The Bulldoze Era: What Happens When Government Gets Streamlined Like a Startup?

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[00:00:31] Hey everybody, this is Bob Goodwin with Career Club and welcome to another episode of The Work Wire where we connect headlines with the world of work. Today we're entering into what I'm calling the Bulldoze Era, a full force effort to bulldoze the federal bureaucracy, budgets and longstanding policies. The Trump administration's unleashed Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, on mission to streamline government. And that's how he meant mass federal layoffs,

[00:00:59] canceled contracts, canceled contracts, canceled contracts, and the closure of the Department of Education. At least that's in play right now. Add in new tariffs, rising inflation concerns, DEI, whispers of stagflation. We've got a perfect storm of uncertainty for businesses and the workforce.

[00:01:15] So we're not here to debate politics. We're here to explore what it all means for employers, talent, and the future of work. And I can think of nobody better on this planet to help me unpack that a little bit than the one, the only, Johnny C. Taylor Jr., President and CEO of SHRM. Johnny, how are you today?

[00:01:31] Man, I'm excited about this conversation. I was already having a good day. I'm really, really excited because this is what I live for, is us really talking about these sorts of things. So thank you for having me again today, my man.

[00:01:46] No, we're partners in this. So there's like 15 different ways to go. But let's just sort of start with DOGE and this efficiency mandate. In fairness, Donald J. Trump was elected with a majority, with a mandate to go drain the swamp, cut out all the fat.

[00:02:08] Like we've got too much federal government and a percentage of people tended to agree with that point of view. Well, he's delivering on that promise. So they've targeted IRS, the VA. We already talked about the education department for deep cuts and streamlining bloated agencies, ideally trying to make faster decisions. Efficiency, though, like what's your take on all this, Johnny?

[00:02:34] Wow. Where do we start? The simple answer is it's the how, not the what. If you really simplify this all down, I think you're right in your statement that America, this was a mandate. Now, you can argue if it was a big mandate or just a majority mandate or whatever, but a mandate nonetheless. He won. And candidate Trump is President Trump.

[00:02:59] Right. And to your point, he told us he was going to decrease the size of government, find the efficiencies. No one could have expected that he was going to do that himself. And therefore, you do delegate it to someone or some agency. And it's hard for the agencies to do it themselves. It's not actually in their best interest, typically speaking, or they would have done it already. Right. Irrespective of who the president is.

[00:03:22] So knowing that, you know, you and I have come from major corporations and what we would do is bring in one of the big, you know, consulting firms and they would do the same work. Like we know you've seen this happen. Right. In comes the BCG or the McKinsey guys or whoever. And they come in, they look at the whole thing and they say, OK, here's where you can become more efficient. This is where you can innovate. So there's nothing new. It might be new for government employees to have this done at scale, but nothing new. And I do agree with you that I think there was a mandate to do it.

[00:03:52] And even, you know, most average Americans say if you can be more efficient, it's not about cutting taxes and giving taxes to someone else. It's taking care of our growing, you know, group of human people, human beings who need some of these like moving resources around is what I'm getting to. Net net be more efficient. The how is the problem. And that's why I'm calling it a bulldozer, because it's just like just straight up.

[00:04:20] I'm just clearing the lot. I don't know what's on here, but it's all going to be gone by the time I'm done. And to pull that through that visual, you know, you buy a lot of land to build a home and you knock down the 150 year old oak tree just because, you know, I got it. But perhaps you could have built your driveway around it. Like there are a couple of things you can do because all of it isn't bad. And there actually may be some really, really good things in there. So being thoughtful about how you do it.

[00:04:49] I've used I've heard people use the phrase a scapel versus, you know, whatever. The visual these days is Elon with the chainsaw. Right. And again, the I understand conceptually and actually agree with the idea that you should become every organization. I run a business and if I wanted to, I could probably find five or 10 percent inefficiency across the enterprise if I wanted to.

[00:05:16] Luckily, we don't have to do that. And I can use those resources to give my people good lives and let them work on good things. But if I really had to cut it down, I could. And every CEO says that I know you and I talked to one of the work wires about Jamie Dimon's comments. But he essentially said that like I could go through here and reduce headcount and it would work. The how I'm going to get back to the how I have a line that I use and have used it all of my career at every company that I've been in.

