Most companies still measure success by how long people stay. Steve Cadigan thinks that scoreboard is broken. As LinkedIn's first Chief HR Officer he scaled the company from 400 to 4,000 people in under four years, and he's spent the years since telling leaders a harder truth: your best people are going to leave, and fighting it burns the energy you should spend getting ready for it.
In this episode of the Team Check-In, Steve tells host Emre Ok the story of getting caught interviewing at LinkedIn while still at EA, a $100,000 exit that turned into the bet of his career. He explains why median tenure at Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Oracle sits under five years, how Cisco's spin-in/spin-out model made two engineers 400 times richer, why Spotify caps any role at two years, and what LinkedIn's own departure data revealed about first-time parents and engineers. He closes on why chasing consensus in the boardroom can quietly sink a company.
1. Stop treating a resignation like a divorce. Cadigan argues the best employers won't be the ones people never leave. They'll be the ones people come back to, sharper for the experience they picked up elsewhere.
2. The scoreboard is already broken. Median tenure at Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Oracle sits under five years, and they're among the most valuable companies on the planet. Long tenure isn't what makes a team win.
3. Build turnover insurance. Move people across roles on purpose so someone can step in the moment a key person leaves. Spotify enforces it by capping anyone in a role at two years.
4. Buy back the people you lose. At Cisco, Cadigan's team spun teams out with funding and bought them back when they hit milestones. Two engineers ran that play four times and grew their net worth 400 times over.
5. Read your own exit data. LinkedIn found two clear spikes in who leaves: first-time parents and engineers who just wrapped a project. Both are predictable, so both are solvable.
6. Consensus can be a warning sign. Cadigan points to Uber, where people who flagged a toxic culture were pushed out until it surfaced and cost the CEO his job. Surround yourself with people who'll disagree well.
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Steve Cadigan (00:01.399)
You know, writing the book and that's so easy to reference a podcast. You just put the link and then the, editor in charge of it, you know, knows how to deal with it. But what's so great about that is there's so many amazing people who've been recorded on podcasts. You don't need to set up an interview to interview them because they've given already lots of gold nuggets, you know, and unfortunately AI hasn't really, I haven't met, found an AI yet. That's mining podcasts yet.
Emre (00:01.601)
Nice.
Steve Cadigan (00:30.035)
So that's got to be coming because it's a huge ocean of great thoughts, you know.
Emre (00:35.79)
Yeah, that can be the next million dollar idea on the AI investments that's happening right now. That's actually, that's actually, yeah.
Steve Cadigan (00:42.583)
I'm sure someone's on it. It's just a matter of time, you know? Yeah. Well, good. I'm heading your way this summer. I'm taking the kids on a boat tour through Turkey and Greece and Spain. So we're to be out. Yeah. Yeah. Can't wait.
Emre (00:55.214)
Awesome, awesome. Awesome. Which cities are you planning on visiting in Turkey?
Steve Cadigan (01:01.417)
no idea. My wife booked the whole thing. I'm just showing up and enjoying it with my kids.
Emre (01:07.599)
No, I like that. Those are the best types of vacation when someone else plans it for you and says, okay, you're the boss.
Steve Cadigan (01:11.683)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Right, right.
Emre (01:17.494)
Perfect. yeah, I'll just start us off and let's we can just do like a casual conversation through it. And yeah, so I'm also in like this little meeting room in a co-working space. And look, I have I have a co-host right here.
Steve Cadigan (01:32.643)
Okay, I see. wow, okay. Yeah. All right, so two questions I always want to ask you. How long do you want to record? And then number two, who's your audience?
Emre (01:39.694)
All right, so.
Emre (01:46.562)
I'll just...
So our audience is mostly HR professionals. It's just mostly made up of, know, not, you know, some, there is some management, but mostly it's just everyday HR people. And I like, you know, a tight 45 to 50 minutes is always perfect. And depending on the conversation, an hour.
Steve Cadigan (02:03.821)
with.
Steve Cadigan (02:13.859)
Okay, great.
Emre (02:16.619)
Also good, but you know, tight 45 minutes is always very solid.
Steve Cadigan (02:23.299)
Okay man, good to go.
Emre (02:26.111)
All right.
Emre (02:34.573)
All right. So, hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Team Check-In. And with me today, I'm a bit starstruck, but with me today, have Steve Cadigan. You might know him from LinkedIn, both at his profile on LinkedIn or as LinkedIn's first chief HR officer or...
my favorite bit, his book Workquake. And it's a longer title. It's embracing the aftershocks of COVID-19 to create a better model of working. It is a mouthful, but trust me, it's an easy read. Hi, Steve, welcome to the show.
Steve Cadigan (03:14.295)
Well, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Emre (03:17.491)
Awesome. And I gotta say, your book is more relevant than ever now. I don't think you were planning on it being maybe this relevant right now in this context, but it was an easy, easy read. But before we start, can you tell me a bit about what the work quake was like that seismic shift was when you were writing it?
Steve Cadigan (03:44.835)
Sure. Well, first, thank you again for having me and also thank you for recognizing that a book published the end of 2021 is more valuable today. And I think part of that's because a lot of what I talk about in the book is really hard for lot of leaders and organizations to consume. And we're still going through acknowledging that the world has shifted and we don't see a lot of early adopters yet taking action on that. So hopefully.
This conversation we have today can help inspire some people to take action and start making a better future work. But when I undertook this book, was after speaking to teams and leaders and organizations and country leaders around the world for years after I left LinkedIn and continually hearing frustrations with an outdated model of work that was built for a different time, a time that was a lot slower where there wasn't a lot of change.
and increasing dissatisfaction from employer and employee around the contract. Like what is this about? Like the employer saying, people aren't staying long and employees are saying, my employer doesn't care about me, you know, and I want to go, I can see so many more new opportunities. And so what I wanted to try to do, the big shift for me was there's a massive change in the psychology of the workforce and there's a massive change in what organizations need. They need new skills faster than ever before.
