Speaker 1: 0:00

Let's aim for that, shall we? Yeah, let's do it, Craig. Welcome. Thank you for joining today. I hope you're ready to perform at your highest possible performance level.

Speaker 2: 0:10

Craig, get in the elevator. We need to talk about your compensation. We do.

Speaker 1: 0:14

We need to just have a talk in general about your responsibilities and your role in this company.

Speaker 2: 0:18

The company's come to some hard times and I know you work for nothing free essentially but we've decided you need to start paying us to work.

Speaker 1: 0:27

Craig, we really like you and we think you're incredible at recording podcasts and posting them, but sadly, you're just not doing enough. You're not living up to the expectation of the role You're fired.

Speaker 2: 0:40

I know that's what you were hired for, but sorry, you're out of town. You're out of town, charlie Brett. I know that's what you were hired for, but, but sorry, you're out of town. You're out of town, charlie Brown.

Speaker 1: 0:50

You're done here, get out. Get out of my elevator.

Speaker 2: 0:54

Welcome back to Corporate Strategy, the podcast. That could have been an email. I'm Bruce and I'm Clark Clark, how you doing Sound a little frisky today.

Speaker 1: 1:03

I don't know, I'm just, yeah, you feel a little frisky, you know, it's just that state of just like delusional Uh-huh. It just hits you on a Friday afternoon where you're like have I done anything today?

Speaker 2: 1:18

Finally freaking Friday. Do I care, do I?

Speaker 1: 1:21

care enough? Do I care that I did nothing today? Not really. I just don't have the energy. You know what I mean.

Speaker 2: 1:27

I had a jam sesh today. I got some work this this entire week, so my leadership's been out. Most people have been in Poland doing a big meetup, so it was great because I had no meetings, so I was able to like knock out the drafts for all of the documents that I owe for this quarter this week, nice, which is pretty awesome. I did a 2,000-word write-up on the NIST 2 legislation coming out of the EMEA. Let me tell you, not fun but I got it done.

Speaker 1: 1:59

Yeah, I wouldn't want to learn about that at all. I'd be happy it's you and not me.

Speaker 2: 2:02

One of the fun things you'll never get to experience, clark. Learn about that at all. I'm happy it's you and not me. One of the fun things you'll never get to experience, clark. But one of the fun things about marketing specifically is the clever act of plagiarism. And I pride myself on trying my very best this is not saying I don't do it all the time, but I do try my very best to read something, comprehend it, understand it, write what I think and then pull some nice lines from sources to then put the proof in the pudding. But one thing I really enjoy is knowing that most of my marketing compatriots don't do this and literally just copy each other to death.

Speaker 2: 2:40

So one of the pieces I was looking at, I was like oh, this is an interesting write-up on NIST 2. I'm getting some information from here. But I'm like this is kind of funnily written. I'm going to go look at what someone else wrote about this. So I'm going to search this specific term.

Speaker 2: 2:57

So I go and search and then not only do I find that they just copied it wrong, but I found the entire document they copied the whole thing from and just ran it through chat gbt like, hey, make this sound like my own thing, wow, yeah. And then, like the real irony was in this act of me finding the plagiarists, plagiarism, and then looking at the, the, the plagiarized work, I was like, well, this still doesn't really help me understand what I'm trying to do here. So I I guess I just need to go read this fricking thousand page uh, legislation on this too, cause no one knows how to actually read and transcribe things anymore. We're all stupid and uh, which is great, I got it done, though, that's what matters. I got it done, whether or not.

Speaker 2: 3:39

It gets, gets approved and goes out into the wild. That'll take months to find out, but you want to know for a little while.

Speaker 1: 3:45

But either way sounds like a super productive week. I have two things for you. Got it. Give them to me. The first thing you said something I'll never experience the plagiarism. I actually think every single corporate role has some level of this. You think so I mean absolutely Think about programming.

Speaker 1: 4:02

Yeah, exactly, it's like what's the first thing you do when you run into a problem? You go to Stack Overflow, you search for the problem, you find it and you copy and paste it. You change the variables to match what you're trying to do and that's it. And then you have the pattern. It's like why read? And to me, I always thought that was a good thing because, overarchingly, why recreate the wheel if there's an algorithm that can solve something already?

