In this episode of HR Heretics, Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich sit down with Chris Vasquez , Investor and Founder of Quantum Talent, and discuss the insane AI talent market, executive hiring, and the future of work in a world where AI is rapidly changing everything. Hear their insights on the dynamic AI talent market covering the evolution of tech trends, challenges in hiring, the changing dynamics of diversity and merit, and the race for top talent. *Email us your questions or topics for Kell...
Jul 25, 2024•54 min
In this episode of HR Heretics, Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich discuss the reality of PIPs (Performance Improvement Plans). Are PIPs genuine efforts to help employees or a company CYA tactic? Kelli and Nolan explore the misuse of PIPs, arguing that they should be a last resort, not the first step in addressing performance issues. Listen to their insights as they discuss PIP alternatives, like the "fork approach," focusing on open communication and employee empowerment over PIPs. *Email us your...
Jul 23, 2024•17 min
In this episode of HR Heretics, Kelli and Nolan are joined by Heather Doshay, Partner and Head of Talent at SignalFire. How is the tech talent landscape evolving, and what are the challenges and opportunities that come with these changes? Listen as Heather shares insights from their State of Talent report, uncovering shifts in location trends, Gen Z job hopping, and the truth about AI's impact on hiring. Plus, hear why "remote ready" is more important than ever and why Heather calls out the reli...
Jul 18, 2024•56 min
In this episode of HR Heretics, Nolan Church and Kelli Dragovich discuss Meta's latest round of VP cuts which raises questions about the future of big tech jobs and the impact of efficiency initiatives on employees. Is Meta's large number of VPs hindering efficiency? Listen as Kelli and Nolan discuss the impact of bloated management structures in big tech, the future of leadership and management, and their insights on how to prepare for a changing job market. *Email us your questions or topics f...
Jul 16, 2024•17 min
In this episode of HR Heretics, Nick and Kelli sit down with Nick Cromydas, CEO of Hunt Club , and discuss the executive search evolution, leveraging technology, and AI. His company Hunt Club uses a network of thousands of leaders to find the perfect candidate, revolutionizing the traditional search firm model. Nick, Kelli, and Nolan discuss common negotiation points and terms surrounding executive compensation, equity, and the importance of transparency and feedback in hiring processes. *Email ...
Jul 11, 2024•53 min
In this episode of HR Heretics, Nolan is joined by regular guests/friends of the pod Colleen McCreary (Ribbit Capital) and David Hanrahan (CPO, Flare) to unpack Alexandr Wang’s MEI stance at Scale AI, the growing backlash against DEI initiatives, and a discussion of how businesses can move forward productively from this debate. The conversation also touches on the new culture deck from Netflix! If you haven’t listened to HR Heretics episode #1 where we interviewed Patti McCord, architect of the ...
Jul 09, 2024•37 min
In this 4th of July special episode of HR Heretics, hosts Kelli and Nolan discuss the hurdles of taking vacations, particularly in the context of modern HR practices. They explore the challenges and strategies of making use of unlimited PTO, the importance of setting regular boundaries for mental health, and the importance of planning ahead for time off. They also discuss the importance of training your colleagues to enforce your vacation, deleting Slack off your phone, and recognizing false urg...
Jul 03, 2024•18 min
In this episode of HR Heretics, Kelli and Nolan sit with Michelle Wagner as she shares her journey from Chief People Officer at AOL and Evernote to becoming the CEO of MindStrong, a healthech company. Michelle, who may be “N of 1” in the CPO to CEO company trajectory, discusses her early career, the challenges she faced in different leadership roles, and the strategic decisions she made during her tenure as CEO of MindStrong. This candid conversation offers valuable insights for HR professionals...
Jul 02, 2024•1 hr 4 min
In this episode of HR Heretics, Kelli and Nolan sit down with Andrew Bartlow, a multi time VP of HR and co-founder of People Leader Accelerator. Andrew shares his extensive career from startups to Fortune 100 companies, the distinct challenges at each company stage across VC-backed startups and public companies, and the danger of being relegated to your HR island. *Email us your questions or topics for Kelli & Nolan: [email protected] HR Heretics is a podcast from Turpentine . Support...
Jun 27, 2024•1 hr 2 min
Scale AI's CEO sparks debate with "MEI" - is meritocracy a threat to diversity? Kelli and Nolan, together with Richard Ni, Scale AI’s former Head of People, weigh in on the implications of this new hiring policy. Together, they discuss the role of meritocracy and company culture and offer actionable insights for HR professionals for talent acquisition and building a diverse workforce. *Email us your questions or topics for Kelli & Nolan: [email protected] HR Heretics is a podcast from...
