The HR industry is at a crossroads. Hosts Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich have been through it all, the highs and the lows - IPOs, layoffs, executive turnover, board meetings, culture changes, and more. With a lineup of industry vets and experts, Nolan and Kelli break down the nitty-gritty details, trade offs, and dynamics of constructing high performing companies. Through unfiltered conversations that can only happen between seasoned practitioners - Kelli and Nolan dive deep into the kind of leadership-level strategy that often happens behind closed doors.
Classic case of HR overreach creating issues where there are none. Even High School kids don't need permission to date. Essentially, Barren Karen the HR manager with her 6 cats, astrology charts, personality tests etc is all upset that others are having fun...
This conversation was not on brand with the "heretics" part of your name. Only Nolan brought up some of the legitimate concerns people have with DEI, but those didn't get much airtime.
I think 8 months is way too long and I am surprised that the leadership team was ok with that. But 4 weeks notice and you got walked out? That is so petty of Google and for $10k. What happened to do no evil? I think 4 weeks is fair and that’s what I plan to do but damn hate to see how you got burned.
Really great points and especially with Tech/IT. I think they were some of the highest paid workers in the last 20-30 years and now we are going to see that normalize now.
Imagine feeling judged by the dot system every single day-it's a subtle but constant reminder that you're being measured in ways that can feel arbitrary. It's easy for demoralization to set in when your value is reduced to a color code, rather than being recognized for the full scope of your contributions and potential. Yup, that’s a no for me!
PIPPER packages may not be legally compliant in Canada as terminating an employee without cause and without severance could be deemed constructive dismissal.
PIPs are used by bad managers to harass competent employees. Usually they are covering up unethical behavior. When I was issued PIPs, the bosses had another person they already hired for my job.
DEI is trash. Anyone that says DEI in my presence has 0 chance of getting hired. The same losers with pronouns in their resumes lol. NO THANKS, more unnecessary waste of time. More needless reasons to perpetuate the constant consideration of race, when we should be thinking a lot less about it. Same with CULTure. Much more with delusional problems, such as this very sudden wave (fad) of people who don't know what sex they are, for some reason. Gender means "type of", from the latin root Genus. Genus of human; male or female or the extremely rare intersex. Just to define the word, correctly. A bunch of bored people worried about useless "issues". Just go to work like a regular person and stop worrying about all the personal crap. It's WORK! Get to work! You want to know about someone, personally? Get their phone number, text them, drop them a tweet. People are so lame. If the job is already the job, who cares how diverse the employee pool is? Does it change the requirements of the job? Improve the outcome? No, the job that needs a body to do the job is the same job no matter who does it. Not only that, but if you want to be "included", be desirable/attractive in your nature. If people don't include you, it's because you're not magnetic to be included. Not everyone can go to every party. Being yourself, especially if you're going out of your way to be unnatural or weird, is not always a good idea. Especailly socially. Sorry, not every has the same social value, DUE TO THEIR OWN DISPOSITION or inadequacies. So if you don't feel like you belong or fit-in at work, CHANGE!!! Or quit. Whatever you do, grow-up and stop crying. I've seen many people, in the time frame in the country, in the regions of the country, where they have everyting stacked against them, on the surface. It was who they really are that allowed them to excel and rise through the ranks. They were actually qualified and special. Not someone giving them a token hand-out to make them feel wanted and get some chip on an imaginary business index that doesn't mean anything. When you go to work: leave your sexuality at home, nobody cares about the genus of person you're fucking/dating/etc. Leave your culture at home, unless it's specific to multiculture day. Stop being proud of the genetic/spatial anomoly that you were born a particular color, in a particular place. Pride is reserved for your accomplishments. Especially appreciable ones (which throws pride month out the window). Nobody cares that you're weird, but definitely nothing to be "proud" of. They need to rename it to shame month. Maybe you spend that time and money into investing into the actual employees rather than some principles that don't pay anyone's mortgage, which is why they are at work in the first place! To earn money. It's always the weak people that have a hard time just coping with having to work that always want to try to make it like it's their own personal home, where they are celebrated, no matter what. Get off of the fucking gas. You want to be recognized and included and celebrated? DO SOMETHING NOTEWORTHY! Existing is not enough, especially if you go out of your way to do so in an unappealing manner. Biden is going to lose, and the next president in office is going to destroy a lot of these childish concepts, the way some states are already banning them from schools and places of employmet. Lemme just say "I told ya so" in advance ;) Zur welcome
Performance Reviews make sense, but PIPs do need to be abolished. They're not designed to improve anything. Not to mention, they are absolutely traumatizing.