Speaker 1: 4:24

Absolutely, I can also make this reference in product management no way do it. Well, there's things like you know putting together, let's say like a pitch deck for a new product, or you know a strategy deck. A lot of the times you go out and kind of look up. You know what does what is a good gap analysis look like, or what does a growth maturity model look like for a product, and you kind of see some examples out there and then you kind of bring it into your own and make it so you kind of inform yourself. You don't necessarily copy and paste, because you know it doesn't really make sense and the things that we do, but you kind of copy the format to get the point across.

Speaker 1: 5:00

And sometimes it does feel like plagiarism because it's like this wasn't my original thought. It was something that I saw out there that I thought like in my head it made sense exactly what I was trying to go for. And then I just brought it into our world. And do you tell anyone that? No, of course not. You bring it. And then people are like, wow, this is amazing. And it's like do I tell them? Do I tell them, bruce, that I just stole this off the interwebs?

Speaker 2: 5:22

so I think the fundamental difference between the kind of plagiarism you're talking about and the kind of plagiarism I'm talking about is in programming and in product management it usually stays internal and no one's going to care that you stole that from somewhere. Very true. In marketing it's all public facing and you can actually legally go after people for plagiarism. It never actually passes in the court of law. There was a great video. Oh, who did it? Uh h bomber guy on youtube who's like a phenomenal youtuber, did this like three and a half hour video expose on youtube plagiarism and it was just the most mind-blowing thing I've ever seen in my life. But one of the points he gets into was how very little plagiarism cases actually succeed in court. And it's it's not for lack of trying, it's just you know the typical depressing things about how you're not really protected as a as an individual and bigger companies will always win. But yeah, plagiarism it's interesting concept in general. But yeah, absolutely yeah, I say steal it. If it's internal, steal it.

Speaker 1: 6:26

If it's external, credit your sources. I was watching something as you roasted me the other week about my LinkedIn posts being all like chat GPT, which you're not wrong, but I'm doing it because I just don't care enough to put that much thought into it.

Speaker 2: 6:38

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 6:39

I watched this video that they were talking about. Kind of what we're talking about. It's you. You look up all these things to formulate your idea, but if you do too much of that, it really doesn't become your idea anymore. You kind of just become a culmination of all those things and you're just a clone like everyone else.

Speaker 1: 6:55

Like you don't have an original thought, and I think that's really interesting because it's it takes so much effort to actually come up with an original thought in your own you. You know, either write it in some sort of marketing prompt or, you know, into, make it into a visual, whatever it is like, do something creative with it. It takes so much energy to do that and it's probably more valuable than just like pulling something off the shelf or taking in like all those different inputs and then just making your carbon copy version of it. So it's really interesting to think about just making your carbon copy version of it. So it's really interesting to think about it's like how do you balance those things where I want to get the input so that I can have something better and I can increase my skill set, while also making sure that it stays your original thought and it is creative in nature and unique to what you're doing.

Speaker 2: 7:37

And you're also not going to learn anything. I think like that's, that's a good point, that's the biggest problem, I think with GPT.

Speaker 1: 7:57

Plagiarism, copy pasting is it eliminates you from going off doing the research, understanding what that means and then transcribing it into your own words. And even software engineering same thing, right? It's like sometimes I'd copy and paste those things. I'm like I don't really understand what this does and I've been messing around with chat gpt just for programming reasons and when I hit the limit of what it could solve for me and I had to like go in and understand it took me forever because I was like I don't understand any of this. Now I gotta go in and actually try and understand each individual piece. So, to your point, it does get rid of that point of learning and actually putting the brain power into it.

Speaker 2: 8:24

I'll cite, cite Alex Restrepo as a source for this, even though I've been using it since college, but I think he's probably said it more than I have, so I'm giving him full credit. The idea of you know learning something is and I'm going to butcher his words here but like, you learn it so that you can then go teach it to someone else, and that's right. You really learn and that's that. That is how I've learned, basically since the college days, because I knew I had to get things across to myself and all I could do that is what? Can I tell someone else what I've learned? And if I can do that, then I know I've committed to memory.

Speaker 1: 8:57

But that's a lot of reform yeah, I agree, and I actually think the best managers and kind of leaders, I mean. I'm even thinking back, Bruce, when we worked together. You kind of had to teach me how to do the things we were doing.

Speaker 2: 9:09

And so you're kind of forced to do that.

