Ted Bauer: The Absurdity Of The Corporate World & Real Future Of Work

[01:39] Paul: Today I'm talking with Ted Bauer, who is a blogger at The Context of Things, where he writes prolifically about leadership, management, and the future of work. He also works as a freelance writer and content strategist. Welcome to the podcast, Ted.

[02:01] Ted Bauer: I'm glad to be here, man. Thanks a lot for having me.

[02:04] Paul: Why don't you start with a story you were telling me? Talk to me about when you were hitting a wall in your work in the corporate world and you decided, I'm gonna call Bars and Sydney Australia to see if they'll hire me.

[02:19] Ted Bauer: Yeah, so I had been at the longest tenured place I've ever worked is ESPN. And I had been at ESPN probably about 5 years. And I was probably, I want to say like 6 months short of turning 30. And it just felt like I came in every day and I didn't do like anything of relevance whatsoever. It was basically just a ton of middle managers telling you this is urgent versus that's urgent. And then ultimately you check a lot of boxes.

Or one of my friends there always used to say it was a hurry up and wait job where you do a bunch of stuff. Yeah, you do a bunch of stuff and then basically someone sits on it for 3 weeks even though they told you when they were telling you to do it that it was like immediate urgency. So I just felt like, okay, 30 was a big number. Like people probably go through it. I mean, I don't think people live to 120, so I don't know what it is, maybe a third life crisis or whatever. But I just felt like 30 was a big number.

And I was living in New York City at the time. I was kind of tired of New York City too, cost of living and other stuff. And it just felt like, man, I need to get as far away from this crap as possible. So that both meant physically where I was like, what's the other side of the world? And I figured, okay, like Australia and New Zealand. So that was step one.

And then step two was like, what's the other side of like corporate existence? And I thought, okay, like service industry would be up there, you know? So I basically did a Google Map search for like Sydney Opera House And I figured, okay, that's probably a touristy area. So like bars around there might suck and they could be corporate bars, but I bet they get a lot of people in there. And I literally wrote down like the phone numbers with international extension of like 5 bars near the Sydney Opera House. And I called all of them.

One of them had like a bunch of openings. Obviously the visa situation is sticky. I'm also probably like maybe more averse to change than I want to always admit. So it didn't pan out, but that was kind of like a nadir of my— maybe not like overall corporate existence because I probably have worse stories than that, but it was— I'd be totally willing to like move 8,000 miles away or whatever it is and like pour beer for people as opposed to doing this, you know?

[04:58] Paul: So that was kind of a moment for you where you said, okay, I'm definitely at minimum committing to a different path, but those calls might have just been a way to like test the waters of moving on to something else.

[05:12] Ted Bauer: Right.

[05:14] Paul: When did you first kind of think, okay, maybe I can do this on my own, taking a self-employment path? Was it before the Sydney calls or after that?

[05:24] Ted Bauer: Well, I guess I had like thought it at times in my 20s and stuff. How it came to happen was, okay, so I ended up going to grad school for this like org development, kind of like I took a bunch of MBA coursework, but I don't officially have an MBA. So it's like business school coursework, but my focus was org development, which was stupid in hindsight because a lot of employers just look at org development and they're like, oh, you want a job in HR? But that was like not at all why I did it. I probably could have like done my value prop stuff better. So just financial necessity-wise, I finished that program and I was probably like 33.

And I got this job down in Texas where I live now. So that was like about 250 employees, like privately held company. So not super corporate, but it had a lot of the same hallmarks of like corporate BS. To it. I had been there about 18 months and there was like revenue erosion. Plus, like, I didn't really have a good relationship with my direct boss, which is like partially my fault, partially like I don't think she even fully knew why they hired me, but then she was my direct boss, which is all too common too.

So I got laid off from that job and I would say that was like when I had to like force myself to do it. At the time I was probably making like $1,000 a month doing like side, like writing, helping people out with like how to structure content, maybe some low-level SEO stuff. So obviously $12,000 a year isn't that much to live on, but I knew I had a, okay, I have something where like people are willing to pay me up to $1,000 a month. Like I can probably extrapolate that into something bigger. So It was kind of a mix of like, okay, I have to do this now because I didn't really want to go through another like hiring process. I was just kind of like tired of it.

So the catalyzing event was like, okay, I don't have like gainful employment. Probably for like 7, 8 years before that, I had thought to myself like, okay, I could do something individual or go on that path. But I'm sure there was always kind of like a fear element there too, you know.

