Exploring New Horizons in People Operations: A Conversation with Alex Hilleary - ep. 064

From Billy Joel to Remote Work! In this lively interview, co-hosts Rick Haney and Kaleem Clarkson welcome Alex Hilleary, co-founder of Gather, later acquired by ChartHop. The conversation begins on a light and fun note as Alex reveals his passion for Billy Joel, and how he has attended Billy's concerts in every city he's lived in.

Our hosts explore Alex's background, delving into his education at Georgetown and participation in the Venture for America program, which eventually led him to Cleveland. They touch on the challenges faced by cities like Cleveland in retaining talent, with a focus on the potential of remote work to address these issues.

In this positive tone, they discuss the impact of COVID-19 on remote work. Alex shares insights into the sudden responsibilities faced by People Operations professionals during the pandemic, navigating the challenges of a swift shift to remote work, internal communications, and the growth of tech companies.

Alex also talks about the creation of the People Ops Community. He explains how it originated as a growth play for Gather, a company born to empower remote work and organically transformed into a space for people operations professionals to connect, share experiences, and seek advice.

Alex delves into the difficulties people ops professionals encountered during the pandemic and their navigation through them, reflecting on the rapid adaptation required, the widespread burnout, and the accelerated growth of tech companies during that period. He emphasizes the newfound responsibilities of people operations in managing internal communications, particularly in smaller and midsize organizations!

Shifting gears, the conversation moves to the main topic for every thought leader in the distributed work realm: remote and hybrid work models. Alex shares his perspective on the ongoing evolution of work structures, emphasizing that many companies, especially smaller ones, are still navigating immediate challenges rather than designing the future of work. He acknowledges the varied pros and cons of different models and stresses the importance of thoughtful design.

A comical anecdote about Alex's experience with long hair during the pandemic, including an awkward moment when he was mistaken for his mother wraps up this engaging installment! You don’t want to miss it.

Thank you for joining us, Alex! From personal interests and experiences to the challenges and transformations within the realm of people operations, remote work, and community building, this one is an insightful and entertaining listen.


Learn more about Alex:

• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-hilleary/
• Webpage - https://www.charthop.com/
• The People Ops Weekly Newsletter -  https://www.charthop.com/the-people-ops-weekly/

Transcript

Alex: 0:35

A big Billy Joel fan. And I've seen a Billy Joel concert in every city that I've lived in.

Rick: 0:40

Wait a second. Wait a second. We gotta lay some groundwork here, okay? Are we talking like, 70s dope smoking Billy Joel, like Piano Man? Or like uptown girl, like cheesy 80s

Alex: 0:51

Whole thing. Whole thing. Cheap from the whole spectrum.

Rick: 0:55

Alright, no, I can live with that. I can live with that.

Kaleem: 1:00

Billy Joel in the early seventies. That is great.

Alex: 1:04

It's like one of those things that like in middle school like stumbled into my dad's like CD collection and that was like. Some of my early exposure to music and it's just like lived with me my whole, my whole life since

Rick: 1:15

Oh, dude. I love it. I love it. Welcome back, everybody, to Remotely One. I am one of your two amazing co hosts. I don't take that term lightly. My name's Rick Haney, and I'm flanked by my ever impressive and whimsical co host, Kaleem Clarkson. Hey, buddy.

Kaleem: 1:42

Mmm, hey sir, I haven't seen you in a while, man. You look great again!

Rick: 1:46

Oh man, I'm, oh, I'm feeling, I feel like I'm back to life. You know, I went through COVID. I went through, uh, this dynamic kind of pseudo career change. I am like back on the mountain, brother.

Kaleem: 2:00

Yeah, that blue shirt, it just really brings out those baby blue eyes, bro. It just really does. I mean, it does, man.

Rick: 2:08

Yes, sir. That's what I'm all about. Right? You got to flash those baby blues.

Kaleem: 2:13

Hey, shake what your mama gave you is what I've been told, you

Rick: 2:16

Shake your money maker, baby. I don't know why I said that. Hey, everybody, since we're all here, now you know where to find us, right? So, do us a huge favor, go to ratethispodcast. com forward slash remotely one and just leave us a review. Please, again, ratethispodcast. com forward slash remotely one. If you could do that for us, we would love it ever so much. We'd really appreciate it. Since 2015, Remotely One is one of the largest remote communities of remote work professionals with over 3, 000 Slack members and 5, 000 email subscribers and that number is growing up by the day if I'm not mistaken.

Kaleem: 2:59

Yes, sir. Power 5000, son. Remember them? Power Man 5000?

Rick: 3:05

It's free to join, so go check it out at remotelyone. com and with that out of the way, Kaleem, Let's have a tease or two about today's amazing guests.

Kaleem: 3:15

You know, Rick, one thing that I just love about this podcast is that all the guests just make us feel bad about ourselves.

Rick: 3:22

Not intentionally, I might add. It's nothing they do in particular, they're just so much smarter than we

Kaleem: 3:29

yes, they just make it happen. You ready for this? Our guest originally from North Carolina, Winston Salem, but this is the one. He's a Georgetown Hoya. Went to Georgetown, sir. Yep. So he knows a few things.

Rick: 3:45

About a thing or two.

Kaleem: 3:46

He can educate people.

Rick: 3:48

Mm hmm.

Kaleem: 3:49

Guess, what was your major?

Alex: 3:51

Economics and government.

Kaleem: 3:53

Oh, snap.

Alex: 3:55

Everybody in Georgetown is a government double major. Like people, like I had friends that were like music in government, like art in government. Everybody's like, you're like in DC, you might as well get a government.

Rick: 4:06

Wow,

Kaleem: 4:06

did you ever get a chance to meet, Allen Iverson?

Alex: 4:10

No, I can't say I did. That's a, that's a bummer. Like, Bill Clinton came to campus all the time, but, no, uh,

Kaleem: 4:17

Bill? Okay, Bill, he did not inhale, everybody. He did not

Rick: 4:23

We're, we are asking the important questions on this podcast.

Kaleem: 4:29

Rick, it doesn't stop there at Georgetown either, right? Listen to this. He was a 2020 Y Combinator participant. Y freaking Combinator, bro.

Rick: 4:42

Let's talk about that for a second. What does that entail exactly?

Kaleem: 4:46

It entails getting picked by a whole bunch of mama jamas and then getting trained by a whole bunch of other mama jamas and then like doing awesome with your company with a whole bunch of other mama jamas.

Rick: 4:59

about

Alex: 4:59

heh, heh. That's

Rick: 5:00

a lot of people from Winston Salem, I'll be honest. A lot of mama jamas kicking around, but they don't come from Winston Salem.

Kaleem: 5:09

Our guest is now a resident of Cleveland, Ohio. Just picked Ohio guests. How did you pick Ohio? Was it the LeBron effect? I mean, like, what's the

Alex: 5:15

Uh, it was, well, I actually did move to Ohio the week of the 2016 NBA Finals, where Cleveland... Which was a fantastic time to move to Cleveland, I'll say.

Kaleem: 5:26

Yeah.

Rick: 5:26

I would say so.

Alex: 5:27

I moved here as part of a fellowship program I did called Venture for America after college. And, uh, ended up never leaving. So, here I am, seven years later,

Kaleem: 5:36

There he goes. just threw out another accomplishment. Venture. What was it? Venture for America?

Alex: 5:40

Venture for America, yeah,

Kaleem: 5:42

just Venturing out. Venturing out. Um, our guest today, Rick. He is a huge, and when I say huge, I mean, huge Billy Joel fan. yeah. When you look at him, you're like, you sure you like I mean, that's,

Rick: 5:55

Sing us the song, you're the piano man! Sing us a song tonight! Like that, Billy Joel?

Kaleem: 6:02

that Billy Joel. We actually have Billy Joel live in studio today. Listeners and viewers. and not only that. He's seen Billy Joel in every city that he's lived in. So he's seen him in Cleveland. He sent him in DC. He's seen him in Winston Salem anywhere else. You've lived there guest.

Alex: 6:18

That's it,

Kaleem: 6:19

Okay. Okay. So our guests, he is the co founder of a company called gather, which has been acquired by chart hop listeners and viewers. I want you to give a warm welcome. To Alex Hillary! Let's fucking go! Alex Hillary baby! Woo! Woo! Woo! Settle down audience. Settle your ass down, Woo! That just got worked up bro. for being here man. Appreciate you.

Alex: 6:57

Yeah, well, thanks for having me on.

Kaleem: 7:01

Anytime man.

Rick: 7:02

Yeah, man, it's really great to have you. Thank you for tolerating us this far. If you made it this far, it means we'll probably get to the end of the show without too many hiccups, so thank you. You've got an impressive list of accomplishments here, but... How did it all happen? Like, was there ever, like, an aha moment where you were... I don't know if it maybe when you were in school or maybe earlier in your professional career when you were like Man this remote life. This is something that I really can dig my teeth into This is this is like my aha moment where I know this is it for me. Did you ever have that?

Alex: 7:36

Yeah, I think so. And I'll kind of connect a few of the dots here. So, Um, my kind of transplanted Cleveland story is, uh, so as a part of this program called Venture for America, that's, the concept is, you take people out of college or early in their careers who kind of want to work in startups, and instead of them just like going to the Bay Area or New York, they go work in cities that are trying to build startup communities, so cities like Cleveland, a lot of like midsize cities in the South and Midwest. Austin. So that's how I ended up in, in Cleveland. And the problem that a lot of cities like Cleveland are facing is, they lose a lot of their talent to other places, right? And so like, this is kind of one of those things of like, can we have people build companies here? Actually, even earlier this afternoon, I was just talking to a founder at another tech company, who's from Cleveland and is in New York. And that's like, one of the things that's always the problem is like, Cleveland loses, loses his talent. And, being, even in my first few years, it was, really. Interesting, to see that dynamic play out. And I think early on, like what I bought into with the venture for America mission is I think that, you're getting a lot of, especially like looking at tech, for example, like you see that a lot on the coast and, you see the opportunity of like, if we could make this more evenly distributed around the U S like. That would be something that's really, really cool. And then you start to talk to some of these people who grew up in Cleveland and maybe are in New York and California. And they actually would love to be able to come back to Cleveland. Like a lot of them want to start families here. A lot of them want to be around, like. Aging parents and stuff. But it was this trade off of like career versus like what I actually want in my personal life. And so I think during that process, I've just got a lot of exposure to that. And like the reason we started gathering, this has gone back to like, 2018. So this is like pre pandemic, is one of my co founders who also did this program with me and I, you know, we wanted to build something around remote work where like we see more companies who were like starting to let a few employees go remote. And it's like, what about a future state of the world where like more employees could be remote and you could actually have like these tech workers, like living in Cleveland, contributing to the economy here, like being back with like their family and raising a family where they want to. And I'm like, This is like a really cool world. So we actually got into this whole, like we started gather, which became a software for people, operations team teams. But the whole concept from the very beginning was like, how do we help empower remote work? And the very early version of that product was like helping with onboarding and offboarding processes. And like helping build out those processes so that you could empower that remotely. But we kind of always had that remote thing in mind because we were driven by this, like same mission or just the same thing that brought us to Cleveland.

Rick: 10:23

So, you know, I was new to remote work when we started this podcast and I have met so many intelligent individuals, so many brilliant people. There are so many ways to describe different roles. My question is in regard to people operations, right? There's so many different ways to refer to people ops, but how would you, in your own words, define what people operations really is?

Kaleem: 10:50

Pressure. Alex.

Alex: 10:53

Interesting. Well, I mean, I think. And the terminology can go a lot of different ways. The way I see it used the most in this space is like, when you're contrasting traditional HR to people operations. And I think the distinction a lot of people like to draw is that, you know, a traditional HR function is more admin focused benefits. It's kind of some compliance, those sorts of things. I think really in people operations grew out of this kind of like tech for mindset, but like, I think that's Google coined the term back in like the mid 2000s, but, just the concept of being a little bit more, people first and really thinking about the employee experience deeper. I think now you get just like people operations departments. A lot, a lot of like HR has just generally been in, especially like tech oriented companies, has been rebranded as people operations. But I think the distinction really came out of like, wanting to think about HR in a whole different way of like, maybe the way that we thought of HR

Kaleem: 11:54

Yeah. Yeah. I agree with you, Alex. I also think it's also a little bit of a rebrand, right? Like I think HR, when you just say it to a lot of people, it's like, that's where I go when I get in trouble or that's where I go when I, when I have a complaint, the tattle on someone, it's not tattling by the way, people.

Rick: 12:14

Mm,

Kaleem: 12:14

Um, it's feedback. So as you feel free, you should be, feel comfortable to go to your people ops team, your HR team, and talk about the challenges. But I looked at it as kind of like a rebrand of, you know, the seat at the table, supported by data. So now you're seeing a lot of chief people officers, who are reporting directly to the CEO or the COO and are really at that seat of the table when you're talking about. Ops operations, you know, a lot of technology. I mean, obviously, you know, HR tech. So a lot of how you interact with people, how you build a culture. It does have to do with policy and it does have to do with tools. People ops is kind of what HR should have been forever as a reputation versus like, oh, you're in trouble. So, anyway, that's just kind of how I feel. So I got a question for you in regards to the people ops community. So you actually created a community called the People Ops community. Two part question, two parts. What does community mean to you? Right. And then like, why did you feel like you needed to create one specifically for people ops professionals?

Alex: 13:30

Yeah. Absolutely. So, I'll kind of a little bit continue down the story here of like, so we founded this company Gather, and we're exploring a lot of different concepts because we wanted to empower remote work, like I was saying. And generally we gotten this advice that like from, we would talk to some other people that had, you know, founded tools aimed towards remote workers. And everybody was like, okay, so there's two different audiences here. One is people operations. And one is digital nomads. And again, put yourself in like pre pandemic minds that were like. The remote work world was not like, you know, this is like something on the periphery here. And they're like digital nomads get all of the attention, but have like no budget. So like you don't try to build a software tool for digital nomads, because it's just like really fuzzy. And so I think it kind of went down the path and kind of, yeah. So that's how we ended up with like ultimately what is like a people operations software company. And my job, so we had three of us founders. I was the growth founder, and I come from a background of like marketing and content and those sorts of things. Ultimately like the community came out of like it was a growth play for us, with, our company. And I think the opportunity we saw is like, we were going out there, we were talking to a lot of people. The company's growing, we hit COVID, right, which is like a very interesting time where we were early in this company that was like a little bit, you know, we weren't branded that much around, remote work at that time, but we had this remote work concept that we were selling to people operations. We just focused on like, how do you build out like an onboarding workflow that works for remote teams. And so like immediately in the pandemic, we're talking to like, you know, summer of 2020, this is when we're going through Y Combinator. We're talking to all these people, ops, people who are like, you know, economy took a downturn, but then all of a sudden startups started getting hot. So like, they're starting to hire a bunch of people remotely for the first time ever. We have some expertise there. That's kind of where we plug in, but I'm talking to all of these, like. Especially I think the heads of people at like series B startups, a lot of these, like, you know, they're one person people team, maybe a company that's like 80 people, and they're trying to navigate all of this, like new stuff for the first time during this year, like all of a sudden, like all of the playbooks they had in the past had blown up and I was having dozens of conversations a week with these people. And I kept on referencing other people I talked to. So I'm like, oh, this person I talked to yesterday was just saying the same thing. You should really talk to them. And I was giving them like introductions there. Cause that's the way I can be helpful and kind of like build my relationships with everybody. And so very quickly from there, we realized there was an opportunity to actually. Connect people. So we started using, and it started with a newsletter and then a coffee chat matching program we were doing. And it was just basically like, how can we scale what we're already doing? Which is being like, here, you should talk to this other relevant person. That's like feeling a lot of the same things that you are. So in a lot of ways, like our community. Which, and those were the foundations of the community that we run, you know, three and a half, four years later, that started at gather. And when chart hop acquired us, they let me continue to build the community. And it's been really cool to see it grow, but it really happened organically. So everything that we've built out to date has come from like. Our community members like asking for something, right? It's not just like, Hey, we want to create this space is like a full marketing play. It's had a lot of great, like brand impact on us. And to this day, it's like the people operations community, like sponsored by chart hop and we're getting like chart hop exposure. But at the end of the day, we're not talking about chart hop in the space. We're talking about people operations. it's just been awesome to be able to focus on that connection piece. you talk to people that there's all sorts of different communities out there. And I was talking to other community managers a few months back. I did talk to a dozen of them. I was just like, okay, I understand the value that certain community members get out of our space, but just a lot of the matching they want to know, like gut check the policies they're creating against peers. They want to benchmark what they're doing against peers. So like, if something changes, they're like, Hey, we're planning an offsite, like what's your COVID policy and get, what other peers are doing. You get a pulse of that and that's how they use our community, but I think other community spaces and even other ones in the hrm people have spaces, you get people who are just trying to be there to commiserate with each other or like Motivate each other right or you get spaces where? You have new people in the space who are just trying to immerse themselves in the conversations going on. So It's been really interesting to just talk to other community managers, whether that's in our space or elsewhere, like, people get different values out of different community spaces, and I think community is a word that lumps around like a whole lot of different actions, which is ultimately putting a lot of professional people in one space together and figuring out how to provide value for them.

Rick: 20:14

Yeah, man. I mean, you just mentioned something that, really kind of begs a question on my end. You said COVID policy, and I know that you remember what life was like before the pandemic. In your memory and in your experience, you know, the pandemic arrives, it hits everybody all at once, all of a sudden companies had to transition, and for many of them, the people ops were tasked with having to figure out how to navigate this remote operation thing. How hard has it been in your experience, where was the difficulties for HR professionals then and how have they moved past them since?

Kaleem: 20:59

Oh, mm-hmm.

Alex: 21:00

Yeah, that's a good call out. Obviously, it's been a little bit of a different experience for everyone, but I cite like that time period is the moment when a lot of these Like people, ops people had to start adapting quicker and reacting to things like a ton of stuff got thrown on their plate, whether it was like figuring out how to do internal operations remotely, I think quickly D. I. B. became something that went onto their plate, back in 2020, as well, internal communications, all of this stuff. so they, all of a sudden they had to do a whole lot of different things and a whole lot of stuff that they hadn't done before. And I think that's the thing where it was like relying on peers because like, you know, maybe they had that same role at another company in the past, but they basically had to throw out the script, and, uh, you know, do things completely differently than they've done before. And so that's why you had to kind of learn very quickly. I think there were a lot of people burned out during that time period. We worked a lot with high growth tech companies. So like you had this dual thing where it's like they went remote and then all of a sudden tech also blew up on this like crazy, growth train for two years where a lot of these companies were tripling headcount year over year. And so like, they were growing just like way ahead of what people operations was able to do. I think now we can look back at like the tech boom times is like, Oh, that was nice. We're like, everybody was being hired and we didn't have, you know, all these layoffs and that sort of thing. The same time, some of these people, operations people, even in the height of all that were so, so ridiculously burned out because like they couldn't keep up. So I think one thing that's changed a little bit, at least in the past year and a half in the tech space is like, there's been constantly new challenges, right? With riffs and layoffs and those sorts of things going on, with, I think a lot of new internal comms challenges, but at least things have like slowed down a bit in that, like, I don't know, it was just, it was nuts talking to all these folks that are like, yeah, we're tripling headcount and we are so far behind building the structures to actually scale this organization in the way we need to. And so, I think that that stands out to me, but I do think that people operations now. And something that's not going to change in the future is like, they bear more responsibilities. one of the things I was really interested in is like the internal communications thing. Basically, so many like internal comms became something like that's something that like bigger companies do. But like, whether it was navigating DEIB challenges, pandemic related challenges, layoff challenges, like all of a sudden internal comms became a real function of a smaller and midsize org. And that function became the responsibility of people operations in a way it had not in the past. And like, I don't think that's going to change anymore. So there's definitely an

Kaleem: 23:48

with you.

Alex: 23:48

responsibility to put on the device.

Kaleem: 23:50

I 100% agree. Well, it's kind of interesting. It's almost like the pandemic is like, oh. Now you all care about people ops, like it's almost as if it lifted it up, like, holy smokes, we have to get these computers shipped to people. We need policies on this quick, quick, quick, quick. We need this now because we're all at home. Like, for me, I kind of look at it as okay. Now everybody sees where and how important a really solidified people ops strategy and people are in those roles. So it was kind of a challenging time, and I'm sure people are still kind of feeling it. And you're right. They're going to have to have a lot more responsibilities. Your newsletter is fantastic. I'm not just saying that because you on the show. I'll talk some ish about you when you get off the show. But right now I'm going to like hype up your newsletter. what I like about it and also kind of like a result of the pandemic. There were a lot of hires. A lot of people were hired into PeopleOps because they needed them. Very similarly, we're kind of slowing down a little bit. A lot of people had to kind of, you know, a lot of PeopleOps people were let go. So can you tell me a little bit about what your newsletter does to help people find their next, their next people operations gig?

Alex: 25:05

Yeah, absolutely. I think the newsletter has gone through a few different iterations in its time. So we've been running this for three and a half years now. People Ops Weekly. We have a blurb. I try to source that from conversations I'm having with People Ops folks. We've always had a job board, as part of the newsletter, and that was thanks to our earlier gather, we had a great, community manager named Clara, who came to us and she's like, we got to put a job board on this, like, that's like in the newsletter needs a job board, people are always looking for, you know, like people ops jobs are burnt out, again, back in like 2021, and we're like, okay, fine. Like we'll put a job board on there. And I think in the past year and a half though, that's become especially pressing. So we've been running this job board now as part of the newsletter, but we really started to ramp stuff up when layoffs started hitting. And, so the job board is available on its own at like the peopleopsjobboard. com, but we also run new jobs in the bottom of each newsletter. And early on, we were doing like, you know, every week, like six jobs. But now we've started to spend a lot more time because I think that's one of the ways that we see we can provide the most value to the folks in our community is like by sourcing jobs And so we're adding about 30 to 50 jobs a week to the job board and I don't know. It's been really cool I've now heard a lot of stories of people who have gotten their jobs to the job board I don't know. It just like happens so casually. I like I'll just be talking to somebody They're like also I got this job from like your job board. That's so that's so so cool. But it's been you know I think we really doubled down on that once, it was clear that people operations was getting hit really hard by, by the risks, over the past year and a half.

Kaleem: 26:39

Reduction in force. Never, never, a fun thing to deal with at all. That's,

Rick: 26:44

No. So Alex, I've got kind of a loaded question, okay? Um, you were looking at remote work before the pandemic struck, and obviously during the pandemic, a new model kind of entered the work world discussion, if you will. And that term was hybrid.

Alex: 27:04

hmm.

Rick: 27:04

your thoughts about hybrid roles and how does the overall remote work play a role in hybrid?

Alex: 27:13

Yeah, I think when it comes to remote, hybrid, in office, I've had, and obviously I've been like very motivated by remote work for a long time. I think I'm not terribly opinionated still quite like I've been in this space for like five years and I'm like, this is something I've said all the way through is like, I don't believe we've actually gotten to the phase where we're designing the future of work yet. Because like, just working with people, operations people for the past three and a half years. They've been thinking one month ahead, right? Like there's still like not a ton of companies and it's starting at the corporate level right now. You're starting to see a little bit more of it of like thinking 10 years ahead of designing the company. But like, you know, we basically at this phase of like crazy growth. That's all we can think about right now to like crazy cost cutting and risks. And that's all we can think about right now. And I don't think that a lot of leaders. Especially in small to mid sized businesses have put enough design thought into what their future is going to look like. My thought is that you're going to have companies that shake out in a lot of different ways. I think there's like pluses and downsides of like every single model. I think those are well documented. I think there's a case for hybrid and a lot of situations. And I do think a lot of companies are going to end up with that, but, it is coming at a talent expense, right? If you're like you know, two days in the office in New York, you're missing out on some opportunities. So, I mean, I think something that frustrated me, I I'm obviously like really interested in this discussion, but like the LinkedIn discussions over this have just been so like not helpful. Right. It's all people who have some like skin in the game that they're like trying to, you know, either they're selling office space and like really care about highlighting that like everybody needs to go back to the office and get real. Or, there's some company that is trying to like, their employer brand is like fully remote work and so they're just going to war against in office. And like, those discussions aren't constructive. I'm finding it more interesting to have one on one discussions with people who are actually trying to implement these policies and saying like, What's working for them and not, and I'm still curious and I still don't have a great sense of like how things will all shake up and in the end, for sure.

Kaleem: 29:34

is kind of an interesting take where you're kind of like, yeah, I just don't know where it's heading. But the thing that really stuck out to me or something that you were saying is, is like, you don't think a lot of small to medium businesses are thinking ahead. And, you know, obviously I'm a little bit. You know jaded towards this because you know, that's who we work with but it's like That's a huge message that I've been trying to articulate is that you can't really follow the big headlines Look, it's like companies. It's a copycat league as they say in sports, right? Like smaller companies see what bigger companies do and they kind of sometimes follow suit and you know, it makes sense But then at the same time The risk of not thinking ahead is much bigger for these smaller companies. If you decided to implement a return to office policy and you're a smaller company and 10 of your 50 employees quit. That's a much bigger, bigger problem than, you know, Amazon or somebody else losing even like a thousand employees or 500 employees. So yeah, I, I really liked what you're saying as far as trying to design something in the future, you know, like designing that employee experience for 10 years ahead. I absolutely love that.

Alex: 30:49

And the other thing I'll add there is I think it's been hard to pivot, right? The people who are actually like thinking about this deeply are like, The startups I've seen who have started since the pandemic, right? Because they have a choice to make up front and they don't have all the baggage of like, where employees are right now and like how we're going to, you know, structure this in the future. And there's no way to structure it without screwing over some of our employee base. I mean, even like ChartHop, for example, the company I worked for was like, I think when we run into the pandemic, this was before my time, when we're into the pandemic, it was like 15 people out of a WeWork in New York. And very quickly the decision was made like we're going to be a fully remote team There hasn't been any looking back because that wasn't like that hard of a like You know, they started hiring a lot of people they wanted to hire not in New York and they made that decision and they moved it, right? That's very different from like a company that's got like 80 percent of the employees in one metro area and but like hired like 20 percent of the employees in the pandemic and like some other spaces and now you've got to design to fit both of those employee bases and design this workspace. That's a very, that's a much more tricky issue, right? So I think it's been interesting. And I think. You know, a lot of newer companies have been fully remote since the pandemic. But I just think it's easier to design when you're starting from a blank canvas instead of like trying to repurpose where,

Kaleem: 32:09

Way easier. Also, those companies aren't really getting the headlines. Cause you don't highlight some of the new smaller companies. So I think that's another thing people, I know it's tough out there right now. If you're looking for remote work, everyone's competing for the same, same small pool of jobs, but just hang in there because I do believe Alex. Some of these startups and companies that are starting now in three to five years, they're going to be bigger. And a majority of newer companies that are in the, you know, especially in the, in the startup space are kind of leaning towards her. Do we really need this

Alex: 32:42

Yeah.

Kaleem: 32:43

I'm Rick, the show's all you, sir.

Rick: 32:45

Well, time to shift gears a little bit, Alex, and this is a two parter. So, honest answers only, okay?

Alex: 32:52

Yeah.

Rick: 32:54

First and foremost, in your opinion, what is the greatest Billy Joel album and why is it Songs in the Attic? Secondly, can you share with us a comical or inspiring moment you had while working remotely?

Alex: 33:08

Uh, I mean, it's gotta be The Stranger.

Rick: 33:14

Alright, I can accept that. The only reason I threw out Songs in the Attic was because of a song called Los Angelinos, and if there are any Billy Joel fans out there who are familiar with that song, it is the most hard driving, piano driven, rock and roll song you will ever hear. Hands down,

Alex: 33:33

It is. That's a, that's a deep cut Billy Joel song there, too. You'd love that.

Rick: 33:39

it is!

Kaleem: 33:39

He is so happy. He is so happy that he can go back into the 1978 crates

Rick: 33:46

That's right. That's right. And so now that we've got that out of the way, can you share with us an interesting moment that you will never forget while working remotely?

Alex: 33:55

Um, it was so interesting. So, like, I started gather within its early stages, like, when the pandemic hit. We ended up going through Y Combinator, that summer. We didn't go to the Bay Area for Y Combinator. We did it completely remotely. We're in this, like, basement, here in, like, a neighborhood of Cleveland. Doing all like completely immersing ourselves for the first time in like west coast startup world But being like here in cleveland and being like we're complete frauds at this and it was just like so interesting because why combinator traditionally it was like such a like in person bonding, you're really like they bring people from around the world and they bring them all into the bay area and Kind of like build this like YC culture, startup culture around them. And we're like doing that, but like we're in a fricking basement and Cleveland. And I think that was like. Just a, an absolutely like weird experience to be like, I don't know, shifting cultures, but not be physically doing that. Um,

Kaleem: 34:57

it musty in this basement? I'm trying to really get the

Alex: 34:59

it was musty. Yeah. Well, okay. Here's, oh man, it was so much fun. Well, my two co founders and I were like in our bubble together. And like one of them was my roommate here. So we'd like walk into our work office in this musty basement that we were paying 250 for. and it was a 20, it was a 20 person office that the three of us were going into. And it had an espresso machine in it, which is fantastic. Every day at like four o'clock, we would go and we'd get a big, thing of ice cream and we'd make affogatos for ourselves. It was great. It was a blast. Like I, it was just like such a fun time. And like, when you think about like early stage of a company and you're going through a lot of rollercoaster stuff, but like, it was, yeah, just a weird time, but a fun time with the co founders back then,

Rick: 35:47

We couldn't have asked for a better response. Thank you for that. We appreciate you sharing.

Kaleem: 35:51

Wait. Did, did something happen? Hang on. Did something happen? Like, did a rat come and bite you while you were working or something?

Rick: 35:57

Always digging for the juicier details.

Alex: 36:00

Okay.

Kaleem: 36:01

musty. It was musty.

Alex: 36:02

here's my, are you ready for my like remote story?

Kaleem: 36:06

yeah, let's do it.

Alex: 36:08

yeah. okay, so during that time period, like many other dudes grew my hair out because I was like, this is like, I need like when we hit the pandemic, I needed a haircut at that time. And I'd never passed. Usually I hit the thing where you like, like, my hair feels gross. I need to get a haircut now. Couldn't do that for like eight weeks, grew the hair longer than it ever had been. I was like, okay, I'm past the pandemic. Yeah. Past this point where it's like super annoying.

Kaleem: 36:32

Like pass the mullet past the half mullet look kinda.

Alex: 36:35

Yeah. Yeah so I just kept going I went for 16 months Maybe grew it out. Like always before this had shorter hair than this right now So I grew that out, like, that was my big, like, you know, everybody was commenting on the hair, cause I was working remotely with everybody. Then a lot of the people, like, I mean, we built this, like, PeopleOps Community Network. Everybody got to know me for this long hair. Like, I had no

Kaleem: 36:57

The locks.

Alex: 36:58

just like a, yeah, yeah.

Kaleem: 37:00

First time I saw you, you had those beautiful locks,

Alex: 37:03

Yeah, yeah.

Kaleem: 37:04

I mean,

Alex: 37:05

Then I guess to get to the story here, I've got some family in Tennessee. My grandfather had passed away during the pandemic. I'm going to, kind of like Memorial luncheon with them. There's a lot of extended family members, whatever. I'm, I'm there setting up for it. Got my long hair, whatever. I got comments on from family members, but. It's cool, but once some random person in this community, I'm like turned around and, somebody thinks that I'm my mom because we have like the same hair and it's like the same length. And that was the big moment where I was like, I think this is gonna have to end. Like, I don't think I can do this for forever.

Rick: 37:42

Awkward!

Alex: 37:43

ended up, ended up cutting the hair. I had a bad first haircut on cutting the hair. It was not a good look. Ended up getting back to the length that I am now. But I go to these conferences and like, people will not recognize me. I eventually had to change my LinkedIn profile because like... People would just be like, Oh, I thought like we had long hair. I walked right past you and had no idea. So I had the full, that full long hair experience, but man, that moment that I was confused for my mom was. Devastating. I mean, that, that

Rick: 38:15

I think that's a first on our show, too. No one has ever been mistaken for their mother on this

Kaleem: 38:19

oh My gosh, imagine if someone came up behind you and like patted you on the butt and was like, hey, how you doing? I would have been even worse. It would have been even worse. Oh my gosh and you know when I walked up to you in Vegas and I looked you dead in your face and like you looked at me like hey Cleem and I was like I don't know who you are. Because you cut your hair. I hadn't seen you. So it's

Alex: 38:43

Yep. That was a particularly bad one. That conference, because I still had the LinkedIn profile with the long hair, and I, like, everybody was

Kaleem: 38:52

Pretty cool. Yeah,

Rick: 38:53

Alex, where can our listeners find you?

Alex: 38:55

Yeah, very active on LinkedIn and people operations space. So just, give me a look. The lucky thing is like my last name has a weird spelling, so it's really easy to find me. So, uh, reach out there.

Kaleem: 39:06

That is great,

Rick: 39:07

you've been a super sport for tolerating us for this past hour. Thank you very much for joining us. And certainly, thank you for your dedication to classic rock and roll. I can't thank you enough. You're

Kaleem: 39:19

Yes. Yes. Thanks for coming, man. Really appreciate you. sir.

Alex: 39:23

Thanks for having me.

Kaleem: 39:24

Awesome.

Rick: 39:25

Alright, man. Come back anytime, okay?