Speaker 1: 9:11

Yeah, exactly, you had to do both, but you had to learn those things so you could teach me those things, and you also had to set an example for how to learn those things so that I could, you know, take it beyond where you were. And so it's really interesting to think about. It's like. Is that kind of dying in corporate culture too?

Speaker 2: 9:26

Oh, it absolutely is. Yeah, surprising. I mean, I think enablement in general is kind of dying. We had a really. So the topic for this week's going to come from the Discord, but this is not a topic. We had a good discussion in there about management and learning how to be a manager in the discord recently and it's so funny just to hear like who has had any kind of training versus who was just kicked into the job. Yep, might be a good topic for a future episode, but I agree, training's rare. I run a lot of trainings. I never get trained.

Speaker 1: 9:58

Yep, I'm right there with you. You know there's been zero training in the in my current company. Been there for a while and I really haven't been trained on anything. There's some generic stuff, but around my specific role, the context that I work in, nothing yeah.

Speaker 2: 10:11

It's either sink or swim. Yep. Also, before we get into the topic, I have a second point.

Speaker 1: 10:17

I didn't even bring up Super quick. How good was your week without the bosses around so quiet, right, all the bosses around like so quiet, right, like all the stupid noisy crap that happens.

Speaker 2: 10:27

It's like, wow, it's crazy, it's crickets. You know it's weird. This is this is the weird part. Clark is yes, I had an incredibly productive week from a bruce got his stuff done, perspective right, but it actually and this is the part that even shocks me it didn didn't feel very productive in the well. We didn't have a lot of meetings and I didn't have a lot of conversations with people, so I didn't feel like much moved along beyond the work that I needed to do.

Speaker 1: 10:55

Interesting.

Speaker 2: 10:56

And you know I'm a deadliner kind of guy. When I get things done or when I get things assigned to me, I like to set a deadline to get it done long before, Because that's just how I operate, I don't like to have things lingering around. There was never any risk of me not finishing this stuff this week. It was nice to have the time just to get it done and not the schedule for it, but it was always going to get done long before. But it didn't feel very productive in the fact that I need leadership to review, approve, look at, To review, approve, look at, move along things, Because they're the gatekeepers and when the cats are away, the mice just wait for them to come back, Oddly.

Speaker 1: 11:33

So yeah, it's always the difference between startup vibe and enterprise vibe. It is it is.

Speaker 1: 11:39

It's really interesting to think about Because, yeah, every single person in your company right now is a critical gear in the wheel and if that person is missing it's like, okay, well, I guess we can't do much until they're back and you, you can do individual things, but actually getting something through the you know, through the cogs and the wheels, is difficult without those critical pieces missing. In a big enterprise a lot of you know I'm a very large, a lot of you know I'm a very large company a lot of what happens is it's kind of just dissemination of information and when the leaders are around, all you're doing is just catching up those leaders. Like you get emails, you get pings, you have to jump into report meetings, you basically just have to catch them up on the things that are happening so they can relay it up to their bosses, and so it's so when it's quiet and you know leaders are.

Speaker 1: 12:27

Two leaders that were gone this week. I was like man, I feel like I feel like I have so much free time, like it's incredible Not all these meetings are happening. I can actually be productive and do work until I got to today. I was just dead today for whatever reason, but the rest of the week was super great, productive and quiet. It was awesome.

Speaker 2: 12:41

Yeah, I actually had free, free, free time this week where I like I couldn't even do work, work, because I was caught up on everything, like there was no work, work to be done, which is just eerie and weird for me I miss.

Speaker 1: 12:52

I miss those days. I don't remember the last time I had a day where something, somewhere, didn't need to be done and my plate was completely clear it was strange.

Speaker 2: 13:01

I'll tell you that right now it was oh sorry, I jumped and interrupted you earlier, but yeah, let's do the topic oh, I was just gonna say, you know, based on the promotion or the, the uh promotions, that's the today's topic, based on the training conversation and the topic today which would be promotions, if you're not in the discord right now, there's like a there's a discord renaissance happening like there is, I feel, like this last couple of weeks we've had some of the best conversations and link shares and topics. Someone posted a job in there today. Yeah, apply to like, get in the discord y'all. If you're listening to this pod and you're not part of our community, you are missing out. It's like 50 of the show is in the discord, so make sure yeah, it's like the real value is there.