They need to change and pivot as an organization faster than ever before. And both of these parties are going through massive change and it's inevitable. There's going to be collisions of disagreement all over the world. And so what I was attempting to do was sort of highlight that, shine a light on it and say, let's not spend time trying to point fingers here or find a sign blame. Both parties are going through a crazy metamorphosis and let's see if we can't get both parties to see.
how to forge something new and exciting together.
Emre (05:42.35)
Awesome, and I love the little dance that employees and employers do that you highlight in your book. It's about, you know, it's this little, I don't want to use the word fake, but it's this little protocol-y dance that we do where we say, you know, sure, I'm here for the long haul, where we assume that, okay, nobody's planning on going anywhere, right? Everybody's committed, like, lifelong to the company. And, you know,
The company knows this is not true and the employee doesn't know it's not true, you know, we never say the quiet part out loud. And it's just this little, again, it's just this little unspoken dance that we all do. And you are very candid about it. You're very open about it in your book. And I just love that.
Steve Cadigan (06:32.288)
Yeah, thanks. am the opening chapters, me getting caught in a trap of really an unreasonable expectation that both parties had. Right? Yeah. And it's a fun place for me to start.
Emre (06:44.461)
I, again, that story, that anecdote really hooked me in. And I do want to talk about it. I do want you to tell that story just a little bit, because for those who haven't read the book, spoilers, but it's only the opening. So again, you're going to love reading through it as well. But you were caught in the nightmare scenario of all nightmare scenarios when it comes to employment. Right. Your boss finds out.
Steve Cadigan (06:52.887)
Yeah, sure, sure.
Emre (07:14.133)
that, hey, you are being recruited by another company and that process has already begun. and the company's in question. You're currently working in EA, a huge company, and you're interviewing with LinkedIn, just huge. So tell us about it. How did you deal with that nightmare scenario of your boss finding out that you're interviewing with another company?
Steve Cadigan (07:41.397)
Yeah. And what made that situation even more complex and more, I guess, tense is that I just joined Electronic Arts just less than two years before. I had, so let me, let me set the stage. I had been recruited by Electronic Arts while I was living in Canada. And part of the negotiation was that they would want to relocate me and my family back to the United States. I'd been living outside the States for six years in both Singapore
and then British Columbia, Western Canada. had given, three kids were born while I was on, know, one in Singapore and two in Canada. And I was ready to come back to be closer to our extended family, you know, the grandparents of my kids. And I thought now's the time. Raising kids in another country, for those of you who have done that know, it's tricky, you know, as much as I wouldn't say that, you know, American families are super generationally very close.
As a first time parent, hey, the more support you have, better. And so that was one of the drivers. Okay, let's get back to the U S E A relocates me back. And right after that relocation, 2008, the second mortgage banking crisis, banking collapse hits. And a big part of what my job at EA was going to be was to do merger and acquisition. Uh, we were going to buy some pretty cool new studios and I love that kind of work. And what happened was
the cash that we were going to use for that disappeared as the market collapsed. And so my job that I was moving to the U S for at EA really got a lot less attractive. And so nobody's fault, nobody's fault, right? Wasn't EA's fault. Wasn't my fault. and so when around that time, an opportunity from LinkedIn hits my radar and I was like, well, I'll go explore it. You know, I didn't know much about the company. seemed like
This is a startup could be just another one of those fly by night startups. That's not going to amount to anything. So I wasn't really excited about it, honestly. and I had to be convinced by my friends. say, you should give it a shot. mean, it's a private company. Maybe it's going to go IPO one day. That would be a great adventure. And I'd only worked for big companies prior to this. So I reluctantly said, okay, I'll go take the interview. And it's a good thing I did because after meeting the leadership team, I couldn't sleep for weeks. I was so excited. I'm like, wow.
Steve Cadigan (10:03.533)
This is an HR person's dream come true, practicing HR in a company whose main product is HR related. It's recruiting. Not only would I be able to do HR, be able to be a product advisor, be able to sell the product to my peers around the world. I'm this is going to be amazing. And it turned out to be like that. But my lack of awareness of how the LinkedIn model worked at the time served to really hurt me.
It doesn't do it anymore. But back then in 2008, whenever you connected with someone new, LinkedIn would send a newscast to everyone you knew. Hey, Steve is now connected to this person trying to get virality, trying to make it, Hey, it's cool. If you, if you connect with new people, that was, think the thinking behind it. And so the day after I interviewed at LinkedIn, I noticed one out to everyone I was connected to that Steve is now connected to the CEO, the COO, the VP engineering, the VP legal, the VP marketing, VP sales.
the VP of Asia, the VP of Europe at LinkedIn. So you wouldn't have to be, you know, very bright to realize what was going on there.
Emre (11:10.305)
I'm getting the cold sweats as you're telling this story.
Steve Cadigan (11:13.783)
And so, I tell this in a little more detail in the book, but I walked in the next day, I'm walking into the camp, this beautiful electronic arts, gorgeous campus. I'm walking in, my phone rings and my boss says, I know you're interviewing at LinkedIn. Didn't even say hello. I know you're interviewing at LinkedIn. And I had that thought in my head, man, if I don't get this job at LinkedIn, I am so screwed, you know? And that led us down a path of, I didn't have the offer at that point.
You know, so didn't know, she says, do you want to leave? I said, and I had been honest with her after the market collapse that my job wasn't as interesting and you know, it's nobody's fault, but I might look for something else. And so she wasn't shocked by that, but I think she had also had a bunch of other key people on her team leave. And so she was feeling pretty vulnerable. and you know, in human resources at the time, your goal is to keep people. And if you're not able to do it in your organization, what gives you the credibility?
tell all the other leaders you need to keep your people when you're not doing it yourself. So there's a little bit of extra pressure, if you will, to retain retain your talent. think that's a very poor way of thinking about teams today, but that's a subject for another time. So anyway, I met with her and I said, Listen, I don't know if this is gonna go but we'll have to see. I'm sorry. I'm not meaning to hurt your feelings. This is not about you. I really like working for her and I did like working for her.
