. It's not that the person sleeps there every night, but it becomes the, it.

Becomes the lore, right?

Yeah. Yes.

Yeah.

It's the myths and myths. You know, some, some things that define a culture are the lore and the myth. They're not fact Based many of these things, they really, really are not fact based, but those things definitely help define and set an expectation for the people in the company. There's no question about it, how the leadership behaves, what they say, how they say it, how they treat people. Many cultures defined by is it customer first or not? When I worked at one of my early companies as Chro, customer was first, it defined the culture.

Which one was Chro, which company was that?

That was Siebel Systems, where everything was very sales enterprise centric. And so in many respects it felt like the customer was more important than the employee and we were there no matter what for the customer.

Yeah. And then one of the things we talk a lot about on moonshots is the idea of a massive transformative purpose. Sort of a more than a mission. It's what defines you. Right. For SpaceX it would be becoming a multi planetary species and getting humans on Mars. There is the equivalent for Tesla for electrifying the fleet and so forth. And I assume that that becomes part of the culture, mission driven organization, right, that that inspires people to come and to give everything they have there.

That's right. I mean health care has some of the those same attributes and it really draws people who want to make a difference in the world as the companies you define. But you know, every company needs to try and figure out their vision, their mission. And it's harder for some companies where it's not naturally obvious what the mission is. Right. I worked at electronic arts for 11 years and you know, some people are anti gaming and then there's others of us that absolutely love gaming and think that fun in life is important. So even we, you know, help figure out a vision around fun and entertainment that's important to all, you know, so it is important to figure that out. I mean, there's other aspects of culture, like is it a culture that takes risks, is it a first principles thinking culture where nothing is predefined and there's an expectation that you don't walk into a meeting and say, well Microsoft does it this way, so we should do it that way. They're successful. Or Facebook, you know, meta does it this way, so we must do it this way. There are some companies that that's just not tolerated. Right. You start from scratch, you start from first principles thinking.

That's probably Elon's favorite term is first principle thinking. And I assume that that was the culture there.

That's right. But even at Electronic Arts, you know, we used to always say fail fast and that would end that innovation hinges upon taking risks. And many people would argue that. We had many debates around is, is structure and elements that people call bureaucracy. Is that antithetical to innovation? And we concluded no, you know, chaos doesn't mean innovation. Innovation means creative thinkers who take risks and think about failing fast. Right, so let's start.

When do you put your culture in place? Is it on day one? Is the founding team? You know, let's say you've got three guys or gals coming together to form a company. There's a principal founder, but there's a small founding team. Are you defining a culture there? Can, can the founder say this is the culture I want and like dictate it? And you know, what's, what have you seen?

It's really done, you know, at the outset I would say cultures evolve based on where the company's at and the growth of the company. There's different phases of a company, but there's immediately some form of a culture. And it usually starts. In my, you know, in my experience with storytelling, I think what happens, I don't think many founders sit down. Some do today actually, in fairness, some do sit down and really sit with their leadership team and their other founders, co founders, and try to define the culture they want to be. They do more of that today than used to be done. But a lot of it naturally happens through storytelling because what founders do do, as they start hiring people, they do the obvious, which is we need to onboard these people and when they're recruiting them, they have to recruit them and try to attract them. So they start storytelling like look, we started this in a garage and we started because in my, you know, for some personal reason, and that's, that really starts building the culture. And as I found, even when I've been recruited by, you know, founders and CEOs, even for boards, it's the story, you know, they're trying to get me to join their board versus another board and it's all about that conversation. And why, why do you think your company is going to make a difference? Why do you think this product is going to make a difference? And then, and then we all make choices based on that. So the storytelling is critical because people join a company based on those stories and then they carry the stories along and it's part of the onboarding weekly meeting and the all hands meetings.

Yep, I, I, I feel that. And it's, you tell the story over and over again and sometimes it, it grows in, in, it's like a fishing story. You know, I, I think probably the hardest thing for me is hiring, and it's the most important thing and I really want to drill down into this and then we'll talk about firing next. The other flip side of the equation, you know, I asked you when we were together because I, you know, I've known Elon for 23 years, since 2000 thereabouts. And I'm always amazed at how many people are being hired all the time, especially as he's starting new companies. And I asked, you know, you know, is he just have this mental Rolodex of people he's run into that he wants to, you know, it's like I'm going to grab them on this company and I, I learned that. I'm sure he does. I'm sure he meets amazing people all the time and wants to bring them into one of his companies. But, and when you grow so large at, at, at Tesla and SpaceX and, and again, you were at Tesla for a couple years, you told me about the internal recruiting engine you had. So what, what is, you know, people, you know, how would you describe the recruiting engine? How, you know, was it, how'd that work for, for hiring people in Tesla?

Well, again, it has different phases. I mean, I would, you know, Elon himself started on the board of Tesla as, you know.

Yes. As an investor and a board member.

Right, exactly. And so there was already sort of a leadership team and an evolution for the, for the company when he came in. You know, recruiting at an early stage company is a lot of friends and family. I mean, you know, at the early stages, it's your investors on the board who are often people you have a relationship with, not always. And the leadership team is often a group of friends who went to school together or whatever it may be. So I do think in the early days it is people, you know, and I think continually through the evolution of a company, if a CEO meets someone they're super impressed by, there's no question that person may end up joining and so forth. But the vast majority, when I, you know, when I was there and we were 40 or 50,000 people, we were already at a size where he had probably run through anyone he knew previously. And sure enough, the head of talent acquisition and I would meet with him specifically weekly to introduce candidates for the important jobs director and above. He was certainly very hands on at the director and above, which is a pretty low level at that size company to be involved in as a CEO. I think there are pros and cons to that. It's not really scalable. You know, it's how much time do you want to dedicate to what. But he, you know, I do respect the fact that he understood how important hiring the right people is. And so we would meet weekly and introduce, you know, candidates. This machine of recruiters, hundreds and hundreds of recruiters had sourced.

I was amazed when you said that. Really? I was like, wow, okay, weekly for looking at resumes at the director and above level. Like how many resumes would you go through in that meeting?

Well, not, you know, in that meeting, maybe a dozen. But there was more to it. I mean I would tell you that the head of TA was on my team. They, she and her team and most of it filtered through her just to keep it simple for, for him. And we, that's what we generally try to do with CEOs, keep it simple. So she, but she would send multiple resumes a day even to him, not just for directors and above, but for important engineering jobs. Absolutely. So it was engineers in his case that he cared about and product people and then directors and above and any other function. So she, he, you know, there would be resumes and again there's flaws with that because he didn't have that much time and he really did open the resumes and he would look for certain things. So I would tell people resumes matter in a case, a case like Elon's, like if he saw something, a red flag on a resume or something he didn't appreciate, then those, those would be filtered out. But he very hands on. I mean just a huge amount of email traffic to review resume.