[00:05:44] And that is red carpet in, red carpet out. It's the notion that you give people dignity. You celebrate them on the way in and out. If there's an opportunity to let someone in the federal government who's been there 30 years and who could retire, let them do so with dignity and honor. And with the notion of just saying you're out, here's a note to you that says don't show up to work tomorrow. I'll put you on leave or I'll permanently fire you until you go. That's not cool.

[00:06:14] Now, I've said that and that's how it would work in the private sector world. I have a full appreciation for the fact and I want people to hear me because there may be people working government there or not that government and private sector operations. We operate differently. Right. So I know there's not one way to do it, but it just strikes me that there's got to be a better way to do this where you don't literally cut at the core of human beings.

[00:06:41] You've also heard me say there are two things that present an existential threat to human beings. It is a threat to their lives, which is covid or their livelihood, which was covid. Right. When people are fearful about making their mortgage next month, paying for a dollar and egg, you know, twelve dollar, you know, egg deliveries at the grocery store.

[00:07:06] Then this really gets at their very core. And it's fearful. It's creating a lot of fear for people. So I just wish and it's unavoidable because some people are going to go away again. That's what he said he was going to do. The question is, how do we do it to make it a little bit more powerful? That's all. Yeah. And so what do you think? Sometimes you and I see these things a little differently. No, no, no. I mean, look, there's some people think he's not moving fast enough. That's right. To be fair. OK, fine.

[00:07:34] But I would agree, you know, that this just the speed and kind of the the no filters like it just doesn't matter. Like you're all of you guys are gone and you're gone by Thursday. Can we break down that? I want you because you had a compound question or issue there speed. And then you said speed and something else. So can we dissect?

[00:08:02] I don't speak where there's a speed in the magnitude magnitude. So speed is probably not a bad thing. Let's debate it in the sense that I've worked in organizations where we announced to people over the next six months, we're going to reduce the headcount. Do you know the kind of anxiety that creates the employee population? Because everyone's like, is it me? Will it be me? Blah, blah, blah. Productivity is lost because everyone's spending that time.

[00:08:29] People who you want to stay are out looking for new jobs because they're not sure if they're going. So to be fair, speed is typically the friend. You get it executed properly. But would you take the friendly amendment that speed may not be a bad thing? Yeah. So, you know, I think one of the the.

[00:08:50] Mottoms isn't the right word, but that idea of Silicon Valley is you get in break things and just break things fast and just like, OK, honestly, like if Tesla wasn't on the planet, the Earth would still spin. If SpaceX was on the planet, the world would still spin. The things that the federal government does for citizens, whether it's Social Security, VA benefits, you could even argue that things are happening in the national parks. And so these affect real people's lives.

[00:09:20] And this is how government delivers meaningful services to people. So I'm agreeing with you that I think in this case, well, maybe not agreeing with you. I think in this case, speed is too fast because it's being pretty, again, lack of a better word, unfiltered and indiscriminate. That's really the word that I'm looking for. So nobody's looking for that oak tree. They're saying, dude, you're this lot will be cleared by four o'clock this afternoon. And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

[00:09:48] I like the fact that you're going to be done in a reasonable time period. It's kind of like you said in early on, on an early, early Workwire episode when we were talking about, what's the new work model going to look like coming out of COVID? You said it took us a long time to get into this. It's going to take us a while to get out. And similarly, these are decades of bureaucracy systems that have been built. And just, you know, kind of roll a grenade in there and go, well, we'll see what happens.

[00:10:17] And somebody will figure out how to clean up the mess. It feels, I'm going to go one step further. It feels irresponsible. I think that they could follow through on the promises made in the campaign, identify where there's fat and inefficiencies and things like that. Does it really matter if it happened in six days or six months? In the scope of what the U.S. government is, that doesn't seem like a meaningful difference to me.

[00:10:47] So, you know, I agree with you. So let me just start with that. But the lawyer in me has to play devil's advocate a little bit. You know that, O-line, that the number one job for an elected official is to be reelected. That's it. That's it. Like, all of that other stuff is true. It's nice if I can help people. It's nice. But ultimately, my job is to get reelected. And that's what most politicians would say to you.

[00:11:15] In two years, typically, the party that's in control of the White House loses the midterms. Correct. I think what they're saying is, no, I can't do this slowly. First of all, it's two million people. It's the largest workforce in the country. If we went in and analyzed it and da-da-da-da-da, we'd be in three years and we may not be able to execute on this. So, and I'm playing devil's advocate for everyone out there who's listening.