But you know, I got to do what's right for me and my family and hopefully we can work through this. So that led us to down the path and a few weeks later I got an offer. I accepted the offer and this is where things, I don't mention this in the book, but this is where things got a little bit dicey. Whenever a company in HR, I think you know this, whenever you relocate someone to a new city, a new country, there's usually a clause in the relocation that says, if you leave before two years, you're going to have to pay back.
a prorated portion of what we paid to relocate you. And so I think it was like a year and three months since I'd been with the company and they just relocated me. Okay. So there was a big number there. And so I wound up having to, and they said, you owe us a hundred thousand dollars. And I said, what? So I had to write a check of a hundred thousand dollars just to leave, to leave, you know,
Steve Cadigan (13:34.295)
Don't feel sorry for me because the LinkedIn success more than paid for that, but I didn't know it at the time. And it was a big gamble, you know?
Emre (13:43.23)
Exactly. The thing is, right now, with the benefit of hindsight and knowing what LinkedIn is currently, that doesn't sound very scary, but just putting myself in your shoes, you know, you're betting on essentially a startup leaving a giant and then having to pay that corporate giant $100,000, you know, a payment that just appears out of the blue. I mean, sure, it's written, like in your head,
Steve Cadigan (13:54.616)
Right?
Emre (14:12.937)
an amount of money owed that just pops up raising a family. Okay, I need another sip of water, Steve. That's...
Steve Cadigan (14:20.415)
Yeah, yeah, I know. You might want to slip a little something stronger in there if you want, because this conversation is going to get a lot more tense as we go. Yeah, so that was like, that was a tough one, you know, and what, you know, to follow on the train of thought around what I use this example for in my book to really set the stage for why I wanted to write Workquake is because what became apparent to me was that we never discussed it, but there was an implicit expectation that I was going to stay at that company a long time.
Emre (14:27.546)
Steve Cadigan (14:49.569)
You said it kind of well in your introduction. was an explicit, implicit expectation. You're going to stay a long time and we're going to employ you a long time. We both know we probably won't live up to that. And there's never a number or a number of years that's discussed as acceptable. Like we expect you're going to stay here a minimum amount of time. Never, never discussed. And you're in Silicon Valley and Silicon Valley is the most fluid workforce on the planet. People are just moving. So, but
my boss started getting heat from her colleagues, from the CEO, from other people like, Hey, you're losing this key guy. just moved him here. You said he was really good and now he's leaving. Does that mean you're not a good leader? Is that, there a problem? Um, and it just led to some really tense conversations and my, my, while my boss understood she was frustrated, she was going to face the heat from her boss and the rest of the executive team. So, she's, when Gabrielle told her, I'm a wonderful person. I learned a lot, uh, working for her in, in no way was I intended to.
you know, leave her leadership. She was a great leader. I'd be happy to work for her again. But that's where we were. And it just felt like this is wrong. This is just broken. You know, why don't we have a more honest conversation? and, and why don't we try to frame a reality where this is more true? Now, here's another side part of the story, which I don't talk about in the book, but because I'm on your show and you said, Steve, I need some really good information for your listeners. Like, okay, here we go.
Emre (16:14.465)
Let's go, let's go.
Steve Cadigan (16:16.291)
You know, if you think about video games, you're really in the universe of entertainment. And when you're in the universe of entertainment, you're in the universe of movies production. Okay. Game production, not too different than movie production. Now, if you think about movie production, actors never work for, never worked for a company. They are hired on as a contractor for the film and then they finish the film and then they go to the next one. Okay. So you've got that, that whole interesting employment arrangement, which is project based.
not company based. And one of the things that I unearthed very quickly at EA was we've got this problem of trying to keep people when there's not work, they have no work to do. Like the way development of a game happens is like, Hey, the pre-production people are super busy early and the sound people really early. But later when it's in to finish, they're not needed as much. So they're just sitting around and
I was at the studio in the UK one day called Criterion and they make one of my favorite games called Burnout Paradise. They make a lot of car racing games. They made a Need for Speed game. Really, really fun. the head of the studio, this woman, Fiona, says to me, Steve, I worry more about the people, about having no work for my people than anything. I don't worry about, you know, the people that I've got, but I worry about I don't have enough work for my people. And I thought, that's interesting.
So what do do? She said, so I make another game because I need to keep them busy. I'm like, oh, you're not making another game to make a hit. You're making a game to keep them so they won't leave. Is that right? Yeah. I worry more about how it can prevent them from leaving than producing a great game. I'm like, okay, we got to fix this. So I had proposed to the executive team at EA, we got to go to a Hollywood model. Like this is just broken. And they were really worried that if we went to that model, the best people wouldn't stay, that they would go some other place and never come back.
And I said, well, isn't that the ultimate challenge for us then that we should be the greatest place where games are made. And so when a project ends, thank you very much. We'll call you when we've got another need for you. But right now we don't have work. So go ahead and do another project. And if we were treated them right, paid them well, give them a good work environment, then they would want to come back. But they were like, nope, not up for that model. And that was another reason why I was like, I don't think this EA thing is for me.
Emre (18:37.449)
And later on down in your book, you do talk about how returning employees can benefit an organization even better. When an employee leaves and comes back, they already know how the machine works. There's almost like little to no onboarding and they just fit right into the team. And also when they come back, they usually come back better with new experiences under their belt and new skills.
Steve Cadigan (19:04.099)
Correct. So you just mentioned two really, really powerful things that I want to highlight for our listeners. Number one, how can any company think that someone leaving and coming back is a bad thing? Like someone going to getting a new experience in a new culture, a new leadership style, a new way of solving problems, a different perspective on every dimension of an organization just makes them better. So when I think about the future, I really think that companies are going to design for that in the future. I think we're going to
Reward companies not by how few people leave but by how many come back That's gonna be like you should be a top employer not because people aren't leaving You should be a top employer because people are gonna go because they can see more what's possible and you there's no way you can stop that today Even if you're a good employer like I can just see more industries more possibilities I can see how you pay people I can see what the turnover is like and see what the work culture is like I can see your leadership strategy your business strategy. I know more as a candidate
about companies in any time in history. And before that was never visible. So people are like, I'm happy because they didn't know what they felt like they might be missing. And now we've just got this crazy dynamic where I think, you know, it's really hard. As a parent, I'm thrilled that my kids have so much choice about different careers and industries. And there's a whole new dimensions of where you don't even need to work for someone today in many cases, you know, and my kids like, you YouTube's, you know, there's a lot of YouTube.
