Welcome to the Causey Consulting Podcast. You can find us online anytime at CauseyConsultingLLC.com. And now, here's your host, Sara Causey.
Hello, Hello, and thanks for tuning in. In today's episode, I want to talk about observing the obvious, versus seeing the future. In my opinion, which could be wrong. I'm just not inclined to give a lot of brownie points to people who are looking around. And just simply observing things that are fairly clear at this point in time. I myself would rather have some type of prognostication that's accurate, so that I can plan ahead and think ahead, accordingly. In my mind, it would be like this, if someone stepped outside and said, Hey, there's a tornado, that's a lot different from the meteorologists telling you, your area is under a tornado watch for the next few hours. conditions are conducive to thunderstorms blowing up into tornadoes, therefore, you need to be prepared to take cover quickly. A storm can turn tornadic like that, and you need to be able to go to your basement where you're safer in totally different things. Oh, hey, guys, there's a tornado? Well, you think you think by that point, it's usually too late to get to the basement or the safe room, and you're just going to have to roll the dice and hope you make it. And I think unfortunately, sadly, for a lot of people, that mentality of rolling the dice and hoping that they make it. I think that's where a lot of folks are thinking about the job market, which is my Bellwether my area of expertise. I get a headache when I see these articles about oh, I guess the great resignation is over with, oh, I guess people would rather stay than job hop the economy feels too risky to them? Or, Oh, I guess remote work isn't really going to last forever. You guys. I'm like, Where have you been? And I want to be clear in saying I'm not trying to pick on anybody as a person. I'm exercising my First Amendment right to free speech of saying other people have opinions that I disagree with. Other people have commentary and analysis that I disagree with. That's all I'm trying to do. I'm not trying to pick on anybody as a person. Really, for me, the greater point and the greater question is, how far behind the eight ball would people be if somebody just now realized, yeah, the great resignation is over with it's done. So people may be outside of certain industries where job hopping is prevalent, and there's a high turnover rate anyway, regardless of the economy, outside of those sectors, when we're talking about white collar knowledge work? Yeah, the great resignation has done. So for me, it's like how far behind the eight ball? That's really the biggest point for me, how far behind the curve? How far behind the eight ball? Would somebody be right now, if they didn't know that, if they didn't know that the great resignation is not only over with, but it's been dunzo for a while. How far behind the eight ball would somebody be if they didn't know that time to hire has slowed down? Employers are not Johnny on the spot, the way that they work when the great resignation actually was churning and burning. There were employers doing on the spot hiring, same day hiring, making every effort possible to get an offer letter out within 24 hours from the interview. In some respects, that was fantastic. Because it cut through a lot of the bureaucracy and the bullshit. It did. And it helped. You would hope you would pray, HR and TA departments to understand some of these steps were just superfluous anyway, they were silly. It was like requiring candidates to go through flaming poodle hoops for no real reason. Like, let's make a decision here and let's roll. But it's not the case anymore. And employers are more likely to well, I've got a vacation coming up next week. So let's just table it until then. Well, we're still looking at our budget. And yes, we do want to hire this person, but we're probably not realistically going to be able to onboard them until the middle of October. Things have slowed down and there's not that same momentum. There's not that same FOMO and YOLO, in the job market like there was in 2020 and 2021. I have podcasted. Before about the parallels between the housing market and the job market, that same FOMO and YOLO. And this might be your last chance, and there's so much heat in the streets. Those things were really analogous between the two. The job market was nuts. People, if they decided that they wanted to Job hop, they could have multiple offers in hand, unless they just absolutely had the most lousy interview on the planet. Or they their resume looked like somebody took it, sneezed into it and handed it back to somebody. They could have multiple offers in hand. And I think there were people that got quite spoiled to that boom cycle thinking, this is going to go on forever. I don't have to really map out a cogent career path anymore. My cogent career path and air quotes here can simply be to hippity hop across the market, ad infinitum. And I'll just continue to make more money and more money and more money each time. And if I burn a bridge, who cares if those people and I was sitting back like, okay, no, no, it's not how boom and bust cycles work. That's not how these periods of expansion and then contraction work. I've been through boom and bust cycles, not just in the general economy, but even more specifically in the oil and gas industry. And you could always tell, these people would get themselves