The BARF: Apple Vison Pro, Jobless Claims, The Use of Body Cameras by Retail Employees, The C-Suite Trying to Manipulate Layoffs

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[00:00:59] What is going on everybody? Ryan Leary, William Tink, here with another episode of The BARF, where we take a look at this week's news, no last week's news. That's correct. So I could be prepared for the week ahead. Yeah, I gotta get that down.

[00:01:13] But anyway, it's been a long week of travel. I'm happy to be home. How about you? I am happy to be home as well, have to say. I need an haircut. Quarterstone Connect was fantastic.

[00:01:26] It was. It was a good event. We podcast live there. Got to meet a lot of really solid people. I was excited. I think the analyst day before really prepped us to ask better questions during our podcast. So it was good. Well done. Well played.

[00:01:45] For as much as we stayed attentive. No, we actually we were very attentive. Yeah, we guess we have a lot of questions. We did well. They have a lot going on by the way. They do have a lot going on. They do have a lot going on.

[00:02:00] Four T road shows, two acquisitions, two really strong acquisitions. And I'll tell you before we kick off. I'm sure we'll talk about that at some point. Yeah, but the VR demo and I know people have done it.

[00:02:17] That we really threw me. It was good. Fantastic. Kyle did a really good job with that rather than that. But when I put the glasses on, I just it was like I was in the room cool. Right. But then this woman walked in scared them.

[00:02:38] Like I was just like I jumped rocked you at elementary. It did not only that. She didn't like my answers. She did not like my answers, which I was I forgot to tell you. I forgot to tell you I was that woman.

[00:02:55] Yeah, probably. Yeah, I was a little offended. I thought my answers were pretty pretty dead on. Nope. Clearly not. Which one did you do? Because I did pre-scritting. Which one did you do? I did. Was it job simulation? No, was I think it was a performance review.

[00:03:13] Clearly I didn't do very well. And the other one was customer service, I think. Yeah, yeah. Customer service play. I was in that I was in that such side of it as well. That's the tailspin for those at home.

[00:03:28] That's the tailspin acquisition that they did earlier this year. But they're doing 14 city tours, 14 cities and and then two huge acquisitions all new management team. Just a lot of good things going on. Anyhow enough about that. Let's get into the news. What do you got?

[00:03:49] Let's do it. You're kicking off today, right? No, am I kicking off today? You are. Oh, look and I'm starting with Apple expands vision for see I knew there's a reason. Yeah. Why I started talking. There's always a reason.

[00:04:04] So there's really no I mean I already went there we go like so I saw this story around the Apple Pro which when when Kyle broke it out there like $4000. Yeah. I think it's like 3,800 bucks or something. Yeah. Yeah, like it'll it'll it'll come down iterations.

[00:04:22] It'll it'll come down. But I'll tell you, you know, putting that on I couldn't he said he works 20 hours a week in that choice. Not for me. That's going to be two screens multiple screens and media everything rolling at the same time. Yeah.

[00:04:37] People in your space for the four meetings like that's pretty bad ass and it's very realistic. Yeah. And again, that's his company. He's always been doing for a long time. So he's used to it. But I think that's it to do VR to fully move to VR.

[00:04:54] I think that's what you have to do. You have to go all in. It can't be like a halfway thing. So yeah, right. So Apple, I think I resolved that good news. Yeah. All right. Ryan, if I said the word care washing. What would you say?

[00:05:09] I'm still trying to understand Krona working so I'm going to say you take care of the gentle when you wash things. I don't know close, close. So no has nothing to do with that type of washing. However, this was from a Harvard business review. HBR.org. Okay.

[00:05:26] How care washing alienates employees. Care washing is a scam. It's a way of saying, see how we take care of our employees when in reality they're not a priority all the only thing that matters is productivity that you can get for them. Hard stops, candidates to wear.

[00:05:43] So we've read everything about how candidates care about mental health, well-being, all the wellness actually put them all in a big family. Financial wellness, health wellness, all that stuff. And this is CEO's basically it's kind of like what it came from whitewashing. Right?

[00:06:01] It came from that where we were being. So they're lying. They're lying. That's exactly, that is the overall point. It's what we expect. Well, here's the deal. They're saying one thing about their mental health of their employees and then all the actions and

[00:06:19] behaviors and everything else is opposite of that. So read the art. It's actually a really fascinating article and we'll put together, you know, shocking not shocking on Harvard business review. So go take a look at it. It's good stuff. All right. Jobless clean.

