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Jamie Diamond went on a rant about
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remote work and and zoom uh in a town
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hall and uh here's a snippet a lot of
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you were on the zoom and you were doing
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the following okay you know looking at
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your mail sending text to each other ask
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the other person is okay not paying
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attention not reading your stuff you
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know and if you don't think that slows
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down efficiency creativity creates
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rudeness and Stu it does okay and when I
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found out that people are doing that you
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do that my goddamn meetings you go to
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meeting with me you got my attention you
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got my focus I don't bring my goddamn
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phone I'm not sending text to people
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okay it simply doesn't work the Young
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Generation is being damaged by this that
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may they may or may not be on your
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particular staff but they are being left
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behind they're being left behind
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socially ideas meeting people in fact my
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guess is most you live in communities a
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hell of a lot less diverse than this
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room that's not how you run a great
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company we didn't build this great
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company by doing that by doing the same
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semi disease that everybody else does
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Colson Brothers tell us about how you
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run stripe are you remote does this
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resonate with you four years after we've
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come out of the
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pandemic I love listening to Jamie
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Diamond rants like I feel like that's
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business ASMR um business ASMR that
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itself to be a great podcast I was about
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to say I'm subscribing that's an instant
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$10 a month
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subscription what do you think John yeah
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I don't know people just said a lot of
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during the the pandemic like you
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remember it's like oh handshakes are
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going to be over business travel is
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going to be over every company is going
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to be fully remote I would say stripe
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broadly is in a pretty similar spot to
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where it was beforehand which is most
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people go into an office like most
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people are you know uh part of our San
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Francisco office or New York or Dublin
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or or Singapore wherever and then we
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have a bunch of people also who work
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remotely I
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think kind of obviously you know Jimmy
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is right on some points I think also
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working remotely has had a bunch of
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benefits where there's a way larger
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talent pool available to companies like
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stripe and there's a lot of people you
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know you see uh kind of the two- body
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problem where it allows a lot of couples
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where you know maybe one partner is
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assigned to some Hospital in Idaho and
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like they don't get to choose what
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hospital necessarily they got assign to
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and the other person gets to work a a
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high-paying Tech job and so I don't know
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I think when like like one of the
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theories for declining dynamism in the
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US and declining tfp is there allocative
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efficiency uh of of you know people
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deine as women enter the workforce
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because now you have you know what John
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describes this two body problem where
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you know both people have to make
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coordinated
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switches and uh rem remote works out
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actually yeah freeberg you're running a
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company now you're the CEO of ohalo tell
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us uh does this resonate with you what
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do you think especially about younger
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people his point and like being rude or
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being focused being in the meeting and
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then like maybe there's too many
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meetings where people are partially
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paying attention maybe there should be
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half as many meetings and people should
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be paying attention what do you think
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well there's always room for
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optimization there we we deal with this
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too too many meetings too many people I
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think what was most striking for me
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about the Jamie Diamond rant and the
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resonance it seems to be having
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particularly in Silicon Valley and
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particularly with folks that are in
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leadership positions or on boards is
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that this is another example of what I
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think is kind of a different tenor for
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leaders in business right now relative
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to where we were a few years ago leaders
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are starting to step up and speak their
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mind and speak more directly and lead
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from the front rather than lead from the
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back I think the last couple of years
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and I would say that the whole kind of
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transition a away from wokeism and
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coddled employee workforces which is
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something that a lot of folks talk about
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I'm I'm not trying to just characterize
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it I'm just saying that's the
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characterization that's been placed on
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it is that the employees made the
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decisions and then the leaders kind of
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said okay I'm subjugated to the
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employees whims and needs and look at
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what's gone on with Zuck he said you're
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with me you're me here's a buyout option
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Elon obviously was an Exemplar of this
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at Twitter uh We've now seen this become
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coinbase Brian and his letter and we've
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now seen this become I think a bit more
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of a standard in the kind of emergence
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in the postco era that leaders can lead
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from the front speak directly and say
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this is the way things are going to be
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my job is not to coddle my employees my
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job is to lead my employees so that our
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organization our team wins and we
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achieve our mission that's the objective
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it's not to create a family workplace
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for everyone to be happy all the time
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it's to help the organization succeed
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and so I think I have heard from people
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individually I've seen this tenor shift
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underway right now um and I think that
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Jamie Diamond is another kind of
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Exemplar of this that that seems to have
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some resonance all right shth I want you
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to respond specifically to this next
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clip let's play the second clip about
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organizational bloat every area should
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be looking to be 10% more efficient if I
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was ready to depart with 100 people I
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guarantee you if I wanted to I could run
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it with 90 and be more efficient I
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guarantee you I could do it just I could
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do it in my sleep and the notion these
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bureaucracies I need more people I can't
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get it done no because you're you're
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filling that request that don't need to
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be done your people going to meetings
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they don't need to go to someone told me
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to approve some his wealth management
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that they had to go to 14 committees I
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am dying to get the name of the 14
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committees and I feel like firing 14
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chairman of committees I can't stand it
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anymore all right shth the bloated
