February 14, 2025 • 27 mins
Can AI truly reshape the future of work, or is it just another passing trend?
In this episode of "What's the BUZZ?", host Andreas Welsch sits down with Joe Reis, a seasoned authority in data engineering and a passionately outspoken advocate for mental wellness in tech.
Join them as they dive into the real implications of AI in modern business, exploring the thin line between innovation and burnout. They discuss the overwhelming hype surrounding AI technologies, particularly in the wake of breakthroughs like ChatGPT, and the genuine strain it places on professionals in the field. Joe shares insights from his experience working with companies of all sizes, revealing that while the excitement for AI is palpable, many organizations are still grappling with basic data management and business intelligence.
Together, Andreas and Joe tackle critical questions:
- How can companies effectively harness AI without neglecting their foundational data needs?
- What strategies can leaders implement to promote mental wellness and prevent burnout among their teams amidst rising expectations?
- Is the future of work shifting towards an 'agent economy' where workers can engage multiple roles simultaneously, aided by AI?
This episode is essential listening for anyone concerned about the intersection of rapid technological advancement and employee well-being. Whether you’re a leader navigating the AI landscape or an individual contributor feeling the pressure, Andreas and Joe provide actionable insights that can help you thrive.
Ready to uncover how to turn AI hype into real business outcomes without burning out?
Don't miss this enlightening discussion—tune in now!
Questions or suggestions? Send me a Text Message.
***********
Disclaimer: Views are the participants’ own and do not represent those of any participant’s past, present, or future employers. Participation in this event is independent of any potential business relationship (past, present, or future) between the participants or between their employers.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Andreas Welsch (00:00):
Welcome to "What's the BUZZ?", where
(00:02):
leaders and hands on expertsshare how they've turned hype
into outcome.
Today, we'll talk about burningfor AI without burning out.
And I have somebody on the showwho recently posted about this
and who's an expert in anythingdata engineering, and a trusted
voice in the community.
Joe Reis.
Hey, Joe.
Thank you so much for joining.
Joe Reis (00:20):
Hey, what's up?
How you doing?
Andreas Welsch (00:21):
Awesome.
Hey, for those of you in theaudience or that don't know Joe,
maybe Joe, if you can introduceyourself real quick, that'd be
awesome.
Joe Reis (00:29):
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm Joe.
I don't know what to say.
Write books, rant online, stillpractice data engineering,
architecture and so forth.
Yeah, I've been in the space along time.
I think sometimes known as arecovering data scientist.
Probably unpack that a bit.
But anyway yeah, good to seeyou.
Andreas Welsch (00:48):
Awesome.
Wonderful.
It's been a while since youinvited me to your show.
I think about a year and a halfor so.
So it's more than than overdueto, to reciprocate.
Obviously super passionate abouthow we can help folks in the
community do that better.
And I think that's still a bigneed.
But not just that side themental health side obviously as
well.
Make sure that we, don'toverstretch ourselves.
(01:10):
But before we talk about today'stopic, should we play a little
game to kick things off in goodtradition?
Joe Reis (01:16):
I guess so.
Let's do that.
Andreas Welsch (01:20):
Good.
All right.
So this one's called In Your OwnWords.
And when I hit the buzzer, thewheels will start spinning.
We'll see a sentence and I'dlike for you to answer with the
first thing that comes to mindand why, in your own words.
To make it a little moreinteresting, you only have 60
seconds for your answer.
And if you're in the audience,feel free.
Free to play along with us, too,and put your answer and why in
the chat as well.
(01:40):
So Joe, are you ready for"What'sthe BUZZ?"
Joe Reis (01:42):
Never been readier.
Let's do it.
Oh, kidding.
I have no idea what you're goingto ask, but
Andreas Welsch (01:46):
if AI were a vehicle, what would it be?
60 seconds on the clock.
Joe Reis (01:51):
oh, geez, I think it depends what country you're in.
I think in America, definitely aCybertruck.
In Europe, probably a Fiat.
So Or a Peugeot, whatever.
Andreas Welsch (01:59):
Maybe the Fiats are highly regulated and
reliable or something, but theCybertruck definitely resonates
with me.
Joe Reis (02:06):
Or a Volvo, right?
It's supposed to be safe onland.
Andreas Welsch (02:11):
Yeah.
Awesome.
I love that.
Good.
So whatever your answer would beagain, put it in the chat.
I'm curious, but so now how do Imake this how do I build that
bridge from cars to, to mentalwellness?
Let's see.
Yeah, look, it can feel a lotlike going on the German
Autobahn, and even if you feelyou're going 140, there's a car
(02:33):
behind you going 160 andflashing the high beams and you
need to move over.
Joe Reis (02:38):
Autobahn is fun though, I will say.
Andreas Welsch (02:41):
It is fun.
It can also be stressful, right?
Much like a tech job.
And I feel that the industry isin overdrive.
It's been in overdrive eversince this thing, ChatGPT,
obviously popped on the map.
And business leaders, techleaders said, wow what's this?
We need to do something.
What's our AI strategy?
What have we been doing allthese years?
(03:01):
Yes, we have some AI or machinelearning, but this, we didn't
see this coming.
More and more announcements,advancements, we all read the
tech news and blogs, it's mindblowing sometimes, even within a
given week, how we jump fromnews and do all that hopping.
But I also think it's reallyhard when you talk to folks in
(03:22):
the industry, nobody reallywants to admit that they're
behind.
Internally, I think there's abig push in many of these
organizations, not just softwareand tech, but across different
industries.
But I'm curious, what are youseeing when you talk to people?
What's that sentiment?
Joe Reis (03:39):
It's interesting.
I definitely talk to a crosssection of people from some of
the biggest companies in theworld to, small and everything
in between.
It is interesting.
You do point out, I think thisand I fake it till I make it
approach.
Maybe it's not the right way ofputting it, but I'll go with it
for now.
And yeah, it's there'sdefinitely got to put on
(04:00):
appearances that you have aquote AI story.
Your board expects it.
If you have a board, yourcustomers might expect it.
I can get into what thatactually is nuance into that.
But the expectation is,universal, obviously
universally, but quasi is that,the expectations are you're
doing something with AI, youhave some sort of a use case,
use cases, and, but, it isinteresting because I feel like
(04:21):
this is it's been ordained as atransformative technology of at
least this decade and maybewe'll see about others, but the
transformation part is somethingI've been very curious about,
what if you're a regular techcompany, for example, obviously
there's probably more use casesfor it to you're probably
already transformed yourbusiness because you're more
probably AI or data native ordigital native than, Maybe
mature enterprises, but then themature enterprises, I often
(04:43):
wonder what's the use cases thatare really going to cause the
transformations for these maturecompanies.
Cause if you take a step back,and I wrote about this in one of
my articles, a lot of companieswant to do AI, but most are
barely doing BI.
This is still the challenge fora lot of mature.
It's not a knock.
It's just, you have the datasystems that are pretty old BI
is still a challenge.
And now we're going to throwLLMs and AI on top of these same
(05:06):
data systems.
And miraculously things aregoing to happen, right?
