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Earlier this month, we had some data out showing that companies are posting fewer job openings this year and employees are quitting less as unemployment has begun creeping out from low levels, signaling the end of the historically tight labor conditions that characterize the rapid recovery from the pandemic shock. We talked a little bit about some of the softness earlier with Michael McKenzie and Michael McKee about the labor market what we're seeing well.
Our next guest has a take on the labor market, specifically on jobs and finding a job that is fulfilling. Let's get to doctor Tesso West, professor of psychology at NYU. Her new book is Job Therapy, Finding Work that Works for You. Doctor West joins us from New York City.
Doctor West, great to have you here on Bloomberg Business Week. Why write this book?
People are miserable at work, and quite honestly, they have no idea why. I think you know, if you ask people, why don't you like your job anymore, what's changed since the pandemic. They'll come up with a ton of little reasons, but they're actually really struggling to come up with the reason and more importantly, what it would take to make them happy at work. So this book is really about finding answers to that deep question.
Is liking a job generational? And the reason I ask is because I remember.
Early on in my.
Career, this is going to be fun.
Uh, you know, looking for a job that I would tell people that I wanted to find a job. This was before I was like when I was in college. I think, like I wanted to, you know, find a job that I liked. And I, you know, previous generations, earlier generations would say to me, it's a job. It's not supposed to be fun.
It's a job. This is work.
Is it like a millennial thing that we're supposed to like our jobs?
Millennial gen z?
I think younger generations they don't necessarily just want to like the jobs. They don't want to feel miserable at work. They don't want to have high blood pressure from their jobs. They don't want to get you know, all these kinds
of pre existing health conditions from work. So I think the discourse around what your job can actually do to you and how it can affect your health has definitely changed with the younger generations, where they're not just looking for purpose, but they're looking for jobs that are not going to actually stress them out as much as I think the older generations, who are kind of just much more accepting of feeling miserable at work and then leaving it at work when they went home at the end
of the day.
All right, So wait, there's totally not liking your job and then there's being stressed at your job. I love my job, but I definitely have days where I'm stressed. So like, there's a are you telling about people who are like in a job and they're like, I hate every minute of it? Is that what we're talking about?
I think both are true.
So what's fascinating is I think there's a whole category people who are highly identified with their jobs. Their jobs define who they are, so good days make them feel good about themselves as a person. Bad days the opposite,
but they actually hate that. They are high on what we call kind of identity centrality at work, my work defines me, but low on satisfaction I hate the thing that defines me, And I think that's the dangerous category to be in, is to feel like something kind of owns you, but you don't like it at the same time, and you don't know how to get out of it.
You don't know how to break that cycle.
Oky, are you saying like, if somebody doesn't like their job, the first reaction, you know, if they told someone that would be get another job. But you actually argue that there are some tools that you can use to stay at your current job. But do you like your job more?
How do you do it?
I think the tendency to kind of just want to jump from job to job isn't getting us anywhere. I think you need to first kind of understand why you dislike it, what is the psychological source of your own happiness? And in the same way you would evaluate a marriage that's going wrong, you would think to yourself, Okay, what's up is it that we aren't communicating? Am I not getting feedback? Have I drifted apart? Do I no longer recognize you? You know, my having an identity crisis? What's
that kind of deep underlying meaning behind those feelings? And you need to understand those before you can improve your current job, or before you can even start kind of networking to figure out what you want next. And that's the step that most of us actually skip in this kind of job hunting process.
That seems crucial, right. You don't just you're unhappy, just leave. You've got to figure out what is it that makes you unhappy, because you might actually like where you are, but just not the particular job that you're in. All right, so give us a checklist. I'm just thinking people are listening and they're like, okay, So that sounds like it's number one. If you're not happy, figure out why you're not happy?
Yeah, dig deep.
There's a couple of quizzes I give you in this book. You can start by figuring out how strongly you identify.
With this career, if you still want this to be part.
Of who you are, if you wanted to define you, Then what are those steps you're going to need to take to actually figure out why you're not getting ahead, why you can't get promoted, you know, why people aren't communicating with you. And I think one kind of crucial part of this is taking a look in the mirror and actually asking yourself critical questions like am I taking on roles and responsibilities that maybe make me known to the boss, make me visible at work, but aren't actually
helping me get ahead? Little communication gaps can be closed, like was I promised a job that wasn't delivered to me?