[00:06:37] I'm going to get that right. I almost thought you said something else. They are up there the highest levels in the last 10 months. So really? Yeah. So today rose about 13,000 up from 229. The expectation was 225. So not ridiculous. Right. Well, that means the expectation that we're

[00:07:02] going to go down by 4,000. The expectation exactly that it was going to go down. Oh, yeah. So so I mean, I'm not an economist, you know, or labor labor market expert, but I think this is where we can we where we've been seeing the trend that

[00:07:20] people are staying at their jobs longer. So if you were workers are leaving their jobs and it's I truly believe it's just a fear of not being able to find another job or finding another job at the salary level that they are at because

[00:07:35] they took a job when salary levels were inflated. And so they're sticking around until they get pushed out and there's a lot of things that tracks month over month up to the election because that could be a big thing.

[00:07:49] If that keeps going up, that could sway the folks that haven't already made a choice, which I'm not sure there's undecided. When people talk about it in the news or this is this large cluster of undecided. That just means they don't want to say what their

[00:08:05] politics are on TV. That's exactly right. Or they're they're undecided on whether or not they're going to go vote. Well, that's not between the candidates, but yeah, we should we should definitely as we being all of us should be looking at the number two forty two

[00:08:23] and looking at what next one tracks. Yep. All righty. EEOC appoints Shivram Shivram. Uh, Kavi and I butchered that. So sorry. Go ahead and go take a look at his name. It's on the EEOC website. So go take a look at that is a deputy chief

[00:08:45] information officer, which he's been there as in that role for a while and they made him their artificial intelligence officer. So you already seen that we've already seen some cases about pre-employment and employment around AI. Already starting to we talked about it here, but

[00:09:02] we've always started to see those things pop. So you know you've arrived when the government hires AI officers. Yep. Yep. It is a question that you've been posing to a lot of people in our show is just asking them one question. Where are we at? Right.

[00:09:16] And so here we are. Here's where we're at. And I think we're going to obviously see more of it now has been validated. All right. So Amazon is making news again, not for layoffs this time, but because they're they're being sued again. Right. Chocking. Not shocking.

[00:09:35] So drivers are filing 15,000 drivers filed claims that they were not paid compensation for overtime. So this is classification of what is an employee versus a contractor? We're seeing this across the board. This is in every I mean prevalent in driving Uber Lyft Instacart all of them.

[00:10:01] And this is this is no different. So the interesting piece here is they can't just file one claim. They have to file 15,000 individual claims on behalf of each individual person. So that's going to be a massive undertaking. And we'll see we'll see how it goes.

[00:10:18] But yeah, it's misclassification. And I think we're going to see a lot more of this. Obviously moving forward. Alrighty. Ryan, we got workers at T.J. Max Marshals and Home Goods all owned by the same company, by the way, wearing body cameras. What?

[00:10:36] This is on Boston 25 news.com. So smile you're on camera. Basically they're there their hope that these body cameras will help them deescalate in incidents to tear crime demonstrate to associates and customers how they take safety seriously. And Karen and Chad switch the flow.

[00:11:00] In fact, I watched this morning I watched 15 minutes of Karen moments. No, no, no, they're from YouTube. And it was a 15 minute video on just different moments when people were captured and people wheels off. I knew that. However, it's just the watch. It is fun to watch.

[00:11:24] But like it's it's like it reminds me is 1985 or he's six. I had a woman who basically they called me as customer service and I went up there and there was a woman yelling at me about the price of broccoli. I mean, she's full on.

[00:11:44] I mean out of and she put her hands on me. So she pointed my chest and she pushed into my chest. I said, OK, so there you crossed the line. You put your hands on me and I'm a call police. So I'm sorry broccoli was missed price.

[00:11:59] And we can handle the financial part over here at this little desk customer service. You don't get to put your hands on me. Right. So she backed down. She was cool after that. The price of broccoli is scanned wrong and it became an issue.

[00:12:14] I'm not sure that I would be comfortable getting into going into a store. I know you're being recorded. That's for a loss prevention and all that stuff. It is if an employee is walking around with a click. I'm just not interested in being recorded

[00:12:30] like that that would determine me from going into those. I don't like going into that chain of stores anyhow. I go into home goods. I swear it's too frigging hot in there. I thought about it. The only thing it's like you know what it cuts down

[00:12:44] on the I mean it increases the accountability. Everyone's got to be accountable now. And again I understand how this is going to make people you're on camera anyhow. Somebody filming and be a good human and buy your shit and go home. I don't disagree. Whatever. All right.