And it's a key importance. I mean your people having an aligned organization and having ever, you know, the aligned background and vision, it can be really useful. I mean diversity is important, but alignment in an engineering organization is critical. So that's fascinating. Total respect for that. And let's talk about recruiting. For a company that's trying to do something extraordinarily difficult versus an everyday company. I have to also imagine that Elon's celebrity helped attract people to the company. Right.

So me, well, and then that's good and bad. I mean I, you know, I think that's obviously more so now. Even when I went there I wasn't, I mean not to say not to be but to people's surprise, I didn't really follow him. Obviously knew who he was. I, I knew who he was more in terms of SpaceX and Tesla's companies and the missions. But now the celebrity is more forefront and that could be a bad thing. You know that happened in my early days at Oracle, as Larry Ellison became more and more a no name, just as with Steve Jobs at Apple, sometimes you end up attracting the wrong people for the wrong reasons. Right. It's not a great. As a CEO or founder, you're really not trying to attract people who just want to be around you. Groupies, Groupie. Right. And so you really want people who care about what you're doing. And so I do think it's actually quite a negative. Over time we'd have a ton of resumes. And this has been true of all the tech companies. Once Oracle became well known and I was at Microsoft seven years, when Bill and Steve are more well known and popular, we would have to filter through groupies. We really did.

Wow. You've been working for some of the most amazing companies in the world. That's incredible. Gabby. You know, I asked you, do you hire outside recruiting agencies? Do you do it internally? And you snapped and said all internal. It's like, you know, you need a team.

Yeah, talk about that. I've certainly used the top recruiting firms and I have some you have to have as a head of talent, great relationships with those firms and they are quite helpful and absolutely. I've used the top firms for CEOs I've had, I've been involved with boards as a chro. Replacing the CEO. And we use of course, top firms and sometimes from. For governance reasons at public companies, bigger companies, you really do need to use agencies. But yeah, my preference is to. I remember when a friend of mine was running Apple and it was a. He was a mentor. He was running talent and HR at Apple decades ago and he was a mentor and he, he brought recruiting and executive recruiting in house. Not only was it more cost effective for obvious reasons, but it was so efficient and effective. And it also helped you filter and hire better for the culture you were trying to build. So it's just that you have in house people who know the culture intimately versus an outside firm. And so it's cost efficient. It helps reinforce your culture and alignment. So I'm a big fan of in house all the way through to executive recruiting.

Yeah, I, as soon as I heard that, okay, I need to find a good internal recruiter because I'm recruiting across all my companies all the time. And you're right, someone who, it's like the most important. The difference between, you know, a very good person and a great person is near infinite. You know, I know amazing people. I have my organization that I feel so blessed and lucky and I would kill for that person, you have to be able to clone that individual.

So one of the thing I want to offer in hiring, which is a subtle but a crazy thing, is, you know, recruiting is a. Is a sales pitch, and that's somewhat unideal. It's not ideal because the last thing you want to do is hire somebody. I mean, I've met with, you know, CEOs and founders that are selling me the opportunity or they're selling whoever we're trying to recruit the opportunity. And it's probably the most positive experience one might have with that person from that point forward. That's just no good, right? I mean, it's. You need to be transparent even in the interview process and let people opt out if they're not right for your style or for that culture.

That's a fascinating point, right? If you're not authentic as to who you are and who the company is, and you sort of wine and dine them and bring them in, and then a month later they realize reality, what a waste of time for both of you.

And that happens all the time, right? You go into it, you think you want this person and you represent yourself as the founder, CEO or as a senior executive in a way that is not consistent once they come in the door. And again, as a chro, we're dealing with those issues later constantly, which is an executive comes in and says, my expectation was so different based on my interview process and what the founder told me, than what it is, and they opt out. And that's just a waste of money and time and morale.

So it's often said that, you know, B players higher C players and A players, hire A players and so forth. And can you talk about that? How do you maintain and up the game? Because I've seen sometimes where in a pocket of one of my companies, the level of work ethic or the intelligence or the culture has gone awry and you have to let go of the entire group.

Well, I mean, again, that's part of the scaling of a company, in my opinion. I mean, in other words, as you become bigger, the CEO who really filtered all the hires in the first year or two, really, I mean, some founding partners, look, interview every hire for the first couple of years, as you grow, that becomes impossible. I mean, it just becomes impossible. They have other priorities. They have to balance. And so then you have someone else taking that on, and then someone else as you become bigger and suddenly three layers down, you have newer people who just aren't part of that initial sort of founding of the company, making the hires. And it's just a scaling issue often. And that's a big one. I mean, that's discussed in many firms. And so some CEOs try to hold on as long as they can to a point of that's almost crazy. But just holding onto those decisions, that's not a perfect solution. Because they make snap decisions. Sometimes they have five minutes to interview somebody, and then they just, you know, make decisions on instinct. So I just think it's something that you just want to make. Sure. Well, I'll tell you this. The other thing I see deteriorating and hiring is, you know, as people become busier and busier, they don't show up for interviews on time. They don't show up at all. They're not the right people to be interviewing for that important job. It's delegated down. They put too much on the recruiters to make decisions versus themselves, so that you have to keep talent acquisition and recruitment of people top of mind, even if you have to delegate.

So how do we. How do people hack that? I mean, if you're in a meeting and you've scheduled 30 minutes for interviewing somebody, and two minutes into the meeting, you just know. Personality mismatch doesn't know the right stuff. Do you hang out and be polite, or do you leave?

I mean, I think you politely leave. You politely leave, right? I mean, especially if you're a founder or someone senior, and you often have somebody who knows how to do that for you. So we had a whole system in all my companies where.

I can't imagine Elon tolerating somebody that he's made a decision on.

Like, you know, but we had a system where even when I interview people, I don't have the time for an hour. If I don't, if I know in five minutes, it's the wrong person. So everyone has their phones. You have a system. And most companies do, you text your recruiting person who's right outside the room, and they come in and interrupt you or your assistant. So it's just politely done would be preferable. I've also had founders and CEOs not do it politely. And it does leave a bad brand. I mean, there's no good in walking out and saying you're the wrong person. And it's just not. So just have a system where you text your assistant and they come knocking, like, emergency. And then.

There'S a concept called bar raiser. And I remember one of my friends, Jeff Holden, speaking about this at Amazon and Uber, where you've got, like, you select who inside Your organization are the top talent and you want more of those individuals and they have to be at least one of those individuals has to be in a hiring decision. Have you used that a lot have used that.