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bureaucracy at big companies your
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thoughts well you know there's that
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adage that says something akin to 50% of
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advertising is useless we just don't
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know which 50% yeah I think it's
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probably true for most corporate
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structures in general which is that a
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lot of the organizational bloat has
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evolved because of the way that people
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have responded to how you use technology
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so meaning if you went looked back 50
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years years ago if you look at that
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famous picture of the Microsoft early
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team they didn't rely on software
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necessarily there wasn't Salesforce
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there wasn't work day there wasn't all
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of this
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infrastructure and so instead they
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probably organized by what they were
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good at and they just tried to do things
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efficiently and I suspect that many
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companies in the absence of Technology
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found a way to just be very efficient
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that started to change when you had
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these rigid demarcations of where one
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job ended and another job started and
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part of why that happened is because you
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had all this software that went in and
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convinc people this will create
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efficiency but in return the chief
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marketing officer's job is XY and Z this
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is how the roles are defined this is how
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people do it and so I think that the
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reason why things have become so
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bureaucratic and Bloated is that there
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is just this propensity to run towards
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software because you think it's a
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solution at best it's a
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symptomatic Aid it doesn't address the
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root cause and in fact it otes
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bureaucracy and it promotes the bloat
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that Jie's talking about and if you look
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at Jamie's p&l he spends $16 billion a
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year on it and I suspect that if you
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streamlined that you'd actually have
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half as many people because they'd be
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doing the job in a wholly different way
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and by the way the the counterfactual to
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it is if you look at companies like
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Facebook or Google or Tesla or SpaceX
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who designs and I'm sure stripe is the
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same who designs a lot of stuff
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internally that's custombuilt
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for their or I think the way that you
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see this in the revenue per employee and
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a bunch of these other metrics in terms
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of the efficiency of those companies so
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I think what he is talking about is that
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he is a
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victim of this push to productivity
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because he would look like a lite if he
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didn't ad drop technology but by
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adopting the off-the-shelf stuff he
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introduces organizational blo because
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these things are demarked very very you
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got the marketing team as you mentioned
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using HubSpot and then you got like the
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sales team using I don't
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organ the other thing I just want to say
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on the first topic is I've mentioned
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this
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before other than Engineers who are who
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are naive but can be extremely
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productive from day one there are very
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few other job types where naivity is an
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asset most people early in their career
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are in a jcurve where they are
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negatively contributing and the whole
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whole goal SL everybody down and the
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whole goal is that you invest in these
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people so that come out of the J curve
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there are probably other jobs that are
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like engineering but many many are not
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and so I think it's important to get the
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kind of Ming you get by being in an
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office and in the absence of that I
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think these young people like Jamie said
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are totally lost that's that's on them
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but then for the company they're
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completely unproductive and useless
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which is on us hey John uh Toby I I
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don't know if you know Toby from Shopify
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but he did this like zerob based
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budgeting kind of concept for meetings
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he just purged all meetings at the
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beginning of the year he just like
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deleted everybody's meetings from the
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top down I'm curious how you think about
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bloat and just all of these meetings and
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committees do you worry about that at
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strip we know Toby very well and I don't
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know I always feel like yeah we should
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I'm tempted to uh take some of the ideas
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like we haven't done the meeting
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deletion one and you just say oh the
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meetings get recreated but they measured
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it and they didn't it sounds like uh and
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I do always enjoy Toby's perspective
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which I think that you know many organiz
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ation problems are in fact software
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problems and you know you just need to
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write a script to literally like I think
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he wrote the script to all the meetings
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you know from the Google Calendar
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instance but uh there's kind of this
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Purity that uh you're you're over
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intellectualizing your problems and I do
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agree with jamat on the remote thing
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where like it's it's very dangerous one
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thing that can be dangerous with as CEOs
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think about this stuff is I think there
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is these unfair anecdotes that feel
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unfair that get people really riled up
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the quiet quitter is the anti-work
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subreddit you know all these talk of
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people working two jobs and that
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generates a lot of energy with corporate
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leaders but you don't want to design
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your policies around like the bottom 5%
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of the company that would be a horrible
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mistake yeah you want to design your
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policies against the top town and we
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have some like outrageously productive
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remote people and they're off and again
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the cabin Idaho somewhere just you know
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Co coding up a storm the thing that we
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have seen and interestingly we measured
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this before Co because we were doing a
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lot of remote hiring and we wanted to
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see we want wanted to see how much we
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should lean into it is that it is not
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good for early career people we could
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actually measure it in our productivity
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Data before the whole discussion about
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remote work happened during covid and
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it's bad from a work point of view it's
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also just bad from a personal point of
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view where they go mad because they're
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23 years old and they're not solitary
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confinement it's literally solitary
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confinement it's ridiculous and by the
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way breaking news here Jamie Diamond now
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uh knows which 2,000 or I'm sorry
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1,739 employees to lay off first there
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is a coworker.org petition to get Jaimie
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to retract his statement so the optin
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has been created if I know Jamie I know
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he'll be retracting that statement right
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away