[00:11:42] But maybe speed is that they don't have the luxury of private sector where we can do the job. Well, I believe the reason they want to go fast is they want to outflank the competition quickly. It's going to be a track meet. And I'm going to beat you before you try and legislate this through Congress. I'm going to beat you before you try and litigate this through the courts. And I'm just going to go fast and break things.

[00:12:09] And then, yes, are we going to find ourselves in court with some things? But we're going to win more than we lose, I bet. And so I'm willing to start the fire and then we'll see where it goes. And that may be it. And so I'm not debating the good or bad of that. What I am saying is the fact that six months versus six weeks or six days could be significant when you're only talking about 24 months. Yeah, that's because now we're not doing it over 250 years.

[00:12:39] We're doing it over two years. That's right. Also, you just accounted for 25% of the time I've got to figure this out. Right. And so that is the point. Again, no one should think I have an opinion. I do have a personal opinion, but it doesn't matter. I'm trying to understand. And I think that's what all of our listeners should do is step out of how this personally makes you feel. Step out of how would I do that? That's an interesting exercise, but I think the better, more helpful exercise is to say, what are they doing and why?

[00:13:09] You then can understand how you want to navigate through it because you can't like I know matter how right you and I might be on today's call. We don't we didn't run for office. As you've heard me say, Obama famously said in 2009 when the Republicans said he didn't like something they were doing. Listen, elections have consequences and I won. And so that's what Trump is saying is like, I won. I'm going to do this. You didn't run for office. And so here you go.

[00:13:39] So I think we we stand in a better position. I think it's a fair critique, which is what we do on the work wire. And I think you and I are violently agreeing. And I think most people overwhelmingly would have to say, God, this feels too fast. I understand it needs to be fast, but maybe too fast. It feels very inhumane. Not good. It adds to the incivility in our society because people are on edge because they're worried about paying their house note or putting groceries on the table.

[00:14:07] They're naturally going to be on edge and more likely to be uncivil toward each other. And so I don't know. I agree with you. I haven't done the full calculation, but I can't imagine that when it's all said and done that we are a better society because of the way we did what we're doing. I could be wrong, by the way. But it's definitely disruptive. There is a mindset of just break things. You know, that's that's Elon's model.

[00:14:37] To your point, Trump really has nothing to lose except maybe legacy. And I think he thinks he's massively, you know, in a good spot on that. So anyway, Doge is going to keep being a thing. So we'll see. We'll see how that plays out. But it does have some spider web effects. And there's different places have been targeted. We talked about this some on a previous work wire. So I don't want to go too crazy on it. But one of the places is with education.

[00:15:06] And as we're recording this, you know, he has said the Department of Education is going to be completely dismantled. And, you know, it made me think about you, Johnny, where you're the CEO of a business, but you have a board that you're responsible to.

[00:15:25] And if you were doing something, if a CEO is doing something that isn't working and is asking for more funding, at some point the board's going to go, yeah, no, that's not working. Why am I giving you more money to do something that doesn't work? Just for numbers, we continue to be the highest spending country on education.

[00:15:46] And according to PISA, U.S. ranks 28th in math against 37 OECD countries. 28th? What? Like, so you need more money and more money so we can get worse and worse based on these standardized international testing benchmarks.

[00:16:08] Marks, I think that the argument is, you know, underserved kids are going to be disproportionately affected by this. Is all that money just going to stop? Which I don't think was the idea. But I'd love for you to maybe kind of just give a little bit of a rehash of busted, broken and leaky. And kind of how you think this dismantling of Department of Education will play out.

[00:16:36] So for those who don't know what Bob is referring to, I gave congressional testimony. The first full hearing before the U.S. Congress about a month or so ago. And it was a critique of our PK through 16 system. In other words, PK through 12, pre-kindercard through 12. And then college because the Department of Education funds colleges because of its student loan portfolio. And Pell Grant, for example. So a lot of money sitting over there.

[00:17:06] And essentially, I argue that the system is broken and it's leaking in some places outright busted. Like we are not good citizens, good responsible citizens with our resources. And I'm not sure we're getting the educational outcomes we thought we would have with this level of investment, as you pointed out. PISA tests are what they are. And one can debate, you know, the legitimacy of them.

