Korn Ferry Buys AMS, Reuters Cuts Engineers, and Work Gets Weird

[00:00:11] What is going on everybody, it is Ryan Leary, William Tincup here with another episode of The BARF Is that a Mickey's shirt? Like Mickey's, baby The beer? Yeah I think last week you had, what'd you have last week? You had the uh I got like eight of them I got all the liquor You had the Jesus, you had the Millers, and now Mickey's Try it, baby We call that a problem No, it's a respect to my misspent youth

[00:00:40] That's all it is, it's an ode Yeah, and then we spent like ten minutes on call 45 in OE That's right Is what we did, yeah My son asked me what Old English was, that was the funniest shit He came into the office and he's like, hey man, what's Old English? Is that like something British? I'm like, yeah It's from the UK Yeah Who are they talking? It's actually paint thinner, don't ever touch it Just stay away from it Nice, nice Alright man, so we, you know, it's like the third week in a month

[00:01:09] So that means we've got Nick back on with us from Candy Tech Nick, what's going on, brother? What's up guys, thanks for having me back on Yeah, yeah, you're lucky, we don't let people back on often Nick's headed on a vacation He's headed out Yeah, so we have, what, 23 minutes to get this in It's going to be easy Or he's just going to bounce Yeah He's just like I don't want to happen to him, bad connection We've got a lot to pack in

[00:01:38] We've got, we've got, we've narrowed it down We've got like four stories to talk about And then we've got, we've got this wheel That's right We're going to spin and we're going to give away some cash money But we're going to hold off on this We're going to make people listen to the episode for a bit So I think that's smart William, kick us off, brother Alright, a hiring manager wrote in to ask a manager After interviewing a candidate who had discovered that the interview That someone that they had had a major workplace conflict with 17 years earlier still worked at the company

[00:02:07] A candidate considered sending a cease and desist letter after not getting the job While comments debated Whether holding a grudge for the early two decades Or expecting someone else not to Was more bizarre behavior So I'll ask Nick first You apply to a job You find out that there's someone that's been there for two decades That you had a beef with We don't know what the beef was But let's say it was significant What do you think?

[00:02:37] I think two decades is a long time I think people can change Despite what, you know, some people don't believe that I do think people can change And I think holding a grudge There's a phrase I love Which is holding a grudge is like drinking poison Expecting the other person to die So I would try and work through it You know, talk with the other person Have a conversation You know, work through it like an adult Rather than just Go straight for a cease and desist Is a bit extreme, I think People get out of prison in two decades

[00:03:07] For putting a knife in somebody's eyeball Yeah Get over it Move on Yeah Leave it, let it go Yeah Oh, is that your official run? That was my official take on that Move on Yeah, like that was Oh, I wasn't saying No We can talk more about I was just saying That person needed to move on Shift the person All right That's a really, really shitty story Move on That's what that's called No It's your shirt It's your story Let's go

[00:03:35] This is gonna start Your workplace grudge against each other 100% You remember what you said? Yeah If there hasn't been a grudge at this point It ain't Good point It ain't happening People ask all the time, Nick How do you work with this dude? That's right I call his wife occasionally She calms him down She walks him up That's right Talks him off the ledge Oh no, he didn't mean that He said much worse than me He was talking about Putting acid on a body To get rid of it

[00:04:05] What do we do? All right So Corn Fairy Corn Fairy You guys probably heard this Corn Fairy acquires AMS For 1.1 billion dollars I like this for a number of reasons I like this because Corn Fairy is executive search Right They do leadership development Orchid salt and the whole bit AMS is like the dominant player In volume And so in volume hiring And so specifically in RPO

[00:04:34] So I think bringing these two together Just make a lot of sense Especially since AMS Is in theory Constantly going to have Reoccurring predictable revenue Because it's high volume And it's contract Whereas Corn Fairy They're going to go up and down As the market shifts One of the things And William You and I know a bunch Nick I'm sure you know A bunch of people Over at AMS

[00:05:04] One of the One of the things I really kind of As I was thinking about This last night Corn Fairy They already know How organizations Should hire Right They're doing assessments They've got the skills intelligence They've got all the leadership data Benchmarking AMS Is hiring at scale I just don't see anything bad here Unless I'm I'm sure there's something bad I'm sure one of you guys Have something bad I'm staying positive on this And I'm giving it a thumbs up

[00:05:37] Nick what do you think Yeah I actually agree I think it's a very good Indication Into Broadly where The recruitment agency market Is heading I think there's been A lot of doom and gloom On the agency side Especially With the post-COVID boom After that As the market started To normalize and stabilize A lot of people I speak to in the agency world Which by the way I spent 10 years On the agency side Were very worried about What the future looks like Plus with How much AI Is being introduced