So I think that's a disconnectthat I see just that, I live in
reality.
I think a lot of other we talkedto technicians, especially
practitioners.
They're like, yeah I thinkthere's a difference between
what maybe is on the the Csuites slide deck for AI versus
what's actually happening and itcould be possible just given the
current state of affairs.
That's not to say, of course,that AI is not going to get
(05:27):
traction, especially if we talkabout more mature enterprises
that there's use cases thatprobably don't directly involve
a lot of the corporate datasystems as they are.
You could do customer support.
That's a big one.
That's like the lowest hangingfruit that I see is just
augmenting people with AI orreplacing them, whatever with
these solutions.
Thank you.
It's that's how it is.
What are you seeing?
Andreas Welsch (05:47):
So I was meeting with a few prospects over the
last couple of weeks and I saw asimilar picture as well, right?
AI is that shiny object thattrigger which I think is already
good because leaders realize,hey, we need to do something.
We haven't done enough over thelast couple of years and we
haven't been able to invest asmuch as we should have.
Now we see there's AI.
It's an opportunity.
(06:08):
It's a threat.
We need to do something, butthen when you peel it back, it
really comes down to data,processes and systems, right?
And actually businesstransformation at the very core.
Yeah.
It is an enabler.
So that to me is still an eyeopening conversation that you
have when you're in the roomwith senior leaders and they say
(06:29):
we're not quite sure where we'releaving money on the table or we
feel we're doing okay.
We're doing better in some areasthan in others, but we don't
really have the data, but if wehad, we could do so much more.
What is step 1 then?
Gathering that data and startingto gather it in a way that you
can use it before you can,
Joe Reis (06:45):
It is an interesting I would say conundrum that many
companies find themselves inbecause they've been told over
and over from people like us andother pundits and people that
like, take your data seriously,be data driven, all these
things, hooray type things.
And guess what?
They ignore it and say we don'treally want to invest in that.
(07:06):
We want to invest in otherstuff, like my yacht or my
Cybertruck or something.
Just kidding.
But, or bonuses, right?
And so that's, but now I thinkthe, it, this isn't, there's no
free lunch here.
You either make the investmentor you don't.
Now, of course, that assumesthat AI doesn't just
miraculously heal your data andsolve your problems for you, but
we're assuming that that's notreally the case right now.
(07:26):
And you talk to any AI vendor aswell that actually does stuff
with enterprise.
It's the underlying data isalways the crux.
Period.
Hands down.
If the data is in great shape,if there's good data quality, if
the data is well modeled,governed, whatever.
Terrific.
If it's not I suppose then youget to fix that.
Andreas Welsch (07:44):
I agree.
And by the way, that's why Ithink GenAI and whether it's
Copilot or ChatGPT or Cloud orwhatever, it's actually a good
tool or a good way to show whyyou need data, why you need good
data and specific data.
We've all had these firstexperiences when we've used
these tools that the output was,okay, Hey, yeah, sure.
(08:05):
It wrote something, but it wasme.
It wasn't specific.
It wasn't specific to what Ineeded, but once you recognize,
Hey, I need to give it morecontext, more data, or even more
specific data, then I get betteroutput.
I think from a conversation withsenior leaders who have used
this.
Early GenAI tools that makes alot clearer why we need data
again.
Joe Reis (08:25):
Yeah, exactly.
And it goes back to, just datais everything at the end of the
day, right?
You're finding that even withvery sophisticated algorithms
and, obviously very greathardware and so forth, the data
is still the differentiator itdoesn't really matter what, the
models are great.
It's data that goes into it thatmatters at the end of the day.
And seeing as we've probablytapped out the publicly
available data all that's leftis, what do you have in your
(08:47):
company?
Correct.
And that's where you're going tosee the yields.
Andreas Welsch (08:50):
Correct.
But that's where the gold mineis, right?
That's the gold mine for sure.
Joe Reis (08:54):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Andreas Welsch (08:55):
Also a little bit the dirt mine.
Joe Reis (08:57):
It might be a mine of mud.
You don't know what you're, youdon't know what you're dealing
with.
I think it depends on, andhere's the thing too.
It's I would say that, there's,it's, there's a big race, but
like all races that you enter,there's people that are going to
be storming ahead.
If you've done 5Ks, there'salways that person that finishes
in 13, 14 minutes.
There's the other people thatfinish in, I don't know, 90
minutes, right?
That is, so we're all racing,but a lot of it depends on how'd
(09:20):
you start the race out?
Not everyone's, it's not anequal there's no such thing as
everyone, everyone's going atthe same speed with this thing,
not at all.
Andreas Welsch (09:27):
No, definitely not.
No, I remember a couple of weeksago you posted about this topic,
especially the mental healthburnout type topic.
And I think, first of all, it'sfantastic that you do talk about
topics like that, because a lotof our peers that are in full
time roles are afraid to speakout, right?
And are afraid to say, Hey,raise my hand.
(09:50):
It's too much, right?
Just catching up andcontinuously catching up and
more and faster and shippingproduct all the time, announcing
new products, marketing productsall the time.
It's exhausting and we're onlytwo years in, right?
How much longer is this going togo?
And is that the new pace?
So I met with a former colleaguebefore the holidays, by the way,
(10:10):
and they shared, hey, it's anincredible opportunity to be in
tech at this time of AI but,Decided being so humbling in a
once in a career opportunity,it's also unsustainable because
it's unsustainably stressful.
So I'm curious.
What are you seeing?
What do you recommend?
How can Take leaders andprofessionals balance the
(10:30):
passion with those highexpectations that are in the
market without burning out
Joe Reis (10:35):
that's a big question.
I think it's one of the biggestquestions of our time right now.
I think you're simultaneouslyseeing record corporate profits
and revenues and valuations andso forth at the same time at
these same companies, evenYou're seeing record amounts of
burnout, record amounts oflayoffs, right?
Some big ones were announcedjust happened today, actually.
My friends who were part of a, Ithink several thousand people
(10:56):
got laid off at a, one of thebig Magnificent 7 companies,
right?
At the same time, I also sawanother group of friends were
laid off at small companiestoday.
Today alone, and this isconstantly the thing I keep
seeing.
You want to talk about anxiety.
First, you lose your job.
That sucks.
That's that makes you anxious.
But then imagine being at thesame companies where, you know,
they, they do these layoffs.
(11:17):
They're expecting more out ofyou.
They almost they're almost eagerto talk about layoffs.
Now, where I was thinking thepast, 10 years ago, right?
You had all the you.
The accoutrements that youwanted in your office.
You had a sous, you had bigtech, at least, could play video
games.
It was like daycare for adults.
And now it's, then the only, butthey wanted to treat their
employees really well.
I don't say it disparaginglydaycare.
(11:38):
It was like, this is awesome.
And so you fast forward todayand it's gloves are off, it
feels like there's almost ananimosity that employers have
towards their employees.
And that's the biggest changethat I've seen.
And what this means is people goto work, they're stressed,
they're expected to do a lotmore with a lot less resources,
a lot less people, probably witha lot less compassion than they
had, earlier on.
