Startup vs. Enterprise: The Talent Rules Change As You Grow with Ron Iacobelli | EP34

[00:00:07] Welcome everyone to the Talent Revolution Tales from the Trenches. I'm Joe Samron. And I'm Jill Caniglio-Kirk. Whether you're recruiting for a startup to hire employee number five, or you're working for a Fortune 500 company, hiring thousands of people a year, today's a conversation you definitely don't want to miss. People think recruiting is recruiting, but attracting, hiring and retaining talent looks completely different in those two worlds. And today we're going to explore that with a special guest.

[00:00:35] Joining us today is Ron Iacobelli. Ron, welcome to the show. Thanks, Joe. Thanks, Joe. I'm pleased to be here. For everyone that doesn't know Ron, Ron's joining us brings a huge, unique combination of global experiences, deep expertise in engineering, technology and talent, giving him a perspective that connects people, businesses and technical organizations.

[00:00:58] Throughout his career, he's worked across global environments and understands the challenges of building and leading high-performing engineering teams in an increasing competitive talent markets from startups to enterprise. Ron, welcome again. Anything else you'd like to add about your background and experience?

[00:01:18] Not really, Joe. I'd say most of the recent experience has been a mix over the years towards startup and international, heavily international now. So over the years, things have changed. And I think we'll probably cover some of that in our conversation today. Ron, I've got to start with, I think, the question that's probably on everyone's mind. How does hiring really differ whether you're working for a startup or you're working for a large company?

[00:01:46] Could you maybe start there on what you think is the biggest difference? I guess there's two really key aspects. And one is attracting the hiring and becoming a destination, which is a challenge. You know, it's a common challenge for everyone. You need to be a destination to be able to have a selection.

[00:02:06] Right. And in the startup world, from the ability to hire, there's the financial factor, what you can offer, and there's equally the talent factor. So in an enterprise, very typically, you can have a fairly defined role with reasonable guardrails that are achievable and a bulletproof proven process that help people be productive right away.

[00:02:35] In the startup world, there's a lot more curveballs. You know, the opportunity that you need to sell and the equal challenge to hire is that you need a broad skill set. You need people that can come in, adapt, and apply themselves to a much wider area or scope of work in almost any of the fields from finance to engineering to manufacturing or quality.

[00:03:05] You need to talk about chaos, too, Ron. Chaos can be in all different levels. How do you add or answer and respond to, hey, this is chaotic, and it happens at all levels. But how do you respond in that way? I think everyone believes they have chaos no matter where they are. It stemmed through my career, right?

[00:03:27] I started out Ontario Hydro early on, which is now Power One, and it was a unionized professional staff environment, right? 36 hours a week, which is, I laugh at it now. And then to Ford. And, you know, you have a pile of resources. You got thousands of people in a plant building a vehicle, and you never felt like you were in control. You knew you were in control, but you never felt like the job was done.

[00:03:57] And a startup's much different because you get it in every different direction. You truly don't have, in the early days, the resources you need to complete the job. Limited funding, limited talent, and sometimes less than a year of operating to put a plan around. So, it really comes down to personality, and it's one of the difficult things to judge.

[00:04:21] Is how do people deal with adversity or uncertainty, and where are they? And you sometimes have to evaluate yourself of where they are in their lives relative to their ability and tolerance to deal with it. And so, as much as every day there's a tactical aspect of doing your job, there's a mental aspect of the stability and remaining positively motivated in an environment like that.

[00:04:50] It certainly all clicks for me, Ron, having had some experience inside of a small startup. And, you know, I look at myself and say, I believe there are some people that could survive in both worlds. But I think there's always a natural gravitation or kind of fit for which world do you feel more at ease in? Which world do you get that charge out of, right?

[00:05:16] I can certainly look at myself and say, I can survive in these two different worlds, drawing on my experience and other things. But what brings me the most joy and what fits with my personality best? So, that certainly clicks for me. And like you said, sometimes getting at that's a very hard thing to do. Yeah, it really is, and it varies. You know, some people love structure.

[00:05:38] You know, when you talk about tech, the other criteria that's very important to understand from a career progression is every young person is looking to grow. You know, against the background of their limited experience. They want the raise. They want the job. They want the promotion.