Jun 25, 2024•30 min
Nolan and Kelli sit down with Lars Schmidt, Redefining Work podcaster, author, world of work content creator, and founder of Amplify Talent. Lars shares his journey from leading talent at NPR to establishing his voice as a creator, to founding his own advisory firm. Lars, Kelli and Nolan discuss the motivations for becoming a content creator, challenges in building a brand and community, and why in the age of AI HR practitioners need to be more selfish.*Email us your questions or topics for Kell...
Jun 21, 2024•55 min
In this episode of HR Heretics, Rippling is banning ex-employees who work at competitors from participating in a secondary stock offering. Is this ethical or a smart business move? Kelli and Nolan discuss the pros and cons of this controversial HR policy. *Email us your questions or topics for Kelli & Nolan: [email protected] HR Heretics is a podcast from Turpentine . Discover Workvivo , Zoom’s employee experience platform, designed to delight your hybrid workforce. With dynamic and i...
Jun 14, 2024•15 min
In this episode of HR Heretics, Kelli and Nolan engage in a heartfelt discussion with Todd Olson, CEO and founder of Pendo. Todd shares his personal and professional journey, from his early days as a developer to his current role as CEO. He provides deep insights into leadership, his unique hiring process, and why he believes HR is essential to business success where human connection and vulnerability are prioritized. *Email us your questions or topics for Kelli & Nolan: hrheretics@turpentin...
Jun 13, 2024•54 min
In this episode of HR Heretics, Nolan and Kelli explore the rising trend of replacing managers with coaches, examining the pros and cons of this model and its potential impact on employee development. They also discuss the practicalities of implementing a coach-based management model, including the role of functional expertise and the need for rapid onboarding of coaches. *Email us your questions or topics for Kelli & Nolan: [email protected] HR Heretics is a podcast from Turpentine ....
Jun 11, 2024•15 min
In this episode of HR Heretics, Kelli Dragovich and Nolan Church welcome Michelle Delcambre, an operating partner at Felicis (and formerly of Stripe & Databricks), to discuss company growth trajectories, and strategic HR practices around talent, comp, and exits. Michelle shares the development of Felicis’ ‘Benchmark Your Org' tool — which you can access here — it’s a free platform utilizing data from 15,000 companies, updated monthly, to help founders benchmark organizational growth. This co...
Jun 06, 2024•50 min
In this episode of HR Heretics, Nolan and Kelli dive into the devastating impact of toxic managers, featuring real stories of burnout, mental health struggles, and even suicide. They delve into the misconduct of a Baidu executive who displayed horrific behavior towards her employees and the extreme pressures leading to suicides among investment bankers, highlighted by a tragic case at Bank of America. From recognizing the signs of toxic management to building a strong support network, Kelli and ...
Jun 04, 2024•17 min
In this episode of HR Heretics, Nolan and Kelli sit down with Casey Woo, a former public market investor turned 7x high-growth executive (including WeWork). He is now the founder of Operations Guild and General Partner at FOG Ventures. Casey shares eye-opening experiences from his time at WeWork and describes working with Adam Neumann, and the dynamics of rapid business scaling. They also highlight the impact of AI on business operations, the rise of the business operator, and discuss what skill...
May 31, 2024•50 min
In this episode of HR Heretics, Nolan and Kelli discuss an article from Business Insider about the ongoing white-collar recession, particularly affecting those earning over $100,000 a year. They discuss significant changes in the tech job market, including the influence of AI, global competition, and the shift from managerial roles to more individual contributor positions. The episode concludes with insights into personal fulfillment versus financial stability in career choices. Vanguard data re...
May 29, 2024•17 min
In this episode of HR Heretics, Nolan and Kelli sit down with Nathan Tanner, an executive coach, author of The Unconquerable Leader, and former HR leader at DoorDash, Neighbor, and LinkedIn. Nathan demystifies the black box of coaching as a career path for people leaders, getting into the nitty-gritty of setting up the business, getting clients, and the economics of coaching. They also discuss the fine line between the empathy required of an HR leader, an executive coach, and a therapist. HR Her...
May 23, 2024•44 min
Nolan Church breaks down what is happening over at OpenAI and what we know about three developing stories involving exec departures, equity, and transparency. Kelli is on vacation this week. He touches on: * The departure of Ilya Sutskever, co-founder and chief scientist, along with Jan Lieke * The journalistic investigation by Vox's Kelsey Piper, who broke the story of OpenAI's practice of requiring departing employees to sign life-long non-disclosure and non-disparagement agreements, threateni...