Speaker 1: 13:43

We're just two guys just chatting. That's pretty stupid conversation. Most of the time, the real value comes from the people in there and yet, to your point, the engagement has been incredible this past. The last two weeks really like there's been polls, there's been jobs, there's been awesome conversations, different perspectives from across the grove globe and grove, grove, grove grove, grove. Grove Street, never forget.

Speaker 2: 14:04

San.

Speaker 1: 14:04

Andreas, yeah for sure. But yeah, it's been awesome. Get in there if you're not, because I think it's just going to get better and better the more people join and the more we're engaging like this. So I agree, renaissance is a good word for it.

Speaker 2: 14:15

Yeah, it's the golden age. Get in there and the way. It's that simple, do it. So today's topic comes from the discord individual contributor. One of our favorite discord ease posted I believe it was last week in the news channel.

Speaker 2: 14:33

This article I don't know if you had a chance to read it, but it was the return of to office productivity argument is over. Hammering the latest nail into the return to office mandate coffin in a way that everyone can understand this comes from inccom, inccom incorporated, and this person who wrote this. I can't say I like the author or his, his writing style or their writing style. But there's some interesting points made in this article, namely, return to office is over, or the discussion around return to office is over Because the people have spoken. They don't care about upward progression and promotions, they'd rather work from home.

Speaker 2: 15:20

Hmm, and that statement which they go on to kind of talk about why they're making it, how they prove it and yada, yada, etc. It's, it's a decent read, but I'm way more curious about what you think about that clark, and I know you work a hybrid job, I work a remote job. I feel like we both talk to a lot of people on various spectrums of that system? Do you agree that let's just say young people, not freshers, just young people, maybe like people under 40 in the workplace, would rather work from home, work remote and forego the traditional every two years you get promoted model or move into upper management approach than to return to office and get that quote? Unquote perk.

Speaker 1: 16:09

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. I'm thinking through. You know a lot of people around me, a lot of the people I interact with, either like employees that I've hired or even like you know, close people, friends and family, who work different types of jobs, and I think what I've noticed is is a lot of truth to this statement. I think the new generations tend to value like freedom and autonomy more than like climbing the corporate traditional ladder and being a corporate slave. It's almost like it's got a stigma nowadays of like big corp is bad and I don't think it's funny. I don't think people know why, but they think it. They're like big corp is bad and I don't think it's funny. I don't think people know why, but they think it. They're like big corp is bad, like I want to be my own boss, I want to be an influencer you know, here's my mood board and they're like they don't want to do big corp, but they don't know why.

Speaker 1: 17:05

And I think you know alex even came on the podcast at one point he talked about this is like a corporate job is good for probably 85% of people you know provide stability. It provides a steady paycheck. It provides, you know, healthcare. You know especially well in America, provides healthcare, so you don't have to, you know, pay out of your pocket for all that and it's good, it's great actually. But a lot of people don't appreciate that because they see all the different. You know, with our instant gratification mindset these days, they see everybody else who's like a YouTube star or whatever, an influencer. I want to do that. I want to have that type of freedom.

Speaker 1: 17:43

Now am I just ranting or do you agree with any of this?

Speaker 2: 17:47

I mean I thought you had more to say because I was really getting into it. When you got to the YouTube influencer part, you were on a roll there, Clark.

Speaker 1: 17:54

Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's what I see. It's like the younger generation doesn't see that. But you know what's interesting and I've seen it with some people that are close to me they hit an age of realization. They're like, oh, shoot, like I am not making a lot of money. And they're like, oh, shoot, like I am not making a lot of money. And you know, I want to get married and own a home and you know, have all these nice things and yeah, this influencer thing ain't going to work out. I don't have it in me.

Speaker 2: 18:20

So I partially agree. But here's the bad news. Right, like to this, to that person, that type of person you're referring to, they could go today and get, let's just say, like a mid-salary job at a tech company. Let's say they're making $150,000 a year. Pretty good, right, like that's pretty good If you went from being YouTube fluencer to corporate strategist at TechCo $150,000. Sucks to suck. You can't buy a house with that. Like it's true, sorry, yeah, not married. If you want, uh, you want to have a kid. Uh, food prices are, you know, at an all-time high hope you like another mouth to feed. That's not contributing to the, the family funds. Like it sucks, dude.

