Companies Are Not Hiring In 2026

Neil, I actually have a good one to start with here. I have it highlighted in green. Um, I want to talk about why companies are not hiring in 2026, more specifically big companies. Have you seen this trend?

I have not seen that trend. I assume companies are hiring in 2026.

Yeah. So let's talk about what these big companies are doing and then let's talk about what we're doing. Cause I think you and I are probably, um, I'll speak for myself. I, we are looking to make a more aggressive push. Um, but if you look at, um, I'm looking at Wall Street Journal right now.

Okay.

So companies are outlining plans for 2026. Hiring isn't one of them. So this is why big companies are not hiring in 2026. You got Shopify, Chime Financial, they're vowing to keep the size of their employee bases roughly flat. Um, and then Midtown Manhattan, um, this is a gathering of CEOs by the Yale School of Management. 66% of leaders surveyed said they plan to either fire workers or maintain the size of their existing teams, and only a third said they plan to hire. So, um, right now you have, um, you know, someone saying you're seeing a lot of wait and see. Some of the looming uncertainty will mean that we're going to see an investment in capital over people. Um, so employment— unemployment rose 44.6% in November. It's the highest in 4 years while the US added jobs in, you know, healthcare and education. Um, I think what's going on right now is what you're seeing too is like, uh, IBM— this will be the last point over here— IBM employees are leaving the technology giant at the lowest rate in 30 years. 30 years, dude. Um, and so he's basically saying that the CEO, uh, Arvind of IBM, voluntary attrition at IBM is under 2%, which is amazing.

Okay.

a decline from the typical 7%. So people are looking to stay pat right now. And then at the same time, big companies, they're looking to see what type of efficiencies they're going to gain from AI, I think, in 2026. I think we're going to continue to figure things out, but at least for us, I think it's worth talking about. And before I switch it over to you to see what you're doing right now, here's another data point. Wells Fargo CEO said the bank expected to have fewer people as it heads into next year. The company's workforce has fallen from roughly 275,000 people in 2019 to about 210,000 today. executives has cut costs and overhauled the bank. Let me give you another bonus. My, um, one of my relatives who works, um, in the government, um, he's like, many people have been cut and I'm all for it. Um, I'm like, why, why would you say you're all for it? He's like, because we're too bloated. Um, so I'll flip it over to you. What are you guys doing there?

So we haven't been doing much, uh, firing. We have been doing hiring to backfill open roles. We haven't been doing much hiring as in like, let's just go crazy and hire. I think you and I have been in the same situation as most people in our industry in which if you look at the marketing space in general, other than the platforms, platforms being Google Ads, Facebook Ads, TikTok Ads, et cetera, most people have been seeing a decline in revenue. I'm assuming you would agree with that since mid-2022, right? When rates started going really sky high. This is at least US.

Yeah.

And we're global, so we see data in multiple countries. And I do think the economy is starting to turn around. I have no proof of it. I was watching the All In podcast with Scott Bessent. I do follow a lot of the stuff that he ends up talking about online, whether it's CNBC or New York Times or whoever wants to end up pulling from him. It's kind of funny watching his New York Times interview during their, I forgot what it was called, deal. New Look?

DealBook, DealBook.

Or something like that. That was quite entertaining. But if you look at taxes are going to be lower starting January 1st, right? You're going to have more and more deregulation, rates are going down. And when you look at all those things, I do believe it's going to cause businesses to pick up. If businesses start picking up, I believe that's going to cause people to hire more than what they're predicting right now. But people are planning based on what the economy is today. I'm not saying for certain it's going to go up by 2026. I'm just a little bit more hopeful. I don't think rates are going to go drastically down in the next 3 months, but I think we get a new Fed chair, what, March or something like that, or February or March or April is one of those dates.

Could announce it in January, but yeah.

Yeah. And I know one person can't make a call on rates going lower because it's a committee, but I would say by the end of 2026, I think things are going to start getting better. Because if you look at, you can actually, you may know this stat. I don't know how many people are on hourly wages, but it's a lot. The last time I looked it up, I looked it up like, I don't know, when they were doing the big beautiful bill, I was looking at how many people are on hourly wages and what percentage of America makes tips from the working force.