[07:48] Paul: Right. So I'd love to dig into some of the writing. You write often and at length and still manage to be quite readable and interesting, I think. And I think you wrote about this at ESPN where you were coming up with story ideas and you were able to just come up with a ton of ideas. Is that something you've always been able to do?

[08:15] Ted Bauer: If you come into ESPN on the production side, like TV production side, you have a 6-month kind of like trial period. So you are getting paid, but you don't have health insurance and you're getting paid like very little, generally speaking. So I think it's like maybe you're making like $500, $600 a week. I came in and like 2005. So it might be higher now with inflation or whatever, but it was probably like less than $500 a week and you don't have health insurance. So during the 6 months, you get a bunch of different assignments.

So sometimes you like prompt TV shows on the network and some like, so you get a game to watch and you just like figure out what's important from the game and then you work with the producer. Highlight supervisor is kind of like another job title over there. You work with two types of people on turning it into a highlight. So you obviously start with really insignificant games and then if you have some aptitude for it, you get a little bit more. At the same time, there's a distribution list for all these senior executives, not like Disney level, but ESPN level. You're supposed to send a story idea and they tell you when you do onboarding that you should send one a week.

So you should send 24 in the 6 months and you literally get to use this distribution list, which is amazing. Like they give you permission to email like all these guys making hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's like they unlock the list for you and then you're just supposed to put your name, story idea number, whatever number you're on, and then the title. And then you, you either attach it or put the story idea in the body of the email. When I went to this onboarding, basically the lady that ran it said, okay, if you want to get to the end of the 6 months and get a full-time contract, um, we suggest that you end somewhere between 20 and 30. And I was thinking like in 6 months, like 30 ideas.

I feel like human beings can do better than that, you know?

[10:42] Paul: Yeah.

[10:42] Ted Bauer: So I started probably slow just because I didn't know what the, what the reaction to it was going to be. So probably in the first week or two, I only did 3. Obviously, it's a list with all these executives on it. Unless your idea is really, really good, or you have a bunch of typos in it, no one's going to reply all because like they don't really care about you. You're not, you don't impact their lives that much at this point. So I just started getting up to like second, third, fourth week.

So through the first month I was at like 50 and then it was like people started like noticing more. I did get a couple of people at like when I was at 50, who were like, like I had executive level people that would email me and be like, hey, slow down, like you're doing too many. I had gotten like 3 or 4 of those in a row. And I wrote back to this executive who I don't think I had ever met face to face. And I was like, hey, could I just ask you, like, are they, are they of poor quality? Like, are they bad ideas?

And he was like, no, they're good. But like, I just don't understand why you're doing so many. And then I wrote back and I was like, well, if they're good, what does it matter? Like, if it, if it could benefit like your network and your job and your silo, like, who cares how many I'm doing? When you're in this 6-month trial period, you have an advisor, and my advisor was like a news editor guy for ESPN. And when I started getting close to like 100 I don't think anybody— okay, I think the record before me was like 76 for 6 months.

So when I started getting near like 70, he started like getting nervous, which I always thought was hysterical. And I'm like, why are you nervous? Like, wouldn't it look good for you to have a direct report who like is like beating some record that existed? And he was like all like super nervous about, oh, like, I don't know if you should go over 76. And I'm like, dude, I'm gonna do whatever I— if the ideas are there and they're good, I'm gonna do it. You know?

[13:00] Paul: I'd love to dive into that. Like, how do you— what do you have a process that enables you to come up with ideas or is it writing things down?

[13:10] Ted Bauer: Two things on that. Like I had grown up big into sports, so like I just, I would see stuff happen or be on Google News looking at stuff and one thing would connect in my brain to another and I would just try to come up with, write something down and come up with it. So that was like, I had such a background in sports that a lot of that stuff came naturally to me. Now more when I do it, my brain will randomly connect things in maybe ways that I haven't seen a ton of other people do. But process-wise, I feel like, especially like if I have a freelance content client type deal and it's in an industry or vertical that I know nothing about, then it's all about like, I'll go and try to read a bunch of different stuff and I'll just make a lot of notes and like, I used to handwrite it when I was first doing freelance because it kind of resonates more.

Now a lot of times I'll just open like a Google document and I'll paste like links into it and then I'll bullet point like what I learned from that. And then if I get to about 5 or 6 articles about an industry that I know nothing about, I'll just like look at all the bullet points and try to see if there's overlap.