We also some you know as well profile those people so that once you decide who those super high performers potentials are you profile a lot of talent acquisition departments. We would profile and just see the patterns and then go source people with those similar pattern patterns. But absolutely. And they should be part of the interview and filtering process. But also again sourcing from the beginning people with their profile in the first place. I'm also a big fan of the group that interviewed getting together. We did this at Microsoft in the early days and it was magical for doing what you're asking about which is keeping a people in. So you get the whole group of interviewers together. And Microsoft was so committed, so committed in the earlier days. I'm sure they are today too I hope. But it was required that the interview group get together and talk about the candidate. It is. Doesn't work on email. It doesn't. It's just not effective. And you get in the room and someone says that's all true but I had this experience or they said this and it's really going to help your hiring 100x if you all get in the room. It's a 15 minute process and discuss the candidate.

Yep, got it. I love that. How about testing stuff like Colby testing and other kinds of personality testing. Useful. Not useful.

I mean I think for some, for some types of business, some industries it's imperative, you know, depending on certain requirements. But I haven't, I've tried testing a few times and it just hasn't been a game changer for the businesses and the technology companies I've been in. But I think you know, for certain academically aligned, you know, or firms where confidentiality is so critical there are certain tests that can really test for these critical needs.

Here's another one which I'm curious. In the companies which are active today, the necessity for a college degree or a graduate degree. How are you seeing that shift? Because I just remember again I'll use Elon as the. Is the example here when he was tweeting about a hackathon I think was at Tesla and he's like someone asked do you need to have a college degree? And he says I don't care if you have a high school degree as long as you're technically competent.

It's interesting because he definitely looked at what schools people would do when we Looked at resumes. That's funny. But I get, I mean, but his point is also true, which is if you're naturally brilliant and school was not your path to your learning and your ability to code and do things at a higher level than it, it doesn't matter. So I mean, I don't, I don't. I think that's right what he said. I'm not sure everyone really, you know, recruits irregardless because we do a lot of recruiting in, in university and colleges. That's where we go source so many of our hires at any tech company. It's a huge part of the recruiting organization. At Microsoft it was huge. It's been, it's just been an enormously important part of recruitment at every firm I've been in. And to get, you know, early talent has just been through the academics that are just really relevant in the moment. So so many hires come from college and university that it's, it's not true to say it doesn't matter at all. It does matter, but in exceptional cases it doesn't do.

You know, I know it's interesting, right? You ask where do you go to school? But you never ask like what was your GPA or any of that other stuff. So it's like the ability to get into MIT or Stanford or Harvard is the only filter point that is noted. Going back to the interviewing process, how long do you typically interview for? And I am curious if there are any like really magic questions that you've learned to ask that bring out something in a different kind of candidate.

Well, I would say the best companies first of all do nep. You know, they always keep recruitment of talent as is a top priority. The best founders keep it in their top five list of importance and you can do recruiting fast. Like in fact when I went, when I was introduced to Tesla, I think it was a two day process, three day process. But I had a, I had sort of back to back a lot of conversations with board members, the executive team with Elon Musk. But it was, he made sure it took two days instead of two weeks. And I believe that's the right. I believe speed is important. The best people have competitive opportunities, other opportunities. People don't want to work at a company where they were left waiting with no feedback for weeks. You know, I think the other tip, which you didn't ask, but I think, you know, you don't let recruiting make the offer. I once had an opportunity and where the recruiting leader made the offer to me versus the CEO and that was it was not a good process. It was not appealing. I did not take that opportunity. And it. You don't. And in my case, you know, credit to you, for example, he made the offer to me. He called me from Australia when he was traveling and he communicated his offer to me. So I. There's no. And then of course, I said yes in the moment. Otherwise, when a recruiter does it, I can say, let me think about it, let me talk to my spouse. And you can do all these delayed and look at other opportunities and you have easy outs. So that's important. It's just a tip. But in terms of you said, what questions? I mean, I have had a lot of success using what they call behavioral interview questions. And those go something like this, like, hey, Peter, you know, and you're just talking about your history and your experience. And I say, well, listen, let's say I talk to your boss, you know, at Microsoft or Amazon, you know, I talk to your boss. What's your boss's name? Oh, it was Sally. I talked to Sally. Let's say I talked to Sally. Issue. What would Sally tell me about your top two strengths and your top weaknesses? And he just. Psychologically, you would tell me because you're like, did she talk to Sally? Is she gonna call Sally now? She knows Sally's name. And so behavioral interviews are great because you're just. It's that kind of questioning. Like, well, they tell you something, you say, well, let's say there was a scenario where you had to do X, Y and Z. Who did you work with on that project? Oh, a guy named Bob. Great. Well, let's say I talked to Bob. What would he say that you did well in that project? It didn't. Mostly people will tell the truth. So this is a good line of questioning, I think.

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Yeah, no. And we do some of that throughout many companies. I mean, there were certain companies early on that were famous for that. Like Travis at Uber would make people do presentations for any sort of job where he was involved in interviewing.

And did you work for Uber as well?

No. Wow, I just heard Travis did that.

Okay.

But you know, I mean, personally, group interviews aren't ideal. I think, you know, one on one and then coming together and saying. Really? They told you that? They told me the opposite. You learn a lot more if you do it individually and then come together. And I think in group interviews, sometimes the interviewers themselves are competing with each other and talking and, you know, look, you know, they might just be talking more than they're listening as a group.

Yep. And length of time for an interview, we talked about sort of on the shorter side. If you think it's wrong, you know, you can bug out. But do you typically schedule it for 30 minutes or an hour for an initial interview?

I mean, no more than an hour. I prefer 30 minutes to 45 max. I only need my best. I personally prefer 30 minutes because why, if you do recruitment in the process, Right. You've already reviewed the history of this person, their experience, their resume, and so, you know, if they're, you're not going to meet with them unless you already know if they're qualified on paper. So I don't actually talk a lot with the people I interview around their capabilities and experience because a lot of that's documented and you can see work they've done. You can ask for that in advance. The recruitment department could say, send us certain things you've done in this area. And so then you sit there and you try to get to know who they are and how they tick and how they work and will they be part of the culture? Will they fit into the culture? So a lot of the academics and experience that can all be previewed in advance, you shouldn't wait to the interview to say well, where did you work last? That's a terrible interviewer.

It's a waste of time.

Yeah, waste. You're not getting deep into the fit with the company and the passion of the person. And why are they even talking to you? Why this company versus another? Do they want to be there?

You know, I remember I'd gotten to know the head of people at Google and he'd written a book blank on his name right now.

And Laszlo.

Yeah, Laszlo, exactly. And Laszlo showed a video in which they. They basically did some machine learning and they videotaped the person coming in, interviewing the individual. And then, and then they match that against did the person get hired or not hired. And then they narrowed it down to trying to guess. Could you know in the first three minutes and could you know in the first 30 seconds and there was a high court like they knew in the first 30 seconds. Do you remember that story?