Speaker 2: 19:06

You know, part of me thinks, yeah, the YouTube influencer probably is on this wagering salary train where you might have months where you hit big, you might not. I mean, my wife is a YouTuber and she makes money through YouTube and, like we see this, there are peaks and valleys to that whole ecosystem and she loves the work, loves to do it. It's great, but it's not sustainable, not stable, right, as a full-time career, and I think the thing is, looking at it, those people probably enjoy their lives a lot more, even though they might not be pulling the kind of numbers. Because the work is yours, you get to be gratified about the work you do. Because it's your work, you're putting it out there. You're getting direct engagement with your audience. If you listen to them, it should put you on an upward trend, like, yeah, you're chasing the algorithm and you're chasing, you know, the ad revenue, trains and all that, but at the end of the day, what is more satisfying? Consistent salary or the freedom to be your own boss?

Speaker 1: 20:13

I think the challenge is, though, is it's not easy, like most people won't be able to make it.

Speaker 2: 20:19

It's not nothing in life is easy, Clark. It's true.

Speaker 1: 20:21

You know, but reality sets in, I think, and people are like, yeah, you know, this is fine, but to your point, you know, food prices are rising, gas prices are rising, prices are rising, my ability to buy houses, like reality sets and it's like, okay, I love this, but it's not what's the right word, realistic right, you know, for actually living my life. So I have to become a corporate slave in order to do it and I think that's the crux of the topic.

Speaker 2: 20:48

So one of the points in the article is there was a return to office mandate from Dell and allegedly it resulted in over half the company's remote workers choosing to stay remote, even if they could no longer be promoted or hired into new roles within the company. They literally gave that up. They gave it up because they wanted to stay remote and I think remote is that extra little bit of freedom you're alluding to.

Speaker 1: 21:13

So it gives you the time to do your hobbies because you don't have to commute into the office, right? You lose that and generally your responsibilities are lower and you still have a decent income coming in. It might not be double triple, but that freedom, that autonomy that you have and the things you do outside of work I think that's what's shifting is work is no longer the value you think you can bring to the world. It's everything outside of it.

Speaker 2: 21:40

And, to your point, gas is going up. If you're driving to the workplace, that is an expense. Just being in your car, that's two hours of your day gone. If you have an hour commute, you know it's an hour of your day gone. If you have an hour commute, it's an hour of your day gone. You've got a half hour commute, but with traffic who knows right? You have to bring food to the office, either to refrigerate, or you're going out to eat lunch. There's the prep time involved with the food. You have to wear nice clothes in those.

Speaker 2: 22:06

Places right, you got to get ready. There's the time spent getting dressed. Putting you gotta get ready. Places right, you gotta get ready. There's the time spent getting dressed, you know, putting on your makeup or doing whatever your hair like.

Speaker 1: 22:21

There's so much time lost, right, you just can't get back and that you're not compensated for? Yeah, absolutely. And no one would have a taste of that without you know. Well, not one, but a large majority, I would say, of corporate jobs would never had a taste of that until COVID, where everyone was forced to.

Speaker 1: 22:37

And I think that little taste a little taste of freedom that we've been locked under for, you know, decades, hundreds of years into this normal model, like that norm changed and I think that's what gave it, that gave us to your point that little bit of light where it's like, wait a second, I like other things other than working and here's, here's, the interesting thing to me, and this is where please go on the discord.

Speaker 2: 23:02

Prove me wrong. I think if remote work was actually bad, we would see studies about it, the fact that there hasn't been like a major time magazine article saying, yeah, remote work, 50% drop in productivity. Because it's not true. And I know I know because I spent half of my life in an office and I spent the second half of my life working remote. And I can tell you for a fact and I spent the second half of my life working remote and I can tell you for a fact I am far more productive here than I was there because of the distractions you know. Every time Clark came into my office and asked to go play ping pong and be like well, fine it's Clark, I guess I have to like.

Speaker 2: 23:46

The productivity just skyrockets at home. Plus the focus, just the uninterrupted focus. Yeah, absolutely. I don't think they can prove any otherwise and that's why we haven't seen it. I think, truly, this comes down to the ego of the company wanting people in their expensive buildings, and you know now they're threatening. Well, we're not going to promote you, we're not going to let you apply for new jobs like I don't care yeah, absolutely, it's so interesting and I think I agree with you, it's and maybe it's not the generation like I.