[00:05:57] In the tech world becomes the challenge of the developmental paths that you really can't judge as much in a young employee where they want to move up. But some of them aren't suited for management. And some of your smartest people that you want to promote because you'd love to be able to multiply their skill set have no desire to deal with the people challenges that dilute their ability to work on technology. Right?

[00:06:27] And when you understand that, you've got to absorb that challenge to give them that long-term progression with what they're good at. So, it's different. But in a startup world, especially on the tech side or even any role in the startup, it doesn't always have to be promotions.

[00:06:52] It's really giving an increasing responsibility, giving them more autonomy to make a decision. I guess that's where talent has to understand. It's not always about, hey, I get to go to a level one or two or three. It's look at the scope and scale that you're now taking on and that we're giving you. That's, I think, what talent has to look at as well.

[00:07:15] One of the opportunities that I've found that we've had an ability to do at many of the startups is take the things that frustrated you when you were at the enterprise and do them different. Right? You can throw out the rule book, particularly in the early growth phase. In the early growth phase, when you're small, you can just take people, you know, why do people want a promotion? It's often related to compensation. Right? So, you have people in the right roles.

[00:07:41] We were always fortunate to have the teams that I've worked with on the executive side and with the board of directors, really, that we could throw out the rule books on pay. And we really paid for skill and promotion. I could have a five-year, six-year, seven-person. If they're not delivering like the two-year guy, the two-year guy is getting the comp. He'll get up there and he'll get the options. He'll get the bonuses. And we have that kind of flexibility.

[00:08:12] It does become truly more difficult as you transition in size and maturity because at some point, there's real reasons why a structure exists in the big company, even to be able to control a budget. And you end up starting to come up with your job classifications. You know, you get a budget of 4% raise. How do I split it up? You know, in the early days when you're small, you've got a lot more flexibility.

[00:08:41] But those things matter. And, you know, when you're writing the rules, you can throw out the rule book. Right? So, when does that happen? You know, think about folks that are listening in from HR and TA and the business. And when, you know, when does a startup have to evolve into some of those rules and structure? Can anyone put that finger on that point? And how does that look? And when do you know? Because you've been in this several times. I wouldn't say you know.

[00:09:09] It's how your decisions come. And, you know, life, your career, everything is what you control and what you control and what you influence. And that's the way I like to look at all the deals, all the financing, all the companies. And if you have great access to funding and financing and you're in growth mode and, you know, frankly, you've got a different challenge. I have a lot of friends that left and went to research in motion when they were in growth mode. I mean, they're just throwing money because they couldn't recruit fast enough.

[00:09:39] They're hiring contractors, hiring people and spending and making bad real estate deals because they couldn't wait to open another facility and just paying what they had to pay because the access to capital and the delays were too much. When you're on the opposite side of the world, which I've fought a lot early in my career, just trying to go funding to funding, you know, sometimes there's just not enough to go around.

[00:10:07] And so you have to decide what you're going to do as a company, keep a smaller team more under-resourced and better comped, right? And sometimes there's no raise to go around.

[00:10:23] So in my past and I've always chose to keep what I could and comp them well, in the way I've always looked at it, work is hard enough, right? We're not all skiing every day, right? You love your job and everything else.

[00:10:43] But what you don't want, what I don't want my best people to do is walk into the office and have a reason to look elsewhere, shall we say. Whether, oh, no bonus this year, God forbid you're going to take a pay cut or, you know, there are some places that I've left more recently that have stopped paying people.

[00:11:09] The minute you throw that uncertainty or do a layoff, the resumes are going out and you have to think hard about, you really have to think hard about those things. So as you had that conversation and talked a little bit about that is if we take care of the people, they'll take care of the business is really a fundamental startup premise. Getting the right people on board and taking care of the right people is an essential part of setting the business up for success.

[00:11:38] And if we take care of the people, hopefully the rest of the pieces will fall into place. You're absolutely right, Jill, and you can't. There needs to be that balance because you have to be driven, you have to deliver, and you need that pressure. And in order to succeed, you know, there's life balance, sure.