And so this manifests itselfinto just yeah, I think gobs of
(12:00):
stress, right?
How do you feel in that kind ofsituation?
You don't feel like anyone hasyour back anymore.
And then it turns into kind ofthe Squid Game or Game of
Thrones kind of thing, where youdon't even know who's going to
turn on you at any second?
Who's colluding behind thescenes?
Because in environments likethis is exactly what happens.
People, because what happens isit manifests itself in the
behavior of the coworkers too.
And they're like the company's,obviously not sending a signal
they care, I may be in myimmediate group.
(12:22):
I care about them, but it'severyone's for themselves at
this point.
I've seen it happen personally,many times.
And I see it happening to myfriends right now.
I don't have a day job.
I don't really want one forprecisely the reason that if I
get into it, You know what I'mfirst I limit my opportunities.
Second, I'm going to be stressedout.
Like it's, to me, it's a no winsituation given where I am at in
my career.
For other people that are inthat situation, they can't say
(12:43):
the same thing.
They have to be muzzled, likeyou were saying, and I keep a
straight face and all the while,right now with AI, I expect to
do much more and much more, Ikeep marching towards the school
and it's the red queen effectthat if you've read Alice in
Wonderland the it's basicallyyou run faster and faster to
stay in the same place.
Ideally, you're running fasterand faster to go towards a goal,
or in the case of the Autobahn,driving faster, but it's just
(13:04):
more and more work.
And hope, for God's sake, I hopeAI shows up and solves a lot of
these problems and alleviates alot of the pressure, because
it's just, this isn't, I wasactually on a walk just before
this, I was reading a reallygood book called Offline
Matters.
It's about just de plugging fromdigital, there's a constant
stress of digital online work,and and I was thinking what's
the nature of Like, why do we dothis to ourselves?
(13:24):
And it was, yeah, it wasseparate from our conversation,
but I was walking like, modernknowledge work.
Is this really what we were,cause I was walking my dog and I
was like, what does my dogthink?
I often think this, cause I'mdumb.
It's what goes through her head?
Yeah, no, I think the only thingI can think of is she's just
excited to be outside, hangingout with me, but then I'd look
at what.
We get stressed out about it.
I'm like, why, what is this allfor?
Andreas Welsch (13:46):
And if you look, especially at the corporate
role, for a long time, you wouldsay, Hey corporate jobs are
stable.
You have a regular and stableincome look for good companies
or growth companies or companiesthat have been around for a long
time.
And then precisely what do youshare?
There, there are layoffs in techand in other places, especially
as well.
And if that happens on yourteam, you look around and you
(14:07):
say if it happens, or if ithappened to that person and it
happened to that person who's tosay that it doesn't happen to me
or to, to my other really goodwork friends or colleagues.
And I think that's very That'sis one of the stressors for
sure.
Joe Reis (14:22):
Oh, big time.
It's, I always equate it to ifyou're in world war one, for
example you're, in the trenchyou don't know who's going to be
around tomorrow.
And, but that's sadly, that'smorbidly how it is these days.
That's just reality.
I'm not trying to be,melodramatic about it.
In fact, I'm probably being likeunder dramatic in some ways.
But it's just like that.
Like I know execs right now.
A lot of big companies who areplanning reorgs right now.
(14:46):
I'm not going to say which ones,but I talk, I know what's going
on and this is happening a lotright now, not announced yet.
Andreas Welsch (14:55):
And then you have a couple of weeks of
uncertainty, let's figure outwho we are, what we do, but keep
doing what you have been doinguntil we hear from the top, what
is really going to change and alot of uncertainty especially at
the beginning of the year, asalways.
Yeah.
Now, I would also see that againif things like an agentic AI
become more prevalent, even morerobust if it permeate a large
(15:20):
organizations that there will beeven more stress and more
change.
And again, for me that hinges onthe fact that the technology is
robust and enough organizationsuse it.
Without adversarial sideeffects.
So let's assume that happens.
And to me that is still in thephase where it's being proven.
(15:40):
But if that happens, I think italso gets very stressful at a
leadership level.
All of a sudden you'll gettargets, you won't be able to
backfill.
It's already the reality in manyorganizations today.
But if you're not downsizing orreducing the headcount, you
cannot backfill if someoneleaves.
But you can backfill with agentsor with technology that is
(16:01):
cheaper, that runs 24 7, thatideally runs at least as
reliably as humans do.
And then guess what?
We might also cut your budget.
Instead of 10 million, you have5 million.
The other five go towards someautomation.
Now, you lose budget, you losepeople.
In our old thinking, you loseinfluence, right?
Especially if these kingdoms,organizational kingdoms, have
(16:25):
been built around people, aroundhaving large organizations,
larger responsibilities, largebudgets.
And that's what determines,again, who moves up.
I think it'll be a big change,not just for individual
contributors, but for leaders aswell.
Joe Reis (16:40):
It's interesting.
So I've been thinking twothoughts about this.
One is that there's definitely asituation where frontline
workers, ICs, basically, getaugmented, we'll say, with
agents.
It can be coded for a lot ofthings.
If you invert it though, and ifyou look at the nature of work,
in fact, I see the middlemanagement actually getting
(17:00):
affected maybe more quickly thanfrontline workers because the
frontline workers know the workand they can guide the agents in
ways that the managers probablycan't.
Historically management, if yougo back to the beginnings of
sort of modern day managementwhen it was in the industrial
age it was managed the output ofworkers but you take it a step
down now and you know the if theworkers understand I mean
(17:22):
because again these things arethese agents will be probably
for a bit.
Managing I don't know, unrulyworkers.
I can't imagine they just comeout of the box and just do great
work.
But over time, throughreinforcement learning, for
example, they can do great work.
And so the flip side of it, Ican actually see a scenario
where middle management getsthey actually get reduced
because the frontline workersactually can manage more and
more agents because they knowthe work better.
(17:44):
They're just closer to themetal, so that also could be a
possibility.
And I think
Andreas Welsch (17:48):
that to some extent we see that in multi
agent systems.
If you have a coordinator or asupervisor agent that manages
and reviews the output ofseveral others, that's one of
the core definitions or tasks ofmanagement.
Yeah.
Joe Reis (18:04):
Yeah, exactly.
This is like one of thosefascinating thought experiments
right now is what is the natureof an organization look like
with AI?
Another thing I've been talkingabout in the last couple of
weeks, and we'll talk about thisfor a while, but two
conversations in the last twoweeks, it's just a notion that
if individually, we have our ownagents and we have, The ability
to farm out our work, so tospeak.
What's to stop us from rentingout those agents to other
(18:26):
companies and being employed bymultiple companies.
And that's something I've beenreally pondering is the nature
of what does work look like?
Like, why do you have to be tiedto one company?
There's nothing in the Biblethat says you have to be
monogamous to one company.
That's not in there.
And it's a thought really thatand, you had the phenomena,
especially during COVID wherepeople were working multiple
jobs and making a ton of money.
(18:47):
But I think this is actuallygoing to be the reality it's the
gig economy, but I guess youcall it the agent economy where
if you've finally tuned to yourskills and personality and so
forth, and that works with otherbots, then, maybe that's it.