[00:06:06] Into the hiring process Where does The agency world sit And I think This is a really good Signal That the agency Isn't going anywhere Potentially it needs to Update And operate slightly differently And be more AI native In the way that it advises And probably be a bit More consultative And I think actually If you take Corn Ferry's Executive search approach Which is much more Consultative Into a high volume AMS model We'll see something Really interesting But largely I think It's a very interesting Acquisition And I think it's A good signal For us to come

[00:06:36] So AMS Is short for Alexander Mann solutions Right We all know that The only thing That shocked me About the whole thing The fit and all that stuff Everything makes sense Is the price tag I thought 1.1 billion In this market That's pretty low I thought that was Low as well I thought That was going to be A much bigger price tag Because I had to Move up with A Deco And Manpower

[00:07:06] And Ronstadt And some of these others So like That was the shocker Was the price tag Other than that The fit And everything else Yeah All that stuff Makes That tracks Just I finally knew If I could buy AMS for 1.1 billion Someone else There should have been A lot of people Wanting to buy them So that's it Alright Let me give you Another one real quick A discussion erupted Across Reddit I love stories from Reddit After workers Compared notes

[00:07:35] On how much Corporate culture Has changed Since COVID The common Themes Weren't Pay or perks There were Workplace feel And more Workplaces feel More transactional Onboarding is harsher Culture fit Culture fit Has become more important Than competence And employees feel Like they're competing With teammates Instead of learning Alongside of them Thousands of comments Piled on

[00:08:05] With similar experiences So the first thing That stuck out to me Is first of all Culture fit And it's relationship With return to work But what do y'all Think about the In general Do you think That the workplaces Have changed Have we regressed Have we progressed What do you think And Ryan Why don't you start I knew you were Going to call me first Because I wasn't Listening to you That's cool No I kind of wasn't And it like Left my thought Left my mind No You know

[00:08:35] I don't I don't know I was talking With We were recording Yesterday And talking about The workplace Changing I just think It's cyclical I think I think the Workplace is always Changing You need to adapt Or move on I'm very move on Today Yes I'm very move on Today I have Workplace culture Got it Yeah Yeah I mean it's A lot of this Is common sense

[00:09:05] To me This is why This is why I never get hired If people listen To these episodes Well the thing is Is in Reddit First of all Reddit is not Reddit is like The YouTube comments It's where Humanity goes to die Yeah I totally understand that The thing though That's really interesting Is that They think that It's worse now And I'm trying to Think of like What they compared it to And they're comparing it To COVID When you didn't have A workplace So you're comparing An orange to Venus So when you don't Have a workplace And all of a sudden

[00:09:34] Now you do have Workplace It means you have Workplace rules And so any of those rules Hey you only have An hour for lunch Whoa What is this In Russia You know God forbid Yeah Exactly

[00:10:15] So I think Me personally I was remote Five years They can go to the gym When they want Or get their kids And you know They're not being You know Visually watched All the time Probably feel like They're losing some freedom I actually think Some of the comments Maybe more It would make more sense To me Actually if people Were still remote

[00:10:45] Because I can understand Why you would feel like You're fighting With your teammates More if you don't Have that personal Relationship And they are just A name on Slack Or a face on Zoom But when you're Actually working with them And you're seeing them And you're in a room I would think That would build More culture So yeah I think probably It depends also Where these people Are in their careers A lot of people They worked in an office For 10 years Had a short break Because of COVID Then when they returned They were used to it If it's your first time Actually being in an office I can imagine It being quite jarring After having so much freedom

[00:11:15] But yeah Probably just depends On the individual's Preferences Certain companies So who knows Yeah You know It's interesting to me Because I feel Nick you said Something about If you're in the office You communicate more You know Collaborate more If you're in the office A lot of people Are gun shy Right Everybody's a A keyboard warrior And can get real tough When they're not in person Because they don't have to Stare at you in the face Right My camera went out Oh sorry I can't get on camera But I can talk

[00:11:45] Really bad to you Right And I can be real firm You can't do that In an office And I've often thought Is that good or bad The situation That we're in Well I know Yeah Which is why You don't work In an office That's exactly right I was prohibited From going to the office Because of that No I have I have The opposite Of conflict Anxiety I actually seek Conflict So I was actually Bad at work

[00:12:14] Because of that Because when someone Say oh I have this Problem You're fucking weak Like what the fuck's Wrong with you You know And I would talk Like that And it's like We should We should probably If you could If you could work You're not getting You're not getting The point You know It's like Okay

