You’ll Still Hate Your Manager in The Metaverse

in this space. So we asked Matt Boyle, god forbid, you know, how are you going to take your you know, your two hour lunch in France in metaverse? I think you'd much rather be at a bistro somewhere. A Bloomberg senior report who has written a lot about the future of work to help explain exactly what's going on here, especially as relates to businesses hiring chief metaverse offices and what those folks even do. Oldie Matt, welcome onto the show.

Thanks for having me. What's going on in the metaverse? Well, quite a lot if you've been reading the news lately, um, But I'm mostly focused for our work shift editorial area in terms of you know how our companies and particularly the C suite managers approaching the metaverse. What are the opportunities, what's the promise, what is the peril? And you know, I hate to say this, and we all kind of hate to say this, but you know, the jury is

very much still out there. When the company that is the poster child for the metaverse can't get its own employees to use its own metaverse, well, that's that company that you're referring to, that post a child which renamed itself to Meta to embrace the metavers. Uh, there are no toes to dip, right, because we're still trying to figure out if people people in the metaverse are gonna

have legs. But this idea of employee adoption of a technology is interesting to me because the metaverse is being positioned as a it's almost like like a Zoom enterprise like products that something for people who work in large corporations will find benefit from, which is very different from some of the consumer brandings that we had out there previously. Like, what's explaining that disconnect? Well, I mean it's funny you

mentioned Zoom. You know, if the promise of the Metaverse or one of the potential promises of the metaverse is to, you know, bring employees into some sort of immersive environment which may or may not enhance their work experience. I think if you hate your manager, you're still going to hate your manager in the metaverse. But you mentioned zoom. I mean, we can't even get zoom calls right these days.

There are homes and books being written and research papers coming out of Harvard studying interactions over zoom and who gets left out on the zoom call and should that zoom have been an email or should that thirty minutes zoom be twenty five minutes? And my argument is yes, the smartest companies are shortening meetings using zoom less because they know what sort of impact it is having. My

wife is on zoom calls twelve hours a day. She comes out of a work from home day, she looks like she just went through the Battle of the Bulge. I mean, it's insane. So if you're saying let's all go to the metaverse and have a more productive meeting, my answer is why can't we Just you know, we're not even getting meetings right now with the simplest of

technologies for video conferencing. But that said again, Um, you know, one of the applications of the metaverse will certainly be you know, workplace applications, and how Slack and Salesforce and all those various workplace applications that we know and loathe are going to happily coexist within some type of of metaverse.

I don't know. What I do know is, you know, it's to be far more relevant for my fourteen year old son who lives has for the past ten years, has lived in basically three worlds, Roadblocks, Minecraft, and Fortnite, and he is so comfortable there. If his first job is something similar to any of those experiences, then okay, I'm kind of getting you there, but that you know, that's when he's twenty four, twenty years down the line.

So again, I think there's gonna be a lot of growing pains here, as with any big shift in the workplace. And my god, I mean, how many huge shifts are happening at the same time in the workplace as we're talking about whether or not the metaverse is going to be really impacting corporations. You know, we've got organizing movement,

labor organizing movements at places like Starbucks. We have people freaking out over the fact that they don't even know where their remote workers are, much less how to pay them. I mean, there's so much going on, not to mention the whole return to office battle that you know, I can imagine how moving work to the metaverse, or corporations shifting a lot of their operations to the metaverse might become slightly lower priority when they can't even hold on

to their best people. Work is hard is a big takeaway I'm hearing there. But what you're also saying is something that we hear a lot about kind of everything that tends to be smushed into like crypto plus web three plus metaverse, which is the criticism that these are solutions in search of problems. And you know, there are always going to people who will be like, no, no, no, no. Bitcoin actually solves x y Z or Web three solves ABC.

But there's way less consensus on what's exactly the metaverse solves for what it even is when different people are talking about it. But that doesn't seem to have stopped some corporations from hiring chief metaverse off exactly. But I think they're chasing the consumer opportunity here rather than figuring out how it's going to change the way that they work. I mean, all the luxury companies doing you know, metaverse fashion shows and um, you know Starbucks doing their coffee

related n f T s whatever that turns out to be. UM. You know, they are very much looking at this as as a branding opportunity, UM down the line away to get closer to customers because again, a lot of big brands missed the boat with e commerce, were very slow to that UM and do not want to miss that that boat again. So digital you know, fomo is is

very much a part of this. But how Proctor and Gamble and LVMH and all the companies that are hiring chief metaverse officers, it seems like that role is sort of being put in place to have a point person. Okay, you're in charge. Now. We know there's a lot going on with this metaverse stuff and you know, UM, but we don't really understand it. I'm a fifty six year old CEO from Central Casting. You know, I went to Harvard, then Mackenzie and now I'm here. I don't get this stuff.

Let me hire somebody or find somebody internally for a heck of a lot cheaper. You know who maybe was talking to me about n f t S the other day. Hey, you could be our chief metaverse officer and you let you smile. But that's as easy, that's as quickly as it is happening in some of these places. You must know something about this. Well, now you are are newly minted chief metaverse officer. Congratulations, And then there's sort of like crickets. THO was like, well, what in the world

do I do now? And that was the whole point of my story. What do these people do all day? We know some of them are getting million dollar paychecks. Okay, are they deserving of them? Um? We don't really know yet. But you know, if one of these chief metaverse officers turns their brand into you know, sort of this amazing Web three phenomenon, then they're earning every penny or are

they not. There have been a few stories I'm thinking of Kashmir Hill for example, of folks who have tried to be in the metaverse, and Alex Brinka the other day exactly. Um, and you know, one of the things that they have said is it's kind of exhausting because you right now to in order to achieve that, especially if you're thinking of it as a virtual reality context, is like you've got something strapped to your face, ye ways over a pound. You know, it's it's a little

bit disorienting. It's you're there, aren't always other people there, right like, So you know that's something that we've seen in crypto, for example, there are spaces there's one called the Sandbox, as one called the Central Land where the number of active users in there like relative to kind of like your typical gaming platform is very low, and so you've got like a dead zone. Nobody is necessarily here a problem, and then you have got the question of Okay, I'm here, how do I fill in my