[00:13:00] Greenhouse so Greenhouse brought in a new CRO which is which I really like this. I don't know who the old CRO was but I like the move because we spoke with them. This is back in the fall maybe and they were

[00:13:16] making some changes and they were a little kind of upset that they were only at a 20% year over year. I think it's 50%. 50 yeah. Yeah. So they they're and they were getting 17% which felt like 50% right. Well exactly right. So the the idea here is that you know

[00:13:34] the the idea here is I like this move because they care. They're not happy with status quo and they need to get to where they want to be and they're not doing that. No they're crushing it in the market like they

[00:13:48] are a hockey stick crushing it but they care enough that they're just like you know this little bit of changing up a little bit is going to yeah it's going to be good so his name is Samir Joglican maybe. We should just not.

[00:14:04] We should just not say names anymore where we're really bad at this so anyway maybe we'll get Samir on and we'll talk about some plans but congrats to him congrats to Greenhouse I think that's going to be a good thing for them moving forward. 100%.

[00:14:18] Alright corporate diversity programs could be headed to the Supreme Court so this is on axios.com and it's this kind of read the article because it's really got all the kind of the steps of all the different lawsuits that are at play right now and the

[00:14:37] state level and if you care about corporate D.I. then you've got to really be looking at the lower court in a court of appeals cases because the legal fight over diversity efforts in the business world is brought by the same group that got the Supreme

[00:14:52] Court to overturn affirmative action last year so this is the same group which shocking not shocking it would be the same group right they've already argued this stuff in front of it but basically this came from a they it was a venture capital firm grant for black women

[00:15:13] entrepreneurs and this this this group sued to say that that was not equitable that that wasn't fair basically you can't do that and so if you want to go back and look at this specific one this is about the appeals courts decision

[00:15:32] halted the VC firms grant program so now basically put a stay and said you can't you can't fund that right fund black women entrepreneurs can't which is insane because it's private money should be able to do whatever they want to yeah private money should be able

[00:15:51] to do what they want to do now we don't know where there might should say we don't know where the money because it could have come from state agencies and pension funds and things like that but key is on this is the same group

[00:16:04] that you know overturned affirmative action is the same group that's tackling corporate DEI programs and my fear and it's playing out in some cases and others not that they're they're not just gutting for the they're gunning to eliminate the I incorporation so that's

[00:16:26] that axios so axios.com go take a look at it read the whole thing see if you have a different opinion etc reach out to us if you do all right Ryan brought new job postings for tech occupations reached 209 in May job postings for AI

[00:16:45] occupations or positions requiring AI skills continued trending upward totaling 12% of all tech openings so 12% is eating into that software developer full stack you know all of those types of positions 12% that was a pure newswire and so it automatically as I read the press release I'm basically thinking

[00:17:13] where are these workers gonna come from you know now you juxtapose that with skills based hiring and okay that's which is cool but when skills would when people don't have the skills that are available 12% of tech jobs that are posted if they don't have those

[00:17:29] skills how do we get from one place to the other so it's great the job I mean you know when you first read it this is on a pure newswire when you first read it and this is by comp TIA by the way so COM TIA they're

[00:17:44] the ones that follow tech positions you know tech positions have having more openings I think we've been looking forward to that that's good but 12% having AI if they don't have the skills not good I think a lot of I think we're underestimating the amount of

[00:18:02] people that actually do have these skills coming in probably probably and so I think that I think will be okay with it'll be hard to hire but I think that's gonna be who's paying more and who's doing the most innovative things right so I think

[00:18:16] that's gonna be an issue for them there and I think there's also gonna be a lot of learning on the job and that's fine I mean look new things are new things right and so although this is not very new right we keep we I know

[00:18:30] you boy good boy this is not new this is 30 40 years old like it's been there it's now prevalent right the internet was there before we had access to AOL that's good point that's good so I did the skills are there I don't know if these if the

[00:18:44] people that are gonna get hired are gonna be the long-term solution because some of these people you know maybe they might just hire workforce they might just have tech backgrounds and then I can teach them a little they'll expect them to learn the stuff on the

