Achieving Work-Life Balance for a modern Marketer with Nirosha Methananda

[00:00:00] The Changing Landscape of Work: A Discussion with Nirosha Methananda

[00:00:00] Jess Bahr: There's a whole bunch of people saying, hey, I just spent 15 years working for Apple, like sacrificing vacations and family events and all this stuff, and then they just laid me off without notice.
[00:00:16] Jess Bahr: Welcome to another exciting episode of Marketers Talkie Marketing.
[00:00:21] Jess Bahr: Today we are joined by Nerosha, and we're going to talk about the future of work.
[00:00:27] Jess Bahr: Such a big topic.
[00:00:29] Jess Bahr: Tell the audience, though, before we get into it, tell the audience a little bit about yourself.
[00:00:34] Nirosha Methananda: Thanks, Jess, and thanks for having me.
[00:00:36] Nirosha Methananda: I have been a B, two B marker for at least sort of the last 15 plus years or so.
[00:00:43] Nirosha Methananda: I've worked across a number of different industries in very large organizations, very small organizations, and gone across the span of marketing.
[00:00:51] Nirosha Methananda: So that's been my background in the past, I guess, seven years or so.
[00:00:56] Nirosha Methananda: I've been as you can tell, I'm an Australian.
[00:00:57] Nirosha Methananda: That's what the accent is.
[00:00:58] Nirosha Methananda: But I've been in the US for the past seven years working predominantly in tech and Martech and in singularish roles, and I think I've become a lot more conscious of ways of working, leading teams and what the meaning of work is as well.
[00:01:16] Nirosha Methananda: So I know that's what we're here to discuss, indeed, a very big topic.
[00:01:21] Nirosha Methananda: Where would you like, where should we start?
[00:01:23] Discussing The Shift in Work Culture and The Concept of Fun Employment

[00:01:23] Jess Bahr: Well, and it's very timely.
[00:01:26] Jess Bahr: I think we can acknowledge and recognize that the layoffs and how everything leading up to this massive amount of layoffs and the way in which people are now choosing to come back to work after it.
[00:01:40] Jess Bahr: Those who are impacted, a lot of them are looking for full time work, but there's a whole bunch of people saying, hey, I just spent 15 years working for Apple, like sacrificing vacations and family events and all this stuff, and then they just laid me off without notice.
[00:01:56] Jess Bahr: And they're choosing not to go back to working full time.
[00:01:59] Jess Bahr: They're choosing to have an alternative path of maybe making enough to cover all their expenses and live a good life, but doing 20 or 30 hours a week or consulting.
[00:02:08] Jess Bahr: We've seen so many people start their own.
[00:02:10] Jess Bahr: I mean, I quit my company.
[00:02:12] Jess Bahr: I quit where I was working in December to launch my own agency.
[00:02:16] Jess Bahr: Yeah, it seems like it's becoming kind of the norm.
[00:02:22] Jess Bahr: I saw an article actually, on LinkedIn.
[00:02:24] Jess Bahr: I'm going to see if I can actually pull the headline was really see if I can find it.
[00:02:28] Jess Bahr: The headline was super interesting.
[00:02:31] Jess Bahr: I'm just going to quickly check.
[00:02:33] Jess Bahr: FLEXWORK sparks the fun economy.
[00:02:38] Jess Bahr: That's the headline you want to see when you've been laid off?
[00:02:43] Nirosha Methananda: Well, there's the other term, fun employment.
[00:02:49] Nirosha Methananda: Am I saying it right?
[00:02:50] Jess Bahr: Unemployed rather than unemployed?
[00:02:54] Jess Bahr: Yeah.
[00:02:57] Jess Bahr: I think she won't mind me sharing her story, but I have a current employee who was a former employee for a while, who worked for me a while ago, and when she decided to go out and just start doing freelance work, and go on her own.
[00:03:09] Jess Bahr: She took like three months just to travel.
[00:03:12] Jess Bahr: She's like, I feel like people are they're saying, I've been working so much, I'm burnt out.
[00:03:17] Jess Bahr: I just want time to go live.
[00:03:19] Jess Bahr: And they want to experience it now, often in their twenty s and thirty s, instead of waiting for retirement to go start living their life.
[00:03:26] Jess Bahr: Yeah, we did not see that ten years ago.
[00:03:29] Nirosha Methananda: Yeah, it's something that I've had the privilege of being able to do throughout my career.
[00:03:35] Nirosha Methananda: I've had stretches between roles where I've had like a couple of months off, or been able to, when I was with a larger organization, take a leave of absence and take like two or three months and go traveling.
[00:03:47] Nirosha Methananda: So it's been inherent to, I think, the way that I've sort of grown up from that perspective.
[00:03:56] Nirosha Methananda: But I think with COVID driven by COVID, we all sort of realized, hey, one, life is short.
[00:04:04] Nirosha Methananda: Like, even though we say life is short.