[00:17:31] But the good thing about PISA tests is they judge people across the globe, including some really poor countries that don't have the resources that we have, but still outperform us on the basics. You know, the three R's, reading, writing, and arithmetic, that kind of thing. So what I said to members of Congress, and it was, I tried very carefully. SHRM doesn't get into partisanship in the politics. So when you go before Congress, you have the majority and the other ranking.

[00:17:58] Majority from control because they're party one, in this case Republicans, and ranking are the number two or the minority party. And so you go in, and my goal was to say, I think we're hard pressed to disagree with the fact that factually, we continue to invest more in education. Secondly, we continue not to see the results that we thought we'd get. So if we all agree on that, the question is, what do we do?

[00:18:25] Because we can't keep doing the same thing and expect a different result. The administration's argument is return it to the states. And I got to tell you, for most of GK through 12 education, primary education, it's funded by local property taxes. So it's already in the states. That's why you have school boards. There's some block grants that come from the federal government for food programs.

[00:18:48] But at the end of the day, most schools are funded by their, so most of it's state anyway, or local politicians through school boards. So the idea is, whatever amount sitting at the federal level, just let them do it in the states. Interesting argument. Interesting argument. Are you a states' rights person or are you not? I don't know. That's a big constitutional question. But okay, got it. Then you have this big block of money that is where most of the resources are spent, which is on higher ed. And we already know.

[00:19:18] We have people who want to get degrees, people who want to go to school because they think they're supposed to go to school, but don't care about it. Like, we know that we're giving loans to people sometimes more than they could ever hope to make, given their choice. Like, things are, it is broken, period. And so the question is, this is the question. Not do you eliminate the work of the Department of Education, but does it have to be done in the Department of Education?

[00:19:45] And it's an interesting argument, as you know where I'm going, that maybe, just maybe, you move all of that higher ed stuff in particular over to the Department of Labor. The work of it. And people forget that prior to 1979, Jimmy Carter, there was no Department of Education. So it isn't like we had a Department of Education forever and Trump is introducing this horrible idea. No, there wasn't one before.

[00:20:12] And not that you can say it's causation or causal. We had better education results as a country. Right? We spent less money and had better results. And that was when, so I think you could make a compelling case. Again, no one, I'm not political, so I'm not here to tell you one way or the other. But I am saying from the employer's perspective, those of us who are consumers of that product that comes out of higher ed, or even K through 12 for that matter,

[00:20:42] we want our product that we consume called employees to be ready to do our job, skills ready. We want them to be socially ready, to work in teams and the soft skills or power skills. And however we get it, if it means sitting it over in the Department of Labor, which understands what we want, then maybe that's not such a bad idea. So that's what they're doing is they're looking at it saying, I believe it ain't working.

[00:21:09] All of us agree, majority and minority members within the Congress agree. And so if we can agree on that, maybe, maybe, maybe we go back to how it was. That's the argument. Okay, so because I think part of the issue, not a small part, there is the... And I'll say one other thing before you go to the case. This has to be said. All of that being said, President Trump does not have the unilateral authority to shut down the Department of Education.

[00:21:38] Everyone should be clear. It was established by Congress, and if it's going to go away, Congress is going to have to do it. So I do want to make sure that Johnny's not saying... I say all of that to say he's still got to follow the law. No one has followed the law, including the President of the United States. Okay, so educate me a little bit, educate our listeners on this Department of Labor angle.

[00:21:59] I think part of the criticism with the Department of Education is that it had become too ideological and maybe not so much focused on the three R's, if you will. And what would your hope be? Maybe that's the best way of asking the question. What would your hope be that if it is kind of remanded back to Department of Labor primarily, what does that world look like? So this may be controversial. I'm sure it is. I hope so. Surprise on the work.

[00:22:29] We're wired. We're controversial. My dream would be that go all the way back to PK through 12. So call it third grade. Pick a number. I'm no educator. But that we figure out what is Johnny predisposed? What is he likely to be good at?

[00:22:50] So that we can create a path that at the end of the 12 year investment, if it's high school or 16, if it's college or what have you, that he will have a good job. If the federal government, we as taxpayers, because there's no such thing as a federal government to us. If we are paying to educate Johnny for 12, 16, whatever number of years, we should have a return on said investment at the end of it.

[00:23:17] And that is a tax paying law abiding citizen. Right. Right.