[00:19:00] job yeah yeah it's alright so that was the completion of research we are now to the A we got some applications to talk about hey so clear company acquired a learning management tool so I saw this out there and I put it in

[00:19:19] I figured you throw it in there too but they we spent all last week at an event that's all about learning and all of that stuff in skills and all that stuff with learning and and things being core to productivity being core to staying power or you know

[00:19:38] staying power of the employees and growing employees etc etc so I think we're gonna see a lot more of this that's out there I don't know I don't know either I know the copies I don't know I've never used them I should say

[00:19:53] either tools I don't know how good they are versus not but you know I mean look we're gonna see a lot of this moving forward especially as we are moving into similar to your previous story there about hiring more on the

[00:20:07] on the AI side and skills may be in shortage and so we're gonna continue to see this yeah I think a couple things so this week with cornerstone this past week was less about learning more about skills everything skills at the core of everything learning being one of

[00:20:26] those things but but basically everything as it relates to clear company you just most people just call them clear clear was one of the first eight yeses to add performance so basically they had a full-on a TS and a full-on performance management together and and in some other

[00:20:46] things kind of in between but those two and this is adding a kind of a third leg if you will to talent management right so if you've got it's an ATS you've got let's say onboarding you've got you've got performance management and now you've got learning management and

[00:21:04] so it brings them closer to being a one stop shop which is good so good move for them good food for their customers oh my goodness bad touching harassment sex violence fraud threats all things that could have been avoided if you had Fama stop hiring dangerous people

[00:21:32] Fama dot I oh all right I want to talk to you for a moment about retaining and developing your workforce is hard recruiting is hard retaining top employees is hard then you've got onboarding payroll benefits time in labor management you need to take care

[00:21:49] of your workforce and you can only do this successfully if you commit to transforming your employee experience this is where I saw comes in they empower you to be successful we've seen it with a number of companies that we worked with and this is why we partner

[00:22:05] with them here at work defined we trust them and you should too check them out at I solved H.C.M. dot com job job get a choir's working to expand retail footprint this at job get J.O.B.G.T.

[00:22:21] dot com you can kind of look at the press release there job gets okay so job gets acquisition of leading platform for hiring frontline workers in malls will enable job get to connect with millions of additional everyday workers and jobs and retail hospitality

[00:22:37] and food service smaller small fish each equal eats smaller fish which is good for job get customers because think about all the people who go to the mall and get jobs and all that type stuff so great pickup yeah what I

[00:22:51] like about this one is it's hyper local like is there right and so this is this is kind of gorilla marketing in hiring it's like right there on the ground mom pop they don't have to compete with Coca Cola so like like

[00:23:06] this don't know much about either of the companies I know they are also malls I mean every time you hear malls are the mall by us I don't know how they're staying open I mean it is a ghost how there's there's

[00:23:19] gotta be I would say less than a dozen stores in there and it's a big no ours is are just thriving mostly because of the 14 year olds 15 year olds no ours are out there just breaking street signs alright well a last acquisition we have is trust crude

[00:23:39] is now part of job alone yeah so job alone j o b y l o n is kind of a think of a hiring platform that be job alone and they basically acquiring trust crude to understand its candidates better they do a bunch

[00:24:00] of surveys a bunch of you know basically they make the candidate experience better and so it's a great acquisition really really great acquisition for job alone and so it's not just tech that people from trust crude are actually coming over and playing

[00:24:16] this day so it's not a not not just like what you would normally see like buying the tech and then the people leave or whatever else like that this looks legit like a good addition to the team and the technology congrats to them alright so got some research

[00:24:34] here bring this one I had to put this one in this is a bamboo HR piece here so they did a survey where they found that one in four executives say that they hoped for turnover with all the policies with return to work

[00:24:55] policies yeah and so rather than doing layoffs rather than saying here's five on your people piece everybody's gonna come back five days a week yeah you gotta come back hopefully people are going to cut off so then you quit rather than being fired you also know

[00:25:13] to firing people so it doesn't mean it look like an art I mean it looks bad either way it's just it's gonna get new more news coverage yeah as a layoff exactly so so hot take on the RTO thing for me productivity is not linked

[00:25:28] to visibility however I do I want to share a couple of stats here so we pull these suckers up because I did find this interesting so when throw some numbers out there 26% okay of employees say greater divide there was a greater divide has developed between