[14:30] Paul: I'd love to dive into the, the whole manager perspective. You've said you've read a lot about it. You, in your bio, you write about the future of work and you say it's basically two things: A, the technical technological changes, and B, how we react to it. And you say, which I tend to agree, the tools are better but the managers are not. What, why aren't the managers getting better? What's your hypothesis?

[15:02] Ted Bauer: I think the biggest thing for me is that, like, what people avoid reality-wise is that it feels to me— this is like almost every job I've ever had— it feels to me that a lot of managers use the technology as a way to hide from people instead of a way to engage with people. And like, I want to say that the technology is designed to connect, but I think both of us know it's designed to like make somebody more more money ultimately. So that's the sad part of it. The thing is, is so many bad managers, and I get that like some conversations you have to have with employees are hard, some are going to be awkward, like so many bad managers put all that stuff on email or like in some platform, like some management platform or some HR tool or whatever. And so like there's no real connection between you and the person that manages you.

And I get that you shouldn't be like best friends with their employees because that's a whole nother trouble zone. But I think the problem is people use the tech as a way to hide instead of a way to bolster engagement, which is how the tech is sold. The dudes that sell those types of platforms, they're selling it as like there'll be more connectivity, more engagement, more productivity, more shit will get done. But that's not how most people who are direct managers tend to use it once it's in the organization. And then the second thing I would say is like, if you've ever read, like, I'm trying to— it might have been like Keynes or whatever.

There's like some 1920s, 1930s economists who were saying like just stuff that like Tesla and Edison had done with like the radio and their inventions and whatnot, like people were saying like tech is going to get to a scale where nobody's going to need to work 40 to 50 hour weeks. And like, I don't know if we're fully at that, but like certainly like just with the invention of like Google and Microsoft and like their productivity tools or whatever, like we shouldn't be working more than we were in like 1983. But that's what like most studies say.

[17:28] Paul: I think you're right that it was Keens.

[17:31] Ted Bauer: Yeah. So the second thing I always think is like maybe the fact that we have all these platforms, maybe that's the other problem because companies buy them by like silo and then it creates this thing where like just to get your basic job done, an employee has to check like 12 platforms a day. And I don't think anybody realizes how tedious that is. And like, One time I was like real frustrated and I just posted some version of what we're talking about on LinkedIn just as like a one-off. And that thing had like 82,000 views and like over like 1,500 comments and like I can find it for you. But it was like, I basically was like, the thing that sucks is when you, okay, whether you're contract, full-time, whatever, You start a new job and it always feels like some manager is like, okay, like if you want to talk to the team, you have to check Slack.

And then if you want to know where projects stand, you have to check Asana. And then like the actual documents are in Dropbox, but we edit stuff in Google Drive. And it's like you literally get to the point where like just to come in every day, you have to have like 10 things that you can check. So I think that that also drives down, like, the notion of engagement or productivity, and it creates this disconnect because managers a lot of times don't fully understand all the tech that their team is even using. And then I feel like they get, like, anxious about that, like, oh, maybe I'm, I'm going to miss something or some number is going to be missed. So they like try to clamp down on certain things, which makes it less organic.

So I just feel like the whole ecosystem around like managerial technology, productivity tools, etc., is almost like set up to fail, which is like not what the situation should be.

[19:30] Paul: Yeah. Yeah. I, I think it's hard to quantify too, right? And you might institute a new tool and you can clearly say, okay, this makes us makes our process slightly more efficient, but people often underestimate the second-order effects, which are harder to quantify. And once you've added 10 different platforms, like you say, you have then created so much complexity that— and this is where you almost get away from that moving from a 40 to a 15-hour workweek that Keynes was saying— is you then have to create more jobs to manage the complexity.

[20:07] Ted Bauer: Yeah.

[20:07] Paul: Which leads to this vicious cycle of, it's like complexity creep and suddenly nobody knows what anyone is doing and why.

[20:18] Ted Bauer: And have you seen like, this was from a couple years ago, but I'm sure it's still somewhat accurate. There was a stat maybe 2, like a year and a half, 2 years ago that like the rise in job titles that were account manager, channel manager, project manager was like 890% from like 2006 to 2016. And it's like, that's exactly what you're saying. It's like we created all these platforms and all these ways of getting stuff done, which on the surface is super positive. But then what happens is all these silos install them in their own way. So there's this complexity creep.

So now we need all these account managers to like let A talk to B, whereas like A and B are probably in the same building and like they could just go talk to each other. But we need to hire a C person to like, to like enable them to speak to each other about where documents reside.