Independent youtubers making a lot of money like that's really interesting and so, you know, I look at this and say company You got a bill to expect that people are gonna stay as long as they used to right and that look for all these different different ways of thinking about it like I used to work at places where if you left I mean, we were never talking to you again. Like it's divorce. You don't think we're sexy. I don't think you're sexy You know, like it's not good. It's not good and you can't do that today, especially when
Emre (20:53.792)
Yeah.
Steve Cadigan (21:01.825)
This mobile phone is a public relations megaphone to the world that anyone who doesn't have a good experience can tell others how it was, if it went well or poorly.
Emre (21:11.969)
Yeah, and how you leave things off with someone who, you know, leaves your organization. And same goes for someone who interviews with your organization, doesn't even join, but now has experienced your organization. And guess what? Has access to all these different platforms where word of mouth matters and word of mouth is now louder than ever.
It's louder than ever and that's what people are listening to. People are not listening to your PR anymore. People aren't Googling things anymore. When people Google things, they like to type the word Reddit right next to it because they want to hear people and they want to hear like honest accounts of people's real experiences and how you leave things off with your alumni. That's going to have a huge effect on your experience and
I love the analogy you used in your book about talent leaving with Coach K and the NCAA, right? So I like this idea of come to my company so I can help you leave it. Now, I know this sounds like.
again, nightmare fuel for some of our listeners. And the same way you put your HR person in EA on the hot seat, I'm gonna put you on the lukewarm seat, and I'm gonna ask you, are you claiming that employee retention is overrated? And I need you to explain yourself when you say,
You know, come to my company so I can help you leave it.
Steve Cadigan (22:58.519)
Yeah. And that's a great question. And it's totally well-deserved given some of the comments and things that I say in the book and also that I say to many of my clients. So I guess what I would ask someone who is very suspicious of this notion or very insecure and fearful of it, ask a few questions. Is turnover rising in your organization? Are people staying for shorter periods? Let me answer for you. Yes. Do you think in the future
that people will stay longer? Do you think this is just a moment in time that once we get through, we solve the little skirmish in the Middle East, we figure out what's going on with Putin and the Ukraine, we solve that, we solve the sustainability issues, we solve global climate change, people are gonna stay in companies longer? Anyone that I talk to about this says, no, I do not think people are gonna stay longer.
Do you as a company need newer skills faster than ever before? Yes, I do. I need my people to learn new skills. What's the most important skill? Oh, AI. Are there many people that know AI? No, not enough yet. Okay. So let me ask you another thing. Do you see the creation of new industries faster than any time in history? Yes, I do. Okay. Do you think that's going to slow down? No. What happens with the new industry? The birth of a new career path. So Bitcoin, know, electric scooters, electric cars, all these and gig work, Uber.
know, Airbnb. These are new career paths and new dimensions for people to explore that didn't exist before. So you put all that together. Do you really think your people are going to stay long in the future? No. Okay. So let's build to expect that to happen. And that's the big leap that most leaders are not ready for. They philosophically agree with everything I said. And I said, okay, so then let's talk about you. Why is that frustrating that people are not going to stay longer?
And the answer usually is because I've been taught the teams that win are the ones that stay together the longest. Okay. So is that frustrating? Yes, it is. Okay. So, so you're frustrated because the model you have in your brain is that the best companies and best teams are the ones where people stay a long time. Okay. Well, let's take a look at Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook X Airbnb, you know, Oracle.
Steve Cadigan (25:21.165)
Do you know what the median tenure is for all those companies? It's less than five years. It's less than five. And they're not, they're some of the most valuable, creative, innovative, highest market cap on the planet. And they've got, they've not won these awards, they've not achieved that because they have hundreds of people who've been there 30 years. Do understand? So here's what I'll say. In a world that's changing fast, having people
from other perspectives and other industries and other places can help you navigate the inevitable uncertainty that's coming your way. And the greatest example, and I'm tired of using them as a benchmark increasingly given what's happening in our country, I'm tired of using it, but Tesla is a phenomenal example. Here's this company that's less than 25 years old that mostly hired non...
non-car, you know, experienced staff. Okay. It's run by a guy who's got five part-time jobs, and running all kinds of other things. And they are worth more than the next seven largest car companies. Okay. They just started doing this. Why are they winning? They're winning because they don't have a hundred years of policies and practices and procedure manuals that are limiting your thoughts of creativity. You're stuck in the quicksand of the way it's supposed to be.
And so that's why I say to people, get excited about new people and new ideas. It's going to be a superpower in a world that's changing. And the longer someone stays with you, the more vulnerable and insecure they're going to be that they're going to ask, am I learning new things? Am I really stretching myself? And that's sort of, it's really uncomfortable, Henry. It really is. Like I'm not, am I so excited to tell people this news? No, but it's the truth. I really believe that with every fiber of my being and no one's disagree with me.
Many people said, I don't like what you're saying, but no one said I disagree with you.
Emre (27:19.297)
Yeah.
If you don't like, if people don't like what you're saying, well, they can either just stay not liking it and just remain uncomfortable and just remain upset and, you know, hate Gen Z or the whatever the name for the next upcoming generation who will be even less loyal to their jobs, which I hate the term loyalty when it comes to.
Steve Cadigan (27:47.235)
Great. Me too.
Emre (27:47.63)
employees staying and leaving. It's not a matter of loyalty and it makes it sound like such a sacrilege to leave an organization. Or you can get with the times, get with the program and like you said, build a new model for what the employee-employee relationship should be. Just come in anticipating that separation.
Steve Cadigan (27:51.041)
Yep. Yeah.
Emre (28:12.993)
A lot of the times people use the analogy of relationships, like a romantic relationship, with the employee and employer thing. okay, it's the first date and then you have the honeymoon phase and then things start getting dark. But that's...
essentially a flawed analogy, especially now because again, we're coming in anticipating that separation. And in terms of adapting to this new model, right? You talk about a lot of different talent strategies like these new talent strategies. And one of them that you highlighted that, you know, I wrote down specifically that I loved so much was employees spinning in and spinning out.