[00:12:03] But there's times where people aren't going home or they're plugging in at night, particularly with all this work between Asia in particular over here with tech and automotive. But even in, you know, even the balance between Europe and North America, there's all sorts of crazy hours. You want that kind of commitment out of the people. They have to understand that you are committed to them as well, and you need to build that culture. It's easier to build when you control it from day one.

[00:12:33] It's more of a challenge to come in and adapt a place to that type of culture if it's not already there. Talk about building. Is it different in North America versus Asia versus Europe? I guess what global lens can you share that there's differences or nuances that you see? So I'll have to put myself in because so much has changed over time.

[00:12:59] I'm going to have to box myself into the areas, you know, the kind of transition. So I spend a lot more time working and dealing with Asia now than in the early days was more Singapore and just getting into China. I say early days. That's really mid days. And I spent a lot more time in Europe maybe 10 plus years ago.

[00:13:25] And so I still deal with the European side of it, but I don't run anything in Europe anymore. So Europe has a very mature skill set of people, highly available and adaptable. I found the UK in particular for automotive and tech to have a high amount of skill and really good.

[00:13:49] And because of the size of the industry and the turnover of the industry, the benefit is the skill level is quite complementary to the startup world. I see a good amount of expertise and people have a pretty broad mix. You know, the auto manufacturers over there are all owned by some other international group now. But, you know, the people have moved around and there are a lot of skill. In Asia, it's just growth, education, mix of young people.

[00:14:18] Big depth of talent. I'd say it's transitioned from what it used to be. I'm going to date myself a little bit. When NIO was launching and I was helping advise their powertrain group, XPT, it was full of expats.

[00:14:34] So, and when I was going to China in 2010, they've really done a masterful job of building their talent at a country level. Because they started with all of the expats coming in and all of the partners coming in to access the market.

[00:14:57] And then educating their people, bringing them all their people, educating a number of their workforce and bringing a lot of them back from North America from their education. And 10 years later, it's a completely different environment because now the local talent they're hiring have been through two, three launch cycles in their own domestic industry. And they're now mature. And being the biggest market in the world, there's always a demand.

[00:15:26] But it's really been able to pivot over that long course to being able to feed itself. And it's quite an amazing thing. So now a lot of it boils down to communication. Right? And Taiwan was the company that I've been helping for a couple of years over in Taiwan. We've been doing engineering across the pond. And communication becomes key. You can't afford your productivity to be challenged on the communication side.

[00:15:56] But again, the same issue sort of between getting the right skill, the right mix of launch experience with bright ideas. And the junior talent is always more available everywhere. So how do you harness it and turn it into a robust process that delivers something that works all the time based on experience? Right? It makes sense to me having lived through the early days of sending expats all over Asia and to where that sits now.

[00:16:25] If we shift gears and talk a little bit about HR, because I know we've got a lot of HR followers out there. I'd love your take on what's most important about HR's role in the startup world. So how it differs, I'm going to... I don't know how much it differs, but we're highly dependent. There's always the focus on recruiting, right?

[00:16:49] Like depending when you're fortunate enough for the financings and you get to growth mode and you want to be able to recruit. And there's a danger of focusing just on the recruiting. Right? I don't know how far many startups go before they actually have an employee handbook and manual.

[00:17:10] And, you know, you can believe in throwing out the rule book on performance reviews, but you do need some level of control and not just control, but even taking an inventory of the skills. You can really lose sight of it.

[00:17:27] And so I know I've always started with HR part-time people that I know and trust get both the recruiting side and some of the background. Having been through it a lot, you know, there's a lot of background process, but it's critical.

[00:17:48] It's just a matter of always what can you afford when you can afford full-time and what can you hire out and who can you trust? Because they have to represent your culture. They represent your brand and they have to be a part of the team. So your external person really can't display that way to my mind to the candidate.

[00:18:12] They got to be integrated, but you really got to have the keeping the team honest about the employees and everything that needs to be managed. Having worked in a small startup as a more seasoned HR person, I could see some of the needs for the depth of experience to frame, you know, the journey, what's needed, what the HR roadmap looks like, what components you need. What are the mission, vision, values of the business?

[00:18:42] How do we anchor our people in that to all feel like they're part of this company? But I could also relate to there's a lot of mundane tactical work, right? Right. So I think kind of going, yeah, going that fractional path, maybe for some of the strategic help early on makes sense. And it's quite a paradox, I think, of the amount of work and the type of things that need to happen.