[00:12:44] Maybe Maybe Maybe those people Who are a bit Conflict resistant They internalize it more And it builds up More in their head And that creates More of a Right An issue You know Actually when you address it And talk about it Opening with someone Sometimes you can just Minimize something That feels really big So Yeah I wonder how much If any Culture Politics Have worked Have changed That's actually Really fascinating to me I don't think anybody's I'm sure there's people That have done studies on this But like

[00:13:13] I know Pre-COVID That especially In hierarchical organizations It was You know It was It was You know It was one of those deals It was It was a bunch of sharks To get to the next level You really had to Get to the next level I hope that part Is gone Or at least diminished Like it's It's more outcome based It's more Collaborative based I hope that Some of that Politics stuff You're probably never Going to get rid of Workplace politics But

[00:13:43] I hope that some of it Has at least been diminished But We'll see I think I think all of that's changing It's You know With Yeah With technology That we have now Yeah Not everybody Wants to be a people manager And that's Which we've talked about A ton But Before people took it They're like Yeah I'll take the raise Because I need the money I want the money I want the job I gotta go up I think with technology And the last Six years or so We've seen You can go

[00:14:12] Lateral Horizontally Right And still take promotions And still do other things And And grow within the company I think The whole thing is It's like As humans You can keep fighting Each other But But Gentic AI Doesn't fight So Like Who Who You No It doesn't fight For Those types of things Yeah Yeah You know what I'm saying Like It's not It's It's gonna do its work Yeah It's gonna do its work 24-7

[00:14:41] And so We're wasting time Fighting with each other When we shouldn't Be fighting each other We should be supportive Of each other And learning how to Manage Gentic AI We should be fighting Our Gentic AI So it does a better job Rather than Fighting with each other And if you see Some of my Code code prompts That's what I'm doing Make it better Be quicker Come on Come on What are you Are you taking the day off Come on Nick Tell us I mean like How ruthless Do you get With your Gentic Like Are you

[00:15:12] WTFing And cursing this guy Oh yeah Oh yeah No actually Actually I'm I'm now I used to be a bit Short and blunt With how I talk to AI But now I'm Very polite Because I read somewhere That you know If this stuff Gets real consciousness And you want to watch out So I want to be the guy It was like Remember I was always Good to you Thank you Appreciate you Love you You know It costs open AI Somewhere in the region Of hundreds of millions A month Because people say Please and thank you To AI

[00:15:42] To process that That's right That's right Crazy Which I do I'm one of those people Guys names Elvis So I always say Thank you Elvis hey This is what I gotta take This is what I'm looking at You know Thank you For taking a look At it You know Like Elvis We're gonna brainstorm Today I got this bid Like I'm I'm very cordial Like it's a person Because When it When it When it Takes over the planet I want it to go Hey Whoa This guy

[00:16:12] Yeah That's good You're training it now And at some point It's going to switch That's right I wanna be I wanna be On a camp That gets like Not killed So I wanna be The guy Elvis protects me This doesn't sound Like the conflict Hungry William I was Hearing about Before In the office I've I've met my match I've met my match Elvis is my match He's just Hoping his names On this wheel We're about to spin

[00:16:41] That's what he's hoping Truth It ain't It ain't on you On the wheel Before we get to spin Nick You got any stories You wanna talk about Yeah one that's Quite interesting Actually Very very new Hot off the press Which is Thomson Reuters They just announced It's interesting They're gonna remove 500 people From their engineering team But they're going to Hire an additional 250 people In their engineering team But AI native engineers At a more senior level So it's interesting They're removing 500 engineers

[00:17:11] Who are back end Front end More generalist In replacement of AI Which I think Is an interesting switch And that we're seeing Why couldn't they just Retrain them Why could Why fire And why not Just invest in training You know And maybe Maybe they will I'm not sure I'm not sure What that plan is Maybe they will Reinvest It's a lot of money To train For silicon Well it is But how many Of those AI native Developers Are there You're dealing With a scarcity issue There's not that many I mean They're hoping

[00:17:40] For 250 So it's like Okay well We can train Those people In eight weeks If they already Have a basis And a knowledge Of C++ We can change That We can train That person Because they just Need to know The outcome And be able To articulate The outcome So why let them go If you can just Train them I think I I I I think There'll be A certain amount Of people That get through

[00:18:10] The system Right It's probably Going to be You're going to Get laid off You have to Reapply for your Job It's going to be One of those Deals probably Right I'm just guessing And those That can make The cut Will make The cut But It's You know There's I have to find The article I don't know The numbers Offhand But it's It's The cost To train Someone To get To the level Where they Actually need Them And get up To speed Fast enough That they're Not already Behind once They get up To speed Is too Costly