Yeah, I do remember. I know Laszlo and I remember that story. They used so much data, his group in particular, so much data to figure out. Obviously they were famous for hiring back then and actually overdoing it in some respects. Right, Just. But yeah, I mean, I think you can know pretty early and in fact you should. So much of recruitment happens before the interview. It has to. I mean, you're going out and sourcing people. The recruitment department has already talked to them in detail and done some back channeling. You don't put candidates and especially in form of a founder or CEO where you haven't fully almost vetted them. So then it's really so in that sense that, you know, we didn't put people in front of any of the founders or CEOs I worked for unless they'd been fully filtered. So those interviews didn't have to be long. It was at that point the instincts of the founder and CEO were relevant.

I mean, was there a gut connection? Right. And there. A lot of times you, the conversation's easy or stilted and you feel chemistry or you don't feel chemistry. And I think especially if it's. If you're, if that person is recruiting someone that works for them, that chemistry is really important.

Really important. Really important. And you know, in that respect though, so I, on the one hand, I'd say shorter interviews. On the other hand, if it's a critical job working for you and you're a CEO or founder. So I'm now going to backtrack a little bit on what I said. I mean, I think you can do that initial in your guts. Right. I think you should During COVID for example, there are many examples where executive hires were made without an in person meeting. Big problem. I mean, there were stories written about so many things that didn't work out. And I get it, you need to meet. So I think if it's a critical job, then that founder, CEO goes to have lunch and, and, and has a cocktail together or has a coffee together and sees see someone at least a second time in person. I think it's critical.

Yeah, I can definitely imagine that. But I did find Laszlo's study was um, I guess at the end of the day that they knew within 30 seconds of the person walking in, sitting down, shaking hands that that initial interaction had a super high correlation of knowing whether you're going to hire that person. That blew me away. I don't know if it's sixth sense or, or whatever, but fascinating. All right, yeah, go on.

No, I was just going to say the other thing to keep in mind on, on recruitment, that comes up a lot as I have thought it through over the decades of doing this is on the one hand, you know, you profile a certain type of person and referrals, all companies like referrals versus going to find random people. I mean, the negative to that is you're, you're hiring people like yourself. They often look like yourself. You're really not helping diversify, you know, the company in all respects. So if you have a bunch of people who are just like you in terms of how they make decisions and how they solve problems and they look and have your same linear thinking or global thinking, you have a problem, you're not going to have a realm of sort of people able to debate a topic and think about it in different ways. So there are some things that we think are the golden ticket to hiring that really have an adverse effect on diversifying the firm and another aspect and culture. So I'm going back to culture a little bit is, you know, every single one of us is either a leader that's open to ideas and alternative ideas to our own, or is not open and is more autocratic. And I think that element of a culture is critical and defines much of the culture and it needs to be transparent from the founder and CEO from day one. If this is a. And I have worked for a lot of autocratic leaders where it's their way or the highway. And so it doesn't make sense for people who are the opposite and really like a good debate and really like to have input to go to that kind of company. It's not going to Work out in the end. So that's a really important aspect of both hiring and building a culture.

Let's go to the flip side here. You find yourself in a situation with a problematic employee. You sort of begin to have the inkling like, this isn't working. And I've been there, and I'm like, huh? I notice it, I notice it. It's starting to bother me. I'm really clear it's not working. And I delay and delay and it has ended in the worst situations. So talk to me about that because, you know, the old adage, higher, slow, fire fast, I think is probably true. So you're a founding CEO, You've got a person on your team, maybe you spend a lot of time recruiting them, and they've come in, but, you know, whether they don't fit the culture, they're divisive. They. How do you. How do you do it? What do you do?

Yeah, I mean, I've seen all kinds of versions of that. I mean, I would say as a general philosophy, if it's 100% clear that the person is a problem, it's not a good fit. Whatever it may be. It's. It's important to move fast. I mean, if it's really clear is what I'm saying, though, you know, impulsive firing. I'm not a big fan of when.

The problem may not be who would ever impulsively fire. I cannot imagine anybody out there who would do that.

I don't think it behooves a company's brand or a leader in any real, you know, you can get away with it somewhat. But, you know, impulsive hiring, where it's not clear the person that you're firing is a problem, and it might be a style thing there, you know, if you're an autocratic leader and they say, but what about this? And that ticks you off, then, you know, you might fire that person for the wrong reason. But sure, if it's very clear that the person's just absolutely, you know, negative in the culture, can't get the job done, and then you exit that person. And my philosophy is you exited them with kindness. You're the one who brought them in, convinced them to leave their last company in many cases, or come to you as an employer versus others, there's no reason in the world to not take a minute to. And then also, to the extent it doesn't have to be a surprise, that's the better way to do it. You still do it quickly, but you do it thoughtfully, and it's not that hard. I mean it's, it's really. I've had to fire presidents, CEOs, senior executives. And you absolutely can do it kindly and just say it's clip. This clearly isn't the right place for you. So let's get, give you the opportunity and let's work it out. And if it means letting someone have two weeks or resign versus announced to the company you fired someone, then do it. There's nothing wrong with that.

Yeah, no, I hear that. I'm curious about any definitive signs. I guess the signs I think about for myself is I stop trusting the person or I stop actually utilizing them and I start bypassing to get information. And that for me is sort of like got to be the obvious sign that it's time for that person to go.

Yeah. And they, and that happens. I mean obviously trust breaks down and people know this more personal relationships through therapy. But you know, trust breaks down kind of both ways. Like sometimes we stop trusting someone because they're disgruntled about something else. And what always helps is getting way in front of that and, and, and breaking that tension or misunderstanding and sometimes things are completely fine after that. But to build up tension and passive aggressive behavior, of course you lose trust on both sides. So you know, when anyone approaches me with you know, I think this, this and this, my first question is have you talked to them and more often than not the answer is no and say go tell them that their behavior in that meeting made you feel this way and find out why they did it. And it repeats again. Then we exit the person. But they may say well yeah, yeah.

What about like performance improvement plans, I guess called pips and so forth. I mean, do you use those? I've seen them simply delay an ultimate firing versus actually change the direction of somebody.