80 million people. So that's around 5.7%.

Not 5%, can't be 5%.

No, 55% specifically.

Yeah.

Yeah. So it's a majority. That makes sense.

So when you look at those numbers, I'm like, wait, giving those people more money to spend, I think that's going to be great. I wish the government did 2 more things, but I don't think they're going to end up doing it. One is no taxes on anyone making under $100 grand federally. And I think they should tax the rich more. I'm happy to pay more money as well. And the other thing I would do is they should reserve homes in certain prices for people under certain incomes and make it where they had to put a much lower down payment. I know they have FHA, which is like 3%, but like end up making it where it's almost 0% from and make it a little bit easier.

Oh dude, we got to talk about—

But I think that'll cause the whole business economy to make money. And here's the kicker. If you don't charge taxes on people making less than $100 grand a year federally, right? For business owners like me, even if I pay more taxes, this may sound selfish, I will make more money because they will spend more money, which then ends up feeding back to me.

So here's how I see it. And so to answer the question directly, are you guys looking to stay pat, aggressively hire, hire more, or slow down hiring? Like what's the move for you guys next year?

We have no plans on either. We planned our 2026 budgets based on how the economy is today, not by things improving.

Okay.

So if they change, we will ramp up hiring faster.

Here are my thoughts with next year. So the 2 podcasts that Neil mentioned, more so the All In podcast with Scott Bessen on it. So those that don't know, he's our treasury secretary, very smart guy, hedge fund guy. And when you listen to him talk, by the way, I've actually, to be honest with you, I've never listened to treasury secretaries talk. But when you listen to him talk, I'm like, man, this guy is smart. And I feel like we're lucky to have him. But a couple of things I believe. So market's pricing in one interest rate cut next year. I don't believe that's going to happen. I think there's going to be multiple interest rate cuts. That's just my opinion. I think GDP.

Okay.

So, you know, Elon, and we can talk about this in a second too, but Elon sees double-digit GDP growth coming, then triple-digit in 5 years. I don't know if that's going to be the case next year, but I do think we're going to see GDP growth. We're going to see acceleration. Just because we're continuing to figure out the AI game. And for whatever reason, yesterday when I was on X, there seems to be picked up a huge pickup of chatter, which we can come back to in a second. So I think we're gonna see more AI growth for GDP. And then I think on the other side of things, what Neil mentioned too, so when you give people money, it's naturally— that's gonna stimulate spending and hopefully that gets things moving more. And the other thing too is We thought that, you and I both thought, I think in the beginning of the year, we're like, hey, maybe this tariff thing is maybe not such a good idea, at least for the United States. Turns out, at least for the United States, tariffs so far have proven to be, we've collected revenue from it. And Scott says deflationary, right? And so we'll see what happens. But I've always believed that maybe we should collect like a 5 to 10% tariff so we don't just lose our shirt to everyone. And that seems That seems to be what's happening. So for us, we are looking at hiring, we are looking at hiring, making a hiring push, especially in Q1, because we already have these people mapped out for especially for what we want to do next year. So if the economy picks up, then we're going to be even more aggressive with hiring. So, you know, it's very much a year of hopefully it's a good year, we can make more bets on people, which is what we talked about in the last podcast. Our best investment has always been people.

By far, it has been people. And I don't think you can grow a business to be large. I don't mean this in a rude way, but Eric hasn't built a large business. I haven't built a large business yet either. And we'll both admit that publicly. I'm not trying to pick on him or anyone else, and I'm in the same camp as him. To build a really big business, if you look at any company, whether it's Nvidia, Tesla, Netflix, even Walmart, even the ones like IBM that no one cares to talk about anymore, They have some really strong leaders, not just the CEO. Their leadership team is extremely strong. It is hard to build businesses that are really large without having some amazing talent.

Yep.

It's that simple. You need it to build something big.