[00:18:40] For them To just Hire someone Yeah I don't buy That on Any level So Firstly I think It's a Riff Disguised As a Technology Strategy I think They just Need to Fire 500 People So That's A I think This is Just all Kind of Cloud Cover Because They just Need to Fire People Okay And then They're Slowly Hire Back But we're Going to Hire A different Position Secondly AI Coding And AI The AI Senior Native Coder That doesn't

[00:19:10] Exist Of course This isn't Training Like Institutional Organizational Training Educational Training It's Training By Doing So You know This isn't Like Oh my God It's Going to Take Two Years To get them To The No It's Not At All It's Not Going to Take Anyone That Long Because Both Of Y'all Have Mentioned Claude Code Projects And Neither Of You Have A Real Hardcore Coding Background Did it Take You That Long To Learn

[00:19:39] Really Yeah There's There's There's There's There's There's Different Levels Of Everything In Life But My Point Is If You've Already Got That Background You Can Get There Quicker Sure Yeah Yeah So the Training That Like We're Going To Invest Thousands Of Millions Of Dollars In No You're Not Because Most Of These People If They Know Hey You Have To Learn This Or You're Going To Be Fired They're Going To Learn It

[00:20:10] And They Were Using AI To Replace Those positions But It Actually Turned Out That They Had Just Spent So Much Money On AI Tokens That They Couldn't Afford To Keep Those People So It Was Cover And It

[00:20:54] To Prompt And You Have A Basic Understanding Of Engineering You Would Assume That Someone Can You Know Bridge That Gap Themselves Especially Given A few Months For A

[00:21:24] Year Yeah Every Year Yeah I Was Thinking About I Was Dreaming About It For Nine Years And One Year I Actually Jumped Into It Are You Doing The Candy Wheel I'm I'm Pushing This Along Yeah I'm Gonna Do The Candy Wheel Bring It So All right So Let Pull Up I Need To Get Better We Need To To Have A Visual On Screen For People Barbara Marks At McAfee She's A Recruiter She's In Recruiting Over At Barbara Marks Barbara Marks Yeah I Think So Yeah Barbara Marks Is Fantastic

[00:21:54] So Barbara You Have She's Gonna Land On One Dollar That's What's Gonna Happen Yeah But Your Wrist Sometimes Twitches Doesn't It Yeah Sometimes All right Ready Here We'll Give It A Big Spin

[00:22:24] There We Go Here Will Let's See It Don't Land On A Dollar Please One Dollar Baby Come On Barbara Needs It 100 Bucks Boom Nice That's Good All Barbara Marks 100 Dollars For You Nick We'll We'll Get That Out Yes Yes Imagine All The Big Applause And The Big Fancy Stuff On The Screen I

[00:23:09] Friend Is Getting Married So Either Celebrate Or Commiserate Whichever Way Is It A Destination Wedding Like Malta Or Something Like That No It's In London Got It That's A Destination For Some Congratulations To him Congratulations To Barbara Marks Gentlemen Hopefully England Wins The World Cup And Then It's A Real Celebration It's Looking Pretty Good One Of Maybe You Got 25% Chance I

[00:23:39] Will Say I'm Not A They're Very Hard To Defend Because They Don't Have To Have The Ball Meaning They Don't Have Possession And All Of A Sudden They Get A Possession And In Seconds They Can Score Yeah So Is

[00:24:09] France Spain Argentina And England France Spain Is Playing Today Here In Dallas And Argentina And England Is Playing Tomorrow And Atlanta Both Of Are Playing In Air Conditioning Today And Then When They Played The Final The Third Place Game On Saturday And Then They Played The Final On Sunday Both Of Are Outdoors So They're Going Have Comfy Games Today It'd Be Interesting To Have Hydration Breaks In The Middle Of Air Conditioning But Whatever

[00:24:39] We're Here Now I'm Hoping For England And If You're There During That Bit That's Going To To Run Out Of Liquor 60 Years Yeah Yeah Since Bobby Moore Got That Final Goal For Us But I'll Tell You One Thing England Are Not Well Prepped To Play In The Heat So They've

[00:25:21] That They Wore From The 66 World Cup So I've Got One You Know It's Obviously Not One Of The Originals But So Yeah I'm All In England I Want Them To Win I Like Spain I Like France And I Like Argentina I Like All The Teams So It's Not Like I Don't Like Sometimes You Get into A bit Where You Just Don't Like A Country Or The Manager Of A Country Or Some Of The Players Nah I Just Want England To Win 60 Years You Can You Can Crack An Old English If

[00:25:52] Nick Thank you For For Joining Us Man Catch Your Flight Thank you Enjoy William Enjoy Your Soccer Matches I'm Going To Stay Right Here In The Air Conditioning Yes As You Should And Then I'm Going To Go To Sleep