Steve Cadigan (28:49.9)
Mm-hmm.
Emre (29:00.407)
Can you tell our audience a bit about that? Because I found it fascinating. And I just think the whole spin-in, spin-out model, that can really be beneficial to an organization.
Steve Cadigan (29:13.077)
Yeah, you know that concept really started to crystallize in my brain when I was with a company called Cisco Systems in the late 90s and early 2000s. The time I was there, we bought 50 companies in the four years that I was running &A integration. I was on the HR team and we were just integrating. And what we started to find was something really interesting that we would, you know, and we were getting to be a big company. I joined where 15,000 when
When I left, think the company was close to 40,000 six years later. So was huge and through organic and acquisition. But one of the things I started to really hit me was, know, sometimes a startup environment is much more conducive to creativity and innovation than working in a department in a huge company. that, and fortunately for me, some of the leaders at Cisco agreed. we would buy a company. We would understand the IP and learn how to elevate and escalate the IP.
and make it work for most of our customers. And then the team would say, you know, we don't want to stay here. Like, thank you for making us rich and everything, but we want to go. And we would go like, wait a second, you guys are really smart. How about we give you some money and you go build something. And if you meet these milestones, we'll buy you back. And they're like, you do that? We said, yeah, okay, we're going to call this spin out. But if you meet the milestones, we're going to spin you in. And so there was these two guys, Mario Mazzola and Luca Caffiero. They're two Italian guys.
They did that four times, four times. Yeah. And their bank account is like 400 times bigger. mean, they were so great at that. And listen, this is a great lesson for all of us. I read this years ago. All of us are really suited for a certain phase of an organization's growth. Some people are super great at taking nothing into something. Some people are great at taking something into something massive.
Some people are great at taking a company that's breaking and falling apart and putting it back together again. Like there's all kinds of different phases of a company's evolution. Luca and Mario were phenomenal from taking nothing to something. And Cisco was really great at taking something to globally, you know, powerful, right? And so those are all different skills, but those two guys, they didn't want anything to do with the big company stuff, you know, and bless them, you know.
Steve Cadigan (31:38.029)
They could hire well, could build teams, they figured out how to, you know, development milestones. Very, very impressive. But that is something that I think a lot of companies, don't think about. Let me give you a more practical example today. I deal with a lot of healthcare associations in the United States and they are in crisis right now because the number of nurses leaving is higher than they've ever seen before. And this is a problem because people's lives are on the line. So they have to solve it.
So one of the ingredients that's painful for them is that if you are missing a nurse and you don't have time to hire, you you'll take a nurse from anywhere and you'll pay anything. So there's this thing called the travel nursing premium. If you travel to another postal code and work for healthcare system that's suffering, you can make four times as much money. Okay. Because it's an emergency for them. And so
there's many nurses that leave and say, I'm just going to go to the next town. I'm going to make four times as much money. No problem. You know, I'll be away from my family. I don't like that. But for a little while, if I do that, I don't have to work all the time. And so when I go to the hospitals and say, okay, so why don't you loan them out? Why don't you become the travel nurse business? Why do they have to leave you to go get that money? Why don't you say we've got a temporary agency here. If making a whole lot more money right now is something you want.
and you're willing to travel, we'll find a place for you. Why are you making it so they have to leave? Do you understand? And they look at me like I'm speaking another language. Like, what are you talking about? I'm like, it is easier to run a temp business than a healthcare system business. And if those people are important, I promise you they don't want to be traveling away from their family forever. So fill that gap and be the organization that does that. And it's just not in their business model.
And that to me is like such an easy solve.
Emre (33:34.838)
I think people are choosing right now, especially right now sadly, the weirdest hills to die on. The weirdest areas of the discussion where they want to stick to their guns, really. Do you wanna stick to your guns when it comes to your organization's success and how committed you are to the organization? Or do you wanna stick to your guns about the model that you're the most comfortable with? The model that you're...
really used to. And sometimes those discussions really blend in, right? Defending the model that you're really used to, defending the traditional model, sometimes just blends in with your passion for defending your organization's success.
Steve Cadigan (34:21.123)
Yeah. Can I tell you a great story? I can't tell you the name of this company, but a major consulting firm, okay? A major one that everyone knows. If I said their name, you would all know. They sponsored me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They sponsored me to speak to all their clients when I was visiting a European city. They found out I was there and they said, Hey, would you give a talk to our clients? And then would you come to a luncheon that we're going to have with all our key executives of those clients? So.
Emre (34:32.865)
Redacted ink go
Steve Cadigan (34:51.233)
I gave a talk to maybe 500, 700 people, all the employees, and then they took all their clients and had a special lunch for me.
Now I presume that they invited me to do this because they know that I'm a bit of a radical in terms of how I feel about the future work and that retention is not a goal worth fighting for anymore. It's like, and this was from a man that I met in Portugal who gave me this idea. It's not mine. I loved it. He was an executive with NTT Docomo. said, Steve, we try to retain the relationship, not the employee. So we want to be friendly with this person even when they go. And he goes, that's management consulting.
So I thought, that's beautiful. Yes, okay, that makes a lot of sense. Like a university, we want to be friends with our alumni, our students after they go and we want their money. You know, we want them to give us some money. So I give this talk, okay. And then at lunch, he says, can you give another talk just to the people in room? And again, I'm saying, hey, this is a really hard time, but do any of you think people are to stay longer? So I've given the talk to all the employees. I give a talk to all their key clients and then
The host the CEO of the company takes the microphone and says just to be clear all of my employees have all been here a long time and It was this you know to your point around this is the hill you're gonna die So what you're saying is you invited me to open the minds of your clients presumably supportive of my ideas and now you're saying yeah Even though he's saying that I just want you to know that all my employees are really dedicated and loyal and I thought my god, I can't
And I almost, you know, if he wasn't paying me a really nice fee, I would have like, you know, really challenged him right there. But I was like, you know what? This is really interesting. Like this is so hard that even after I've given this talk sponsored by him, he's saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's all interesting, Steve. But I just want you to know, you know, he was worried that what I was proposing was a threat, perceived threat from all of his clients in the room, which was so interesting to me.