May 21, 2024•11 min
In this episode, Nolan and Kelli have an honest and transparent discussion with CEO and founder of Remote Job van der Voort (also the former VP of Product at GitLab) on the nuances of running an international remote company. Job strongly emphasises how trying to replicate the office environment in a remote setting doesn’t work and how giving small teams extreme autonomy with focus on outcome-based-management far outweighs surveillance and micro management. Kelli, Nolan and Job chat about early c...
May 16, 2024•52 min
In today's segment, Kelli welcomes back Janelle Lopez, discussing her recent career decision to take a second-in-command role at Coursera over the top Chief People Officer position elsewhere. She gives us an honest look into her decision-making, her networking efforts (75 meetings!), and how to assess a company for fit. HR Heretics is a podcast from Turpentine . -- SPONSOR: Attio is the next generation of CRM. It’s powerful, flexible, and easily configures to the unique way your startup runs, wh...
May 14, 2024•15 min
In this episode, Nolan and Kelli chat humanity in leadership with Michelle Weaver, CFO at Twitch (now part of Amazon). Michelle Weaver has 25 years experience including Hired (with Kelli), StitchFix, Axiom, Gap, Inc. and EA. Michelle emphasises the importance of a human-first leadership approach and that growth and learning can come from the projects you work on, not just promotions. The team all agree that building a strong relationship with the CFO builds a strong business foundation and knowi...
May 09, 2024•48 min
In today’s segment, Kelli and Nolan discuss the recent FTC ruling to ban non-compete agreements nationwide in the US, the broader implications of the ruling for employers and employees, and the future of AI and tech post-ban. HR Heretics is a podcast from Turpentine . SPONSOR: Attio is the next generation of CRM. It’s powerful, flexible, and easily configures to the unique way your startup runs, whatever your go-to-market motion. The next era deserves a better CRM. Join ElevenLabs, Replicate, Mo...
May 07, 2024•12 min
In this episode of HR Heretics, Kelli and Nolan are joined by Kristy McCann Flynn, a seasoned HR professional with 25 years of experience, who shares her journey from working in traditional HR roles to founding SkillCycle, a company aimed at revolutionizing talent development and performance management. The lively debate covers the evolving role of HR, why HR software purchasing power might be changing, why HR practitioners are doing it wrong if the 50% of their time is spent hearing staff conce...
May 03, 2024•50 min
In today's segment, Kelli and Nolan discuss Google firing employees who barricaded themselves in the CEO of Google Cloud Thomas Kurian's office for nine hours, to protest Google providing cloud computing services to the Israeli Ministry of Defense. Google CEO swiftly released a 'No Politics in the Workplace' message. The discussion explores the broader implications of protesting in the workplace, raises questions about protests and explores alternative ways to voice dissent without disruption. H...
May 02, 2024•14 min
This week Kelli Dragovich and Nolan Church sit down with Peterson Conway, headhunter, investor, and advisor who shares insights from his epic career working closely with Silicon Valley greats like Peter Thiel, Kevin Hartz, Keith Rabois, and Joe Lonsdale. Conway has assembled talent for the founding/early teams of Xoom, Palantir, Founders Fund, and 8VC Strap in for some crazy stories. Conway's journey highlights the significance of curiosity, optimism, and unconventional hiring practices in Silic...
Apr 26, 2024•51 min
In this segment , Nolan and Kelli discuss new information about Shopify's Mastery Program. Employees are assigned a mastery score, and if their score does not increase, they do not receive a raise. They cover the implications of this new approach, comparing it to previous systems used by other companies which also relied on ratings and algorithms to determine merit increases, and discuss the concept of creating a zero-sum game in the workplace. While not exactly new, internal competition is fron...
Apr 23, 2024•13 min
In this episode, Nolan and Kelli discuss the audacious quest to change the HR market with Adam Weber, Chief Evangelist of 15Five. The team discuss the new reality of strategic HR business outcomes and the importance of developing and nurturing high-performance cultures and building great leaders, with the critical necessity of upskilling leadership development fast to adapt to new trends such as the addition of AI which will change the face of how we know HR today. Adam also advocates for having...
Apr 18, 2024•47 min
HR Heretics bestie Colleen McCreary joins Kelli Dragovich for today’s segment to discuss a recent viral post about a VP People candidate who was denied a job because she didn’t wear makeup . Colleen and Kelli discuss the expectations and norms about appearance in the workplace and the nuances of providing helpful feedback to candidates. — HR Heretics is a podcast from Turpentine . Share this with your friends, forward to your enemies. Subscribe at hrheretics.substack.com — SPONSOR: This episode ...
Apr 16, 2024•16 min