Speaker 1: 24:16

I wonder if this is, and maybe you know you and I are close to the same generation. We're the same generation. Yeah, I, I'm curious, like for other generations that are older, if they also had this same trend, if they got a taste of this and they're like hold up, like now I need to be remote, like this is way better. And I would argue, like the people that I work with, the people that I associate with that are older than me, did get a taste of that and they're like yeah, I can work from home and take care of my kids and, you know, have all this time to like do laundry in the middle of the day incredible. And so I think it's less about a generational thing. I think it's more of, yeah, the world changed when covid happened and, to your point, everyone got a taste of that freedom and autonomy. And they're like shoot, this is way better than living the regular corporate life it's.

Speaker 2: 25:00

it's the same way they saw, like when they started doing those studies in europe, where the four-day work week, yeah, and they found productivity didn't change at all, but happiness just increased Like that's a scary result. That's a really scary result because we're basically saying the way we've been doing things for 100 years is wrong. Right, and there's nothing that I'm going to generalize here, but there's nothing that old, rich white guys hate worse than being told they've been wrong for 100 years. So you know we can't do that.

Speaker 1: 25:32

but here we are. Well, I can tell you this week, four really productive days. One day I might as well just not work. Today I could just take the day off because I was.

Speaker 1: 25:41

I was useless, I was a little slug sitting in my chair it should just be given to you, it should be given to all of us I would say like this is the day I would have rather have done something like creative or just fun, and not worked, and I would have had probably more productivity on Monday, knowing like I am refreshed now and I don't just have Saturday and Sunday. So so it's interesting to think about, like the different, you know length of the work week and how many days you work and you know the type of work you do and how that balance could affect your productivity.

Speaker 2: 26:14

So here's the hypothetical All right hit me. Would you be okay if your company said you can be fully remote Clark for the rest of your days, but you will never get promoted here or able to apply for another job in this company Again? You'll still get your, you know, 3% to 10% increase yearly for good work and inflation, but promotions are off the table. Job changes are off the table, that's it.

Speaker 1: 26:49

That's it, it's interesting.

Speaker 2: 26:52

would you take the offer?

Speaker 1: 26:56

I think a lot, yeah, no more growth, you're locked in. Yeah, a lot of what I do and just the culture of the company I think can't be done but if it locks in, like my responsibilities and what it is, like where I am now in my life at this company, I think, I'd do it.

Speaker 1: 27:15

Yeah, the thing though I and I mentioned this on previous episodes I do get energy from being around people. One day a week is all I need, but, like, I enjoy seeing my team, I enjoy when we get to collaborate together and solve hard problems or figure out solutions to things, and I do get energy from people, and that's why I think being fully remote would be hard for me to work as hard as I do. I think I'd have to have some other like. I probably would start being more social, because I'm not extremely social, but I need to fill that void with something, because that's just the in my nature of I need to be. I need to have that kind of energy and collaboration with others.

Speaker 2: 27:55

What if we throw in the caveat it doesn't have to be like one day a week you go in, but it's. You know we're going to do quarterly get togethers in, you know, atlanta, georgia, with the team, one week on site, team building planning, all of this, like it's, it's in bursts, it's not weekly right?

Speaker 1: 28:17

I think maybe the better question is. I'm curious on your answer. Uh-huh, you have two choices, okay, you either stay on your normal trajectory back to the office, you know, let's say it's four days a week or five days, whatever it is, and you can grow. You can, you know, increase your salary. You're not locked in anywhere.

Speaker 1: 28:37

You can keep climbing that corporate ladder, you little little mouse or I like how you phrase that no bias at all or you get fully locked in at where you are and to your point, you have full, your, you can be remote for the rest of your days, keep working here, same salary, everything. You get fully locked in at where you are and, to your point, you have full, you can be remote for the rest of your days, keep working here, same salary, everything. And so you kind of have those two options. And I think, out of those two options to your point earlier, I'm hybrid. So you know, I'm kind of in a different spot, but I would rather be remote than be forced to go back to the office five days a week.

Speaker 2: 29:12

Yes, a hundred percent, and I would give up climbing that ladder. 100. Yeah, and you already know my answer I I could care less about getting promoted at this point. I think I've reached the top of where I go and I'm fine with that. I like well, I could actually go one level down and I'd be fine with that too.