At what stage was that promise made?
You know?
Where was that miscommunication kind of coming from? Did it start at the hiring stage, onboarding later on? Really kind of figuring out in that timeline of your career those problems started to occur, and how much of that is you to blame and how much of that is your career? Really treating your career as a relationship partner that you can kind.
Of negotiate with to figure out what those things are.
What happens if you have you're in a position where you have a manager that you feel is holding you back, how do you address that?
I love that question.
A lot of people can't get ahead because they have managers who love them, but who don't have the social status and power to actually get ahead.
You need to network with other higher status people.
At work, and I like to kind of go up and adjacent, so talking to other managers, you know, even outside of your immediate team, even outside of your function, to find out how much social capital your manager actually has, you know, if they want to promote you, how much voice do they have in those rooms where those decisions are being made? And you can ask very critical questions during performance feedback, during interviews around what is the process
through which people are promoted here? How long do they need to work here? How critical is it that their manager, you know, has the social capital to make those things actually happen for them, early early on in that process, before you get to the point where you're realizing I have a manager who loves me and wants to promote me, but they have zero ability to do so.
You know, in this environment, I feel like you know, or I feel like for years people have said, you know, it's great when you can do multiple things, that's a good thing. You take on more and more responsibility, more roles. Is that a good, gooder pad thing you think?
In terms, I think it's a very dangerous thing.
Why yeah, I think because we are in a kind of movement of busyness right now. We think more is better and a lot of managers are asking us to do this instead of getting really good. In a couple a handful of roles and tasks. We are spread too thin. We are taking on multiple things that don't add up to a path towards promotion or towards a raise, and we end up having resumes that look like we are
all over the place. And one of the main criticisms I've heard from hiring managers is people have those resumes that say, you know, twenty twenty two through present, twenty twenty three through present fourteen times in a row on their resume, and it really looks like they have no idea what direction they're going in. They just say yes
to everything an attempt to get ahead. So you have to exercise some restraint when it comes to taking on these roles and understanding how these roles can actually build on one another to help you climb up instead of just spreading you out in a million different directions.
Okay, so one thing that we like to talk about is lessons not just for people who are employees, but and you know, who are targeted in the book, like don't necessarily like their jobs. What about lessons for managers who may have employees who aren't feeling like they're fulfilled at work. What lessons for managers can be taken away from the book.
I think one of the more surprising things I learned in research for this book is that the signs that people are struggling, that they're having an identity crisis, that they're spread too thin, that they're drifting apart, are often the opposite of what we're trained to see. We're trying to look for disengagement, quiet quitting, but often those early signs are actually the opposite. When people are struggling with their identity, they're actually thinking of taking on a new career.
They go all in at work, they take on more, they show up later. It's like an extinction burst. It's a little like when you're married and you go on a million dates right before you get a divorce to prove to yourself that you did everything you could. So managers actually need to learn to look out for some of those warning signs that I talk about that are often kind of things that are not in the zeitgeist.
We're not talking about being really engaged when you're questioning your job, or being sensitive to intermit and reinforce manner, being on an emotional roller coaster.
Those kinds of things.
Interesting interesting. One of our fans of our show has said, you know, the most recent grads over four years of only notable market and hiring and hoarding of employees. So how do you deal with the stress of life once that cycle turns and we see unemployment tick up? I mean, doctor Wes just got about twenty five seconds. I mean, this has been a tight market. How does this stuff change when it's not so easy to leave a job just quickly, very quickly.
You really have to be ready to ride that roller coaster.
Don't read too much into one emotion that you're feeling, and whatever you do. Don't chase a job just because of the compensation package that comes along with it. Those things go up and down constantly. That shouldn't be your primary motivator.
All right, got to leave it there, Doctor Tessa West, professor of psychology at NYU. Her new book Job Therapy, Finding Work that works for You. That fan of the show also says, you might like your job, but not your co host cough cough.
Wow.
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I think it's fair to say, Carol, that a lot of consumers experience with the supply chain comes from when you can't get something absolutely right. They're like, oh, wait, this is going to take eight weeks to get Now, I'm interested in supply chains.
It is.
We all just assume it just shows up.
Yeah, it's like during the great supply chain crunch that happened during COVID. As we know though, now, supply chains are incredibly complex and they're incredibly fragile.