[00:25:45] remote and non remote workers yeah bringing people giving people the option of bringing people in the office it's now separating those people they are filling this separation right they're not engaging with each other and they're almost like forming clicks right yeah so so that is so you know

[00:26:04] obviously that number was higher as close to 50% so 45 44% of hybrid or in office employees said they don't have a strong relationship with with remote colleagues as opposed to those that are actually in this I think all that's natural makes if you create

[00:26:22] different if you did if you create different citizen groups that's what you can't you can't you can't be shocked that there's different citizen groups now there was there was a part of the report which is actually pretty fascinating oh so like somewhere the amount of people

[00:26:37] that said they actually get up out of their chair and walk around around the office not to talk to people I saw that but to be seen in the office so not only are you in the office that would you probably don't

[00:26:51] want to be not only are you being pulled away from your other co-workers you're now doing the parade around the office to make sure your leadership sees that you care enough to be in the office for what you hate being in the office to go home pissed off

[00:27:05] to your spouse because I'm just trying to get here I'm just trying to get the promotion people yeah I'm here these national national society of high school scholars that's NSHS to those that might care Henry was a member of this group was just released by

[00:27:21] annual 2024 Gen Z career interest survey that said NSHS.org because you can read the survey and read the results yourself so this is all about AI so there's the results cover our spectrum what do you think about brands what do you think about

[00:27:40] this that the other bit the part about AI was the most fascinating to me three points 59% believe that AI will be a more negative than positive effect on society 59 60% 55% are extremely concerned about AI's impact on personal privacy these are high school students by the

[00:28:03] way 62% are worried about job displaced that's a big number so all pretty all negative yeah well you know the job this place would make sense to me though because with yeah with a lot of layoffs and parents having to have two have two household incomes and

[00:28:21] maybe not being able to find work for an extended period of time they see this yeah so that fear and anxiety builds up in them yeah I can see that yeah take a go take a look at the report it has way more than just this

[00:28:34] AI stuff so if I just don't want to pigeonhole people into thinking that's just about AI it actually covers right what high schoolers are thinking about in terms of what happens after I see yeah all right the 2024 state of hourly workforce reports

[00:28:54] sadly I read this report let me back it was a good report let me start to leave I say sadly because I didn't have internet connection on the plane no I didn't I didn't have headphones my bad I did not have headphones on the plane so you

[00:29:14] couldn't listen to music while you're reading? Couldn't listen to anything couldn't watch TV I tried watching the shows with the captions couldn't keep up with the captions because it was too quick I was like you know what maybe they're going to

[00:29:24] sleep I'm gonna read and I had this report downloaded and so I read the report good report actually it was pretty pretty good report so it covers three key things reducing attrition how to look at unionization risk and then the challenges managers face with

[00:29:40] an hourly workforce so all things for those that are and for those who are trying to follow follow on this was put together by Legion yes so if you go to Legion dot co you can see the report as well so all right so a

[00:29:56] couple things that stood out to me one in four hourly workers when presented with the option were in favor of union unionization that's a high number that is a high number it's 25% and I think that can cause obviously a lot of anxiety and employers right I mean every

[00:30:19] every hourly work or every company that has a high volume of hourly workers that's a big deal right like a union steps in so couple of things and I look at I tend to look at numbers in reverse so when it says 69% of the

[00:30:36] people said they value the people they work with I read that is they're trying to put a positive spin on this that's 40 is 30% 31 31 yeah I'm good like that 31 I'm off by a little bit said that they can't stand the people they work with 60% said they like the

[00:30:55] way they do the work that they do 40% said they didn't like the way the shit they do right so that's the biggest part for me the funniest part of this whole thing is I saw the math and I didn't correct it yeah

[00:31:08] I got it here yeah yeah so anyway yeah yeah but um but I think the reports are good like I actually enjoyed this report but tell the other story like it just yeah you know if 60% of the people love the work that

[00:31:25] they do that's a high number of people right now don't like the work that they do that's 40% that's right that's a bigger problem right 30 was it in people 30 31% yeah 31 not that was 40 because it was 60 I even math is good it's when it gets into that's why

[00:31:44] I can never be a waiter or a cashier like six seven 25 is your chain you know what why the tail keeps coming up you switch the side switch the story go do something else 71% of CEOs have imposter syndrome according to workforce 2024 global

[00:32:05] insights report by corn fairy you go to corn fairy dot com and then you go read the whole report so my take is I first of all I don't believe it yeah I think you know to be a successful CEO one must be almost