[00:04:07] Nirosha Methananda: And two, we have the flexibility to be able to work from anywhere, and we don't have to spend all this time commuting, all this time doing this, that, and the other, and we have that tied to ourselves.
[00:04:21] Nirosha Methananda: And then three, also, I think for a lot of people, me included, when you have personal life and work life blended together, you start to realize how flexible your organization is, what's important, and so on and so forth.
[00:04:38] Nirosha Methananda: And for some people that was great, and for some people it wasn't great.
[00:04:42] Nirosha Methananda: And I think that just sparked this fundamental shift in everyone around, okay?
[00:04:48] Nirosha Methananda: Especially in the corporate world.
[00:04:50] Nirosha Methananda: What is that balance?
[00:04:52] Nirosha Methananda: We talk about this work life balance, but where actually is that balance?
[00:04:56] Nirosha Methananda: And for me, it's been about purpose as well, and fulfillment, especially like now, right?
[00:05:05] Nirosha Methananda: Like what you were saying with the layoffs.
[00:05:09] Nirosha Methananda: And I think my personal story is my father, he worked worked when we were young, he worked so much, right?
[00:05:20] Nirosha Methananda: He used to get up and he used to be in office by seven, he'd come home by six.
[00:05:25] Nirosha Methananda: And that's how I remember him.
[00:05:27] Nirosha Methananda: He worked a lot.
[00:05:29] Nirosha Methananda: And then what I thought happened with him was when I have got a younger brother, when we were sort of grown up, and you sort of wait for this time in life where you're like, okay, cool, I put my hard work in.
[00:05:43] Nirosha Methananda: And not to say anything about that because I had the life that I had because he worked so hard.
[00:05:49] Nirosha Methananda: But it was kind of sad because when he came to time, he wanted to spend time with me and my brother.
[00:05:55] Nirosha Methananda: We were in our 20s or well into our twenty s, and then when he could enjoy what he worked so hard for, he got quite ill.
[00:06:03] Nirosha Methananda: And that impacted his health, it impacted his quality of life.
[00:06:10] Nirosha Methananda: He wanted to travel, and he was in a position to be able to do all of that.
[00:06:15] Nirosha Methananda: He has recovered from it, but it's been ongoing.
[00:06:18] Nirosha Methananda: And for me, I was like, you keep working, working to this utopian state of like, cool, I have it up now, and I can enjoy, which is essentially supposed to be retirement, but it's like, well, what are you doing along the way?
[00:06:35] Nirosha Methananda: And I think that journey is so important to them, and understanding what you want and what is going to fill you, I think is becoming a lot more prevalent for people.
[00:06:50] Jess Bahr: Yeah.
[00:06:50] Jess Bahr: Fulfillment is what has always driven me.
[00:06:54] Jess Bahr: I will admit I am a workaholic.
[00:06:57] Jess Bahr: I have been inflicted since the youth.
[00:07:01] Jess Bahr: My grandparents raised me and we had rental property.
[00:07:04] Jess Bahr: And growing up, my grandmother worked at a hospital in a kitchen for, I would say until I was probably middle school.
[00:07:12] Jess Bahr: When she learned that I could get on state health insurance, she stopped working.
[00:07:17] Jess Bahr: She was only working to provide me with health insurance.
[00:07:21] Jess Bahr: So as soon as she was like, I don't need to do this, she was super mad, too, because my grandfather always knew and didn't tell her because he was like, it's just better if she's out of the house for a little while.
[00:07:33] Jess Bahr: But as soon as she could retire, she did quit working.
[00:07:36] Jess Bahr: And then my grandfather, he built spec homes and apartment complexes.
[00:07:40] Jess Bahr: And so I grew up in elementary school, getting up at 05:00 A.m.
[00:07:44] Jess Bahr: To work before school, going to school, going home and working.
[00:07:47] Jess Bahr: And I conditioned my entire life for it.
[00:07:50] Jess Bahr: And so when I went into tech after college, I started a company in college while also interning and going to school.
[00:07:58] Jess Bahr: And then I sold the company, went and worked in tech.
[00:08:01] Jess Bahr: And it was an environment that fosters workaholism.
[00:08:04] Jess Bahr: And so I went like eight or nine years without taking any PTO, with unlimited PTO the whole time.
[00:08:11] Nirosha Methananda: Right.
[00:08:11] Jess Bahr: And I got to this point where I was like, okay, I'm putting everything in to build a company for someone else.
[00:08:17] Jess Bahr: I love the work I do, but I'm lacking this huge part.
[00:08:20] Jess Bahr: And so I started trying to get a better work life balance and limit my working hours, but then it wasn't fulfilling because I get so much dopamine from work.
[00:08:30] Jess Bahr: And so I started trying to chase after do I feel fulfilled?
[00:08:34] Jess Bahr: It doesn't matter how many hours I'm working.
[00:08:36] Jess Bahr: Do I feel like I'm living a full life?
[00:08:38] Jess Bahr: Am I making time for those other non work things that also feed my sense of purpose?