Yeah.
Our next guest wants to modernize a specific part of the supply chain, material flow, the moving of raw materials and other components before they become things or those things that we all love to buy. And that's what he's doing. It's all happening at a company known as Maitra.
It's a startup that's raised seventy eight million dollars. It's backed by companies including the food and drug retailer Albertson's. Chris Walty is co founder and CEO at Miitra, and he joins us from ore again, Chris, welcome. You've got a really interesting Yeah, you've got a really interesting career so far. Seven years more than seven years at Tesla. Before launching Miitra, you worked in mobile robotics. You ultimately worked for the humanoid, the Optimus humanoid robot during that time.
What was the problem that you identified when you were at Tesla that you built Miitra to solve.
Absolutely, yeah, so leading the material flow, specifically to help Model three off the production line, as you may have known, Elon called it production Hell.
Oh yeah, he was sleeping on the floor of the factory.
Yes, I think I've tripped over him a few times myself. It truly was challenging. It was a multi month, multi year effort to really get that spun up. And you know, one of the most common activities throughout the process, the one that I was ultimately put in charge of because as it was falling behind, was simply getting parts to the Model three assembly line. Moving and storing material within the factory was a huge channel.
Okay, so wait, wait, so hold on, let me let's understand this. Your job was to get the parts they would come in from their suppliers or they would be fabricated there, and they would be stored in a certain area, and your job was to facilitate the transportation of those from wherever they were in the factory to the actual supply chain where it'd be assembled exactly.
Yep. Just you know, think pallettes, move it from palettes down to cases and tots, breaking those apart, and then using things like conveyors and elevators to get them to exactly where they needed to be on the line.
How does this not already happen, Well.
It happens today in many factories. It happens through a lot of manual processes. In fact, forty percent of the labor in any manufacturing facility is really just moving things around, and that's that number increases to about eighty percent in a warehouse, and most of that is done the way it was seventy five years ago today through forklifts or people moving things manually.
So what's the way that you can solve this and bring this up into the twenty first century?
Absolutely so. The goal of our company is to develop the simplest mechanism possible to do the most amount of work, and that is simply moving material up to three thousand pounds. And when you think of a factory or warehouse, it's a large, volumetric open space. I think everyone's been in a costco before, right, you imagine just that lots of airspace with racks and palettes and a lot of that doesn't really require the sophistication and you know, horsepower of a person to do a lot of that.
Yeah, that challenge.
Amazon bought this company years ago, Kiva Systems, Is it right? Are you building something like if that's the image that people have in their head of how something moves across a warehouse floor, explain in the context of that, like use that as the reference point.
How is your solution different?
Certainly? Yeah, Kiva's a phenomenal System's really been beneficial to Amazon. What Kiva is really good at doing is bringing a lot of smaller bins parts to a particular area so that someone can pack it and put it in a parcel that is sent to probably your doorstep the next day. That said, in the supply chain, most of what moves around in the supply chain moves around on palletts. You look around, everything you see around you has probably been
on a palette at some point or another. That's not really. You know Kiva's bread and butter, it's not really designed for what's called parcel fulfillment. Most of the supply chain needs palletts. Right our first customer, Albertson's, they run on pallets. Most industry runs on palletts. And so that's what we're moving around, and we're doing it in an extremely simple and efficient way using mobile robots that move in any direction.
And it seems like your systems in terms of how they fit together, it's very simple, right, It's not a lot of moving parts to that.
No, that was what I mean. It almost killed the company at Tesla. The amount of moving parts, the amount of things you had to plug in, commission, all of the motors, all of the sensors. At the scale of a warehouse, it's really challenging. And if you want to do full automation for these buildings today, that's kind of
the state of the art. And that was what one of our biggest struggles at the company was led a team thereafter to try to build mobile robots to solve that problem at scale within Tesla, and now we're trying to do that for the rest of the industry and much more of of a green field approach effectively.
Chris, you mentioned working with the Albertons. Who else are you working with? Give us an idea of kind of the different types of companies that you are working with, are planning to work with, our hope to work with.
Certainly well, as I mentioned, every you know, supply chain moves runs on pallets. I mean every industry from consumer package goods to retail, pharmaceuticals of course, automotive, you know, home goods, you know, any of those folks can benefit from from our system at some point in their supply chain. So the folks that we're working with are you know, Fortune one hundred companies that have significant scale to apply this throughout their ecosystem.