Emre (36:56.683)
Yeah, all these new and innovative and fresh outlooks, they're always exciting on paper to a lot of people, They love, yeah, we're so innovative. Yes, innovation, flexibility, we are all about that. Sure, but then after the talk is done, you go back to the, but we're still doing this and we're still sticking to those values.
Yeah, that's really interesting. I think from on my side, I before you know, this whole marketing thing, I worked in perhaps one of the most traditional work environments in history, I was a teacher. So you know, schools, teachers lounges, and you know, the teachers relationship with the school hasn't changed in God knows how long. And for the longest time, sadly, the
teacher's salary in where I lived, Istanbul, Turkey was let's say abysmal and the raises were even worse. So what I noticed in a lot of teachers, what they would do is they said, hey, the new signing salary at a different school is much better than the raise I'm getting on this one. And so you would have,
all of these teachers fluctuating between these private institutions, these private schools in Istanbul. And I was a part of them. would say, hey, the signing bonus for that school is much better than the raise I'm getting here. So why don't I just move on to the next one? But the thing is teaching might be one of the only industries where it's
tenure actually matters because you're staying with these kids and the longer you stay the longer you get to stick with them throughout their journey and the more beneficial you are to these students.
Steve Cadigan (38:56.843)
longer you're with them, the more you understand their learning styles, the more you understand how to connect with them, how to get through, how to deliver. Let me put you at ease a little bit. This is happening all over the world right now. And there's a reason it's happening. The salary and compensation frameworks were not built for people changing.
Emre (39:00.717)
Exactly.
Emre (39:06.098)
Exactly. So I was in these rotating kitchen rooms. Yeah. Go on, go on.
Steve Cadigan (39:26.179)
To your point, every company has a budget when it's time for a salary raise, it's either nothing or 10, 15 % in a good year, right? But there's no budget for how much you pay someone when they're new, right? We got to pay what we got to pay, right? We generally have a range for the position. We're not going to go way above the range, but frequently we can go above 10, 15%. You know, that's not going to be out of the range. And just like,
We all think that the new company looks, you know, as the grass is greener over there, the employer thinks the new employee is way, way more capable than their employee usually really is. So we're willing to, know, because the people that we know all the, you know, development areas for, maybe they're not worth as much as the people. don't know what their development areas are. So they look like they're really perfect. So we're going to pay them more. It's broken. It's broken. And so when I go tell companies, the reason why people are flipping, they're making less staying with you than if they move.
And it's not about, know, how can you begrudge them for wanting to take care of their family and earn more? That's a good aspiration. How could you be upset about that? And don't play the loyalty card because that means that's not putting food on the table. Right. but I agree with you. Like, you know, back to what I said earlier, I'm not excited to talk about, you know, the fact that people are probably not going to stay, but it's, it is kind of exciting to understand this as a new dimension. And we get a chance, our generation gets a chance to build something new and figure out,
How are we going to do this? The same way you alluded to college basketball. No, what coaches realize if my players are not going to stay four years like they used to, my best players are going to stay one year. I need a really simple offense and I need a really simple defense. I need to accelerate team building like so fast. used to all my teamwork was built for over two or three years. Now I need two months. That's all I have to build this team. And then the season starts.
And then some of them don't even stay here. Some of them stayed the season and they're out. You know, we've just finished most of the teams that finished the basketball season here and half the players are ready to go to a different school. And so, you know, that's leading the coaches. And that's why I love business leaders who like sports. They look at what's happening over there. You see what they're doing. They're recruiting all the time, all the time. They're expecting the best people are not going to stay and they're having to do simple offense and simpler defense. So when the new people inevitably come in,
Steve Cadigan (41:50.667)
It doesn't take two years for them to figure out how to do their job. And still there are so many companies that have these jobs that take one or two years for you to figure out what's up. And the person leaves like, no, Susan left. She's the only person that knows how to do that. And I look at them and say, yeah, but you knew she was going to go. Why didn't you figure out a different way of approaching it? Yeah. Yeah.
Emre (42:06.017)
Yeah, why?
Emre (42:10.893)
I love that. So another aspect of this whole discussion that is really interesting to me right now, and I know you have a background in HR tech as well, and we here at Team Flex, where I work, we are an HR tech company, and we produce this HR software for Microsoft Teams, and something we pushed out.
very recently was more centered around internal mobility. We just pushed this section in our app where now organizations can list these internal job openings for employees. note the necessary competencies associated with each role and the different branching career paths that employees can take within the organization where organizations can now list their own job openings internally.
In this ever-changing landscape where the grass is always greener on the other side, how can people make these internal job openings, as you said, sexier, more attractive to the employee?
Steve Cadigan (43:19.917)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, this is, I think you're getting towards a dimension that we're all struggling with right now, which is, I think the sexy thing that I want to go after and hopefully you guys can, can address this. So if you look at LinkedIn, what did LinkedIn solve? LinkedIn solve finding more people. Did they solve finding the right people? Not necessarily. They just help you solve finding people, but they're not, you know,
They don't know who the right people are for your culture. They don't know all your needs. And in a world that's changing really quickly, I think one of the domains that's still up for grabs is the domain of understanding the taxonomy of skills. So let's just take the fact that something I said earlier, which I really believe is, is unfortunately very true, which is the supply of qualified people is smaller than it's ever been. And it's not going to increase the more we need new skills, the more
new industries create, the more people change careers, that supply we're used to having, all these people that know how to do this kind of thing, it's going to be smaller and smaller. So we're going to have to become teachers and we're going to have to become schools and every business is going to need to become a business school. And what I think we need to learn to get better at is, well, if I see that you did X, Y, Z, I know that you can do A, because I've seen it, you know,
the connection of the skill taxonomy of skills. think we need to be aware of how can we forecast if I know I need these new skills next year, who's going to be the most likely to learn it? know, who are, what are the, are there clues that give me confidence? Do you understand? And that's, think where you're heading with, with your conversations. Like we have so many people that leave and this has happened my whole career. People leave and they could have done another job in the company, but the company didn't know it and they didn't know it because they're just thinking,
You're an accountant, you're only interested in finance. they had all these skills, they could have moved over to marketing, or they could have gone over to investor relations, or they could have gone into the planning department. What do mean? Just because there wasn't a job open in finance doesn't mean they couldn't do something else. You see what I'm saying? We've been very myopic because of the abundance of supply. That supply's gone, and it's gonna force us to have to be a lot more creative.