obligated for boats, RVs, large houses, pickup trucks. And then when the bus cycle hit, because it always does the bus cycle hit. here came the repo man, every time, every time. And so it was with the great resignation. You have people who thought this is going to go on forever. And it was difficult for them to process that the band had stopped playing. And I knew I've been on the podcast warning. You have been on my blogs warning you that based on what I was seeing there was flat out No way in hell, in my opinion, that we could have an unemployment rate below 4%. record low unemployment, churning and burning to legit open jobs for every one unemployed person. Mitch McConnell, the turtle people are flushed with cash. They're just hanging out in grandma's basement. They're not motivated to work because of their 2020 stimulus checks. Okay, really. Then we had these recycled figures about all of these men are out of the workforce. Apparently, all men in the country between the ages of like 25 and 60 are hanging out on a girlfriend's couch or their couch surfing with their pals. They're living in a basement. They're all smoking dope, and nobody's forcing them to work. What? Then we got Gen Z is lazy and entitled, and nobody's making them or going, like, okay, let's just come up with every absurd excuse possible, every clickbait nonsense excuse we can make. Yeah, it'll give you a headache. I put the same category, though of this idea of remote work the great RTO versus work from home debate. I put that in the same bucket. I don't give out any brownie points to somebody who's just now saying, oh, you know what? I think maybe the wind has come out of the sails of the remote work revolution and Oopsy daisy, you guys, maybe a lot of you are going back to the cube farm. That is just my opinion. It could be wrong. As I said, I'm not trying to come down on anybody. I'm not trying to judge anybody. I'm saying there are other experts in the field that have their opinions. And I'm allowed as an expert in the field to say I disagree. Just like you are you have the right to free speech. You can say you know what? I heard an opinion today. And I didn't agree with it. I didn't think it held water. So as I see these headlines about the great resignation is over with people are staying. I'm like, you're saying this in August of 2023. Where have you been? And how is that going to help somebody now? Because I was reporting on that last year. I'm happy to toot my own horn if you come to this podcast you already know I don't get up here with false humility and false modesty. Oh my gosh, I mean, like I did totally tell you guys. No, no, I don't do that. As a woman you know, so for me as a Gen X or when I was growing up there was still some of that sugar and spice everything nice. That's what girls are made of. Boys are supposed to be more aggressive girls are supposed to be more passive. Yeah, there was still some of that. I mean, the ad is just a different time from what what kids experience now believe me and It's like a man would happily get on here and be like, I predicted this shit a hell of a long time ago. And if you didn't hear it that's on you.
Well, same, same energy. We're bringing that same energy today. I predicted all of this a long time ago. And my hope is that people heard it, they understood it and they interpreted it in whatever way made sense to them. And if it made sense to them to prep if they decided to get that RTO survival plan put together good if they decided to get a job loss survival plan put together that's even better, because we still yet don't know we we really do not know how deep and wide the situation is gonna go. Just like we don't know at what point is a talking head going to trot out in the media and finally say, You know what stuff is not looking good. As banks continue to get downgraded as inflation is crippling he there's been some posts going around about people getting on Tik Tok to discuss how fed up they are with inflation. We don't know how bad the situation will finally be before somebody finally comes out and says, okay, it is a recession now. I don't I don't know the answer to that question. And I'm, at this point, suspicious that we just might get gaslighting indefinitely. That's one of the reasons why I just suspended the Saturday broadcast because I'm like, we're just getting so many breadcrumbs, and so much gaslighting. This could go on forever. It could go on for a very long time. Who the hell knows? I have other things in my life I have to do. That I saw in this article, I blogged about it over on the job market journal about the great reshuffles over Welcome to the Big stay. And I'm like, Yeah, but that's like been the case. That's not something in my opinion, that's brand new information. And so again, I asked the question, like, how far behind the eight ball would somebody be if they were just now coming to that conclusion if they were just now hearing that information in the media? I had an interview with Yahoo Finance, back in February of this year. And I said, the next phase will be loud staying, I was alive and well, during the great recession and whatever you had to do to keep that job, you did it. You did not want to be turned out on the street with all of the other people that were unemployed fighting for scraps. People will want to be overt about staying they're not going to want to get pink slipped in a downturn. That was back in February. But