What type of investment does a company have to make if they want to integrate Mitra into their supply chain. Because I'm looking at the website. Carol and I were looking at it earlier in the day today as we were preparing for this. It's really really cool, but it also looks like it's a big investment.
Sure, and that's one of the biggest challenges, right, I mean, if you're a supply chain company and it's challenging to know what what does your business. Look like five ten, even fifteen years from now, investing in a lot of these fixed automation systems like you know we had to put in at Tesla could be a bit challenging, and so what we've designed is a system that effectively, regardless of what your system needs to do five ten years now,
can flex can change through software. You know, from a cost perspective, our north star was, look, you know, ninety five percent of these warehouses operate on pallets, pallette racks, and forklifts. You know, this has to be as easy to install and effectively as cost effective as a pallet rack and a forklift. So that is effectively our north star.
That's what we're driving towards. And you do that through a very very simple system orders a magnitude more simple than than you know, the kind of fixed automation that's out there today. And so that's that's our north star.
Chris, I want one of these for my basement. Basically, no like like you look.
At how do you get it? How do you do you get it to the main floor? You got it.
But it's this idea of like, you know, what you do in a basement with those metal shelvings and you try to like capital it's like this on steroids, And I understand it's a much more sophisticated system. Having said that, I think we're trying to get like what does this cost a company to do? And I understand this is one of those things that probably over time, but how expensive is a system like this?
Certainly? So you know, when you look at on a cost per per pallette position or a cost per per palette stored, right, this is you know, our north Stars is pretty equivalent to what you would would need to spend to outfit your warehouse with you know, call it single deep pallete racking, which is I mean today those can be you know, one hundred to you know, seven
hundred dollars a position. It's a pretty wide range and a lot of it depends on are you in an earthquake zone, are you you know, in an error area with hurricanes, et cetera. So it really, you know, the vast majority of the fixed infrastructure is just in a very simple steel rack. And that's a that's a it's a pretty well really it's just the cost of steel. Effectively, it's a.
Pretty cool system, very very cool.
Yeah, yeah, I highly recommend everybody check it out on the website. Well, keep in touch and let us know how things are going as you guys, as you continue to build it out like fascinating background and certainly interesting to see what you guys are up to. Chris, thank you so much.
Chris really appreciate you joining us. Co founder and CEO at Miitra joining us from Oregon.
All right, you're gonna thank us for this segment in a big way. Skin cancer, my own family having their own scare recently around this, many of my extended family have dealt with these concerns. I'm big. I gotta say tim on those full body checks. Do it every year.
I got one on Tuesday morning.
You did, so we get aware for the summer and summer sunning season with us. Is a Shawnee ware Atna, Chair of the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University is supported by Michael R. Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg LP and Bloomberg Philanthropyes, a Shawnee welcome. We got lots and lots of questions for you, So we're so glad to have you with us.
What I do want to start with sunscreen, though, because we know we're supposed to wear sunscreen every day, regardless of how much time we spend outside.
But one thing I.
Don't underst stand is is it okay to wear chemical sunscreens or should we move completely away from chemical sunscreens and instead use sunscreens with metals in them, like zinc.
That's a great question, and it's a question that a lot of people have concerns about. The truth is that there's no real evidence showing that the chemical sunscreens are dangerous for your health. And what I advise people to do is if they are really concerned about it, there are so many great lines of upf clothing that are available now, including long sleeved T shirts, hats and that sort of thing. And as you just mentioned, the zinc oxide based sunscreens are fantastic.
So I don't think.
There's a need to move away from chemical sunscreens because again, there's no hard evidence that they are dangerous. However, I do think it's important to have other options.
Yeah, I mean, certainly the hats and the long sleeves, you should see me at the beach. I'm no fun to go to the beach with because I just stays. I'm or an umbrella and with long sleeves on the whole time, and I'm grumpy.
You can get a gold star from me.
But you know there are but we do have to put some block on our face and on our nose. Like do you recommend a zinc sunscreen over a chemical sunscreen?
And we're not at that point.
I honestly do not, because I use chemical sunscreens myself and on my children, and I don't see a need to switch. However, again, if someone is concerned, obviously we have great psynchoxide sunscreens.