I'm not a, I'm personally not a big PIP fan. They really were originally created by legal departments and they've worked against companies. So and you know this, this I learned a lot about this at Microsoft and also about performance ratings. A lot of this stuff was legacy legal stuff. And I absolutely love most legal people I work with because we're partners in any firm. But it was law that made us say okay, document when, when somebody's performing badly. Not so much to turn them around but to document it. Right. And you know what, people are have a very difficult time documenting well, poor performance and they, we also are weak at giving the right ratings, performance ratings to people. We tend to curve up versus down. And so then somebody gets a good rating and the next month the manager says this person is not performing well. And I'm like, really? You just gave them a four out of five and a bonus. So that doesn't demonstrate that. So I'm not a big fan of pips. I think if somebody, I am a big believer and anyone who's worked for me knows this, I don't hesitate. And the best manager I think do this is feedback in the moment. I mean I'm a very transparent person by nature and I know it's difficult for some people, but it is so good if you can simply say in the moment or right after something goes wrong. I do practice this all the time and I do it because I want them to be successful. If you truly are a leader or a manager who realizes your team is a reflection of you, then real time feedback, even that conflict oriented or negative feedback is so valuable. I hired this person. It took me a lot of money and time. The best thing I can do is say when you said that it turned off the team, you talk too much, you're not listening. Anything that would help them turn around and improve. So pips to me are illegal documentation. It's not a way to develop and mentor.

I completely get that. And there is an issue, I mean a lot of employees these days, I think especially in California, maybe other places too, their first reaction when they get fired is to turn around and sue the company. And that sucks.

It does. And there's more of that than, you.

Know, I mean, I'm sure, I'm sure there is. And I'm, you know, I'm still in. Most of my companies are relatively small compared to, you know, a Tesla or other companies. But it's like. And then what? So you know, you, I'm suing you because of age discrimination or gender or whatever discrimination and, and people can sue for any reason. And then a lot of times it's just that much easier to settle out of court. What are you seeing in the companies you work for? Do you like? I mean there's got to be some companies that say I'm not going to settle, we're going to, just not. Because if you get a reputation of settling all the time.

That's right. That's right. No, but I mean, I would, I mean my, my biggest learning along these lines and there's been, I have many examples, but so much of that can be avoided. And I mean, I remember there was a class action lawsuit at one of my companies that predated my coming in. And when I came in and Sort of had to fix, fix the problem and sort of studied why this even happened. Like, how did this turn into a class action? I mean, I found out that the, the person who started the whole case and solicited other employees to join in, tried, tried and tried to talk to the right people, be it NHR or be the management, his or her management, and they were listened to, they were ignored, they didn't take the problem seriously. So, you know, many companies put themselves in this position because if you're not there for the person to vent to, if you don't resolve their salary and equity problem and really look at it, they're going to go talk to a lawyer or they're going to be at a dinner party where somebody's a lawyer and says, I'll help you with that. And that happens at companies all the time. And so I always tell my teams, one of the most important things in the town function is you better answer every email you get that day, not the next day, and you better take every call. And it's a lot, but you abs and then, and sometimes team members of mine would come and say, this person, this woman came to me and said, they're paid less than their colleagues. It's not that big a deal. It's only, you know, 5k difference from the rest of the guys in the group. And people who've worked for me will tell you, I say go change it. This person is equally a good performer. That's just because they came in at a different. And fix it. Get rid of this problem now and like today, cheaply.

Get rid of cheaply. Yeah. So how do you think about transparency and what people get paid and incentives and so forth? You know, it's a lot of times it's judgment, A lot of times it's how good a negotiator the person is. And there are differences, you know. Have you seen both sides of the equation?

Yeah, I mean, I think over time, I think, I mean, I don't, you know, I'm not a huge fan of let's post everybody's salary. Unless you are like, the government can do that because all the salaries are the same for the, you know, so, you know, for the same job. And there's a reason for that. But I mean, I am a big believer in fairness though. So unless, you know, I always tell, you know, in that sense, I always say assume salary is never a secret. We cannot control that people share this amongst each other. So assume it is posted on the wall and never make an unfair decision and if someone says, well, we can't hire this person unless we pay them 50k more than most of the team members, my first response is, don't do it. Give them a 50k sign on bonus. That's, you know, they pay back if they leave in the first year or something. But it cannot be part of, we cannot have this one off person have 50k more in salary than the rest of the group. So I do think those things come back to haunt you. Not only in litigation, which for sure, but it's just not fair. It doesn't. It's back to culture that people do talk and if you can't explain why this person makes 50k more than that person, now if you can clearly explain it and say they had these credentials and 10 years more experience and are a higher performer, it's no problem. But if you cannot clearly explain the differences, then you shouldn't make the. Make the difference. You know, have the differences.

Smart. All right, my last firing question, but an important one. Let's say you're a company, you miss your financing, you miss your revenues and you have, you know, or the economy slows down and you make the decision you need to let go of a significant chunk of your team. Right. We've seen this in a few different places. Or you know, you saw Elon do this in Twitter. I know you're not, haven't been involved in X, I guess I should call it now. But what's your advice? If the leadership team, the CEO, the board is needing to make a significant layoff, how do you deal with that?

Well, you know, I've had to obviously do that many times at many companies. And you know, you do it. I mean, if it's a. For all the reasons you describe, you do it. And then the question becomes how do you do it and how do you do it sometimes very quickly and it can be done quickly. Now I've had teams working for me and I might come back from a meeting with the executive team and say, you know, we have a 2,000 person layoff we need to do in four days. And they're just like, no way. And all this noise. I'm like, guys, we're doing it. The question is, let's get started now. And the question is how to help the leaders. HR doesn't make the decision on who to cut ever at any firm except in their own department. There's a myth around that. So how do we help these teams make sure that they're cutting, not the wrong people, and that the process is done? With integrity and respect as much as possible. It's very difficult. And I was on a board once that insisted upon communicating that a reduction for cost reasons was all about profitability and cost. Instead felt a need one of the founders to communicate it was performance. Even though I had warned this person not to do it. That was horrible. And it did exactly what I thought it would do. It completely hurt that company's brand. It wasn't true. There was not a real tight filter on which of these individuals are bad performers and which individuals are we just cutting because we are cutting this organizational unit, we're cutting these particular jobs or cutting these offices. So if you're doing a cost cutting exercise, call it a cost cutting exercise. Why defame everybody departing and communicate publicly that these are just all bad performers. And if some individual you're letting go is a bad performer. I also don't think there is any goodness in members of the board or the management team or anyone talking, you know, defaming that person. You know, it's just. There's not much goodness in it.

Sure, sure, sure, sure. You know, I guess announcing that and getting that out the door and not letting it leak out, not creating panic and really stabilizing the rest of the organization is the other half of the challenge.