But it also makes me wonder longterm, what is even the nature of
a company in that situation?
Why can't you just band togetherto solve a problem, which is the
nature of a firm under RobertCoase back in the day, the
(19:08):
nature of a firm is to solve aproblem and create customers.
But if that whole paradigminverts itself, I could actually
see something very we're a bit,we're a ways from that.
Andreas Welsch (19:18):
Yeah, luckily.
And I don't want you to a lot ofconversations with dystopian
view.
Joe Reis (19:23):
I think it's an optimistic view actually.
Cause if you have the agency togo out and do your own thing and
rent it to the highest bidder,it's not just singular bidder,
perhaps it's a good thing,right?
You could infinitely scaleyourself.
Andreas Welsch (19:35):
And I think if you start from the entity of a
company and you say,directionally it will be
augmentation, it will likely besome replacement.
What do you do then as anindividual who's affected by
that change?
Either you need to work fewerhours because you're being
augmented, but we don't have a40 hour workweek for you, we
have a 20 hour workweek for you.
(19:57):
If you can scale through agents,again, or through technology,
There are two companies or threecompanies you work for and to
your point, you can scale yourknowledge through agents in
essence and make that sameincome ideally, but through
multiple jobs.
Joe Reis (20:12):
That's just it.
Why not just have a 24/7getting, since you're not doing
any of the work, like the 40hour work we came about because
of labor negotiations, remember?
So you, yeah.
People used to work at non stopat factories.
And then that, that was kiboshand put the 40 hours cause,
under Henry Ford just becauseit's probably not healthy if you
want to have good laborrelations.
And, but that was also at a timewhen, Ford is very considerate
(20:33):
of the long term impacts of,factory employment on the
employees.
And he was very conscious ofthis.
That's why he paid people welland treated them well.
So they would produce betteroutput.
But that was, that's, That wasover a hundred years ago, right?
And we're still using that samemode for today, but it's no
wonder people are stressed out.
Because I, again, as my walk, Iwas just thinking, what's, what
is the nature of knowledge workthese days?
(20:54):
Like why, like this wasn't whathumans, we weren't supposed to
be like sitting at a desk,typing away at a keyboard.
This is, I think this is a gooda transition point to something
else.
But anyway, that's a book foranother decade.
Andreas Welsch (21:06):
That makes me wonder then on one hand, leaders
are either already under thiskind of stress or will
experience it.
ICs are definitely under thestress that yes, I have a
permanent role as long as myemployer wants me there.
How permanent is that?
Semi permanent?
When does that run out?
How do you feel leaders can thenprevent the team from burning
(21:28):
out, especially in these highpressure situations where we're
behind, we need to innovate, weneed to do new stuff.
We need to do a lot morefoundational work before we can
even do the new stuff.
Joe Reis (21:38):
Yeah, but we
Andreas Welsch (21:38):
need to do it faster and we need to catch up
all.
All that time that we've notutilized or not spent well over
the last couple of years.
So how can leaders help theirteam from burning out?
Joe Reis (21:48):
There's the old saying, right?
People don't leave their job,they leave their manager.
I think that's really true.
So I think things that I've seeneffective, at least in my
experience, and, talking to lotsand lots of people is that when
a manager or a leader makestheir team feel valued, when
they take the time to give themattention, to be compassionate,
to get to know them as people, Ithink that's a really good way
(22:10):
to stay things off because youhave your personal connection
with your team, right?
Like I had one friend today whowas laid off, right?
And he told me that, how he gotlaid off was very cold, very
clinical, not even a thank you,right?
That goes, that says a lot aboutthat company.
And I would say that's, beingcold and clinical isn't going to
get you any favors, it's goingto get you output.
(22:30):
And if that's all you careabout, go for it.
But if you want to develop ateam and a culture it is,
there's a lot more to it.
And, but this isn't easy.
This isn't easy to do.
It requires that you do thethings that aren't scalable.
It means going and talking topeople and like understanding,
What, what makes that persontick and so forth but I think
it's, it's things as quotesimple as that.
(22:53):
But, also playing blocking andtackle for your team I think is
a big one but you can onlyshield your team so much from
what's going on.
And the big thing is, especiallyin big companies is nobody seems
to know what's going on.
I'm sure you know how this goes.
It's, you think, it's going on,you hear rumors and stuff, but
it's there's a lot ofinformation asymmetry that
(23:13):
happens.
And That's just reality forbetter or for worse, but that's
just how it is.
Yeah, I don't know, but I wouldsay just do the best you can
just be a person at the end ofthe day.
That's, that's who I want torelate to and feel like, I can
get behind as a person who isjust a person, if you're going
to come to me and talk to me incold clinical terms or corporate
speak, even worse, try and beall jolly, but talking and just
like nonsense corporate BS.
Then I don't have respect forthat.
(23:34):
I don't have time for thateither.
Yeah.
So
Andreas Welsch (23:37):
I love that.
It's especially in, in that timeand age of more AI and more
machines, more automation, fewerhumans in the end to, to some
extent, be human be humantowards the people that you work
for that work with you.
I think that's a very good callto action.
Joe Reis (23:55):
Yeah, and I would say that holds true with or without
AI, right?
Like you don't have to wait forthe robot apocalypse to be nice
to your people.
It's just something you shouldbe doing.
Cause you know, ideally that'sthe role of a leader and a
manager is it's leading people.
But to me that also means justbeing a person.
Which is hard to do.
I think for a lot of corporatepeople, I think it's hard to do
because you're so used tomuzzling yourself.
(24:15):
You're so used to, as you say,your friends that you talk to
and it.
And I see this especially at bigcompanies.
You gotta put on the face.
You gotta put on the the act.
You're partly hired for yourexperience, partly hired for
your brains, but I think you'realso hired to conform to this
sort of this LARP, this actingrole that you have to have.
Which is what it is.
Andreas Welsch (24:33):
We covered a lot of topics.
We've got a lot of ground overthe last half hour.
Joe, I was wondering if you cansummarize the key three
takeaways for our audience outof all the things that we
touched on burning for AIwithout burning out.
Joe Reis (24:45):
Going backwards, I would say, if you're a leader,
be a human, be a person.
That also includes individualcontributors, by the way just,
be a person.
And that's the one thing I thinkpeople sacrifice too often.
And then they look back andthey're like, what did I do?
Where I spend my time, so that'sa big one.
The other one is just try andfind ways to take, to put your
data house in order.
So AI is good to go.
But I think finally just figureout ways where AI is going to
(25:08):
have the most impact for yourcompany, right?
We danced around this a bit, butit's find ways where you can do
it in a humane way as well.
I think that's the thing that'smissing from the conversation
is, how can we get rid of allthis cost?
How would you feel if I calledyou cost?
That's your pronoun.
Andreas Welsch (25:22):
Are you asking me as an individual or as a
shareholder?
Joe Reis (25:24):
Yeah, that's a good point.
So when you, as an individual,when you're referred to as cost,
you're like, that's prettyinhumane, yeah.