Excel spreadsheets? Like, like what practically can I be doing in the metaverse? To your points about experimentation, given that people can't really do much in most cases right now, what are some of the strongest arguments you've heard corporations make for why they're plowing forward if they are I mean, one could be just collaboration. We certainly have been disconnected it over the past two years, and you know, for a forty something maybe seeing a colleague in the metaverse

isn't going to be enough. Maybe not enough too then you know, having like an in person lunch or a drink after work. But maybe for younger workers, you know, having a more immersive collaborative experience, whether that's onboarding a new employee, doing a training session, sitting in a big virtual auditorium to listen to you know, you're your fearless leader tell you that we're going to attack this or that market, or you know, we're going to do this

or that. Um, that might be you know, enough to get to have people sort of feel a sense. Okay, I'm kind of getting a better sense. And here are my colleagues, and they are you know, I look to my right and my left and and there, okay, there they are. They might not have legs, but there they are, and they're chatting, and we're kind of like passing notes during the meeting. And isn't that funny? I mean, maybe

that will be enough. I'm not sure yet. Um, But then, you know, Alex Brinka's story the other day was great because you know, she was trying to she couldn't figure out if she could type while she was in you know, in the metaverse, and and then her makeup got smushed, and it's you know, it's like, it's always the everyday stuff that ends up being the huge issue here. You know, it's just happened throughout technology. You know this better than I do. It's that they often overlook the every day

the cotidian examples like wait, Howard did we account for this? Oh, don't worry about it. This technology is wonderful. It'll solve all our problems. Um. So it's figuring out those little things like yeah, can I do an Excel spreadsheet? Can I just do my expenses in the Why in the world would I want to do my expenses in the metaverse? You don't ever do them anywhere? Um? But could I be onboarded and meet all my new fellows some are interns. Okay, now you're kind of now I'm with you a little bit.

I mean, yes, I might rather be going out going bowling with them in real life, but it's a start. We'll be right back with more from Bloomberg Senior Reports. Matt Boyle. In the story that you rose about chief metaverse officers, you talked about one in particular that wasn't even a person. Yes, that was very interesting, as kind of prompted my my interest here when someone said, hey, Matt, have you heard about these chief metaverurse officers? I said, oh,

let me look into it. And one of the first companies that came up is Publicis Group, which is a big, massive advertising giant. Their French, um, their clients are Nestlee, Walmart ubs, I mean blue chip clients. They do very well. Um. But when I looked into it, they said, oh, they hired a chief metaverse officer and said, oh, who is here? She I'd love to interview this person, and I realized it was not a person. It was a digital avatar, a very sleek, French speaking or I guess French accented

lion named Leon. Of course, his name was Leon, who had a YouTube video and he had a linked in profile, and he had an email address, although every time I emailed him it got bounced act to me. Um, so maybe he's still you know, maybe they're not maybe still onboarding, or hasn't got his email, or maybe he's like you know us young people, he's like email, what's email? I

don't use the email slack me. Um. But in the end, and of course, given Publicius as French, it took them three months to get back to me to basically say like, well, yes, this is our chief metaverse officer and you know, and but like then when they finally got back to me, they said, how many hundreds of of agency people are actually working with their brands on sort of Web three related stuff. I'm like, okay, well now it's getting interesting.

But again that was because brands really want to figure this out. It was not because everybody at Publicis Group is working in the metaverse. God forbid, you know, how are you going to take your you know, your two hour lunch in France in the metaverse? I think you'd much rather be at a bistro somewhere. Um. So, yes, it really runs the gamut from digital avatars, two very high qualifiled people you know who used to work at McKenzie and at Goldman Sachs who are becoming chief metaverse

officers too. Again, the other people I mentioned the other day is just like the guy in the room who raises his hand when they say, who knows anything about n F T S Bam, you're a chief metaverse officer. So that's how haphazard the approaches right now among companies. But they all kind of agree this is something we've got to pay attention to. As you say it's it's not like companies haven't done this before, right, like twenty

years ago, it was like anyone heard of the Internet? Great, you know, in charge of our digital and now you're the chief transformation officer, the chief digital officer. I mean, as we know, the C suites are never hesitant to add yet another person to the c suite um. And while some of them have real like a chief information officer you need, you need a person in charge of your internal I T. But then there's a chief Technology officer who's like, Okay, well I'm in charge of finding

out what's next in technology. And then you have a chief Digital officer, and now you have a Chief Metaverse officer. And I can imagine the four of them in a room sort of arguing over like, you know, who's really the top tech you know, gun um. I would not want to be in that room, but I'm sure those conversations are happening somewhere in corporate America. Yeah, just not necessarily in virtual reality. Thank you so much, Matt for

being here. What a pleasure. You can find more of Matt Boyle's reporting on the Bloomberg Terminal on bloomberg dot com, where he writes for Workshift and on Twitter at biz boil and if you're interested in more about the future of work, follow Workshift on Twitter at the future yep, that's apt t h E f U t U r E. On the next episode of Bloomberg Crypto, finance people, including to be clear, finance reporters love round numbers love them.

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