long before that I have been telling you Yep. That great resignations over when the tide is turning. There's no way in hell we have this low unemployment rate. No way in hell, we have two legit open jobs for every one unemployed person. As the mainstream media was telling you that everybody can do just go become a burrito maker Chipotle or a barista at Starbucks. And you know, somehow, a person that lost a tech job that was paying him 150 200k, they'll go get a job at Chipotle making 17 bucks an hour, and that'll be enough. That'll solve the whole economy's problems. just absurd. And I saw another article last week. So this would have been like August the 23rd. So we're still talking about here we go. Our articles published in August of 2023. And it's titled employment expert explains why remote work won't last. The byline reads more and more companies are demanding their workers returned to the office. I mean, not to be super tacky here. But no, Sherlock. This is my point. I don't give out bonuses for somebody looking around at Clearly observable reality and saying, Oh, look, you guys, here's the situation. For me. I would much rather have some kind of forewarning about what's coming down the pike it would have been in my opinion, which could be wrong. It would have been more useful to John and Jane Q Public to get a heads up. Instead of once the tidal wave has already started once there's already a poop hits the fan scenario, having somebody step out and say, hey, the poop is hit the fan. It's like well, yeah, it's spraying all over us. We kind of understand that. I mean, just that same day, August 23. There was an article on the side panel for LinkedIn, about Goldman saying, Yeah, we want to renew our push for you to be but and see it in the office five days a week. In that we read for more than a year Goldman Sachs has tried to get its staff back in the office five days a week with spotty success. Now it's ramping up the pressure again, according to Bloomberg ever reports that revenue generating employees for example, those in investment banking and asset management have returned for the most part, but a significant chunk of full timers and other units haven't. Its human resources chief says the company is simply reminding our employees of our existing policy to work in the office five days a week, Goldman's penalties for not complying aren't clear based on Bloomberg is reporting but it notes city employees pay could be affected if they don't follow the if they don't follow it's three days a week policy and quote, they haven't walked it back. There hasn't been some nationwide strike with people willing to starve out over RTO. And I predicted that I told you, I told you, you know what, screw it. I'm just gonna play the music.
I did, I warned you. I knew this was coming down the pike. I think the only potential derailment that we have here is another. If we have more lockdowns and shutdowns that could disrupt this whole effort. And there have been plenty of whispers on the wind, shall we say that we may see that exact thing coming later this year, that could certainly put a wrench into the bosses that want everybody to come on back to the cube farm, then again, it might not, if they just tell everybody, hey, get an updated stabby waggy and wear a mask. But like we still expect you to come back, we don't think it's going to be as severe as the first time around. So get your stabby and put on your face mask and come on back to the office that could happen to I really think based on what we've heard the mayors of the city say about how they want people to cross pollinate downtown, little old ladies and vulnerable children are not going to get your tax dollars. And the cafes and the shops downtown will all go out of business. If you don't go down there. There's been the guilt tripping and the shaming. But the bottom line is they want that revenue. They want people back but unseen in the cube farm, they want them shopping, they want them eating, having business meetings and so on they they want that money. And I find it hard to believe that that would go away even in the face of another. I've said before, in my opinion, it's too late to just now be getting strategic to just now be getting intentional about who you're listening to. and for what reason. If you have listened to people on social media, that have given you a lot of hype, a lot of hot air and hopium somebody that's telling you remote work is going to last forever for everybody because that's how they make their living. And they want to tell you that so they can keep getting a paycheck. Or they themselves are smoking hopium they don't want to believe that things could go back to the way they were pre. I'm sorry. That's the one you 100%. And as I said at the beginning, I don't give personally just my opinion, and it could be wrong. I don't personally give any brownie points or bonuses out to people who can look around at observable conditions and report on it. To me, there's a vast difference between someone who can let you know someone who's on the leading edge that says I see a b and c happening on the horizon. And then it happens. A vast difference between looking around seeing the obvious when it's happening and it's too late to prepare, versus someone who can help you to anticipate possible consequences beforehand. Stay safe, stay sane, and I will see you in the next episode.
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