[00:23:39] And we're going to let you know he's going to do what is the thing. OK. So I'm going to let you know when we're seeing the federal government and we're seeing the federal government and we're seeing the federal government. And I think that's a big thing. And I think the federal government will have a budget for that. good at based upon some battery of tests. And yes, you got to validate them and make sure they don't over-index for races, racial. I got all of that. But I'm saying the concept is, say to Johnny,

[00:24:07] when we assess you, you are more quant oriented. You should go be an actuary or something that plays to your natural strengths where you can be great. Not saying you can't do something else, but let's give you that information and start pathing you toward that. If you do that, the Department of Labor is best situated because it's not ideological. And it's not the sum of the stuff that's happening in the Department of Education. This is about,

[00:24:33] at the end of the day, taxpayers should have you doing something since they paid for it. You know, the best way to think about it, Bob, and I'll make this real quick. My son went to Georgetown. When we got ready to go decide what college he was going to go to, if he was going to go to college, I said, what are your strengths? And we had to pick a major. And I'll never forget his early say, I'm not sure. I said, well, then you're not going to go to school. I'm not going to spend $55,000 a year for you to figure out what the hell you want to do. That

[00:25:02] ain't how this works. You're not sure I'm going to spend a year working at a job somewhere in town with your high school diploma. And then you'll sort of figure it out. I'm not wasting that money. Once he figured it out, then he said, I want to do X. Okay, great. Do you go to a state school for $5,000 a year? Or do I spend $55,000 a year for, you know, a high end? He ended up at Georgetown because what he said he wanted to do, I could see the return on the investment after a $250,000

[00:25:30] four-year education at Georgetown. That's just practical. We all, and I was the funder of his education. I don't know why taxpayers shouldn't do the same thing. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So in your congressional testimony, you talked about a couple of schools that college isn't for everybody. I am getting young people some like labor market ready skills, right? You can go not just make a

[00:25:56] quote living wage. You can have a thriving wage, like a very good career doing something that doesn't require you going to college because to your point, that's not my bend. Like I'm just not that interested in going to more school. I like working with my hands. I like being outside. I like fixing stuff, right? So do you see some of those dollars being reallocated to help fund programs like that?

[00:26:22] That's my dream. My dream is that we will, and I remember it, I'm not that old, but I do remember that we had kids who attract to vocational training programs. You needed shop, you know, the course. You remember it's the shop course where people who were better with their hands, mechanics, you know, fixing cars. We have a shortage in this country. One of the problems, as you know, with the EV market is they don't know enough people who were trained to fix EVs, right? So you got all these cars coming

[00:26:50] to the market and the old mechanics know how to fix the gas cars and you don't know. So there's just so many opportunities and these are well-paying jobs. I had a visit last year from a woman who, I think it was Otis Elevator or one of those. I was shocked at basically call it 12 weeks. I don't remember the number, 26 weeks of training. They can take anyone who's good with their hands and make

[00:27:18] them a trained elevator service person. And these people are making six figures. Like, like, wow, because you think about it. I'm going to go, Johnny. I'm going to go figure out how to go. Well, right. I hadn't thought about this, but think about it. As we have an aging population, people are building more homes with elevators and not just the rich, but because if you run out of space to go wide, then houses have to be vertical. And if they're vertical, that elderly person can't

[00:27:47] navigate four flights of stairs every day. So elevators are becoming a thing in residential homes. Someone has to fix them. If that person gets stuck in the elevator, someone has to service it to prevent it. So it's a whole industry out there. And we've told people, no, you got to get a master's degree, spend $200,000 to be an X. They don't even want to do. No, I agree. So to your,

[00:28:12] let's get the headline, right? Which, which I agree with in this case is it's not that the work of the department of education goes away. It's who doesn't, right? And they had, what'd you say? Jimmy Carter. So that's 50 years ago, 79. All right. So you had a 50 year run, didn't work out super great. So let's go try something else and see if it works. Right. But, but again, not saying that

[00:28:36] education doesn't matter, not saying funding education doesn't matter, but how it gets done is clearly getting a relook. And so efficiencies, I'm going to just say that going all the way back to Doge, if you found a way to do just in, you and I've run businesses. If you took the exact, you know, 90% of the people and moved them over from the department of education to department of labor, I'm not promoting anything, but I'm just saying the idea. If you literally took those

[00:29:04] people over to department of labor at a minimum, you don't need all of the, the upper management team. So there are, and there are savings in there at, they're just automatic savings. Now how deeply you take advantage of those savings, different story. And then later on, you and I should talk about AI because there is a big question. If you had a hundred people doing that work, do you need a hundred people going forward? And then there's the question is what do you do with the people who are displaced? Oh, let's be, let's be fluid. We can go there. Let's go to AI. Go.