[00:32:20] crazy with confidence a touch of narcissism in my opinion imposter system imposter syndrome is persistence ability to believe that one success is deserved is is there or has been legitimately achieved due to one's efforts and skills what you just said right now so so basically you don't

[00:32:44] believe that you should be there right right so we say that they are faking it until they hopefully make it or they just don't have confidence that they believe they should be there they they believe they have imposter syndrome 71% only they have which I think is

[00:32:59] crazy so how many how many CEOs do you know that fit that description that that feel like they inability to believe in ability to keep any building is key here for imposter syndrome it's the persistent inability to believe that one success is deserved

[00:33:17] what break down of size a company now because that would make that would sway me one way or the other if you were a four five hundred fortune 100 you've been there you know some you need some chops to get there if it's a 50 person company battlefield

[00:33:33] promotion you're an amazing sales person who can lead people they may stick you in that CEO role because yeah why not that's fair you don't have that kind but I find it hard to believe you get into a you know one thousand or five hundred or certainly

[00:33:47] a fortune 100 like they did the yeah they did do the they did ten thousand respondents and they did do the full spectrum so I know they got it and they probably do you probably can slice the data to find out where

[00:34:01] that 71% comes up yeah I just I had a hard time even with a company thousand employees if you're that CEO of a thousand person firm I just can't I just can't believe that you feel like you have imposter syndrome you might have anxiety you might feel

[00:34:17] you know other things going on but like to feel like you don't deserve to be there I just don't buy that sorry so I mean all right don't expect juniors to teach senior professionals to use generative AI according to a study by MIT you know Harvard Wharton and

[00:34:39] Boston consulting group so four relatively smart organizations will say this is on papers dot SSR in dot com it's an academic paper but it tracks for me because who taught us the internet we taught ourselves who taught a social media ourselves who

[00:35:00] will teach you gen AI if we expect the younger people to teach us jenna jen AI I just don't think that's going to happen because it's never happened how many of you have actually sat down with your parents and tried to explain the symbol on

[00:35:17] an even I mean come on yeah just get in the plane with it figure why is it why is it 12 blinking I don't know I don't know you know what I really I want to get paid to do research like this so that I can

[00:35:29] give the outcome before I even do the research and say no shit my kids not going to teach me effectively how to use gen AI you got it you're gonna learn it yourself or not I guess that's the key or not you can opt out of the learning

[00:35:43] and just pass by yeah all right we're getting to the F the funding some dollars so AWS drops 230 million into gen AI gen AI startups to accelerate innovation so what I like about this they're not just dropping cash they're actually building an accelerator yeah for everything that they

[00:36:11] do and so some of the biggest thing some of the challenge obviously you know this the biggest challenges a lot of these startups have isn't necessarily cash well yes cash of course but when AWS builds an accelerator and says yes you can become part of this eight week

[00:36:28] intensive or whatever it's going to be and we're going to give you seven million dollars in AWS credits yep this is same as getting cash right let's just I mean which all that stuff the all that stuff is going to need all that AWS

[00:36:45] infrastructure so they have to buy that stuff and now with the accelerator right Amazon gets to learn something so they're learning they got first price right refusal on the future fundings so that's just a win-win-win-win for everybody it's time to pay up well they're

[00:37:03] already there now they've incubated a company that went big and now they can afford to pay expect similar things if they're not already out there from Microsoft from Google from Facebook from Meta right they're all going to be doing something similar to this because they've got a if

[00:37:19] they've been sleeping on AI which might maybe Microsoft hasn't but if they have been sleeping on generating by AI they've got to find a way to get there faster than other people mm-hmm visibly raises seven and a half million to turn infrastructure training

[00:37:38] on its head that said visibly vis IBLYHQ.com this is just a music this is just straight up this comes right from the press release I'm going to read it because it's actually really really good copy think of an infrastructure worker excavating on a

[00:37:58] whole sounds simple but they hit a high pressure pipeline the consequences could be fatal we all know the dangers danger the dangerous task so how is it taught a classroom has a 20 question written assessment at the end of a course pretty ridiculous right training reimagined so basically

[00:38:17] what they're doing with workers that are out in the field doing work is they're actually really training them in a legit way and I you know and I think it's genius so first of all the money is going to go to adding you know more executives and adding