As a shareholder, you're like,yeah.
Andreas Welsch (25:33):
Asset is the right word, not cost.
Joe Reis (25:36):
Yeah, sure.
Andreas Welsch (25:39):
Awesome.
Hey we're getting close to theend of the show.
And Joe, I just want to saythank you for joining us and for
sharing your expertise with us.
I'm glad we're able to have thatconversation.
Like I said, it's so mucheasier.
Having it with someone who'sseen it who's been through it,
who has lots of of connectionsto people who are going through
that because I know that a lotof folks in corporate roles and
full time roles cannot speak soopenly about the challenges.
Joe Reis (26:02):
I understand, man, is what it is.
Yep.
Andreas Welsch (26:05):
Yes.
Wonderful.
Again, thank you so much forcoming on the show and
everybody.
Welcome to "What's the BUZZ?", where
(00:02):
leaders and hands on expertsshare how they've turned hype
into outcome.
Today, we'll talk about burningfor AI without burning out.
And I have somebody on the showwho recently posted about this
and who's an expert in anythingdata engineering, and a trusted
voice in the community.
Joe Reis.
Hey, Joe.
Thank you so much for joining.
Joe Reis (00:20):
Hey, what's up?
How you doing?
Andreas Welsch (00:21):
Awesome.
Hey, for those of you in theaudience or that don't know Joe,
maybe Joe, if you can introduceyourself real quick, that'd be
awesome.
Joe Reis (00:29):
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm Joe.
I don't know what to say.
Write books, rant online, stillpractice data engineering,
architecture and so forth.
Yeah, I've been in the space along time.
I think sometimes known as arecovering data scientist.
Probably unpack that a bit.
But anyway yeah, good to seeyou.
Andreas Welsch (00:48):
Awesome.
Wonderful.
It's been a while since youinvited me to your show.
I think about a year and a halfor so.
So it's more than than overdueto, to reciprocate.
Obviously super passionate abouthow we can help folks in the
community do that better.
And I think that's still a bigneed.
But not just that side themental health side obviously as
well.
Make sure that we, don'toverstretch ourselves.
(01:10):
But before we talk about today'stopic, should we play a little
game to kick things off in goodtradition?
Joe Reis (01:16):
I guess so.
Let's do that.
Andreas Welsch (01:20):
Good.
All right.
So this one's called In Your OwnWords.
And when I hit the buzzer, thewheels will start spinning.
We'll see a sentence and I'dlike for you to answer with the
first thing that comes to mindand why, in your own words.
To make it a little moreinteresting, you only have 60
seconds for your answer.
And if you're in the audience,feel free.
Free to play along with us, too,and put your answer and why in
the chat as well.
(01:40):
So Joe, are you ready for"What'sthe BUZZ?"
Joe Reis (01:42):
Never been readier.
Let's do it.
Oh, kidding.
I have no idea what you're goingto ask, but
Andreas Welsch (01:46):
if AI were a vehicle, what would it be?
60 seconds on the clock.
Joe Reis (01:51):
oh, geez, I think it depends what country you're in.
I think in America, definitely aCybertruck.
In Europe, probably a Fiat.
So Or a Peugeot, whatever.
Andreas Welsch (01:59):
Maybe the Fiats are highly regulated and
reliable or something, but theCybertruck definitely resonates
with me.
Joe Reis (02:06):
Or a Volvo, right?
It's supposed to be safe onland.
Andreas Welsch (02:11):
Yeah.
Awesome.
I love that.
Good.
So whatever your answer would beagain, put it in the chat.
I'm curious, but so now how do Imake this how do I build that
bridge from cars to, to mentalwellness?
Let's see.
Yeah, look, it can feel a lotlike going on the German
Autobahn, and even if you feelyou're going 140, there's a car
(02:33):
behind you going 160 andflashing the high beams and you
need to move over.
Joe Reis (02:38):
Autobahn is fun though, I will say.
Andreas Welsch (02:41):
It is fun.
It can also be stressful, right?
Much like a tech job.
And I feel that the industry isin overdrive.
It's been in overdrive eversince this thing, ChatGPT,
obviously popped on the map.
And business leaders, techleaders said, wow what's this?
We need to do something.
What's our AI strategy?
What have we been doing allthese years?
(03:01):
Yes, we have some AI or machinelearning, but this, we didn't
see this coming.
More and more announcements,advancements, we all read the
tech news and blogs, it's mindblowing sometimes, even within a
given week, how we jump fromnews and do all that hopping.
But I also think it's reallyhard when you talk to folks in
(03:22):
the industry, nobody reallywants to admit that they're
behind.
Internally, I think there's abig push in many of these
organizations, not just softwareand tech, but across different
industries.
But I'm curious, what are youseeing when you talk to people?
What's that sentiment?
Joe Reis (03:39):
It's interesting.
I definitely talk to a crosssection of people from some of
the biggest companies in theworld to, small and everything
in between.
It is interesting.
You do point out, I think thisand I fake it till I make it
approach.
Maybe it's not the right way ofputting it, but I'll go with it
for now.
And yeah, it's there'sdefinitely got to put on
(04:00):
appearances that you have aquote AI story.
Your board expects it.
If you have a board, yourcustomers might expect it.
I can get into what thatactually is nuance into that.
But the expectation is,universal, obviously
universally, but quasi is that,the expectations are you're
doing something with AI, youhave some sort of a use case,
use cases, and, but, it isinteresting because I feel like
(04:21):
this is it's been ordained as atransformative technology of at
least this decade and maybewe'll see about others, but the
transformation part is somethingI've been very curious about,
what if you're a regular techcompany, for example, obviously
there's probably more use casesfor it to you're probably
already transformed yourbusiness because you're more
probably AI or data native ordigital native than, Maybe
mature enterprises, but then themature enterprises, I often
(04:43):
wonder what's the use cases thatare really going to cause the
transformations for these maturecompanies.
Cause if you take a step back,and I wrote about this in one of
my articles, a lot of companieswant to do AI, but most are
barely doing BI.
This is still the challenge fora lot of mature.
It's not a knock.
It's just, you have the datasystems that are pretty old BI
is still a challenge.
And now we're going to throwLLMs and AI on top of these same
(05:06):
data systems.
And miraculously things aregoing to happen, right?
So I think that's a disconnectthat I see just that, I live in
reality.
I think a lot of other we talkedto technicians, especially
practitioners.
They're like, yeah I thinkthere's a difference between
what maybe is on the the Csuites slide deck for AI versus
what's actually happening and itcould be possible just given the
current state of affairs.
That's not to say, of course,that AI is not going to get
(05:27):
traction, especially if we talkabout more mature enterprises
that there's use cases thatprobably don't directly involve
a lot of the corporate datasystems as they are.
You could do customer support.
That's a big one.
That's like the lowest hangingfruit that I see is just
augmenting people with AI orreplacing them, whatever with
these solutions.
Thank you.
It's that's how it is.
What are you seeing?
Andreas Welsch (05:47):
So I was meeting with a few prospects over the
last couple of weeks and I saw asimilar picture as well, right?