Thank you Steve for coming on the show! Subscribe for more incredible interviews delivered weekly. Timestamps below. Check out our sponsors: Lattice www.lattice.com/hrheretics and Continuum bit.ly/40hlRa9 (08:30) LinkedIn’s biggest problem was recruiting: Why would anyone want to work here? (18:49) Sponsors: Lattice | Continuum (21:13) Overcoming the resistance against boring HR foundations (23:27) How to navigate leadership’s expectations for HR (27:52) Steve’s take on HR leaders (28:30) How Steve led his team at LinkedIn (30:21) Stories from working with LinkedIn’s CEO Jeff Weiner (37:42) How to get other stakeholders to own comp (42:30) When LinkedIn went public (46:48) Counseling organizations on creating opportunities with a distributed remote nature (54:13) Blitzcaling at LinkedIn - what didn't go well and finding the right leaders for a billion dollar company (01:01:35) Would Steve return to the chief people seat? (01:04:03) Rapid fire: Steve’s favorite hire and interview question (01:12:20) Kelli & Nolan's segment: Hate speech at work
I agree with you totally Nolan. Hiring Managers are still largely biased, and as you said, they are just humans and bias is encoded in our DNA. And I believe any such bias strongly manifests when a human takes a decision that impacts themselves - e.g., hiring for own team. If they are interviewing a candidate for another manager's team, this bias will be lesser. It will definitely take many many more years for us humans to overcome these biases. So job seeker, be aware!!
Re: the open for work linkedin banner - I’ve not only heard the same from founders, hiring managers and executives at a spectrum of companies, I’m shocked more people don’t widely accept this is the case. I will say there’s nuance to how it’s applied but humans are inherently biased animals and if you don’t think this happens, I have a car I’d like to sell you. Also, “HR monoculture” is a real thing that permeates conferences, “HR thought leaders” on linkedin and most of the hopelessly well intended yet naive narratives spewed by people who had the luxury of a mostly pre-determinant outcome that gave them the halo of “success”. You know who you are! ;-)
Thank you Molly for coming on the show! Subscribe for more incredible interviews delivered weekly. Timestamps below. Check out our sponsors: Lattice www.lattice.com/hrheretics and Continuum bit.ly/40hlRa9 (03:30) Behind Molly’s viral articles and her years at Google and Facebook (06:15) Emotions at work (08:39) Normalizing founder/ early team depression (09:50) Lessons scaling at different stages (11:00) Becoming the 9th employee at Quip (14:20) Overnight success (15:35) You have to pick a big problem (19:10) Sponsors: Lattice | Continuum (21:30) Navigating a career with a high risk appetite (23:50) Molly’s Chamath story (27:25) Creating opportunities by cementing relationships (33:40) How to get teams to work well together (37:45) Hiring great execs (40:30) Exec tenures (43:00) Moving faster on terminations (49:50) What do founders want now from a CPO? (53:10) Rapid fire: best hire, best interview question (54:30) Kelli and Nolan on the Open to Work controversy
Another great episode ! Finally impactful business conversations with Talent and HR as a natural partner in driving financial success ! And thankfully none of the HR jargon !!!! HR speaking the language of business. Hallelujah !