[00:38:33] more people to more training so I'm just impressed with how you read that that was there you go it's pretty good no worries are you ready shift plan that's SHYFTPlan.com this is where the press release was so this is this is okay so terms not disclosed

[00:38:57] so I think they've raised what's noted is like 13 and a half million like in crunch based but they've raised a little bit more because they just didn't note what this one was but okay so SHYFTPlan is an AI go to the website because the websites really cool it's

[00:39:15] SHYFT forecasting SHYFT switching and SHYFT scheduling and they integrate with SAP and workday so is this a thing well it's yeah it's a feature but it will probably eventually end up in a much bigger kind of product or sweet because they're already integrated

[00:39:33] with two of the big two of the three big players but it's AI based SHYFT shift work there's a lot of S's in there SHYFT I'm trying to figure out if AI SHYFT today could actually handle that I mean obviously there's a graphic

[00:39:53] there's a graphic on there just on the main page that shows how they do it it shows like the blood flow of your like going through your veins it shows how it carries that data and then double checks it with other things and then makes decisions

[00:40:07] making sure PTO request all that stuff yeah yeah I know a restaurant local to me that could handle could use something like that because they tend to screw up schedules for the kids all the time but alright Blink IQ raises 5 million so this is not about work

[00:40:31] but it is about work so Blink IO raises 5 million for Gen AI software testing platform so this was softwaretestingmagazine.com go read about it so this is the Fobo comes back to us right now this is basically Blink so BLINQ IO I believe that's Blink IO

[00:40:59] will allow Gen AI to perform the work of a test engineer autonomously so check this out like IO's AI test engineer understands requirements and his picks tasks makes decisions on how to execute them creating test automation code and maintaining it autonomously but will it hate its manager

[00:41:23] that's the real question so the reason I wanted to call this funding in particular is ok people are like oh my god it's going to take my job yeah actually if you're a testing engineer they just I feel like this is a prime example

[00:41:39] of what should be taking from somebody right right like if we can get the AI can get as good as everyone feels and why are we doing it there's software running I mean anything like thinking like a I don't know like a roller coaster right like

[00:41:55] if they can run the software if there's even software and they're like and I'm not going to fall out and it's not going to lock up I'm down for that because I've seen some of those engineers that work on them straight out of prison

[00:42:07] how much do I actually need an engineer I know we're using the term engineer lightly ladies and gentlemen yeah well no engineer are you really you were straight out of prison son alright relay raises $35 million funding to expand cloud based platform for front line teams this was on

[00:42:29] moneyleads.co go read a whole article so this is comms for front line teams which has always been a bit messy because things are busy and things are crazy and it's you know the chaos of it all and how do we get everybody on the same team

[00:42:45] all the team on the same page all that stuff so I'm really glad that someone's cleaning it up it wouldn't shock me if they are acquired other front line tech players but congratulations to relay for raising $35 million it's good money

[00:43:01] good money if you can get it go get it work box awkward it secures $17.5 million but they have the option to up size that they're 23 made so this is on PR Newswire work box is a better version of we work and it might be the bridge

[00:43:21] no that's what they said but it might be the bridge that people use for RTO so instead of RTO going to corporate headquarters return office could be a work box office and their funder in this particular round has a REIT real estate investment trust

[00:43:43] so they're probably getting a break on the commercial real estate to then be able to make it work whereas we work they were playing full retail for their spaces I don't think these folks are going to be paying full retail and they're going to set up these offices

[00:43:57] and it's just the same model that's been around was it? Savits? It's been around for 30-40 years somebody needs an office you don't need a big office there's a number yeah there's a wonderful amount it's not a new concept it's kind of gone away the pandemic

[00:44:15] killed off a lot of that stuff however congratulations to them $17.5 million I mean look if if they can get the cost per box or per office call it if they can get the cost of that down below the square footage

[00:44:31] they would pay for me to come into an office it's going to be a win because if I'm in a city somewhere New York or Philly or wherever there might be 30-40 people that work in that general area and they're only paying

[00:44:45] for a number of people that come in that you don't pay I don't know how they set it up but I've thought about this where if I want to make a plan with you to go into an office well we just pay for that particular day

[00:45:01] I'm not sure how they do it but if they can keep it lower then the square footage it costs for me to step into a building I think it's going to be a win and somehow we'll start transitioning over to something more we did man

[00:45:17] this is a good one a lot of good stuff coming off a heavy week of travel and fun, a lot of talking and we're out