[00:29:33] That's the biggest fear of mine. There's no question that you and I know that there's a reason why a trillion dollars or so of capital is being thrown into AI because companies believe they're going to be more efficient as a result of better, higher quality, but more efficient at the end of the day. The big question, Bob, that I think we've got to toil, we really got to sort. What do you do

[00:29:55] when you make people's jobs go away? People who are willing, ready, able, qualified to do work? You're not talking about blue collar workers who were made redundant because of automation. You're talking about white collar workers, people who are well-trained and you say, got it. I don't, all of you who went on to those coding academies, guess what? AI can code much faster than you can. So instead of 10 of you, I need two of you to quality check. What happens with the other eight

[00:30:23] people? That's the question. So a couple of things. AI isn't coming for your job. Somebody who has to use AI is coming for your job. I think a wise man who I co-host the podcast with says, but the thing with AI is, and I'm a big user, like I get a lot of utility out of ChatGPT.

[00:30:48] AI, it allows me to do things not just faster, but I think better. I was saying about this the other day, artificial intelligence. For me, it's more like, because I think that's the part that feels like cheating to people. For me, it's augmented intelligence. It allows me to actually do my job better. Now, one of the common talking points on AI is it's going to think about people leaders.

[00:31:16] It's going to remove some of the kind of task oriented things because it can do better, faster, cheaper than I can do something. Okay, good. That creates bandwidth. Does that mean we don't need me? Or as a people leader, does that allow me to do things for the uniquely human to actually be a better, you talk a lot about deep listening, being empathetic, understanding, actually figuring out, is this even what you want to be doing? Can I help you with your career path?

[00:31:44] But if we don't have time for those conversations, then we don't have time to help be the best people manager that we can be. I think that's one. And that's just like with some of the mundane tasks, things that can be routinized, if that's the right word. But I think also there is an amazing body of content that is able to democratize how to be a better people manager. Right? So I may want

[00:32:12] to help you, Johnny, and you're telling me about your aging parents and what's going on with your kid and everything else. Not my Elaine. Like, I don't know exactly how to coach you through stuff like that. But if I could get some help. That's right. And in this situation, what Johnny needs is X. What I would suggest you offer to Johnny is 123. Or as the manager, I have a conundrum. As a human being, I understand you need to go take care of your parent. Got it. But I also know I this project is due on May

[00:32:41] 15. And Johnny's my lead guy that's running that project. AI tool, please help me reconcile these things. How can I give Johnny what he needs and at the same time, fulfill what needs to get done? I think AI is amazing at helping work through things that might be new to me, but aren't new to the world to think through how to solve a problem like this, or how to help a person who's going through something. What

[00:33:08] do you think? I think that's right. I think that's right. But I'm going to take you back my fellow co-hosts here. At the end of the day, there are going to be fewer people. There is something to be said for fewer jobs, because we are trying to gain efficiency. If at the end of the day, a company goes into a department and installs a new technology, nine times out of 10, the sell to the CEO

[00:33:36] is, yeah, and we can either reduce headcount or deliver more volume. So do more work with fewer people or have fewer people, right? To do the same work. We do have, people aren't stupid. Like we just saw the other day, Amazon announces 14,000 middle managers are going to lose their job.

[00:34:00] So then rightly. But is that an AI thing? Well, who knows? But if I'm sitting in my seat, and all I'm hearing about is AI, and I'm hearing you talk about AI can help, then yeah, maybe it is. Maybe AI is not my friend. I was actually talking to a friend who's in the courts. And they said, you know what? AI could probably do a lot of this stuff that we do. A lot of it faster. But I need my job.