[00:19:06] Definitely, if you're looking for one person, it's a very unique person that has to really straddle all worlds and be comfortable being really in the weeds and also being comfortable being very strategic. My experience with it, too, is that us sort of operational focused startup people tend to like to just consider HR and admin all in one. And so startup HR people often run admin.

[00:19:35] And, you know, like everyone wears multiple hats and HR, you get it all. You like keep my, you figure out how to staff and keep the office supplied, how to respond to my calls, customers. Go get the furniture, right? We need furniture. We need an office space. Oh, yeah, yeah. And you get to speak to my investors. Oh, absolutely. Right. You know, so, so because that's it. It's admin and HR.

[00:20:01] Let's not kid ourselves when you can justify hiring that one full time person. And so you need someone, you need someone with at least a decent amount of experience. Seed in that kind of role and help you because that's, you know, your partner in growth and the place has to run. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. And if I think about it, you know, it's certainly not a world for everyone.

[00:20:29] It has to be a person who's comfortable working on all stratospheres. But I think having that person early on is important. I know it's a big investment, but I think because each person you bring in has such a large impact on a small company, getting that right is somehow the stakes are higher. Would you agree with that? Absolutely. Yeah. Um, recruiting is maintaining growth and charting the course are all important.

[00:20:59] And let's be honest to any level of compliance and obligations you have with health and safety, everything else. Well, also in the recruiting side, it gives that brain, right? And you're building a brand.

[00:21:16] And obviously you have a network of folks that you're bringing in on startup and growing, but it's the marketing, the communication, the brand, the network of what everyone's talking to about that startup and the network of those folks. So, you know, driving that piece of it helps on the recruiting and that's where the recruiting partners play a big piece to be able to help you support that in the, in the side of it. So where have you seen that run?

[00:21:45] I mean, obviously you're building organizations across the globe, that whole brand awareness and brand plan plays a factor into it. I mean, talk about brand, I guess, is in that aspect of it. I've seen it and it varies like in, uh, the, the most difficult time is, uh, is the hot market.

[00:22:12] When I was down in California and helping, uh, as the CTO at, uh, at another hybrid electric vehicle developer, just post COVID, the market was hot, right? Like Rivian was still hiring the guys at karma automotive were going. Tesla was hiring the, all the OEMs were trying to grow their teams.

[00:22:39] So as a startup, it was difficult to have a brand, right? Everyone wanted to go to the, to the people with the hundreds of millions or the billions. And, uh, and those financing seem to go indiscriminately to any level of talent. So only, you know, maybe the, you know, Rivian and Lucid still around and most of the other startups that raised half a billion are gone.

[00:23:03] But, you know, that cash A, if you weren't that company and we weren't, was very difficult to recruit against. And, and to some point you still have to grow. It was a constant battle felt like you couldn't win. Um, but you still got to get your talent in.

[00:23:21] And so you got to become more reliant on the couple of people that are experienced that can bring in anyone with the right education and, and make them productive. You hit a, um, a spot for me that you hire a few of the right people, they will come. Um, so getting the right leaders, getting one key technical person.

[00:23:47] Um, I find in those situations, typically people want to follow those people and that's your best recruitment strategy. Um, often I've seen a whole team follow a leader, right? Into a new business. So when you talked about getting the right people on board, I think that's really important. Making one strategically important hire, like with the right reputation, with the true leadership, um, you know, discipleship where the people who work for them really want to follow them.

[00:24:16] Um, I think is, is paramount in a situation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That, that aspect and the aspect that they've, they've really got to be able to train and help people learn their trade. It's a huge trust. Because you often, you know, you often, you have to go to the well of junior people and, and, uh, master students that are, uh, coming in and you've got to be able to make them productive.

[00:24:47] So, so you got to, like you said, Joe, you've got to really focus on getting one or two people that you can build around that, that you trust and have that demonstrated experience. Those, those people can't be a flyer. They, they have to have been there, done it and demonstrated the ability. I'm thinking about it for everyone listening and everyone listening is from different disciplines and backgrounds.