Yes, absolutely. And you do, you know, you have to anticipate that a layoff. And this has been true in every one of the situations where we had to do it. You have to acknowledge and anticipate that you're going to have higher voluntary turnover following that. And you can reduce that job insecurity fear, but you can reduce the negative reaction of the workforce that stays by treating all those exited people more kindly. They are watching that they consider that could have been them. And you know, we've seen in tech over the last nine months just so many bad examples where, you know, sometimes you have to do this, these things quickly, but you have to do it legally. You have to understand what you know, the, the regulations are the severance regulations. And frankly, you should do it not through AI, not through an email to the whole group of people. You think each person has a manager, right? Each person has a manager of a manager manager somewhere there's a hierarchy. Somebody can give them a phone call or have a meeting. And the firms that have just thought it's okay because of the volume not to do that are mistaken. And no, no talent or HR department people department should allow that to happen. And exits over email or automated messaging. That's ridiculous.

Yeah. All of a sudden your email is cut off and your phone no longer works and your passkey's over.

You're just hurting the brand from everybody's perspective.

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Blind or blind?

I don't actually know blind, but you can tell me about it. But I am. I was. How do I put it? I was kind of shocked and surprised by Glassdoor on how, how it became a tool for weaponizing situations there. And I've had a few. So a lot of times I'll take the role as executive chairman and founder of a company. And I've got CEOs that have worked, worked for me and my companies. And I'm like, this is a great CEO. And I'm reading the, reading the reviews on Glassdoor and I'm like, I'm just getting angry. I'm saying, if you feel that way, you leave. Just leave. How do you get out of here? And if you're, you know, again, if you're a moonshot entrepreneur trying to do something difficult and hard, you know, you're going to turn through a lot of people and you're going to be turning the ship a lot of times to get your product market fit. And a lot of people just don't like that instability or don't like, oh my God, now we're going here, we're going there. Give me your advice for an entrepreneur who's dealing with this as the leader of a company and the Glassdoor reviews are less than stellar and then how important is it today?

I agree with you, but we're Gen X or at Baby Boomers, I don't know. But we have a different way of thinking about it. I agree that it is just I would, I would never go publicly or talk to a reporter even about an experience that may have been negative for me. I would try not to do that. And I have no need to go on social media and criticize, you know, anyone about much of anything. You know, if you're not, if it's not a deposition where you're half, you have to speak under, under oath, then there's no reason to go out with all this. But that said, it is a norm. It is a norm today. I mean any aspect of social media, I mean there is a recent article on Blind and it's where, you know, every CEO's worst nightmare, it's just the replacement, even a more negative spot to complain. But it's, it's very similar to Glassdoor and, and you know, some, some employees think Glassdoor became very corporate and, and you know, they can pay Glassdoor and the company can, you know, respond. And it's not the pure truth, but these sites are everywhere. And it's not just those sites. You know, well known employees have, you know, posted social media stories about their experience at very executive levels. In some cases, you know, you could argue it was the only way they could be heard and that's again, horrifying. But, and there's been a lot of truth to many of those articles and, and so forth. So again, I don't think you should try to sweep illegal activity and so forth under, under the rug. So in some cases, some of these postings need to be done. It's sad that that's the only way you can get it out. But that said, I do think is often the most disgruntled employees and I'm sort of in your camp, like I said, which is just leave now. Again, you know, you have time to look for something else. You know, they're not, the company's not firing you. You're the one who's choosing to leave. You're clearly unhappy. Go focus on what's next. Go where you can be happy and positive and posting as if you're warning everybody else. There's not a lot of truth in that, but it does. I mean, new recruits look at that stuff and they get affected by it.

I mean, I want to get it like hold a company wide meeting and saying, I'm not sure who posted this, but if you're listening to me and you're here, just leave. This is obviously not the right company for you, so I'm not going to address that. We're not going to change our policies. That's just not who we are. So please depart. I mean, is that one way to deal with.

Could be. I mean, listen, I've seen postings, I mean I've seen so many postings and reported to CEOs on what CEOs care. I've had to write up on a weekly basis. This is what's on Glassdoor. This is, you know, and, and some of it I can tell you, is very accurate and truthful and it's something the company should be addressing. And sometimes it is the one thing that finally gets the CEO or founder executive to change behavior. So in some regards it works sometimes. But in other, you know, but there's the other more, you know, common part of those postings which is just somebody who was recently, had recently been fired or was part of a layoff and they just get negative. And I don't, I, you know, I think, I think a lot of them, by the way, Peter, are people who've already left. I mean, you have to carefully read. It'll say whether there's still an employee left, but it's really the place to go blind. And Glassdoor, after you've been fired or laid off. And then of course on occasion you do see the active employees and their other media sites, social media sites, where they're talking amongst each other. And again, if you don't have a place where somebody can go within the company to complain and vent, then they're going to go on social media or they're going to talk to a lawyer. So my philosophy is open door, have enough HR people to your point early on in the company. So when something comes up and people feel whatever they're feeling that has to do with the work environment, they have someone to talk to. If they don't, they will go online or they will go Worst case, eventually to a lawyer.

Amazing. Can you get people, is it legal or a good thing to ask your employees that you have a good relationship with to help give you positive ratings on Glassdoor?

I know that happens all the time. It happens all the time. I mean, I think if it's. If it seems obvious or employees pick up on that, it's just going to be another. It's going to be perceived negatively. Like, Sometimes I've seen CEOs have asked me, like, get the employees to post the opposite message now. And, you know, and I can tell you most companies do do that. It can go. It can work against you if you don't do it very clandestinely and with thoughtfulness. I've had to. I've answered on Glassdoor. I've taken it on as a role at one point just because I wanted to get close to it. And all my replies were trying to be balanced, which is to say, there's no question your personal experience doesn't sound positive. I would love for you to come talk to me, whoever you are, so that we can address it with confidentiality and in the right way. I mean, so a lot of it is just trying to get people to find someone they're willing to talk to and see if we can resolve it. That, you know, it's sort of like, I hear you. I don't think that was the intention of the company. That kind of a tone. There was no goodness in, you know, but you can respond and you can have other employees put more positive posts on.

All right, I want to go to a few questions. I mentioned to people on Twitter. I was going to be interviewing you and asked for questions, and there are some really good questions that popped up. And so let me jump into some of those for fun. So Bob asks, how do you keep an organization from being dominated by HR and not lose sight of the product or the company really missing its mission and dying? Have you seen HR dominate in the wrong direction?

I mean, I haven't seen hr. I think maybe Bob might mean people stuff, activism, people, issues. Or maybe that's what he means. I mean, or he could mean, you know, everything is around policies and, you know, people perceive HR as like an extension of legal and policies and rules. And I think those are both valid issues. You know, I don't think. I mean, I'm not a big believer in sort of follow the policy hr. It's. Maybe it is a little bit of first principles thinking, which is, you know, what is the best way to solve this problem? I mean, I Think great talent, great HR organizations are problem solvers. They, you know, yes, the top HR person reports to the CEO, the CEO reports to the board. So. But I don't think great heads of HR just do what the CEO says. In fact, I know that's true, particularly in public companies. You know, we have to work with the board, which is the boss of the CEO. So there's a lot of governance. So I think, I think great heads of people and not all of them are great, try to do the right thing. And I think it's really a problem solving role.