Emre (45:41.12)
I love that and my God, this opens so many doors in the conversation. And one thing we talked about in our discussion before the recording, which was like a month ago, but I remember you saying the half life of a skill is now five years tops, right? So how do you anticipate that? And I love that one of the most...
important competencies in the world of work today is how can some, can this person pick up a new skill like that? The ability to learn. That's the most important thing. And another thing you discuss in your book is employees switching around between departments. I don't remember the specific example, but I found that fascinating where an employee does a small term. Yeah, Spotify. Okay.
Steve Cadigan (46:15.299)
Yes.
Steve Cadigan (46:18.775)
Yes.
Steve Cadigan (46:30.677)
Spotify, yeah.
Emre (46:34.367)
You have the floor, Steve. Tell us about that because that was an amazing example and it opened my eyes.
Steve Cadigan (46:41.451)
Yeah. So going along the narrative that you and I have been walking down here for the last 10, 15 minutes, if you believe people are not going to stay as long, if you believe that you're going to, you you need a new strategy and you can't stem the tide of people leaving, what can you do? You can move people around so that more people know how to do different jobs so that when someone does leave, you have someone who can sit in quickly. Right. I call that turnover insurance.
you have this insurance policy. We always knew moving people around was a good idea. That's just a good idea. But it's even more critical now because it's an insurance policy if someone leaves, someone else knows how to do that. And that's really, really powerful. But here's what I love about what Spotify did. Human nature in bigger organizations blocks talent movement. So what do I mean by that? Well, if you go to an organization, say, hey,
We need you. We need to put your best person over there on that team. Do think the manager is going to be happy about that? No, man is going be like, no, Emory is my best person. What do you mean you're going to take him and put him over there? I just trained him for like the last six months. He's just getting good. You know, you can't move him over there. And like, yeah, yes, we can. So if you leave it up to the voluntary system, there's a lot of managers that say, Emory, I hired you. If you go apply over there, I'm going to tell them you're horrible. I'm going to sabotage you.
You know, and if we go to your manager and say, can you please give us your best employee, the manager is going to think, if I give my best employee, I'm going to have to work weekends. I'm going have to stay late. I'm not going to see my kids. I'm not going see my spouse. Why would I do that? I'm not going to give them my best people. And so what Daniel Eck, the CEO of Spotify said is, you do not have a choice. Nobody can be enrolled more than two years. You know, nobody. know, switching gears a little bit, when we were at,
LinkedIn and you people leaving was really painful because we're so small and we're growing crazy and it was just a career candy store and it still is in Silicon Valley We studied who's leaving and why and when and we looked at everything. Okay, and there were two categories that were the spike of people leaving showed up one was first-time parents Any employee who's being a parent for the first time?
Steve Cadigan (49:05.899)
What happens those of you who are parents know your whole worldview shifts where you want to spend your time with the baby, you know, and you don't want to spend it in the same ways that you did and how you just make decisions change. So that was number one. We're missing. We're losing people who are starting a family. Number two was engineers who finished a project because engineers generally speaking do not want to leave their teammates high and dry. They want to finish the project. Okay. So we couldn't.
You know, what we try to do is, so let's give counseling to first time parents a lot to try to help them navigate all these new decisions. And, you know, we love them to stay, but if they need to go, they need to go. But engineers, okay, here's what we're going to do. Six months before a project ends, let's get them fired up on the next project. Let's get them, you know, starting to do something new. So there's not that sense of, I'm done. They're always working on something else. So these are the kinds of things like you got to start, look at the data and how can I reframe solving that problem? Right.
Emre (50:06.277)
And you never know until you approach it with that new mindset that if this system will be like, some people might think of this as problem solving and you're just crisis management, but.
You don't know if this new model that you're using to quote unquote manage the crisis might be even better for you and your employees in the long run. And I think sports analogy that works really well with the Spotify model you talked about is volleyball, where with each serve, you know, the team rotates between like these different positions on the field. And
I don't know that much about volleyball. know that our national women's team was number one last year. We're still in the top five. So no shout out to those girls. They're killing it. that's, they, they, know, in our country, we have a lot of crisis right now as well, but they are like our pride, pride, pride and joy. We love them all. one thing I can tell.
Steve Cadigan (50:56.311)
Yeah.
Steve Cadigan (51:12.845)
Talk to me about crisis in the country.
Emre (51:16.403)
you know, I think right now you and I, can, that's, I know that's a whole different conversation. That's, you know, that's a different episode. But speaking of which, and I do not want to get political on the show, but I think we cannot discuss employee departures and, you know, separation in the workplace without,
Steve Cadigan (51:19.907)
We got a few things going on over here too, by the way. Yeah.
Steve Cadigan (51:28.099)
Mm-hmm.
Emre (51:45.474)
discussing the ugly side of what's happening right now in the US where this conversation of firings is so prominent. And I think.
This is not what you and I mean when we're talking about, employees need to leave at some point and we're OK with that. And then there's the other side, the nasty side of letting people go. And we currently are seeing these massive examples of how not to do things when you're letting people go.
Steve Cadigan (52:26.443)
Yeah, we are. it's really, it's unfortunate on so many levels. wrote one of the most viewed articles I've written in long time around what the Department of Government Efficiency, DOJ, how they're doing this is being done in a way that's humiliating. mean, nobody wants bureaucracy. No one wants a slow moving government. Nobody wants inefficiency or fraud. But to go in and treat people so ruthlessly and humiliate them and make them feel horrible.