[00:34:26] And that's the way you ended. It was like, I need my job. People are also going to, they're not going to do something that's not in their best interest most of the time. How did I get 34 minutes into a conversation with you? And we haven't gotten to upskilling, reskilling. Well, okay. So got it. That's so yes, that's the, and that's the silver bullet, but guess what? The reason that you and I were talking about department of education,

[00:34:51] department of labor is that is the strongest case to me for not just PK through 16 education, but lifelong learning. And that is, I think the department of labor has all of the signals for what are going to be the future jobs, prompt engineers, this, this, this, this, they know that. And then they could say, let's ensure that we have a mechanism and institution in place

[00:35:18] to re-educate the 40, 50 year old who may or may not have been a digital native or the person. And by the way, the person who's 20 today, the new technology in 20 years is going to make them old too. So there's a like constantly lifelong learning. We need to put that somewhere, but it has to be tied to supply in the workforce. We've got seven, almost 8 million jobs in America right now. That's a problem because we don't have seven or 8 million people looking for a job right

[00:35:47] now. And of the people who are looking for the job, many of them don't have the skills to fill the jobs that we have open. So this is a really intractical problem. This is a problem for us. And I think it is a, ultimately a labor problem, maybe education and skilling of that labor, but nonetheless a labor problem. So before November of 2022, nobody had ever heard of open AI and chat PPT and Sam Altman was

[00:36:15] somebody nobody ever heard of. Right. Unless you were in Silicon Valley, I guess. In the main. And all of a sudden we've, you just mentioned, we've got prompt engineers. That wasn't a thing. And AI ethicist, right? What are the ethics around AI? Like I need to start thinking about who, who talks about, who knows about that. We've got, you know, all these data farms that are being stood

[00:36:39] up, right? Well, who's building the data farms? Who's running the data farms? Who's building the stuff that goes into a data farm? Managing the people who work inside of a data farm. See what I believe, Johnny, is that the shutting of some of these doors opens up new doors because it's never going to stop. You know, all of this is organic and as one thing dies or at least becomes

[00:37:07] less, it creates new opportunity. That company that is saving money because they, you know, the AI can do that. Their growth goals didn't go away. So way to go. You've got, you know, a contributor to gross margin that you didn't have before, but we have to keep growing. Now you just found the funding vehicle for us to continue to grow our business. Are we going to go into new markets? Are we going to innovate new things? Are we just going to go buy another company? The work never stops.

[00:37:37] And that's why I believe, I'm sorry. That's why I believe this reskilling and upskilling is the unlock on all of this is because the work is never going to stop. It's, are you qualified to do the work that needs to be done? And are you willing to put the effort into reskilling you? I can put up. As an individual. Individual. That's what we've got to get to is I can get you.

[00:38:06] There are mechanisms now for people to upskill them. Thankfully, you and I didn't grow up with the worldwide web. You can literally go on and self-teach. There's a lot of stuff. You don't need to go off to some university or even some training center. If you want to, because as you pointed out, AI, as we know it is really only two years old, that means anyone can become a master at it. They decided to, right? You know, you could literally decide I'm going to go from the beginning

[00:38:35] and I'm going to learn everything there is to know about it. At least practically speaking, I'm not suggesting becoming an engineer, but, but the point is you could master this and you could master it in the context of the job that you currently have. There are things you could do. Our problem is people are not motivated to do it. And here's the deal. You know this. Our, on an individualized basis, we were taught go to school, whether that means college or not,

[00:39:01] it was college, get a skill and do that skill for 30 or 40 years and then retire. That's the model. None of us really at scale thought I've got to constantly retrain. I might have to do a little bit of updating. I'm a lawyer for a training, for example, as you know. So you have to go get some continuing legal education units because the law has changed. Supreme courts make a decision, but it's still the law. It's the, the concept is the same. It's not different than it

[00:39:28] was 30 years ago. Now it's fundamentally different. They are jobs that did not exist ever before. And so we've got to figure out how to get into the psyche of people, a phrase that you and I've talked about for years and it is lifelong learning. And it's got to be more than a buzz phrase. Individuals have to subscribe to lifelong learning and corporations and employers like us have got to give you the time,

[00:39:55] the money we've got to subsidize along with the government. We've got to make sure there are no barriers in place for people who live on more modest sums of money and can't actually afford to do it. But nonetheless, you have to decide that you're going to upscale and reskill yourself period. Without that, the government can't do anything about that. I don't believe that. So clearly like you have to have the desire. Check out career.club for personalized help with your job search. Visit SHRM.org to

[00:40:24] become part of the largest human resources organization worldwide.