[00:25:16] What kind of advice would you give someone when deciding between a startup versus established organization? What kind of advice would you share for them to think through? I mean, everything has its advantages, right? So I wouldn't choose one or the other. Go in, try to understand what you enjoy. If you're early in your career, sometimes that just requires trying something. Be committed to your decision.

[00:25:45] And identify what you want to learn and what experience you want to gain in the process. Like, don't, don't forget that. Evaluate no matter what your level of experience is, evaluate the potential to learn and be where you want to be in your career.

[00:26:04] But, you know, and as much as I advocate making a decision for the long term and being balanced, you know, understand going to work is a choice. And the decision you're making of where to go can be considered the biggest choice or just a choice. And be committed. Try to learn, get what you get out of it.

[00:26:31] But you've got to be happy to produce. And every day you make a decision to go to work. So your cup should be half full. I've seen it in so many places, even that I've taken over. Everyone's got their complaints. At some point when someone has their complaints to a degree that it's a problem, it's like, you know, you're not trapped here.

[00:26:55] And not to tell you to walk out, but there really can be a change in perspective if you just, there's a freedom to understanding where your flexibilities really lie. But you can learn both. You know, my take on answering that question, even though Joe didn't direct it at me, would be there's very different learning possibilities in both worlds. But there's also some overlap. Those environments are going to challenge you and make you grow in different ways.

[00:27:24] Perhaps there's some unique insights and experiences you get out of each that help you learn and grow. But having worked in both, I can say I'm glad I had that opportunity. You know, I know for me, which world felt more rewarding. So I chose to stay there. And that's a little bit larger, a little bit larger company. I definitely don't gravitate toward being in the weeds too much. But there's really good learning in both worlds.

[00:27:51] And I think those environments challenge us in different ways that help us grow and learn. Yeah. Well, the enterprise. The one thing that I appreciated when I was at Ford throughout the 90s to 2000, early 2000, was really when you look at the enterprise, you could have the most rewarding career under one roof.

[00:28:18] And an automaker, it doesn't have to be an automaker, but a complex engineered system and manufacturer, like a car or airplane or, you know, a number of things like that. You could have so many careers under one roof. You could learn, you could engineer electronics, you could do software, you could go into quality, you could get into manufacturing, you could go into finance, sales. It's like you'd never have to leave. Right.

[00:28:45] And it's a hardened industry that's been around for 100 years. So it also represents potentially the end goal of where the startup wants to be. And so it's tough to be a founder without that background. I started at the bigger enterprises. So when I went to clean sheet of paper, I understood I had already, I'd worked within the system.

[00:29:13] And as much as you could be a cog, I'd moved around enough at Ford that I did a lot of, I did and had an opportunity to learn a lot of things before I went out. And I, and I embraced, and I could understand the minimal requirement of what I had to do basically to make a startup work without over-investing in the higher level of bureaucracy. But if you don't have that kind of experience and you're just in a startup, well, then that's when you're more to the earlier conversation in the chaos.

[00:29:42] And that's what I do now. I help a lot of these startups that lack that experience get through the chaos with the maturity of what are the trade-offs, what are the non-negotiables, and how do I stably move forward and launch a product? Sometimes it's just getting the right focus on the right things. Because I know when I was in startup world, I felt like this need to help prioritize things for people and bring some focus. We can't do everything.

[00:30:11] So how do we divide and conquer? How do we all agree on the prioritization of things? And it absolutely makes sense that you have to have lived a different life in order to see those things and know how to prioritize those things. And you're quite right, Jill. Often it's the balance of the, I wouldn't even say often, but maybe just everything you do needs to be driven ultimately by the market.

[00:30:40] Either your interpretation of it or the direct voice. It just depends how close you are to having the customer and the voice. And you got to take that pull in demand and bring it all downstream. Because in the end, your success and prioritization is, you know, face it, you got to make some decisions that get you to market and satisfy customer demand.

[00:31:06] Because that's what it's about, whether it's software, hardware, or even services. Right? Like you, you got to never lose sight of the pull. I have one last question, Ron. And then obviously, if you have any other closing, but there is no conversation today without throwing out the two letters out there. You know, how does AI play into this stuff nowadays?

[00:31:30] And what have you seen in the AI support and thought process around AI? AI is, you know, rapidly become, it was a word, you know, three, four years ago, it was a word. And probably it was more of a word to the people that were setting it all up and working in the industry. For the rest of us, it was getting to be a smarter search engine.