What about though, kind of like I'm someone who's embraced kind of the more natural or non chemical things. Are they they seem to work as well? Do they are? Like, what's some advice in terms of how we should pick a sunscreen, whether we you know, aren't so worried about the chemicals in there, or you know, we go, is there some way of kind of filtering through?
Sure?
So the most important speaking of filtering, the most important thing for a sunscreen is to make sure that it is a broad spectrum sunscreen. It needs to be able to block both UVA rays and UVB rays. So those are two different kinds of UV rays. They penetrate different layers of the skin, and it's really really important to block both of those. So, wherever you are looking for a sunscreen, no matter if it is you know, natural based, chemical based, physically based, make sure it says that it's
a broad spectrum sunscreen. I would also stick with the sunscreens that are FDA regulated because you know they are safe and they have been tested to do what.
They're supposed to.
How do you know if a sunscreen is FDA regulated, it.
Will usually say it, We'll say it on it. What about like you know, SPF ten, SPF thirty, SPF a million, Like is there a point where it's just ridiculous?
Yeah, So actually, you know, we recommend anything that is SPF thirty is probably just fine. You'll see SPF fifty, SPF seventy. All that means is that you can stay out longer in the sun without reapplying. But the truth is SPF thirty is probably at this point in time, SPF thirty is a completely comfortable SPF factor with which to stick if you're interested in it.
But if you're really fair, like would you go would you suggest that you go for a higher SPF?
So no, because the higher SPF you go, it's not a linear increase if you will in protection. So my advice would be, rather than go for an SPF seventy by an SPF thirty, but reapply more often consistently. We suggest that you reapply, especially if you're sweating or swimming, at least every eighty to ninety minutes when you're out in the sun, which I don't think most people do, because I have so many people say oh, we put our sunblock on, but we still got burned, And then
I asked them did you reapply? And often they say no?
Is what this is a real question. I'm not just asking this because this is what I deal with every morning, but truly, why is it so difficult to put sunscreen on kids? And what are some good strategies to get kids not to screen at you when you're trying to put sunscreen on.
The You know, honestly, it is a challenge. I remember when my daughter was in kindergarten. I got all the kids to the point in her class where they would just line up in front of me and I will cover them.
And with son, can you come over tomorrow morning?
What's that?
Can you come over tomorrow morning?
Yeah? Absolutely, I'll be there.
Yeah.
So again with kids, you know, there's these great lines of the SPF clothing and that is a lot easier. But unfortunately, as with everything, getting them to eat, getting them to wear their sunscreen, it's just a struggle. And I wish I had a better answer for having said that.
I actually had a pediatrician who was like, back off the sunscreen a little bit because kids were being so covered in sunscreen, concerns about was invitamin.
Okay, I want to hear the answer to this, Yeah, okay, Yeah.
So the truth is that to get the amount of vitamin D that you need for your body to function properly, you only need fifteen minutes in sunlight. And often we get that fifteen minutes even if we're wearing sunscreen, because nobody's going to reapply at the exact second they need to reapply, and so if you're out in the sun at all, you're getting the sunlight that you need to make.
The vitamin D.
So it's a little bit of a flawed argument to say don't use sunscreen because you won't get vitamin D. More of a concern is don't let your kids sit in the basement playing video games because then they definitely won't get their vitamin D.
And I will say the caveat was you know, basically put it on when it's like supreme sun hours, like the peak hours, but you can you know, there could be hours a day where they're not slathered in sunscreen.
Okay, do Carol and I really have to put on do we really have to put on sunblock every single morning when we leave our homes to come to the office, even in the dead of winter.
I've got pretty thick makeup on that's not going to do it.
So I actually have makeup that has an SBA fifteen in it and that's what I use.
And you know, when you're sitting.
Inside an office all day or as you say, you know, we get significant sun exposure, even in the winter. And if you are someone who skis, for example, that is you actually get a double exposure of the sun because if you're on the slopes, the sun bounces off the snow and eighty percent of it reflects.
Back on you.
So right, and just to your earlier points. The peaks and hours are between ten and four.
Oh okay, good to know. Good to know, Shawnie, thank you so much. He's chair of the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Shawnee, we are at over.
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is supported by Michael Our Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg LP, and Bloomberg Philanthropies.