And do you, do you in your HR role and with your recruiting team also help shape the board of directors and recruit board members?

So as a head of hr, for sure, let's sell in private, smaller companies that really, really, the founder CEO gets heavily involved and other board members get heavily involved. But in a public, bigger company, again, it is the board nominating governance committee's job. Usually it's that committee that does board recruiting. There's a chair of that committee and they work with the CEO. I think great companies also involve the Chro in that process. I was involved in that process at ea. You know, I remember when Gary Cousin was our chair of Namgov. He, you know, asked me to help him and work with the recruiting firms and you know, even if a process role. And I think that involvement was positive in the sense that not only do you keep the train running on the tracks and somebody to deal with the recruiting firms, but you make sure that the board members are also a good fit. And I'll tell you, a lot of founders and CEOs in my experience have not spent a month seeing that as so important, it is. This is their boss. And to not pay a lot of attention to who you're asking to be on your board and making sure you have that chemistry as CEO with that person and making sure they're coming on for the right reasons. I've seen it again and again. I've had many CEOs I've worked for fired by, by their bosses, the board, and they even recruited some of the board members that voted against them for continuing CEO. So I just think it shouldn't be taken lightly. I think the Chro is a consigliere. The CEO can really help in that process and really make sure they're paying attention to the process. Carving out time to get to know that person and making sure it's the right, it's the right person for the board.

Nate has a few good questions here. How do you Separate a good interviewer from a great interviewer?

Well, some of it's just the basics, right, that we talked about.

It's talking too much.

Exactly. A great interviewer does homework before the interview and knows exactly. Like, you did homework on me, Peter, and so did your team before we had this podcast. I mean, that's the way you do things. And so you do your. You do your diligence, your homework. You've already combed through the resume, you've gone on LinkedIn, you've looked on social media. I mean, I remember once I was interviewing somebody and I went on the Internet and searched on the person's name and found out some past legal issues that were absolutely a red flag. And my recruiting department didn't even catch those things. I mean, you do your homework before you filter out the people that you shouldn't be wasting time with in a lot in a face to face or a phone interview. And a great interview is prepared. They use behavioral interview questions, not just tell me about your experience. You really don't need someone to get on the phone or meet with you and walk through their resume. You should be past that. You want to pinpoint certain things, like, why'd you leave that company? You were only there a year. I mean, in other words, the best interviewers are really direct. Hey, I noticed on your resume there were two companies back to back, and you were only nine months at both. What happened? Why'd you leave? If I called your boss at each company, what would they say?

Oh, they say that trick again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm calling Sally. I'm calling Sally.

I'm calling Sally.

Let's go to this one from Bruno. He says, how do you handle disagreements with a strong sort of founding CEO, AKA Elon, or other senior executives when there's a disagreement in and strategic HR decisions? I mean, I've been in conversations with Elon where I've watched a disagreement and he doesn't tolerate a disagreement. And I'm sure, I'm sure people feel the same for me, probably not at that level, but how do you deal with a strong founding CEO when you're in disagreement with them?

Yeah, no, it's a really great question. And I've had to deal with that, as you say, quite a bit. And I. I've learned over time I'm not naturally great at just not speaking my mind. So, you know, if I have experience or a point of view that I think is helpful to that founder or CEO or the company, and helpful and know that the impact of what Their decision is. Would be negative. Again, there's nothing in it for me. I don't. It's not about ego. It's just about, in my experience, doing that will lead to this. Some CEOs or founders don't even want to hear that. They don't. They might not even care about your experience. I mean, it might even be hard to just, to your point, counter at all. These are people with very little time. They're in a rush. This is what they think everyone should be doing or you should be doing. And there's little tolerance for. So, I mean, the little tricks I've learned are. And you know, not. No, like I say, do such and such will do. And you know, in other words, or if you have to get them to do something, find a way to make them think it's their idea, not yours, to help with a certain amount of credit style. Like, you know, even if you're a little tricky about it. Like, you know, when you said that, it made me think of this. It really triggered this amazing idea. Really, which you made me think of when you said xyz. So you can turn it into their idea. That helps. But there is no, no, that is really hard with those kind of leaders. It is understood. I mean, there are, there's certain language around some of these leaders that's quite common. It's, you know, understood will do and not. But. And would it be okay if we also did X?

Yes.

And would it be helpful, you know, if I could also. So if you have to turn it into a positive somehow.

Yep.

Or it's just not tolerated.

Great advice. So you're in a company. Maybe it was in Tesla, maybe it was an EA someplace else. And there are harassment claims and there are conflicts. And how do you go about today? You know, investigations. And I just, I can't. I have to imagine that gets more and more difficult, the risk involved. So Bruno asks, you know, he says, how did Tesla handle internal conflicts or issues of harassment and what systems were in place to ensure unbiased investigations?

Yeah, my philosophy is be all over that stuff. When I was at Tesla, we created, I had an incredible woman leave the legal department and come work for me and ran an investigations group. It's become more and more common at big types of companies. Not all companies have these groups. And it's not your HR manager, your HR business partner. Those groups exist too. But an investigations group, because if you have high volume in terms of complaints, just by the sheer size or the type of company or whatever it may be, you Absolutely need to very quickly respond to these complaints and investigate them. And that's under the law. Right. It's in the eye of the victim to decide whether that person felt it was a hostile environment or they felt they were harassed. And it is really up to the company to prove otherwise. So these investigations are critical. And some companies are very, very, very high volume. And as I said in my case, I pulled somebody from the legal department to run it. She was fabulous. And much of it would turn into litigation ultimately. So I also reported Back to the CEOs, here's the top 10. And, you know, I don't want any surprises. I mean, this might revert from the investigations HR team to the legal department soon. And at that point, once it's in legal hands, it's lawyer to lawyer. But it's, it's just. And many of these, you know, situations are very real and the employee needs protection. And then we need to solve the problem and get rid of the manager or get rid of the person who did it. And both happen. I mean, I wouldn't say they're all false. I would say 90% of what I had to deal with under investigations were true. 10 to 20 would not be true, but most are true. And so it's not just that we have a legal requirement to an investigation. I want to stop whatever's happening that got to the point where the person had to make the complaint to us in the first place. There's something that's not working. Get rid of the problem.

Great. Bruno has another great question. He says, given the intense work environment at Tesla, how did you possibly manage burnout and mental health concerns? And is that, you know, is that your responsibility at the end of the day? Because I do imagine, I know in my own organizations, I operate 247 and a lot of people, you know, and I'm sending out emails at midnight, not expecting people to respond, but. And I've had to tell them, you know, you can wait till the morning to respond. Don't think because I send it to you, I just, you know, I'm not going to program it to go out in the morning. So how do you deal with that?