All right. So I wanted to take a moment to tell you about my podcast co-host Neil's agency called NP Digital, and they work with a whole host of global companies or a global organization. Also, Neil has SEO tools such as Ubersuggest and AnswerThePublic. All you have to do is go to npdigital.com to learn more, and we'll see you on the other side. Yep. And by the way, I mean, speaking of, we're talking about Nvidia, and then I was looking at, um, I was listening to the HubSpot CEO talk, and they all have different— everyone has different management style, right? So you look at Jensen, for example, he has 60 direct reports, I believe. Um, Brian Halligan, back in the day, he had, I think, 15 direct reports. Um, in some, some cases you look at, um, you know, HubSpot CEO, like 90% of the time. I mean, he was just saying he was in a bad mood, right? Um, and, you know, for, for him, I mean, he's always felt like, you know, paranoid and an imposter, right? And Nvidia, the CEO, he's always felt like he'll look in the mirror and say, you know, I'm a piece of poo poo, right? Or you're a piece of poo poo and look at himself. And so I don't think there's any right or wrong way to, to lead. Um, and so if you want to hire the right people, you have to know how to lead. And leading actually just means getting people to follow you. Um, and Well, in order to build a great company, you have to learn how to get people to follow you. So that's something to keep in mind because I would just say that in my 20s, I read like, sure, I have a lot of books behind me. I've read a lot of these management books. I've read a lot of biographies. Okay. I've interviewed a lot of people. Okay. Um, and I will tell you, it really, management style, leadership style kind of goes the spectrum and there's no right or wrong way. So for example, us at my company, we give feedback in public and 99% of people do not like that, right? People give me feedback in public in front of other people. Um, there's certain ways Neil does things too. Neil's going to kind of jump around, right? Um, his management style is not managing people directly. And so all that to say is like, if you want to get the right people, you're going to have to learn your management style over time, not necessarily just rely on all these books, because that's certainly what I did in the beginning. You're going to have to, sure, read the books, but also gain experience.

Yeah, no. So when you look at, because you have a topic there, the NVIDIA and HubSpot C, uh, management styles, what's the difference? I'm actually curious. I don't know the difference on the CEO's management styles. And I'm assuming you're speaking about Brian Halligan, or are you talking about the— I forgot what the lady's name is. Yasmin?

No, I'm talking about Brian Halligan. So Brian Halligan, um, was very— he was very direct. And then when he was angry, he would wear his heart on his sleeve. And you can tell when he's pissed off, right? And he wouldn't— he's very impatient too. And he was working very, uh, he was 996 and so was Jensen. 996, meaning that you're working all the time. It's actually 996+ because you're basically working, you're thinking about work 24/7, right?

What's 996? What is that defined as?

996 is 9 hours a day, 6 days a week. Yeah, so it was popularized in Chinese culture, right? So you're working 9 AM to 9 PM, okay, 6 days a week. But theirs is more like 997 or even 996+, meaning that they're just thinking about work all the time. So both of them are similar in that respect. Um, I think both of them wouldn't hold back when they were pissed off and they're very direct and they would just say things in front of people. Um, for sure Jensen would do that. And, you know, Jensen's style too is like he would look at, he would want people to fill out the 5 main things that they're working on, 5 like trends that they see and all that. He'd read those every single day. And so anyway, all that to say is they're similar in many ways, but also different in many ways too, because Brian, the reason why I brought this topic up too was because as Brian was learning, because they raised money from a bunch of different VC firms, right? And they're like, oh, you need to build a management team. You need to do this. You need to do this. And he felt like he wasn't being him and he was, it was becoming this version of him that, that, that just felt like a, like a Frankenstein. Jensen felt the same way. Everyone's like, oh, Jensen, you need to have a management team. You, you can only have 10 direct reports. And then over time they all realized that, oh, like, dude, screw what you guys say. Screw the management philosophies. I'm just going to do what's right for me.

Yes. Are you pretty direct with your staff? Like, do you wear it on your sleeve, your emotions? Are you—

Now, now I'm very direct and I do it in front of other people. I didn't do that before because I was afraid of what people thought about me. And I'm still respectful about it, right? I'm not like just a dick. I'm just, it's like, hey, like I really, here's how I feel right now. And if we don't do this, this is what's gonna happen. And so it works. And don't get me wrong, I feel bad sometimes, but it feels good. It feels like I'm doing the right thing.