[21:23] Paul: Have you read David Graeber's book Bullshit Jobs?

[21:27] Ted Bauer: I have it and I started it, but I'm not done with it. But I've read some other In the last 4 years, I've read some of like his essays and stuff. So I mean, I'm familiar with the overall ecosystem around it for sure.

[21:41] Paul: Yeah. So definitely recommend his stuff. And I've just been fascinated with his perspective and he ties a lot of it to— it's almost our— so much is focused on the job as the vehicle for kind of our dignity, self-worth, meaning.

[21:58] Ted Bauer: Yeah.

[21:58] Paul: And especially in the US. For benefits, healthcare.

[22:02] Ted Bauer: Yeah.

[22:03] Paul: And we're kind of stuck. And it's interesting to know what the release valve might be. I've seen people throw out things like the 4-day workweek or universal basic income, but it does seem like there needs to be some sort of release valve to distance from this system we're tied to, which just creates a lot of complexity and anxiety for people in these organizations. So what's wrong with the hiring process and what can we do about it?

[22:33] Ted Bauer: I mean, there's a lot wrong with it. I guess I would say like the main thing to me, just at the 35,000-foot level, is like, think about how much money, especially in the first world, people put into education. So like the whole principle of education kind of at face is like, or at base is like, Okay, you're not gonna know everything, but education is powerful, learning is powerful, you should pursue these learning opportunities. But then like, as soon as you try to enter a job market, the whole job market is rooted in like, we only want people that have done this exact type of thing before.

[23:16] Paul: It's so crazy.

[23:16] Ted Bauer: So it's like, it's such a massive disconnect there. It's like, man, I just spent, Okay, like I did Teach for America, so they do like debt relief or whatever, but like I went to Georgetown. I probably would've spent like without debt relief, I probably would've spent like $160,000+ on college. And it's like every job you initially encounter when you're like 22, 23 applying for jobs is like, all they're like, oh, you haven't done this type of job before? Well, we're gonna screen you out of the process. It's like, oh, but I was just like, spent $200,000 like being told that like learning matters, you know?

[23:57] Paul: Yeah.

[23:58] Ted Bauer: So that's the big disconnect. Obviously there's like tech parts of the process that are a problem. Like you're seeing some companies now move away from ATS, which is good because ATS is usually like old school SEO where it's just like if your resume has the right keywords, you'll advance even if you're not the best candidate. You're seeing some companies move more towards like AI and like predictive models. And I'm sure there's going to be problems with bias and stuff within that, which is going to be another landmine. But it's like better than the ATS system, which I feel like probably most people have encountered those where it's like you got to enter 27 screens of data about yourself.

[24:44] Paul: I think it's like anything too. It's, uh, I've seen a lot of companies I've worked with, If you have a culture that is not high-performing already and then you layer in technology, it's just going to amplify a lot of the mistakes you're making.

[24:58] Ted Bauer: That's 100% true too. And then I would say another thing with it is like everybody in every like business article ever, whatever the topic is, hiring or anything else, they talk about like executive buy-in and how important it is and like Here's the thing. If you really want to know why hiring is broken, if executives really cared about the quality of people they were bringing in, they would never house that stuff in HR. It would never reside out of HR. Executives don't talk to HR on a regular basis because it's not relevant to their jobs. So if they really cared about it, they would house hiring out of operations or something and make it a scientific process, and they would use HR or legal for the compliance side of it.

And that would be if you want like people to actually care about it, you need to house it out of a place that the guys with the most authority are actually talking to, you know. And final thing I would say is just like it's still rooted in like so much subjectivity, which is paradoxical because it's like We live in this thing where like data is supposed to be the new oil and everything, but like we still have these like super generic subjective interview questions and it's like, okay, well, if it's not an entry-level candidate, you should be able to find information about like where they worked previously, what they worked on. Like you can design specific questions about their past experiences, or even ask them, like, what if people came to interviews and the hiring manager was actually like, okay, we're— we created this position because we have XYZ problems in this department.

I know you don't have full context on all the people and the problem, but just from what I've told you, like, what do you think you would do? Because then you're actually, like, testing their ability to think Yeah, totally agree. I'll tell you, I'll give you one, I'll give you one like semi-fun story. It's like when I was coming outta that grad school program, there's a company in Tampa. Like I didn't really wanna live in Tampa, but I needed a job. And I had 7 different interviews with them and each one was with a different person.