I wouldn't say it's just a Tesla thing. I mean, I, you know, in the gaming industry, there's crunch time when you're supposed to ship a game on time and they slip all the time and people work 24 by 7 and, you know, there's some legal considerations, which is to say there's some laws around. You know, are you a salaried employee or you are a non exempt hourly employee. Many companies have their employees misclassified. And so if you have these crunch times or burnout periods and the and the job is supposed to be under the state or federal law, what I'm calling non exempt or hourly, you may be paying those people wrong. And that can turn into a class action lawsuit in these times of 24 by 7. So if you're 24 by 7 or a over 8 hour work environment, make sure you've classified your jobs correctly. So whoever is supposed to be certain jobs are absolutely non exempt under law and they are paid hourly with overtime and double time and time and a half, et cetera. So that's something that has surprised many of my companies, many, many companies. Because if that will come up, any lawyer loves to grab that lawsuit, this class action lawsuit. And secondly though, in terms of mental health and just burnout, it's a real issue. I mean it took a different form during COVID even where people couldn't separate their personal and worksp space in life. I think it's a big, big concern. And there are a lot of new companies that have popped up to help us from a healthcare side. You know, support and help pay for behavioral health and different and new ways these point solution. Healthcare companies like Lira are fabulous to help companies really support the needs of their employees. You know and it's just much more of a need right now. So I think you know, the employee, the engagement, the you know, everyone has a survey people need to chime in and make sure a company realizes where their pockets of extremes and issues. But there are certain companies, I mean consulting is like this a little bit. You know companies maybe like Tesla where the, the culture is. Is a 24 by 7 and you want to opt in or opt out and you want to understand what each culture is about and make personal choices. But at least I do think most companies that have an obligation, they have some obligation today at least to provide healthcare benefits that can support people in dealing with this because they do bring it to the workplace or it's created by the workplace. And I'm a big supporter of mental health support.

All right, last question here but an important one especially now. This comes from Paramendra who asks best practices for hiring a remote only team. And I want to also add on to that question, I think from Amber. It's like should we be moving back to offices or are you okay sort of staying remote. So let's tackle is our final subject the the pluses and minuses and the HR challenges of remote only. And a mixed team here because it sure has made things interesting.

Yeah. And I am not an expert in the category, although I am part of a board group that gets together to learn and be better board members. And we did have a Stanford professor who is an expert in this area come talk to us. So I know a little bit about it and I've experienced it. I mean, I would say, you know, there are a lot of companies today that are 100% remote. They were created that way. I actually advise one of those companies and talk to their head of HR regularly every week. And it can be tough. You know, I am so. To answer the second question philosophically, I am in the camp of in person is better. It's better for building loyalty and that stickiness of a culture. It's better for collaboration. It's better for community building. And I think a lot of the leadership today is in the sort of Gen X age group. And we happen to be. And I'm in that age group. We happen to have loved that ability to work from home. I'm generalizing now, but to work from home or work from wherever we may be. And so while we might be okay with being remote, we're often in the leadership roles and our Gen Z folks or millennials would rather be in the office. They're forming relationships. Remember, we all met our friends and even maybe our partners in the workplace and we're taking that away from the younger generations. And it's a problem not only from a social and mental health, but from a work collaboration standpoint. So I'm a believer in it. I just don't think it's easy to do now that so much of it has been reversed. I mean, I'm also, I just think the companies that went totally remote, you know, I, I'm not a, I'm not a big fan of it. And then it, it kind of killed like San Francisco in the downtown commercial real estate situation too. That's a whole other problem. It's changed, you know, cities.

Do you think? I mean, so everyone forced remote and it was fascinating and. But do you think that the pendulum swang all one way? I don't think it's ever going back to the way it was. Right.

It's too hard. It's too hard to reverse it. And there's some great aspects of it. There's some great aspects of it and it works. It works. You know, it works. I don't think as well. Although, look, there's some upsides to it. You know, you cut out maybe up to two hours. I commuted two hours a day most of my career. So it's, you know, there's. There really are some positive aspects of it. You can be home, you know, to grab a bite, and you might run into your child, which is like something I never experienced as I was raising my kids. I was never home. So believe me, I think there's a lot of things that are very positive about it. I don't think it's going back to the way it was. I think it's sort of more of a hybrid situation at this point. We've allowed people to move. I. So I'm not a fan of a company doing a total reversal and saying, come in. And many of the tech companies are doing.

Or forcing people to come in.

Yeah, forcing people. Right now, if you're a manufacturing company, you're talking about the manufacturing group. They never even went remote during COVID They had to work. So, you know, there's certain companies where remote doesn't work at all. But there are other companies where it is working. As I say, I'm an advisor. One, it is working. But they. We talk about a lot. And what they do is they have in person meetings on a regular basis. So a quarterly all company meeting and departmental meeting. So it's not as if you never get together. You have to get together to keep the. If nothing else, the culture and the alignment. But I agree it's never going to go back to where it was. But there's pros and cons with a new arrangement.

Yeah, no, I miss. I miss offices. And that's what most of our companies do right now. Not all of them, but a lot of them still have, you know, fountain life. Our. Our medical operation has centers and we operate there and such. But a number of companies, we do, you know, quarterly meetups for a week. We have a meet a week, a quarter, and then we're on zoom constantly and we pair up and have meetings as needed. But I miss having an office that was a center gathering place and running into people and having an idea and like knocking the door. Hey, can I ask you a quick question?

Exactly.

And you know, we'll get the virtualized version of that. One of the companies of Adam I'm a board member of is, you know, heading in that direction, but it's still not there. Hiring a remote only team, I mean, that's fascinating, right? I mean, the geographic arbitrage of being able to hire, you know, great AI engineers in Romania or Brazil, you know.

I mean, that's the access to talent, right? I mean, it really opened the doors for like almost any company, be able to. To access some of the best engineering talent. So listen, I mean, there. There are pros and cons, and maybe the hybrid, once we settle into the perfect hybrid, is the right answer. And it may indeed be. I just think the extreme of one or the other, you know, at this point is either impossible or not ideal. And forcing people back into the office and losing potentially some of your best talent seems short sighted, you know, Gabby.

Taldano, I am so grateful. Thank you. I actually wish I had had this conversation with you 20 years ago. It would have been a lot more. A lot more effective. I have learned the value of having a great head of HR as your partner, as your consigliere. As you said across everything, until we have. Until we have real AGI or artificial super intelligence, humans are still a super critical part of our company. Gabby, so grateful. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Peter. I really enjoyed it. Thank you.

Real pleasure.