AI is that shiny object thattrigger which I think is already
good because leaders realize,hey, we need to do something.
We haven't done enough over thelast couple of years and we
haven't been able to invest asmuch as we should have.
Now we see there's AI.
It's an opportunity.
(06:08):
It's a threat.
We need to do something, butthen when you peel it back, it
really comes down to data,processes and systems, right?
And actually businesstransformation at the very core.
Yeah.
It is an enabler.
So that to me is still an eyeopening conversation that you
have when you're in the roomwith senior leaders and they say
(06:29):
we're not quite sure where we'releaving money on the table or we
feel we're doing okay.
We're doing better in some areasthan in others, but we don't
really have the data, but if wehad, we could do so much more.
What is step 1 then?
Gathering that data and startingto gather it in a way that you
can use it before you can,
Joe Reis (06:45):
It is an interesting I would say conundrum that many
companies find themselves inbecause they've been told over
and over from people like us andother pundits and people that
like, take your data seriously,be data driven, all these
things, hooray type things.
And guess what?
They ignore it and say we don'treally want to invest in that.
(07:06):
We want to invest in otherstuff, like my yacht or my
Cybertruck or something.
Just kidding.
But, or bonuses, right?
And so that's, but now I thinkthe, it, this isn't, there's no
free lunch here.
You either make the investmentor you don't.
Now, of course, that assumesthat AI doesn't just
miraculously heal your data andsolve your problems for you, but
we're assuming that that's notreally the case right now.
(07:26):
And you talk to any AI vendor aswell that actually does stuff
with enterprise.
It's the underlying data isalways the crux.
Period.
Hands down.
If the data is in great shape,if there's good data quality, if
the data is well modeled,governed, whatever.
Terrific.
If it's not I suppose then youget to fix that.
Andreas Welsch (07:44):
I agree.
And by the way, that's why Ithink GenAI and whether it's
Copilot or ChatGPT or Cloud orwhatever, it's actually a good
tool or a good way to show whyyou need data, why you need good
data and specific data.
We've all had these firstexperiences when we've used
these tools that the output was,okay, Hey, yeah, sure.
(08:05):
It wrote something, but it wasme.
It wasn't specific.
It wasn't specific to what Ineeded, but once you recognize,
Hey, I need to give it morecontext, more data, or even more
specific data, then I get betteroutput.
I think from a conversation withsenior leaders who have used
this.
Early GenAI tools that makes alot clearer why we need data
again.
Joe Reis (08:25):
Yeah, exactly.
And it goes back to, just datais everything at the end of the
day, right?
You're finding that even withvery sophisticated algorithms
and, obviously very greathardware and so forth, the data
is still the differentiator itdoesn't really matter what, the
models are great.
It's data that goes into it thatmatters at the end of the day.
And seeing as we've probablytapped out the publicly
available data all that's leftis, what do you have in your
(08:47):
company?
Correct.
And that's where you're going tosee the yields.
Andreas Welsch (08:50):
Correct.
But that's where the gold mineis, right?
That's the gold mine for sure.
Joe Reis (08:54):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Andreas Welsch (08:55):
Also a little bit the dirt mine.
Joe Reis (08:57):
It might be a mine of mud.
You don't know what you're, youdon't know what you're dealing
with.
I think it depends on, andhere's the thing too.
It's I would say that, there's,it's, there's a big race, but
like all races that you enter,there's people that are going to
be storming ahead.
If you've done 5Ks, there'salways that person that finishes
in 13, 14 minutes.
There's the other people thatfinish in, I don't know, 90
minutes, right?
That is, so we're all racing,but a lot of it depends on how'd
(09:20):
you start the race out?
Not everyone's, it's not anequal there's no such thing as
everyone, everyone's going atthe same speed with this thing,
not at all.
Andreas Welsch (09:27):
No, definitely not.
No, I remember a couple of weeksago you posted about this topic,
especially the mental healthburnout type topic.
And I think, first of all, it'sfantastic that you do talk about
topics like that, because a lotof our peers that are in full
time roles are afraid to speakout, right?
And are afraid to say, Hey,raise my hand.
(09:50):
It's too much, right?
Just catching up andcontinuously catching up and
more and faster and shippingproduct all the time, announcing
new products, marketing productsall the time.
It's exhausting and we're onlytwo years in, right?
How much longer is this going togo?
And is that the new pace?
So I met with a former colleaguebefore the holidays, by the way,
(10:10):
and they shared, hey, it's anincredible opportunity to be in
tech at this time of AI but,Decided being so humbling in a
once in a career opportunity,it's also unsustainable because
it's unsustainably stressful.
So I'm curious.
What are you seeing?
What do you recommend?
How can Take leaders andprofessionals balance the
(10:30):
passion with those highexpectations that are in the
market without burning out
Joe Reis (10:35):
that's a big question.
I think it's one of the biggestquestions of our time right now.
I think you're simultaneouslyseeing record corporate profits
and revenues and valuations andso forth at the same time at
these same companies, evenYou're seeing record amounts of
burnout, record amounts oflayoffs, right?
Some big ones were announcedjust happened today, actually.
My friends who were part of a, Ithink several thousand people
(10:56):
got laid off at a, one of thebig Magnificent 7 companies,
right?
At the same time, I also sawanother group of friends were
laid off at small companiestoday.
Today alone, and this isconstantly the thing I keep
seeing.
You want to talk about anxiety.
First, you lose your job.
That sucks.
That's that makes you anxious.
But then imagine being at thesame companies where, you know,
they, they do these layoffs.
(11:17):
They're expecting more out ofyou.
They almost they're almost eagerto talk about layoffs.
Now, where I was thinking thepast, 10 years ago, right?
You had all the you.
The accoutrements that youwanted in your office.
You had a sous, you had bigtech, at least, could play video
games.
It was like daycare for adults.
And now it's, then the only, butthey wanted to treat their
employees really well.
I don't say it disparaginglydaycare.
(11:38):
It was like, this is awesome.
And so you fast forward todayand it's gloves are off, it
feels like there's almost ananimosity that employers have
towards their employees.
And that's the biggest changethat I've seen.
And what this means is people goto work, they're stressed,
they're expected to do a lotmore with a lot less resources,
a lot less people, probably witha lot less compassion than they
had, earlier on.
And so this manifests itselfinto just yeah, I think gobs of
(12:00):
stress, right?
How do you feel in that kind ofsituation?
You don't feel like anyone hasyour back anymore.
And then it turns into kind ofthe Squid Game or Game of
Thrones kind of thing, where youdon't even know who's going to
turn on you at any second?
Who's colluding behind thescenes?
Because in environments likethis is exactly what happens.
People, because what happens isit manifests itself in the
behavior of the coworkers too.
And they're like the company's,obviously not sending a signal
they care, I may be in myimmediate group.
(12:22):
I care about them, but it'severyone's for themselves at
this point.
I've seen it happen personally,many times.
And I see it happening to myfriends right now.
I don't have a day job.
I don't really want one forprecisely the reason that if I
get into it, You know what I'mfirst I limit my opportunities.