Each one was about 35 minutes to an hour. And like, it kind of, each time the person went up in importance, like their title went up, but not even that much. Like they were all kind of in the middle, like all 7 people. So let's say HR and then 6 like managerial type people. All 7 people asked me legitimately the same questions for 35 minutes. There was no difference.

[27:52] Paul: Wow. Yeah, they could have just videotaped one of the interviews.

[27:56] Ted Bauer: Yeah.

[27:57] Paul: I mean, what, what fundamentally drives you in your writing and like the making sense of this? Is it just like waking people up to these things going on or is it just trying to push people to think a little bit differently about that?

[28:12] Ted Bauer: Well, I would say like when I first started doing it and it was more about work, it was honestly like a little bit because I was still working in full-time jobs when I first started writing more. And I would say it was like a little bit of therapy, like personal therapy for myself at that point. Just like coming across statistics and realizing like, okay, some of the stuff I believe or see in jobs that I'm holding is not uncommon. Like other people feel this way or experience this stuff. So that's part of it. I think legitimately, like there was a degree of like, this was therapeutic for me.

And then it's just like, man, every year Gallup comes out with like some state of the global workforce thing and you'll see like 14% of people in the whole world, like, or at least the first world, like, like their jobs or I don't know how they measure it different ways, different years, but it'll be like wants to go to work every day or whatever. And you're like, man, how is that possible that like, 1 in 8 people like their jobs when it's such a major element of capitalist first world societies. So what you said about the eye, like the awakening eye-opening thing, I think that's part of it too, is that I just feel like even if you— I've met people who love their boss and love their job, love their company, and that's awesome. But then I have two friends in that boat. And like one of them, that company hit like revenue erosion stuff, and he was fired within like 3 weeks.

And like, it took him— right, and it took him 7 to 8 months to recover from it. Because the whole first 4 months, he was like, man, I had such a good relationship with my boss. I liked my company and what they stood for. And like, That was probably, that happened around when I had been writing like a year and a half, and I've probably been blogging like 5 years almost. But like, I just remember even in that period being like, people need to understand that like, a job is not promised to you. Like, these companies are, even mid-sized companies, even small businesses are gonna have to make decisions off the bottom line, and that makes sense, you know?

So there is like a wake-up call awakening thing for me where it's like, I think that there are too many people that believe like, look, like some degree of loyalty still exists or whatever. And ideally it would. I just don't feel like it's actually there. And there's like a million examples of it not being there. So just like people navigating to a place where they understand work is relevant and it's important and like you need it to support your family or your way of life, but that you also have to view it as like it's going to change and like the whole tapestry of it is going to be transitory in some respects. So just kind of like that awakening level too, I think is kind of what drives me.

[31:18] Paul: And what is it? What would the phrase the human side of the future of work mean to you?

[31:23] Ted Bauer: I want— like, I want to say that it would be more about almost like what we were talking about before with the proliferation of tools and complexity creep. I want to say that that would get to a level that becomes a bubble. And then people are like, man, we need more face-to-face interaction. We almost need a return to analog where not paper storage-wise, but like people are walking 190 feet to go talk to somebody about a problem instead of like leaving it in a platform or emailing it. So more like human connection in that context. And then I think this ties in with the Graber stuff.

If we get to like 35% automation, 50% automation, whatever that is, the best company— okay, the worst companies are just going to view that entirely as a cost thing and they're going to lay off human workers that jobs can be replaced. That's like definitely going to happen at some companies. The best companies would find new opportunities or new contexts for those human workers and be like, okay, maybe customer support because there's going to be an adoption scale with like, obviously we talk to chatbots during the day, like right now, but there's going to be an adoption scale with like automated tech doing higher level customer stuff. So maybe like retrain some of those people whose jobs are redundant now.

And like the best organizations hopefully are going to make it so that those, like the human beings in their companies are going to have like a lot of ability to do like, I don't want to say purposeful because it almost sounds like a buzzword, but like at least pull a salary and do something that's like a little bit higher order than their previous job, which obviously was low enough that it could be automated out. So I think just finding a usefulness for the human beings that you have and then realizing that there's still a place for like going and talking to people, like working through problems that way.

I don't even mean meetings because obviously those are their own disaster, but just like having like empathy for like that these people have needs in your organization and also realizing that like sometimes a conversation about a work issue can solve stuff way more effectively than like 35 emails can, you know? So those would be kind of like the higher order ways that I would look at it.