Speaker 1: 29:27

I think about that a lot. I'm like man. Wouldn't it be nice just to be a software engineer again?

Speaker 2: 29:31

Yeah, part of me would really like one level above me. Part of me would actually like to not have to deal with leadership.

Speaker 1: 29:40

I agree, just drop me out of managerial and just have me be an individual contributor again.

Speaker 2: 29:45

Yeah, I want to be far away from the decision making. I want to be in the basement. There goes Bruce writing his little blog. Yeah, I want to be far away from the decision making.

Speaker 1: 29:50

I want to be in the basement, it's so hard.

Speaker 2: 29:51

There goes Bruce, right in his little blog. He just didn't will.

Speaker 1: 29:55

It's so hard because it's like half your body's like man. If I get promoted, I get to make those decisions. I get more money.

Speaker 2: 30:03

You don't make decisions. That's true, very true.

Speaker 1: 30:07

Or I go down one and then, you know, I make a little less money but I have less responsibility. But then I'm not the one making the decisions, like I do with the other crappy decisions they make above me. Is that worse?

Speaker 2: 30:19

In some ways, it hurts more when you're in the room where the decisions get made and you just think to yourself well, this makes absolutely no sense, and I could say that, and they'll get mad at me, makes absolutely no sense. And I could say that, and they'll get mad at me, and if I'm right, then they'll get really mad at me, or I can say nothing and they'll still get mad at me, because they were wrong and I said nothing.

Speaker 1: 30:44

So, yeah, no, you're hard in the other direction. You would rather be fully remote. Lock me in. I'm never going anywhere. Just let me have the freedom I have now and don't change my responsibilities or my pay.

Speaker 2: 30:53

Tell me what you wanted to do. Lock in my pay, give me five percent increase every year and we will never speak again.

Speaker 1: 31:00

I'm so good with that trajectory, oh man, and it varies based on where you are in your career. I know this answer does. Yes, like young people who have, like, started climbing the ladder. I know this was me just a couple years ago, probably three, four years ago but no, definitely lock in. No, let me climb that ladder to the top. But then the more and more you get up that ladder, you realize you're waiting on others to leave and you're like shoot man, do I want to do what I'm doing for 10 more years to get to that next level?

Speaker 2: 31:29

not really you know those pictures, those like collages, where it's, you know, someone's face or a pretty field or something, and you're looking at it from a distance like, wow, what a neat picture. And then the closer you get to the picture, you realize it's actually made up of lots of little pictures. I think climbing the corporate ladder is a lot like one of those. But the closer you get to the, you realize it's just a bunch of middle fingers pointing right to you and you think, well, this is a mistake of it coming close. Like the picture looks so nice from far away. I should have stayed so far away from this. Now I'd like to climb down the ladder, please. I'd like to get off.

Speaker 1: 32:10

Oh my goodness. But yeah, I would say generally like this article, going back to the very heart of it, I think it has changed. It has changed. It has 100% changed. I think generationally it's changed.

Speaker 1: 32:21

I think COVID was a big reason for that, you know, because everybody to your point got the glimpse of there's a better way to do things than just go to an office and slave away every day of the week and be gone from my family for 10 hours a day. And I think that 100% has changed the world and how everybody views it. I also think just instant gratification and the way the younger generation gets to experience the world. They're changing their perspectives on life and work because they have more visibility into something outside of the norm of what's just right in front of you. It's like, oh yeah, you don't have your parents and your grandparents and everyone and that's your only reference. So they work the same job 45 years and then they died. It's like now you can see a bunch of people making a living, doing what they want to do and traveling the world and doing all those things, which I think changes your perspective on work and life too.

Speaker 2: 33:11

Couldn't have said it better, clark, I think that's it right there.

Speaker 1: 33:16

Remember when I used to wrap things up?

Speaker 2: 33:18

Yeah, and do like a summary.

Speaker 1: 33:25

Yeah, we used to do that. Is this show getting better or worse?

Speaker 2: 33:28

It's hard to tell sometimes Succinctness is a goal and I feel like if you listen to it, if you listen to it from start to finish and you don't know where we're at right now, that's a you problem, that's not an us problem, like you know, if you make it to the end, you make it to this point.

Speaker 1: 33:45

God bless you.