Second, I'm going to be stressedout.
Like it's, to me, it's a no winsituation given where I am at in
my career.
For other people that are inthat situation, they can't say
(12:43):
the same thing.
They have to be muzzled, likeyou were saying, and I keep a
straight face and all the while,right now with AI, I expect to
do much more and much more, Ikeep marching towards the school
and it's the red queen effectthat if you've read Alice in
Wonderland the it's basicallyyou run faster and faster to
stay in the same place.
Ideally, you're running fasterand faster to go towards a goal,
or in the case of the Autobahn,driving faster, but it's just
(13:04):
more and more work.
And hope, for God's sake, I hopeAI shows up and solves a lot of
these problems and alleviates alot of the pressure, because
it's just, this isn't, I wasactually on a walk just before
this, I was reading a reallygood book called Offline
Matters.
It's about just de plugging fromdigital, there's a constant
stress of digital online work,and and I was thinking what's
the nature of Like, why do we dothis to ourselves?
(13:24):
And it was, yeah, it wasseparate from our conversation,
but I was walking like, modernknowledge work.
Is this really what we were,cause I was walking my dog and I
was like, what does my dogthink?
I often think this, cause I'mdumb.
It's what goes through her head?
Yeah, no, I think the only thingI can think of is she's just
excited to be outside, hangingout with me, but then I'd look
at what.
We get stressed out about it.
I'm like, why, what is this allfor?
Andreas Welsch (13:46):
And if you look, especially at the corporate
role, for a long time, you wouldsay, Hey corporate jobs are
stable.
You have a regular and stableincome look for good companies
or growth companies or companiesthat have been around for a long
time.
And then precisely what do youshare?
There, there are layoffs in techand in other places, especially
as well.
And if that happens on yourteam, you look around and you
(14:07):
say if it happens, or if ithappened to that person and it
happened to that person who's tosay that it doesn't happen to me
or to, to my other really goodwork friends or colleagues.
And I think that's very That'sis one of the stressors for
sure.
Joe Reis (14:22):
Oh, big time.
It's, I always equate it to ifyou're in world war one, for
example you're, in the trenchyou don't know who's going to be
around tomorrow.
And, but that's sadly, that'smorbidly how it is these days.
That's just reality.
I'm not trying to be,melodramatic about it.
In fact, I'm probably being likeunder dramatic in some ways.
But it's just like that.
Like I know execs right now.
A lot of big companies who areplanning reorgs right now.
(14:46):
I'm not going to say which ones,but I talk, I know what's going
on and this is happening a lotright now, not announced yet.
Andreas Welsch (14:55):
And then you have a couple of weeks of
uncertainty, let's figure outwho we are, what we do, but keep
doing what you have been doinguntil we hear from the top, what
is really going to change and alot of uncertainty especially at
the beginning of the year, asalways.
Yeah.
Now, I would also see that againif things like an agentic AI
become more prevalent, even morerobust if it permeate a large
(15:20):
organizations that there will beeven more stress and more
change.
And again, for me that hinges onthe fact that the technology is
robust and enough organizationsuse it.
Without adversarial sideeffects.
So let's assume that happens.
And to me that is still in thephase where it's being proven.
(15:40):
But if that happens, I think italso gets very stressful at a
leadership level.
All of a sudden you'll gettargets, you won't be able to
backfill.
It's already the reality in manyorganizations today.
But if you're not downsizing orreducing the headcount, you
cannot backfill if someoneleaves.
But you can backfill with agentsor with technology that is
(16:01):
cheaper, that runs 24 7, thatideally runs at least as
reliably as humans do.
And then guess what?
We might also cut your budget.
Instead of 10 million, you have5 million.
The other five go towards someautomation.
Now, you lose budget, you losepeople.
In our old thinking, you loseinfluence, right?
Especially if these kingdoms,organizational kingdoms, have
(16:25):
been built around people, aroundhaving large organizations,
larger responsibilities, largebudgets.
And that's what determines,again, who moves up.
I think it'll be a big change,not just for individual
contributors, but for leaders aswell.
Joe Reis (16:40):
It's interesting.
So I've been thinking twothoughts about this.
One is that there's definitely asituation where frontline
workers, ICs, basically, getaugmented, we'll say, with
agents.
It can be coded for a lot ofthings.
If you invert it though, and ifyou look at the nature of work,
in fact, I see the middlemanagement actually getting
(17:00):
affected maybe more quickly thanfrontline workers because the
frontline workers know the workand they can guide the agents in
ways that the managers probablycan't.
Historically management, if yougo back to the beginnings of
sort of modern day managementwhen it was in the industrial
age it was managed the output ofworkers but you take it a step
down now and you know the if theworkers understand I mean
(17:22):
because again these things arethese agents will be probably
for a bit.
Managing I don't know, unrulyworkers.
I can't imagine they just comeout of the box and just do great
work.
But over time, throughreinforcement learning, for
example, they can do great work.
And so the flip side of it, Ican actually see a scenario
where middle management getsthey actually get reduced
because the frontline workersactually can manage more and
more agents because they knowthe work better.
(17:44):
They're just closer to themetal, so that also could be a
possibility.
And I think
Andreas Welsch (17:48):
that to some extent we see that in multi
agent systems.
If you have a coordinator or asupervisor agent that manages
and reviews the output ofseveral others, that's one of
the core definitions or tasks ofmanagement.
Yeah.
Joe Reis (18:04):
Yeah, exactly.
This is like one of thosefascinating thought experiments
right now is what is the natureof an organization look like
with AI?
Another thing I've been talkingabout in the last couple of
weeks, and we'll talk about thisfor a while, but two
conversations in the last twoweeks, it's just a notion that
if individually, we have our ownagents and we have, The ability
to farm out our work, so tospeak.
What's to stop us from rentingout those agents to other
(18:26):
companies and being employed bymultiple companies.
And that's something I've beenreally pondering is the nature
of what does work look like?
Like, why do you have to be tiedto one company?
There's nothing in the Biblethat says you have to be
monogamous to one company.
That's not in there.
And it's a thought really thatand, you had the phenomena,
especially during COVID wherepeople were working multiple
jobs and making a ton of money.
(18:47):
But I think this is actuallygoing to be the reality it's the
gig economy, but I guess youcall it the agent economy where
if you've finally tuned to yourskills and personality and so
forth, and that works with otherbots, then, maybe that's it.
But it also makes me wonder longterm, what is even the nature of
a company in that situation?
Why can't you just band togetherto solve a problem, which is the
nature of a firm under RobertCoase back in the day, the
(19:08):
nature of a firm is to solve aproblem and create customers.
But if that whole paradigminverts itself, I could actually
see something very we're a bit,we're a ways from that.
Andreas Welsch (19:18):
Yeah, luckily.
And I don't want you to a lot ofconversations with dystopian
view.
Joe Reis (19:23):
I think it's an optimistic view actually.
Cause if you have the agency togo out and do your own thing and
rent it to the highest bidder,it's not just singular bidder,
perhaps it's a good thing,right?
You could infinitely scaleyourself.