[00:31:58] Now, it hits you in every aspect. So it simplified the hell out of accounting and business backend stuff. I know in many of the areas and some of the companies I support, they've gone all in to help reduce their admin costs. And it's really quite effective on that front. And they've equally started to lever it for code writing.

[00:32:28] And frankly, it's an area where I need to continue to learn and adopt more, right? Is it because of the areas that I cover, but no, you're getting to a point now. We always had the old debate of model-based software development versus hand-coded C. And not to get into the weeds for people that are not technical, but now you got an AI engine that can make that debate a little bit irrelevant, right?

[00:32:56] So who knows what AI is doing to check the outcome? Again, you know, it's transition, right? Model-based world, you always need the system architect and the high experienced expertise. But now you can get Claude to write code, Claude code, right? And people are using it and it's changing the makeup of the workforce.

[00:33:19] And it's really a huge opportunity because I still always view it the same way. You always need some people with deep, deep expertise, but how can you multiply their skill out? And that's really one way. Levering the tool chain, setting up the architecture is always important.

[00:33:41] And the AI can help a lot with running tasks and removing hours and frankly, doing a lot of validation and quality control, right? So I don't look at it as job or placement. I look at it as being able to improve development cycles and increase productivity. And it's really quite incredible where we stand today versus five, 10 years ago. It's exciting to see.

[00:34:12] I think it has a place in both enterprise and startups, right? I think the advantage of startups would be that they could embrace that from the get-go, perhaps, right? And kind of build that into their planning and those types of things versus going through the transitions in other organizations. But like you said, I firmly believe that we still need humans who have the real knowledge to validate and to even know what to ask for. I find mistakes.

[00:34:40] I keep using going back and forth between Claude and Copilot and Gemini in the daily work. And the one other aspect that I find it extremely helpful for, but maybe a little dangerous is everybody's a lawyer now with AI. And it can help you tremendously with agreements. But again, you need to understand the risk.

[00:35:08] You need to understand what you need to get out of it, right? And the legal aspect of the startups, you know, you are minimizing your legal expenses, you know. But the requirements to protect yourself, your company, and your IP and understand global environments is quite critical. So how can you ensure you get the right things in there and work with the tool, right?

[00:35:39] It's really streamlined a lot of things. It's amazing what they can help you write as well. You know, but the example, like in the legal case saying, well, I could send a document that I've developed to our attorney for review for maybe an hour of billable versus six hours of billable if they had to write it. So there's still a potential opportunity for savings there, right? But you definitely still need that expertise on the outside. Any final thoughts from yourself, Pam?

[00:36:08] I enjoyed the conversation. I think, you know, between the startup world and the enterprise world, right? I think it's, you know, everything remains the same. You just have, you have a smaller pool to get a certain amount of ambition and scope of work done. At the end of the day, you have to match skills with delivery.

[00:36:34] And, you know, in the startup world, you got to be a little bit more honest about what's truly achievable versus your desire to tell the investors what you can do with your 20 person team. Right? Because what many people could risk losing sight of is you can ask for the world. At the end of the day, in leadership, your job is to give your staff an opportunity, a vision and an opportunity to succeed.

[00:37:02] And if you understaff them, and if you don't prioritize for them, and you tell them to do way too many things, and they're late all the time, you need to look in the mirror. Right? And that's the big difference in the startup world. The, you know, filtering the ambition into the prioritization, and it cascades to everything, to building the team and what you expect. Great closing words. At the end of the day, results matter, right? In order for any business to be successful.

[00:37:32] There's more on the line, I think, in the startup world as far as funding and investors and all of those things. So, really enjoyed meeting you, Ron. Enjoyed having the conversation and digging in on this topic. It's been one we've wanted to talk about for a while, and we're very fortunate to have you join us today. So, thank you. No, no. Thank you, Joe. Thanks, Joe. I'm excited to have been a part of it. It's nice to see your podcast in action. We really appreciate you joining.

[00:38:02] Thanks, everyone, for listening. Again, like, share, and comment. And we'll see you soon. Thanks, everyone. Bye, everybody. Cheers. Yep. Bye. Bye.