Thank you Tomasz for coming on the show! Subscribe for more incredible interviews delivered weekly. Timestamps below. Check out our sponsors: Lattice www.lattice.com/hrheretics and Continuum bit.ly/40hlRa9 (02:40) Span of Control: eliminating middle management (04:19) Tom's take on the ratio of managers to doers (06:19) What should ARR per employee be? (07:19) Talent today vs 5 years ago (08:30) Tom's view on exec searches (11:45) Evaluating the decision for a down round (13:15) Sponsors: Lattice | Continuum (15:00) Opportunities for new talent (16:45) Flexibility of Mind (19:15) Hiring: Getting it Right and Changing When It Goes Wrong (20:40) How should departures be communicated to boards? (21:00) Life cycle of an executive (22:49) On interim roles (25:15) How Tom diligences people (26:20) What makes a great head of people (30:30) Google's acquisition of Looker from Tom and Kelli's perspective (31:00) How does a Mergers and Acquisition process work? (37:00) The 3 kinds of Acquisitions (39:15) Where the puck is going for venture-backed tech companies (41:25) Predictions for AI (43:55) HR Folks and founders should get back on the offense in 2024 (45:00) Kelli and Nolan on navigating politics at work
Thank you Colleen for coming on the show! Subscribe for more incredible interviews delivered weekly. Timestamps below. Check out our sponsors: Lattice www.lattice.com/hrheretics and Continuum bit.ly/40hlRa9 (01:43) The Carta story: executive terminations and lawsuits (05:15) Rolling layoffs (13:45) Setting expectations after a layoff event (17:49) Sponsors: Lattice | Continuum (19:23) Employee accountability and RTO debate (21:00) CHRO/CPO’s responsibility to be the voice for the company (26:20) Moral challenges and breaking up with a CEO - infamous Zynga story (31:28) Colleen’s experience being an advisor for Silicon Valley, the HBO series (34:25) Recruiting lessons from Silicon Valley (36:20) Colleen’s tactical lessons from multiple M&As (43:30) Most important ‘gotchas’ to watch out for in M&A process (47:08) Transitioning from HR to VC (50:40) Being a long date in the interview process to create opportunities (53:15) Navigating the choice between CPO at a big company, COO, and VC (55:40) Colleen’s best hire(s): Mike Vernal and his crew (58:28) Colleen’s best interview question
Cannot agree more with Patty! After 30 years plus in HR I have had to deal with these employee issues. Giving context is so important in communicating with employees
Huge thank you to Patty for being our first guest. Subscribe for more incredible interviews delivered weekly. Timestamps below. Check out our sponsors: Lattice (www.lattice.com/hrheretics) and Continuum (bit.ly/40hlRa9). (00:00) Episode Preview (02:19) How we got Patty on this podcast (05:22)The true story behind Netflix’s culture deck (09:15) High Performance cultures actually take 4-5 years to pull off (09:40) Why releasing the culture deck changed Netflix’s hiring immediately (11:33) What to do when employees are averse to change (15:10) Delivering effective feedback (18:15) Sponsors: Lattice | Continuum (19:50) Why execs need to get used to short tenures (22:10) If you’re successful your company will change (24:30) Retention and the truth we need to tell employees about career pathing (26:19) How Reed Hastings hired Patty McCord (29:45) How HR officers can get a seat at the table (33:25) The P&L is the most important HR metric (35:10) Are HR leaders getting soft? (37:40) What Patty would tell her younger self (39:00) Why an HR officer is a business leader, not a business partner (40:00) What do HR people do? (41:30) Fixing equal pay and compensation strategy (43:28) Why HR keeps doing stupid stuff and needs to abandon best practices (48:10) What HR can learn from product managers (52:44) Compartmentalization and terminations (55:20) If Patty rewrote her book, she would change the chapter about relationships at work (56:40) Why HR people invite inappropriate therapist-style relationships (59:50) Why having arguments at work should be normalized (01:04:25) Does Patty miss being in the arena? (01:06:58)The portions of the workforce most impacted right now