Andreas Welsch (19:35):
And I think if you start from the entity of a
company and you say,directionally it will be
augmentation, it will likely besome replacement.
What do you do then as anindividual who's affected by
that change?
Either you need to work fewerhours because you're being
augmented, but we don't have a40 hour workweek for you, we
have a 20 hour workweek for you.
(19:57):
If you can scale through agents,again, or through technology,
There are two companies or threecompanies you work for and to
your point, you can scale yourknowledge through agents in
essence and make that sameincome ideally, but through
multiple jobs.
Joe Reis (20:12):
That's just it.
Why not just have a 24/7getting, since you're not doing
any of the work, like the 40hour work we came about because
of labor negotiations, remember?
So you, yeah.
People used to work at non stopat factories.
And then that, that was kiboshand put the 40 hours cause,
under Henry Ford just becauseit's probably not healthy if you
want to have good laborrelations.
And, but that was also at a timewhen, Ford is very considerate
(20:33):
of the long term impacts of,factory employment on the
employees.
And he was very conscious ofthis.
That's why he paid people welland treated them well.
So they would produce betteroutput.
But that was, that's, That wasover a hundred years ago, right?
And we're still using that samemode for today, but it's no
wonder people are stressed out.
Because I, again, as my walk, Iwas just thinking, what's, what
is the nature of knowledge workthese days?
(20:54):
Like why, like this wasn't whathumans, we weren't supposed to
be like sitting at a desk,typing away at a keyboard.
This is, I think this is a gooda transition point to something
else.
But anyway, that's a book foranother decade.
Andreas Welsch (21:06):
That makes me wonder then on one hand, leaders
are either already under thiskind of stress or will
experience it.
ICs are definitely under thestress that yes, I have a
permanent role as long as myemployer wants me there.
How permanent is that?
Semi permanent?
When does that run out?
How do you feel leaders can thenprevent the team from burning
(21:28):
out, especially in these highpressure situations where we're
behind, we need to innovate, weneed to do new stuff.
We need to do a lot morefoundational work before we can
even do the new stuff.
Joe Reis (21:38):
Yeah, but we
Andreas Welsch (21:38):
need to do it faster and we need to catch up
all.
All that time that we've notutilized or not spent well over
the last couple of years.
So how can leaders help theirteam from burning out?
Joe Reis (21:48):
There's the old saying, right?
People don't leave their job,they leave their manager.
I think that's really true.
So I think things that I've seeneffective, at least in my
experience, and, talking to lotsand lots of people is that when
a manager or a leader makestheir team feel valued, when
they take the time to give themattention, to be compassionate,
to get to know them as people, Ithink that's a really good way
(22:10):
to stay things off because youhave your personal connection
with your team, right?
Like I had one friend today whowas laid off, right?
And he told me that, how he gotlaid off was very cold, very
clinical, not even a thank you,right?
That goes, that says a lot aboutthat company.
And I would say that's, beingcold and clinical isn't going to
get you any favors, it's goingto get you output.
(22:30):
And if that's all you careabout, go for it.
But if you want to develop ateam and a culture it is,
there's a lot more to it.
And, but this isn't easy.
This isn't easy to do.
It requires that you do thethings that aren't scalable.
It means going and talking topeople and like understanding,
What, what makes that persontick and so forth but I think
it's, it's things as quotesimple as that.
(22:53):
But, also playing blocking andtackle for your team I think is
a big one but you can onlyshield your team so much from
what's going on.
And the big thing is, especiallyin big companies is nobody seems
to know what's going on.
I'm sure you know how this goes.
It's, you think, it's going on,you hear rumors and stuff, but
it's there's a lot ofinformation asymmetry that
(23:13):
happens.
And That's just reality forbetter or for worse, but that's
just how it is.
Yeah, I don't know, but I wouldsay just do the best you can
just be a person at the end ofthe day.
That's, that's who I want torelate to and feel like, I can
get behind as a person who isjust a person, if you're going
to come to me and talk to me incold clinical terms or corporate
speak, even worse, try and beall jolly, but talking and just
like nonsense corporate BS.
Then I don't have respect forthat.
(23:34):
I don't have time for thateither.
Yeah.
So
Andreas Welsch (23:37):
I love that.
It's especially in, in that timeand age of more AI and more
machines, more automation, fewerhumans in the end to, to some
extent, be human be humantowards the people that you work
for that work with you.
I think that's a very good callto action.
Joe Reis (23:55):
Yeah, and I would say that holds true with or without
AI, right?
Like you don't have to wait forthe robot apocalypse to be nice
to your people.
It's just something you shouldbe doing.
Cause you know, ideally that'sthe role of a leader and a
manager is it's leading people.
But to me that also means justbeing a person.
Which is hard to do.
I think for a lot of corporatepeople, I think it's hard to do
because you're so used tomuzzling yourself.
(24:15):
You're so used to, as you say,your friends that you talk to
and it.
And I see this especially at bigcompanies.
You gotta put on the face.
You gotta put on the the act.
You're partly hired for yourexperience, partly hired for
your brains, but I think you'realso hired to conform to this
sort of this LARP, this actingrole that you have to have.
Which is what it is.
Andreas Welsch (24:33):
We covered a lot of topics.
We've got a lot of ground overthe last half hour.
Joe, I was wondering if you cansummarize the key three
takeaways for our audience outof all the things that we
touched on burning for AIwithout burning out.
Joe Reis (24:45):
Going backwards, I would say, if you're a leader,
be a human, be a person.
That also includes individualcontributors, by the way just,
be a person.
And that's the one thing I thinkpeople sacrifice too often.
And then they look back andthey're like, what did I do?
Where I spend my time, so that'sa big one.
The other one is just try andfind ways to take, to put your
data house in order.
So AI is good to go.
But I think finally just figureout ways where AI is going to
(25:08):
have the most impact for yourcompany, right?
We danced around this a bit, butit's find ways where you can do
it in a humane way as well.
I think that's the thing that'smissing from the conversation
is, how can we get rid of allthis cost?
How would you feel if I calledyou cost?
That's your pronoun.
Andreas Welsch (25:22):
Are you asking me as an individual or as a
shareholder?
Joe Reis (25:24):
Yeah, that's a good point.
So when you, as an individual,when you're referred to as cost,
you're like, that's prettyinhumane, yeah.
As a shareholder, you're like,yeah.
Andreas Welsch (25:33):
Asset is the right word, not cost.
Joe Reis (25:36):
Yeah, sure.
Andreas Welsch (25:39):
Awesome.
Hey we're getting close to theend of the show.
And Joe, I just want to saythank you for joining us and for
sharing your expertise with us.
I'm glad we're able to have thatconversation.
Like I said, it's so mucheasier.
Having it with someone who'sseen it who's been through it,
who has lots of of connectionsto people who are going through
that because I know that a lotof folks in corporate roles and
full time roles cannot speak soopenly about the challenges.
Joe Reis (26:02):
I understand, man, is what it is.
Yep.
Andreas Welsch (26:05):
Yes.
Wonderful.
Again, thank you so much forcoming on the show and
everybody.
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