I haven't gotten mad at an employee in a very long time. I can't think of one.

You don't get mad at employees. You get mad at like other things. When you get scammed, when you feel like you get scammed, that's when you get really mad.

What do you mean scammed?

For example, the store in Beverly Hills, that overcharged you or when you're getting overcharged by your contractors?

Yeah, that kind of—

Yeah, you lose it.

I lose it.

Eric's right.

I go off. I know I shouldn't go off. I don't actually have a temper, but when people are screwing me over, I let them know that you cannot screw me over. And I make it very clear. And I can be very direct is probably a kind way, but they usually don't do it again. In business, I used to be really direct. Like if I had someone underneath me who works under social media or whatever, actually here's a good example. Salo is underneath me in marketing because I have a great relationship with him. I'm extremely direct, so much so sometimes I know he's just pissed off at me because I just, you know, like if someone screws up or someone does it wrong and I have a good relationship with them, I will just not just lay it out, I will really lay it out where it's very clear, like, you should never do this again. I can't believe you did this.

Wow. You know who else you've done this to? You've done this to me before. You've done this to Mike Kamo before too.

Yeah, but typically we have a small organization, but let's say if you have 1,000+ people like us—

By the way, guys, when Neil says small, it's still 1,000 people. So just FYI, just context for everyone. When he's comparing it, he's really comparing it to the multi-trillion-dollar companies.

No, even the multi, like someone worth like $50 billion, $100 billion, $10 billion.

Still a magnitude.

Yeah. So when I look at like at our size, there's too many people that I don't know. So it's like if someone's just really terrible and I have no relationship with them, instead of laying into them, I will just go message someone who's in charge of those people. I'm like, you need to figure this out. This is a problem. And if you don't fix it, You're going to be left with this mess.

Yeah.

And I have my neck to choke. I know that sounds really bad, but let's say the easiest example for me is because we're in so many countries, I have managers just for Australia, manager just for India, manager just for, I don't know, South Korea, et cetera. You get the point. So if someone is off in, let's say, Australia, I'm not saying there is, but I'm making it up. What I would do is I would just go to Dan and I'm like, Dan, this is a problem. You need to fix it. If not, this is an issue and it affects our numbers. This is on you. Pretty much I have my neck to choke, as bad as that sounds.

Yeah. In management, they call it one throat to choke.

Yes.

Yeah.

Because it's too hard for me to individually manage every single person. I just want to make sure that my managers are doing what's right. And what I've found is And no matter what department that you're in, managers who are coin-operated, like they tend to just work for other organizations versus being entrepreneurs, they tend to be slower to hire and they tend to also be slower to fire. They say hire slowly, fire fast. I found that when you hire good managers, they tend to hire slowly because they don't want to screw up the numbers and the P&L and they want to be cautious, get the right people, which is right. But they also find that they tend to be slow to fire.

Yep. You know, that's, that's the one thing since knowing Neil. So Neil and I, I've known him, I was 24 years old, he was 25, but Neil's always been fast to fire.

Remember the mustache guy who claimed he was an amazing marketer?

Yeah. Well, you, you hired him too quickly. I never told you to hire him for that. That's your fault.

So yes, but how long did it take me to fire him?

Within 2 weeks.

Yeah, this isn't gonna work. You know, like, you're terrible.

Goodbye.

I'm much nicer than it, but pretty much those people hate me after.

Yeah. Well, here's the thing too, and we're not going to say we're right all the time too, because oftentimes I will say something or Neil will say something. Um, I'm talking about more in public, right? So we're very direct with our thoughts, but sometimes we'll also backtrack too. So I'm also very quick to apologize. So just keep that in mind. Like you have to figure out what management style works for you. Like, again, I've read the Patagonia book, Let My People Go Surfing, where it's like, you literally let your people go surfing during lunch because you trust them so much. Right. And then you have other books where you read the Nvidia way where it's like, Direct feedback in public and, um, you know, I will torture you into greatness type of thing, right? And so there's all these different management styles. And, um, again, I think it's helpful to know these things, but, um, you're gonna have to figure out your style. And the only way you figure that out is actually by doing. All right, guys, uh, that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe.