absurd wisdom
What lies beyond understanding? Beyond certainty? Listen in to conversations between a.m. bhatt and colleagues, confidants, and important thinkers as they tackle questions both timely and timeless, and chat about maintaining your humanity in an ever-evolving world.
You can find a.m. on Instagram and Substack at @absurdwisdom. We are produced and distributed by DAE Presents, the production arm of DAE (@dae.community on Instagram and online at mydae.org).
absurd wisdom
Embodied Ownership, Startup Culture is Changing, Scale is Fundamentally Inhuman, and Empathetic Defiance
This episode is a conversation between a.m. bhatt and Ben Heller about the importance of ownership and belonging in a rapidly evolving environment, particularly in the context of technology and the workplace. The discussion delves into the significance of ownership, pride, and the need for individuals to feel that they belong to a place, group, or lineage. It also explores the growing uneasiness about the changing dynamics in the tech industry and the potential impact on individuals' sense of self-worth and identity.
You can find a.m. on Instagram and TikTok at @absurdwisdom. We are produced and distributed by DAE Presents, the production arm of DAE (@dae.community on Instagram and online at mydae.org).
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities they represent. While we make every effort to ensure that the information shared is accurate, we welcome any comments, suggestions, or correction of errors.
You can contact us at daepresents@mydae.org.
I'm a.m bhatt Welcome to Absurd Wisdom. And for today's conversation, we are continuing the ongoing series with Ben Heller, CTO of Driver Technologies. Let's jump right in. So you had a topic you wanted to jump into? Yeah,
Ben:well just, I think the sense of the sense of ownership. Yeah. And, you know, it's How it applies to. In my case, a startup environment. It is the ideal for everybody to feel kind of this equal sense. Of ownership. But how do you actually function without gridlock? When everybody has a sense of ownership, right? If you have ownership without respecting the other owners, then it leads to people. You bulldoze, you go right ahead. You implement your ideas. Other folks don't feel respected. If you survey everyone all the time. Then you're just going to be comparing notes and you're very seldom going to actually result in action. Yep. And so a sense of ownership, but a indifferent or adjacent, but interlocking spheres of responsibility. Is ideally the place that you want to end up in. And, you know, we, we did a podcast episode, I think a little while ago, I was talking about the reduction in force that we did, which brought us from, I think it was at the time, like 35 people down to something like 15. And we signed that just. Massive expansion in ownership, right? Because people had to balloon, you know, here's what I'm working on. Here's what I have a responsibility over. And it wasn't just one little corner of the product. It became, you know, entire products. You know, we have multiple products that we offer multiple platforms and someone just said, I just own iOS. Now I own Android now. Or I'm, I'm the entire server product. And Hey, I have an idea for something I want to roll out. Guess what? I did it on Saturday night and Monday morning, here it is. And, you know, people have asked me since then and said, oh, I think that, that must've been really hard for you having to scale the team down and yeah. It was from a human perspective. You know, we spent a lot of time trying to make people, make sure that people landed comfortably that their lives and their families and livelihoods weren't impacted. And to that extent you. We feel very responsible for everyone, but the, the guilty joy. Behind it all is. I am loving the sense of ownership and co-ownership because suddenly, instead of feeling like. There were a small number of owners at the top of a food chain, trying to pilot this company that granted we've always run fairly collaboratively. And I think respectfully, as far as. Yep. Tech forward startups go. But suddenly now. Every single person left is an owner. Yeah. There's few enough people that is just owners interacting with one another. And we're in different enough spaces. That we can all own those spaces and move forward. Which means that effectively instead of having, you know, 35 cars on a four-lane road. Now it's as though you've got four cars on a four lane road, right. You just each go as fast as you want to go. Eventually you're all going to turn the same corner when things align, something is pushed out and it's, it's a It's a feeling of. Moving. Incredibly rapidly. Right? But not hurriedly. Which really ties. I think that the earlier conversation we were having about just how saturated are you in terms of your movement? There is so much saturation in an environment. With a low ownership and. We'd have these conversations with each other often say, you know what I need, I really need from you. It was more ownership. Step up and own this product. And it turns out the reason. People weren't owning their products is because ownership was hard. Ownership was stressful. And if ownership wasn't required, why would you, why would you take on that burden? Why would you ever choose to own something? Other than the fact that was, is deeply gratifying. And I like it, but if it means coordinating with 20 other people getting buy-in going through the process of actually kind of birthing something, which is difficult. Why would you really elect? Into that. And so then when you, when you filter a company down to only the people who've really kind of are self selected owners. Because if I look at who we're left with at the end of the day, That that was who remained was the owners and critical spaces. And so it's sort of this weird experiment. And a microcosm for society. If you're talking about, well, what, what would happen if we took the city and we got rid of everybody who wasn't an owner, let's only keep the people who are sweeping their stoops. Right. And maybe we don't really know who owns what stupid, the literal property sense, but maybe we're just all of the responsible people. It's not quite utopian, but it is very much It's probably the most day today. Just pure joy. I've seen in a, in a group of people working together to build something. That that's shared technology. Even though. We're probably not We're not growing in the way that we were growing previously. We're not succeeding in the market the way we were succeeding previously, there's been a bit of a dip. Fine. We'll get through it, but just the act of building. Together. With other owners is frictionless. And I'm seeing it from the other side where I've never really reached this, the state before I've worked at many, many startups in various ways. And It's not something that we've ever really achieved. So the question is, I think is why don't we do this all the time. You know, why, why do people not feel comfortable stepping up? To be in a position of ownership. And, you know, why don't we actually, why do, why do we then ignore it? Right? Why is there anybody at a certain level of, you know, I'll say like white collar tech job. Who is allowed to engage in this space without ownership. I think we, you know, I know. I'm going to mention Elon Musk, which will give you a minute to, you can jump right in on it. But you know, when, when Elan came onto Twitter is that we got way too many engineers and, you know, the way he went about downsizing, Twitter was. The terrifying. And, and didn't make a whole lot of sense. He asked people to print out their code on eight and a half by 11, like physical paper. And it was measuring productivity by number of pages of code, something insane like that. But I do think we've got a lot or we have a lot more people. Sitting in positions. Of that don't involve ownership. That probably are not spending their time. Well, we're not doing I'm a service. In a way by allowing people. Two. Dedicate their days, all day, every day. To, to work, to win like their livelihood, their main endeavor. You know, the sitting at a desk eight hours a day and avoiding a sense of ownership. And so from now on, for me, this is like, The only thing I care about. When I'm collecting people around the us. Is there something that you care for and you want to tend, like why, where is your garden? Point me to it. Show me what it is. And show me how you care for it. Yeah.
a.m.:So I, I, I would I would look at ownership. I do look at ownership. In, in, in three domains. In the context of work, right. And consequent workplace. So there's what, how and why. At a sort of disease and organization that that's, that's gotten acute among others recently. Right? We go through cycles on this is purpose and meaning. And the assumption that we can have a collective, why. There've been some quote, unquote thought leaders shells. That have pushed that. That, that ideology and it's silly. It's still in my own little organization of 16 people. I have no delusion. That everyone is here for the same reason. Right there, there, there are folks who are here because they, they value and love, but their priority. The core, why right now is I need. A place that provides a respectable income. And the kind of schedule that allows me to take care of, you know, my kids or my elderly parent or whatever it might be. Right. Like, Like. Great. You know, The organizations, Y doesn't have to be there. Why? But. The organization has an obligation. And his self-interest in not only inviting, but really pushing the individuals clarify why the fuck are you here? Right. And so do you have ownership of why you are working here? Hmm. The what. Have a job. Is not grounded on the individuals, you know, sort of what moves them. Right. What their attention is, what their purpose is, what their, you know, Or worked there situational purposes. It's its market. Right. Like the, what you're working on. Should matter to the people who eventually will get served by this. And if it doesn't. Why are you doing that job? Yeah, right. And so the. There's ownership there. But that ownership is understanding that this is whatever I'm doing. It is a service to some constituent. And that's where I need to place ownership. Right. The thing that's collective for me at least is the, how. There's a share. When I say shared ownership, I mean, shared OSHA, how. Oh, are we going to live here? How do we talk to each other? How do we take breaks? How do we communicate verbally written in this place? I would hope. But you know, that everyone feels comfortable. Like if they see somebody else working too hard, And say, Hey, you got to take a day off. That's not how we work. Right. But that's only that to me, that's ownership or somebody sees that You know, something about walking in is not inviting is not have a sense of belonging. That's not how we work. And they just change it. All right. And so that's what, and so the going back to the, our last podcast and last week, When I was talking about tea and Starbucks and that, you know When I was pointing to ownership there it's, it's, it's an absence of ownership of the, how, how do we want to live on this block? All right. Why were living on the block as each individuals concerned? And the society or the organization, if we go back to work. Should not only invite in a certain way, should gently demand that you clarify why you're living on the block or working in the organization. For your own. A sense of satisfaction, but also you're going to be much more reliable in the neighborhood or in the organization. Right. And then the want is a collective agreement that, that. W w w if we are not engaged in things that have meaningful transactional value, We can't serve the individual. Why? And live in the context of the collective, how. And so we have to keep. Calibrating the what to whatever the market is, marketed air quotes, right? So you have a very loose bone and you're using that term. And have ownership of, of, of commitment to that marketplace and constantly changing those whats based on. The needs of, yeah. And so that, that's how I would think about ownership, but, but, but to distill down. In the previous conversation we're having the, the, the ownership that was missing for me was this collective sense of how, how do we want to live together? And then we're all owners in how we want to live. Hmm. And that's absent. Right. It's all transaction.
Ben:Yeah. I mean, that's, that's what I think gets to me as, as sort of an engineer where I sense that a lot of the. A lot of the output of an engineer is capacity. And I see a lot of engineers allowing themselves. To be represented in units of capacity. And a unit of capacity. In a world where we, we have things like AI generated code. The value of that is rapidly changing. And so I worry a little bit where there's going to be this bottoming out of self-worth. For any class of technologists that sees themselves as represented by the value of their capacity, which is never going to be equal to what a bunch of GPU's. Can you crank out simultaneously and 10 minutes. Relative to what you can do in a week of human capacity, the only value is going to be in the sense of ownership or, or becoming a steward of the code and injecting something essential of yourself. Into the work and putting that out there. In a way that's an indication of, of its human origins of the uniqueness of the person that created it. Even if it's in small decisions. You know, I, I tend to be on the side of, I'm not automating things like code style. But leaving that up to the individual engineers with the idea of being that I should be able to look at a block of code and see who wrote it. Not that it should be normalized to the point of becoming anonymous. And, and ownership. In the technical space. I think is the way to fight the devaluation of, of your unit of worth. And, and I really, really, I see the engineers that I've worked with, who I love and I respect and who are brilliant. I think becoming somewhat disillusioned with the industry as a whole. When they see themselves as being Not owners, but just capacity for a company. And they're actually having a hard time finding jobs. When they see themselves as capacity and not owners, because companies are more and more looking for someone who is going to be. A shared steward of that space. Who's going to look around them. You know, Treat it like the New York subway. If you see something, say something. Then someone who wants to be kind of fed pellets from the pellet machine, right. You know, I care, I care the most about that sense of, of self-worth. But that's not that that to me is, is I think what I really mean by, by ownership is, is the, the injection of that U unique spirit into what we do, because it has to matter. Yup. You know, if it, if it doesn't matter, we should stop doing it entirely and just let bots do our jobs. Yeah.
a.m.:My family is at that big. Oh, pretty good. Pretty large. Yeah, I'm with you. And, and, and Yeah, there's a scale issue, right? So an organization of 16 or 26, maybe, you know, maybe 56, although I think it breaks down before fit before that size. That, that sense of ownership you can do at a wholesale level, maybe. But we get these organizations of any size 500, 5,050,000. You know, kind of laboring under the delusion that we can have a collective singular. Y a singular sense of purpose, a signal, a sensor. If you had a singular sense of purpose in your 50,000 person organization, I will tell you, let's say you achieved it. I will tell you, you don't have an organization. You have a cult. Yeah. That is the definition of a cult. Like everybody believes the exact same thing about why. It's it's hubris. Right. And we invite people out of actually being owners. By abstracting themselves into this singular. You know, vision of the thing, right. Again, maybe if you've got six or eight or 10 or 12 people and you can, you can, you know, kind of curate it in such a way that everybody is, you know but I think ownership starts to look different as you scale. I think. Ownership looks the same as you scale, but the kind of precursors or. And the, and the conditions for start to look different.
Scott:Do you see that like, Working for startups and stuff, do you feel like the culture is changing now that AI is becoming. Not a threat, but more of a, some, you know, something you have to think about in your productivity and your capacity, like you were talking about. And do you feel like you know, the, the same motivations are there, like build a unicorn, get an exit, get a payout, like let's do this and do it again somewhere else. Somehow.
Ben:That cycle has been broken a little bit which I'm actually glad for, because I think it's flushed out a lot of the people who saw startups as a get rich, quick scheme. So I'm sort of happy. That that's, that's taken a turn. But at the same time, I see engineers have a and everyone at the company. I have a sense of productivity. I think that there is a. This drive to feel productive. And to not acknowledge activities that can be nebulously productive. That might have a chance at being extraordinarily fruitful or it's a total bust, but that over time, average out people will choose the like 70% productive activity almost all the time, just to have this consistent kind of creep. And that drives a lot of people to use tools, to either code for them, to write for them, to think for them. And I really don't have any knock against using AI tools as an extension of a calculator or an editing tool. But when it's because you can't engage your brain or won't engage your brain, or are afraid that the result of engaging your brain will take longer. Therefore, you're turning to these tools out of fear that you won't meet some productivity goal that you yourself have defined. That's where the culture is starting to kind of change where I think that. There is a sense of a little bit of a sense of panic. And I don't know where it's coming from, but I, I start more meetings by telling people. Let's take a beat. Than I used to. And I think that's because productivity or the feeling of productivity is accelerating because of the use of these tools. The allowing us to get by gaps in our knowledge, by asking chat GPT, to write a config file for us, instead of learning what the, what the options are. Then the next time you get stuck. You got to go back to chat GBT because you didn't learn the prerequisite of what the config file looked like. So you still can't bug it. So that means you got to go back to the same tool. So it kind of compounds. And, you know, you have to be really, really aware of. When you're capitulating to that, that sense. But. You know, the, the sense of. Ownership, I think is different in a startup than it is in a large corporation. I think large corporations do want to have a singular vision that they can put on the motivation poster in the lobby. That says we're all unified. Like to me, that's actually the opposite of ownership. Yeah, to me, you know, owner ownership is like, ah, I've got a fork in my hand, but each of the times, you know, these are strong, fixed points that are operating together, but also individually, each one is stabbing a piece of lettuce on its own. And there just happened to be a fixed to the same base. That that to me is, is what ownership means and why, you know, I have this kind of. Guilty pleasure of, of reveling in it. EMS startup environment. And that I think is why a lot of people. Are attracted to a small companies, small initiatives, because it's the same dynamic as a rock band, you know, or each playing this essential role. And if one of us leaves, then it all falls apart and, you know, There's someone's going to be contributing in different ways. Someone gets to be John Lennon. Someone gets to be Paul McCartney. Those are. You know, different roles. But the band isn't the band without Ringo. So, you know, it's gotta be there.
Scott:I find that a collapses into an acoustic set.
a.m.:Just flip, flip, flip. Let's just flip this. Let's just take a moment and just acknowledge that Ringo is a radically. Under acknowledged drummer. Okay. We can go back to.
Ben:We can do a whole session.
a.m.:How much. People missed out what a good drama Ringo was sort. But have a bunch of jokes. I do go back to the topic. It's it's Yeah. I teach grad psychology. Right? And then the. At some point in every class that comes up there, there are two things that we've been doing for as long as I've been working in, in large organizations. That are complete and utter bullshit and they will never get achieved. And we still, every successive generation of HR goes to work on it. One is this issue of shared purpose? It's nonsense. It's insane. You're not going to get a company of 30,000 people or a thousand people to do anything but simulate. Shared purpose. It's toxic. It's counterproductive. It's stupid. Right. And it blocks. The path you could have to actually getting people really engaged, which is individual, you know a sense of individual purpose that can be at work in a system. Right. But, but we don't know how to control that. And so therefore we keep trying to go to, you know, And then the second thing is employee engagement in a related. Work is not designed or. Beyond engagement satisfaction. Work is not designed for human satisfaction. Work is designed for human productivity until, until, until, and unless you dismantle economic system. Satisfaction is a temporary thing you'll achieve before you need to work on it again, it's just not designed for that.
Ben:Well, it says finish, responding to one of the things that that's Scott teed up. Yeah. You know, I think there's, there's a sense of startups in particular. That. You have this model, which has everything that you like about what we sort of described here. You're all unique. You're all owners. You're the band, but the point of it is to grow to the point where the whole thing falls apart and becomes this larger corporate entity that either gets slurped up into an even bigger corporate entity or exits or somehow succeeds. But. Effectively stops being the thing that you. That you opted in for. After one of our very first conversations you had recommended a Small Is Beautiful. Which is sort of an interesting. You know, mid century economic treatise. And it is like, He touches on a bit of this aspect of like, why would you ever sign up for a thing where the early stage attracts you, but its purpose is to evolve into something that is the opposite of what attracted you to it in the first place. And so, you know, I, I've kind of experienced this in, in reverse where I, and this has been the first time I've been part of a company that's taken this trajectory and it's just been interesting to see where I came in just before the massive growth spurt. Grew hugely, and then reduced size back down to the size that I, it turns out just really love. Right. And so have kind of fallen in love with the experience in the opposite order. And have done this kind of reverse, reverse sizing of the startup journey. And I've come into feeling like why, why does this so great? All of a sudden, oh, oh, Oh, it's this. And, you know, we, we There is no model for Orwell. There is no financial model. For a company that does the thing that I think most people would actually love. Which is most people who I'll put a caveat, most people who prioritize ownership. In this way, really love. Which is to start small and to stay small. And to continue along that growth trajectory, allowing the product to grow the users, to grow the impact, to grow. But not necessarily the team in the apparatus.
a.m.:There's a precedent for it. I used to use this in early two thousands. When I was speculating on where I was hoping organization was going. And of course it didn't, it stayed the big, horrible machine at it's always been in. It actually has gotten more calcified. Not the only example. An example is a film company. The whole thing is, is people committed in a lane? That come together. You know, really committed way. For six to nine months and then break apart. And then some of them come back together and some of them. I'm going to be going to work for another film production company, right. But, but the entire thing is a business. It is. An intact long-term business. Take like an a24, right. Where, where there's a real high commitment to a certain kind of quality. And it's authentic. And, and producers, and even some, you know, a lot of directors and some talent. Certainly, you know, technical talent cinematographers lighting, et cetera. But then actors as well. They're in this thing and they'll work in this project, this, this, this, and that since mini company within the company. Right. Which is a film for six months and then break apart. And then come back together in some other configuration for another mini company as it were right. We played with the, the only place we played, where, where I thought we got, like had some semblance of traction was Roche diagnostics of all places. And this idea of, of creating kind of cellular pockets that could kind of form and unformed. But any publicly traded company that kind of pressures it has it just, it just, that vision will never happen. Because the primary thing is always grow, grow, grow. So it becomes tough, but anyway, there are, there are some precedents for it and they all come from, from artistic sort of reference points
Scott:during the Like pandemic coming out of the pandemic. I was still home taking care of my dad and stuff. The company I was working for one of those major, you. Huge companies. That tries to unify them around a vision and a credo. Sure. So they often have been toasty. The Hey, they offered us a Coursera, you know, subscription for free as part of developing, you know, that kind of thing. So I started taking Certificate programs in worker. Owned companies and the different case model. You know, case studies of ones that have happened, ones that are successful. And that was the thing that really said, oh, maybe this, you know, with, with the proper incentives. Both financially and legislatively. To can be a way to sort of take the pride that people have in their work and give it back to them. In a meaningful sense instead of just like, you know, here's your, here's your 3% cost of living increase in here's your benefit change or whatever it might be over time. And some of the case studies were taking closely held companies, family companies, like they made widgets. I made whatever windshields or, you know, whatever it was across the country and converting them when the owners of those companies didn't have any children that wanted to take over the company as ownership. Going through the process of creating a trust that owns the company and then the owners of the trust are the employees who work there at that time and across the board every case study that was given to me from both American companies, Canadian companies and European companies, productivity went up like 10 to 20% the first year, and then continued to grow at a rapid rate after that, without necessarily expanding the company itself. Okay. So it's not like they were hiring more people, but the incentives to fill. Positions that might've been gone through attrition. Are there because, oh, I know somebody, my nephew is looking for a job and you know, they come in, they learn their skill and, you know, might be working on a factory floor or an assembly line. But. The pride in what they're making changes, as opposed to like I'm working for company X and I don't care where it ends up, you know, I'm just going to collect my thing and go home. So I think worker ownership might be a model to think about it. I don't know how it applies to tech. I feel like it applies. If you're creating a product very easily, but less likely when you're doing a service or idea generation.
Ben:I feel like this is like the virtuous coupling between the two definitions of ownership that we've talked about in this conversation. And, and also our previous one. Where, you know, literal corporate ownership can lead to ownership. And in terms of the product or the idea, or the general progress and vision of a place. I think what I'm trying to chip away at generally is like, do we, do we have an industry, which is the industry that you're sending some of your students potentially out into, into the world. Where something is about to bottom out in terms of the value and morale of a certain type of contribution. And how do you convince? Cause I don't actually believe that the value is going to bottom out. Yeah, but I do believe that people's perception of their own value is going to bottom out that there's going to be a crisis of confidence in what, or what have I been doing? What if I, how am I actually just been generating code? Four models to be trained on that can now do my job. Have I, has this been actually, what I've done for the last two decades is just create a training set. And now I have to re-imagine myself as, as something different. Or can I still feel like there is something integral and in what I bring to the table? I mean, it's sort of. I think comes down to the difference between like a plate. That's created and mass produced. And you can get one of a thousand identical plates at Ikea. Versus a plate that somebody made. And fired and glazed themselves, and it has their own perspective and personality and character. Do most people. buy the Ikea plates. Yeah, it's fine. It's affordable. You can eat off of it. To some people have a few nice plates that are handmade, that they really liked, that they got from her friend that are their favorite ones and that, you know, if they always kind of hand wash, so that's available. Yeah, they, they probably still do. Right. But that's something that in consumer goods, we've reconciled that these two things can exist. Side-by-side. The Ikea plate hasn't completely replaced the kind of handmade. Silverware or whatever dishware. But we're about. To reach this inflection point in, in software and technology where we're going to have to make that distinction of maybe there is a luxury good. That is the kind of human crafted homespun project. And I'm starting to see whole platforms that are being done entirely. By AI. I mean, this is you're talking like really like soup to nuts web application, right? The type of thing that your students could put together. In. A weekend of hacking. That would actually be a really, really great validation of an idea of a product. It would be the perfect way to say, Hey, this is the thing that you want to use. Let me get some feedback. Let's make some tweaks. Okay. I'm going to ask it to tweak this part. Now it's going to regenerate the code. Let's go. But then there's a moment afterwards where you say. Great. You did it. Now go build it. And now learn what decisions you're going to make differently. Why it's going to force you to reevaluate all of the decisions that were baked into the assumptions that were made about how this product was going to be built. Can you find efficiencies? That weren't obvious from the very beginning. Is it going to make you reconsider what it is that you wanted to build in the first place as you go through and come through this line by line and rebuild it? So I think the process and the value. It's going to change radically and everybody needs to be prepared to take. This leap together. Regardless of what it ends up, meaning for the value of the thing you've spent your time on for however long. And I, if you're in the ownership camp, if you're the person who's like, yeah, I just want to get in there. I want to get my hands dirty. I'm curious. I'm the CFO. You're going to be fine. If you're not in the ownership camp, if you're like, this is a thing I do. To exchange for money so I can buy goods and services. You're gonna have a much harder time. I think feeling like this is actually the most effective way for you to make that transaction. For a livelihood and it's going to be, it's going to be a real sea change. I think in the types of people who are attracted to technology and the reasons why they're attracted to technology. No.
a.m.:There's so many. Ways they're different. The aspects of that I want to respond to, let me just I'll I'll stick to the education thing. Yes. And it's it's, it's not the sole reason, but, but, but it's, it's, it's one of the currents that has us focus. I get. I can only get funded. Because of the cool technical shit. And it's only after they've been with us for awhile, as far as I can tell them, that's not actually what we're doing You know, Like that's just a container if it were plumbing or if it were like, it doesn't matter what we're building, what we're developing, not building and building implies machine, but we're developing, you know, what's growing in this garden is human beings who give a shit. Right. Yeah. You don't get to decide what they give a shit about, but what I can promise you is that they all give a shit. And so that means they're going to be reliable. If you, if you're willing to put them into a space that aligns with their, give a shitness. They're going to be reliable. Right. And so the idea is to make them Bulletproof from in part, you know what you're speaking to also to try to make them Bulletproof from the traditional corporate deadening, you know, fit in this slot. And you know what, for as long as that goes on, In the workplace, right. As it's transitioning to what you're pointing to, where the hell we got an AI to fill that slot, you know Yeah. And that for me, that is the only purpose of education actually. The other stuff is training. Yeah. The only purpose of education is to, you know, allow human beings to develop in this way, in their own skin, in their own sense of what do I give a shit about? What do I want to give life to? What do I. You know, all of this, this, this, this, this kind of sense of, of ownership of, I mean, ultimately again, walking around on the planet. As I own this. Not, I have the deed to it. I own it legally. I own it financially, but I own when I take a step, I own this. Hmm, right. Like that's actually what we're developing. I can't tell anybody that up front because they're like, oh, that's cool. Move on to my next meeting, you know? We could fund something real. You know,
Ben:well, I'm an impartial third party. If then if your investors are. Our listening. I think the people who give a shit are going to be the only ones left. I think that. That's really what I'm saying. They're going to be the only ones who are still here. I mean, this is like being in like finance after a major, major financial crisis, you know, it's like, you're only going to be still doing it if you really love it. And you have something unique to bring to the table. And there's a reason, right. You know, giving a shit is, is ownership. At the end of the day, the end of the day. And it's, but it's, it's, you know, it's your personal version of that, right. And I wonder, I mean, there's this always be the Googles, the Facebooks. There, and that's fine, but I'm not sure where they're going to find the talent pool like that. I do kind of have a question about, which is like, those places really do function on a lot of very intelligent people who are fine, kind of, you know, taking their tail and plugging it into the wall. And I sit there for as. And they unplug it. I think there there's creative work being done in lots of little pockets, but I wonder, I wonder what's going to happen to the workforce. And most, mostly I think it's kind of exciting. You know, We've had a few conversations about the doomsday scenario and my feeling remains just like. Hell. Yeah. Let's tear it all down. I just want to make sure that the people I love don't get hurt in the process and don't devalue themselves because, you know, They're they're losing something they've been clinging to. Yeah. I was speaking at a panel. So yeah, Hardy yes to that that I speaking at a panel A couple of weeks ago. And, and we were the last panel up there only two panels, but then there were some speakers before that and Yeah. Good people all, you know, kind of go down the line and, and. You know, After the first, the first question is just, yeah. Tell us about what you do in your organization. Whatever. The first real question was You know, kind of what message do you think you have that you think your organization has kind of working on? What's the. I said, you know, throughout this thing I've heard. And so they're like, you know, business leaders, they're people look senior HR, people, some government people, some people funding, more forced development, like is that kind of conference? As I do. I I've heard, I don't know how many people talk about the criticality of soft skills. For for, for, for, you know, people entering the workforce and how, how important soft skills are. And I said, I've been around the organization 30 years. Let me translate for you. Like nobody here is trying to do a bad thing. Let me translate for you what they mean by soft skills. They mean, will you please be fucking compliant? I mean, I didn't say fucking. Right. But will you please be compliant? Should have yeah. Yeah, yeah. Will you please be nice. Will you please be pleasant. Will you please be interpersonally comfortable? While you're being compliant. Yeah through the thing we tell you is your job. As I said, we don't need compliance. You organizations, don't be like, you need. Highly highly empathetic. Highly highly humanistic and highly, highly creative defiance. All right. Mm, what you keep asking for? When you say soft skills, as you want compliant, human beings will be nice to you. You don't need that for what you're facing. You need outright defiance. That's humanistic empathetic, emotionally mature, et cetera. Yeah. If you're going to navigate what's what's already here. It's no longer what's coming. What's already here in terms of the tech waves and the, you. And that's another way you. You know, I'd characterize what we try to do here. So, you know, we try to develop kids who are gonna, you know, go off into college and then there's the workforce. Defiant, empathetically defined creatively defiant. Art. All it all boils down to a handful of things like just fucking artists. Right. Like that go to healthy, mature artists. Is this what we're developing? We're going to look at the previous, you know, body work. I'd say cool. Give me a blank canvas, please. You know,
Scott:you should've saw the faces of the people on the panel. I have it on video.
a.m.:Where they were, they. I think so.
Scott:Manufacturing and biomed and they're just kind of like,
a.m.:I wasn't I was looking cause I was looking out at the audience. I got. I'd love to see that video at
Scott:Rolling their eyes on. That's great.
Ben:Use that as a promo for this place.
a.m.:Like an HR person. Again, all of this. I wound up saying this all the time. Like I have never met. The evil corporate person sitting there. I can't wait to screw up. Is that they don't exist. This is all everybody's operating out of habituation. Everybody's operating. Yeah. In the dream or in, in, in the hallucination, really? It's not even a dream. So nobody trying to do anything bad. We just keep perpetuating this shit. Right. Yeah. And, and good, healthy. It's. What has. Art move forward. Every generation, every wave of the movement, whether it's music or painting or whatever it is is at some point, the thing as it stands is so jelled and so perfect. But the next group comes along and says, fuck that. And does something totally different with it. And everybody says, oh, And they say, oh, that's interesting. And then that thing gets jelled in right. An organization is so goddamn jelled. And they're living in the context of this world that is just, just falling apart around them and they keep trying to get more and more and more jelled, more and more solid, more and more predictable. And it's just, it's. It's insane. And to get back on the topic here. It's further and further and further removing any, any possibility of a sense of ownership. Right. Where, when you were in an era of this sort of madness, but you did in fact stay at the same place for 20 years as a worker, 30 years. You know, the IBM man, the old kind of right. Yeah. You could get away with this artificial ownership. Because the design of the thing masked. The consequences of the ownership or the lack of ownership. That's gone. And so you got somebody you you're renting people for, you know, nine months to 36 months at a time. And if you can't figure out how to tap into their ownership in that period of time, you're just constantly cycling through widgets and yeah.
Ben:Yeah, no, I mean, this isn't, this is all sort of spot on. It feels to me like we're right on the cusp of one of these. pivotal transitional. moments. And it's weird now because technology touches everything. You know, it's not, it's not like this is one industry that's kind of isolated and off to the side, like it's in all of our pockets, you know, it's going to be in our eyewear soon. It's in our cars. It's it's, it's this totally ubiquitous. And, you know, there's a whole generation of people who are kind of finding themselves in. As recently as like five or 10 years ago where it's like, you know, fear like someone with a mixed background, you don't have a traditional education. You know, you can go and you can work in software and no one's going to hold it against you. That you don't have a high school diploma. No, one's going to care. You go, you build you. You can be yourself. You can be an artist. You need to be kind of punk rock and it's like, it's great. You know, it, it was just enough of the wild west. And just enough of this self, actualization kind of aspect, that it was a way for a lot of people just to find a home that felt very comfortable. And I think that suddenly it's like the, the ground underneath that. Shifting a little bit. And there has been a lot of folks who I just, I sense this, this uneasiness, this nervousness around it. And, you know, I guess. Before we kind of tie a bow on this. Yeah. You know, we've been touching on the concept of ownership, but without really talking about like, why ownership matters, why we've been treating it as an absolute good, but without picking at it at all. That's great. And I think that there is a sense of, of. Ownership. And pride. There's something, there's something that has kicked off there in terms of. I really wish I had like a brain scan of somebody when they felt pride for some, in something, you know The last time I felt like really, really proud not of something that I did was my, my wife submitted some vegetables to the Guilford fair and she, she walked away with like three blue ribbons and three red ribbons. And. I'm standing there sobbing. It's like so proud of these tomatoes. And is this physiological, right? It's, it's something that we should all feel and, and it's, it just takes over. And for me, that's, it's almost like the simplest reason of why ownership matters is because you need to take ownership in something and it brings somebody else joy or it's acknowledged, and it brings you joy. It's just a really easy virtuous feedback loop. And, you know, that's good enough for me. Like I don't, I don't, you're welcome to pull it, pull it apart even more, but there has to be a reason why it's good and why we're treating it as good. And it's, it's very, it's almost like it's it's a lifeline. You know, you can be at a sort of absolute zero. If you have ownership in something. And that feedback loop starts to generate is generating positivity for you. It can pull you back from a whole lot, very quickly into a positive state. And so it's easier as a I'd rather have Like mechanisms for survival and happiness, then. Already accrued means. And sort of the materials rather, like I really want the, the means to do it rather than the materials and a. Ownership seems like the way to do that. Professionally and cognitively in a way that joins, like who you are with what you spent your time doing. The, you know, VI the idea of just kind of being a desk jockey in engineering. Or almost anything for me. My, my reaction is like, That's great for now. Do what you need to do to feed yourself. To be well cared for. But there's gotta be another way. Like, there's gotta be a way for you to join who you are with what you do and what you dedicate your time. To, and, and I think that there. We're as we come to this crisis of that in engineering, where people are wondering. Have I really have, have you been doing something? Realizes that value. The way out is going to be. Teaching people to have ownership to create that positive feedback loop back to a sense of, of self-worth. I don't know at what scale it's going to work though. You know, I like your, your the every time I think about your corporate America. A thousand person company. It kind of falls apart a little bit for me.