I don't understand the benefit of that. I just don't. And then to fire people and say, sorry, I made a mistake. You got to go back. What? And so when you start doing that, you know this. When you start doing that at scale, even the people who are not impacted are just waiting for them to be impacted. So they're not delivering their best.
Mission is to deliver a high performing organization at the end of this. You're failing miserably, right? That's why I'm just like scratching my head going, wow. So just so you know, as an aside, through a major venture capital firm here in Silicon Valley, the Department of Government Affairs reached out to me and asked if I would help them.
And I said, you know what? I'm really busy doing what I'm doing. I'm liking my current portfolio. Not interested. Thank you so much for the opportunity. Wow.
Emre (53:56.406)
Yeah, I understand that completely. And now that, you know, we've perhaps done the most possibly controversial and divisive minute in this podcast's history on this subject. The last question I want to ask you from your book, and I think this is a lovely note to end on. And it's another, I think, you know, so-called controversial opinion that you mentioned.
And it is consensus might not be such a good thing in the workplace, in the boardroom. So I think that's a nice note to end things on. Steve, how is achieving consensus in the boardroom not a good thing?
Steve Cadigan (54:47.555)
Well, I think there's a lot of examples of this through history. One thing I can tell you with a high degree of confidence, having worked and coached and been close to a number of CEOs over the course of my career, they rarely are told the truth by their team because a lot of people are fearful that they could get in trouble. They're fearful that they will be seen as incompetent.
and they want to impress the boss. if many and many leaders, you know, don't want to hear bad news and they get very animated when they hear bad news. So that whole notion of everything's fine, everything's okay, could take you down a very dark path very, very quickly. know, Uber almost collapsed because there was a shared narrative of a very toxic culture and the people who raised their hands and said, this is wrong.
or let go or fired and told, you're the problem. It's not the culture. And then when it really surfaced, the CEO lost his job and a whole, like, I don't know, a third of the executive team was fired. And so that's a, it's a very dangerous path. You know, I think I want people around me who don't always agree. I want people around me in constructive ways, you know, not like you're wrong and you're an idiot. You know, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm, you know, Hey, maybe we could think of it a different way. And that's, you know,
I think one of the best lessons I learned early on and I talk about in my book, I had this manager Mimi and she told me, you need to hire someone better than you. And I was like, why would I do that? He's better than me? What kind of a knucklehead do you think I am? And she said, well, if you do that, then you're going to be able to do more things and you can learn from him and he can learn from you, but you're going to be able to take on bigger tasks and more exciting things than all the stuff you're doing. He can do the stuff that you've been doing. And it would, when I,
didn't want to hire him, I started to recognize that's my own insecurity. And so she said, I'm going to make you hire him. I'm like, thanks a lot. The guy turned out to be a rock star, not only professionally, but personally, was just a super amazing human being. And I think that in the same way that you're talking about consensus, it's like a lot of that is, you know, a product of insecurities and people having their own agendas and, you know, be careful.
Steve Cadigan (57:07.094)
You know, and I talk about that, you know, in the book, think it's today and more than ever, we need to surround ourselves with a diversity of thought. Yeah, because it's just a really, really unpredictable time that we're in.
Emre (57:19.693)
Steve, you're the real rock star. This has been an amazing episode of the show. And like I said, your book, Workquake, is now more relevant than ever. And I think that over the years, it will become, again, it will keep growing in relevance because as we know with tectonic lines and seismic shifts, they don't just happen once, they keep happening and...
I think you approach those workquakes, those seismic shifts, not in these isolated incident-focused ways, but in a more universal way. Because the title with, when the title includes COVID, it might be a bit misleading. People might think, this is just a bit about the remote work and everything. But it's not. It's not just about those seismic shifts. Exactly.
Steve Cadigan (58:10.775)
Yeah. I don't even talk about remote work because it wasn't yet. That remote work wasn't even a thing when I published it. It was in the early phases. You know, that's interesting. And I really appreciate you saying that around the relevance today. My dog wants to get in on the podcast here. But here's the, I've been really thinking lately about putting out a work quake too, you know, because man, I've learned so much and I'm seeing, I'm starting to see some really early adoptions.
Emre (58:27.351)
Hey.
Steve Cadigan (58:39.509)
and some people doing it. But my aspiration with that book was to provide some practical, achievable belief in a path forward that's not... One of the things that just drives me crazy about AI conversations today is everyone's just talking about the shiny object. They're not talking about the practical value for human beings. They're just talking about we're all going to lose our jobs. I'm like, that's not the conversation I want to have here. I want to have a real human one because being human's never been more valuable.
And so, know, that's, I think that's the final, you know, wish for the, for the audience here is that don't be a passive participant in the, in the economy right now, because it's changing quickly. The, the early pioneers of AI have thrown the baby to us to raise. Okay. We're responsible for the baby. We are the foster parents. We're the adoptive parents. No one else is going to raise that baby. And if you think someone else is you're wrong. So speak up, raise your hand. We got to put some.
some barriers in so that we don't just drive right off a cliff. Because even the creators of AI are as terrified as they are excited about the future. And we've got to grab control.
Emre (59:50.324)
Exactly. And hey, y'all heard it here first. WorkQuake 2 Electric Boogaloo is coming sometime in the future. So Steve, where can people find you?
Steve Cadigan (01:00:05.075)
You could find me on LinkedIn. You could find me on SteveKatigan.com. can email me at Steve at KatiganVentures.com. And I also have a TikTok channel with some pretty humorous takes on my career and other things I've seen called True Stories from Corporate America. And there's a lot of international stories too. But yeah, it's been really great to be on the show here.
Emre (01:00:28.331)
Love it. Steve, thanks you so much for coming on the show. And if you're listening to us on iTunes, Spotify, wherever you find podcasts, leave us a like, subscribe. It really helps the show out. And if you're looking for an HR solution in the Microsoft ecosystem, Team Flex just launched its brand new plan, Team Flex Professional. You can try it for free by clicking the link in the description. This has been the Team Check-In signing out. Bye-bye, everyone. Amazing. Steve, thank you so much for doing this,
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