Speaker 2: 33:46

That's all I got to say Everyone. Now I think we are at the end, because I know we wanted to keep this short, so I want to make sure we don't blow past the opportunity to play our favorite game show in a podcast. There's nothing, there is.

Speaker 1: 33:58

There's not, there is.

Speaker 2: 34:02

Oh no, what do you mean? It's the game within a game. We play it. You can go to the Discord channel. What do you mean? Where our listeners will create memes based on things we said in the previous episode? And Clark, did you return this week? No, and there's two in there. No, there are two there was actually more above that too. Oh man, I'm not doing those, though there's eight in there. Why don't you do?

Speaker 1: 34:27

I think the latest two.

Speaker 2: 34:29

The latest one is fine if you want to keep it short.

Speaker 1: 34:32

The latest one is fine, if you want to keep it short.

Speaker 2: 34:35

The latest one, Please go ahead. Explain the meme with your words.

Speaker 1: 34:39

I will explain to you with the words. And this is if you don't know what you mean. It's, you know, great memes posted in our Discord and it has to be in relation to the last episode. So we give callbacks to kind of go into it. I think Alex kind of coined that before it was just random, but now I think it's supposed to be a callback, which is awesome.

Speaker 1: 34:59

So the meme is three, no, four gentlemen in a room. Three, maybe four gentlemen in a room. I think it's four, I count four, it's definitely four. There's someone in the background like is that a guy or a girl? Four gentlemen in a room. They all are looking in one direction. They all look like they are sweating and dripping wet, like it's absolutely just poured all over them. They're just dripping, they're soaking wet and there's no way a human could perspire this much. But there is that much. Perspiration. On the table is what seems to be some sort of paraphernalia of some kind. It looks like drugs and money all sitting around and it's titled Sweating in the Narc Room. And if you listen to the last episode, this was a slip up by Bruce where he meant to say something else and instead he said knock.

Speaker 2: 35:52

I meant to say knock room, which is an IT term where they do all their control, but I said sweating in the knock room and this image is just perfect. It looks like it's AI-generated. It is. It definitely is, but this is AI at its best.

Speaker 1: 36:08

It's so good Sweating in the knock room. All those people at CrowdStrike in the knock room, all those people at CrowdStrike in the knock room, probably looked like this when that happened.

Speaker 2: 36:15

They're like oh man what did we just do? And they might have had to crack out some substances. Considering what it did to their weekend, they probably were up for like 72 hours straight.

Speaker 1: 36:24

So they needed those substances and those dollars on the table. Is their company saying you've got to pay us?

Speaker 2: 36:33

Give us our salaries now. Yep, that's it. That's it. Crushed it, clark, good job. That was what do you mean? Our our fun little podcast game, show game. If you want to play, easiest way to do it, like I said earlier, go into your show notes, click our corporate strategy link tree. You can get to our discord, our website, our newsletter, our store. That doesn't work. There's all kinds of things you can do in that link tree. I recommend just clicking them all and seeing what does and doesn't work. It's a fun game, it's a great game.

Speaker 2: 36:59

Thank you to our listeners as always, both your participation in the Discord and listening to the show. We see you, we hear you, we love you. We really appreciate you. Please share this with your friends. If you think what we're putting out there is useful and valuable, we'd love for you to share the pod with all of those around you, because that's how we grow and do better uh you got anything else clark?

Speaker 1: 37:20

no, it's incredible, you know. Go on there, sign up, join the discord. It's free, it's free, it's great, it takes a click. Also, you can just go to our website too. We have a newsletter that goes out every time there's a new episode. Be the first to know ton of great stuff. So appreciate you guys listening, appreciate you in the discord or appreciate it is dot biz dispense for business.

Speaker 2: 37:39

Yeah, don't forget, that's all. Sure. Did you know, clark, that we are a pure five-star podcast on apple music, are we? Yeah, five, pure, nothing less than five. If you want to help break that, please go give us a review on Apple Podcast.

Speaker 1: 37:59

If you give us anything less than five, we will kick you out of the Discord. We hate constructive criticism.

Speaker 2: 38:04

Keeping with our theme for how you review people in the previous episodes. Nothing but fives, please, please. Well, that's all we got for you this week. Keep climbing that corporate ladder. I'm Bruce and I'm Clark and you're on mute. We will see you next week.