a.m.:Scale is not human. Man. Scale is not human. And you cannot scale human things. There's a whole different frame of reference. You've got to bring, if you're going to try to engage with these things in a, in a collective of 30,000, it does not scale. I just, I want to, I want to just underline everything you just said about, about, you know, why ownership matters and, and, and I would. I don't think he would add to it. I think, just say what you're saying, but maybe in, in, in more, you know, words that I would use, but I think it's actually the exact same sentiment. For me, the criticality of, yeah, we are home. Like to get philosophical and existential about it. Like we are all strangers. Like you land on this fucking rock and like what, you know, And again, we used to have narratives and cultures, and that were like, like you own this legacy, you own this thing. And what's what that's connected to is you belonged. You belong? You were part of this. Not like it belong in the sense of you have a deed that you own in that way. But part of what you own, this is you are owned. Again, not in a product way, but you belong. Right. And, and like that story I told about my grandfather, you know, our last podcast. You know that seed, like I walk around, it sounds, I don't know. It sounds however, it sounds, but, but my experience walking around the planet after, you know, A lot of personal work and, and, and, you know, Fortunately, I think healthy processing of early trauma of being an immigrant, all that I was like, yeah. Wherever I step I belong. That is my experience. Like I belong here. Like not in a transactional way. And that's connected to own. And I own here. Right. Like I own this block and I belong on this block. And I own that. And I think beyond any issues of productivity, if we're going to, you know, Sort of just survive without just continue to devolve into. Unhealthy tribalism. Right? Is it the sense of ownership is connected to something that is really, really, really missing and has been missing for a couple of centuries as we've moved along this industrial path, really missing lollies. A sense of, I belong. I belong to the planet. I belong to these people. I belong to this lineage. I belong to whatever it is. I belong. Like actually, but not, I've got the t-shirt. Not, you know, it's not, it's not turf. You know, America. The Yankees. You know, Well, my religion, right. Yeah. People take that on as that, but that's not, I belong. That's, I'm enrolled in something. That's a different, a wholly different phenomenon. Yeah. But it's a, it's a placebo for the thing that, that I think is really, really critical. Sort of a psychological, spiritual nutrient that is really absent. We have a massive vitamin D deficiency. People walking around and we have a really strong belonging deficiency. And I, paradoxically I think ownership is, is a pathway to that, you know, like actual ownership, not again, deeded ownership of this thing. We've been playing with all, all conversation. Is a pathway to a sense of belonging. Again, I love that I was with your kids or with a spouse where I go, it's like, I own these, I own these kids, but it's not like I don't want it. Like. Like a car. But connected to as belonging. This is my place on the planet. This is like, I belong to these people. They belong to me. It's like that kind of thing, you know?
Ben:Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Those are, there's a reciprocation that you get from ownership where. Yeah, whatever, whatever you take ownership of, kind of gives back to you and in this way. Yeah.
a.m.:So that's the work kids is figuring out just how you belong to the world.
Ben:Do that. And you'll be happy and gratified and all things. And hopefully someone will hire you. Who doesn't hang motivational posters in the office.
a.m.:Thank you for listening to Absurd Wisdom. This is a.m. bhatt and you know, conversation, real human conversation never actually ends, but episodes of podcasts need to. So we're going to end here. You can connect with me on Instagram and TikTok at, at Absurd Wisdom. You can find DAE on Instagram at dae. community or online at mydae. org. Absurd Wisdom is produced and distributed by DAE Presents, the production arm of DAE, and we'll be back with more Conversation Beyond Understanding next Thursday.