[00:08:44] Nirosha Methananda: Right.
[00:08:45] Jess Bahr: And trying to just chase that because when I was trying to focus on spending equal times in different things, I just got stressed out that I wasn't doing it well enough.
[00:08:53] Nirosha Methananda: Yeah.
[00:08:55] Nirosha Methananda: I actually just published an article about Hustle culture and what perpetuates it.
[00:09:06] Nirosha Methananda: I was similar to you in that when I go to work, I know I'm going to work hard because it does give me something.
[00:09:13] Nirosha Methananda: It's something I've invested in throughout my life and my career is something that I've built but I think it's coming back to that.
[00:09:23] Nirosha Methananda: Okay, yes, you're working for someone else.
[00:09:26] Nirosha Methananda: You're putting in all of this hard effort and time and if you're getting something from it, great, but if it's not valued or appreciated or you're not getting the reward or recognition or it's coming at a cost of something else.
[00:09:40] Nirosha Methananda: For example, for me it's been like my health and well being, my health and wellness.
[00:09:46] Nirosha Methananda: I will put off going to see the doctor in favor of going to meeting.
[00:09:55] Jess Bahr: Every morning.
[00:09:56] Jess Bahr: Every morning I wake up and I'm like, I'm going to go to the gym.
[00:09:59] Jess Bahr: And then I'll be like, oh, I have these ten things to do.
[00:10:03] Jess Bahr: And then I'll be like, should I go to the gym or should I get this done?
[00:10:07] Jess Bahr: And I'll be honest half the time I used to be at a point where the gym always went out because I recognize from a logical standpoint, if I'm sick and dying, that's going to fuck with my productivity much more than anything.
[00:10:26] Jess Bahr: And so I need to go to the gym, I need to make these decisions.
[00:10:29] Jess Bahr: But in the moment sometimes it's hard to pick self over the other thing.
[00:10:36] Creating Healthy Work-Life Balance in the Tech Industry

[00:10:36] Nirosha Methananda: Yeah.
[00:10:37] Nirosha Methananda: And I think the other part of it is allowing yourself the space and the time to discover what that is like.
[00:10:45] Nirosha Methananda: I'm in a position where I'm transitioning right now in terms of my role and I'm looking for what's next for me as a part of what's happening in the tech industry.
[00:10:55] Nirosha Methananda: And everyone's like, oh, how are you?
[00:10:58] Nirosha Methananda: How are you?
[00:10:59] Nirosha Methananda: And I'm like, well, I'm not necessarily working per se, but I'm enjoying my life.
[00:11:08] Nirosha Methananda: And what I'm finding is I am enjoying being able to take the time things that I forgot fulfilled me.
[00:11:17] Nirosha Methananda: So I love to write, I love to learn.
[00:11:22] Nirosha Methananda: I've been taking the time out to learn and advance myself in that perspective.
[00:11:27] Nirosha Methananda: I've been taking the time to network and reconnect with people.
[00:11:32] Nirosha Methananda: Those are things that unless you have allow yourself that space at work to be able to do that and you prioritize and often what happens is you prioritize what your day to day is what I usually say to my teams, especially when if I take PTO, I'm off, I am off.
[00:11:55] Nirosha Methananda: I work hard and then when I'm off, I'm off.
[00:11:59] Nirosha Methananda: Unless it's life or death and it's to do with you personally, do not contact me.
[00:12:07] Nirosha Methananda: And the stuff I do, it's not brain surgery.
[00:12:10] Nirosha Methananda: No one's life is depending on for a lot of us, I think when you look at it from that perspective, what is going to be that impact if you step away?
[00:12:21] Nirosha Methananda: And I think it's like this constant fear that's being instilled or generated and I think that is actually turning for a lot of people in terms of putting themselves first versus putting your job and your work and the company first.
[00:12:38] Jess Bahr: Well, it went from if I'm on vacation for a week and I'm not doing anything, they're going to realize they don't need me.
[00:12:47] Jess Bahr: I think that's a lot of people thought I took PTO a few times.
[00:12:52] Jess Bahr: And my boss at the time would schedule meetings.
[00:12:57] Jess Bahr: I almost only took PTO for grad school, but I would take some occasional days off and my boss would schedule leadership team meetings on those days.
[00:13:06] Jess Bahr: Like, well, I mean, it's your career.
[00:13:07] Jess Bahr: You're sacrificing if you don't go to like we had a Series C announcement that I wasn't told about until the Friday before.
[00:13:15] Jess Bahr: And it was like the Friday before I had an entire week off because I was speaking at a conference, right?
[00:13:19] Jess Bahr: It's like, well, listen, it's a great opportunity for your career, and if you don't do it, you don't do it.
[00:13:24] Jess Bahr: It's like, I'm clearly going to do it, but you can't give me any notice so I can try and move some stuff around.
[00:13:30] Jess Bahr: At least I got in this spot.
[00:13:33] Jess Bahr: But what hit me is that I got feedback from my team in one of our culture amp surveys.
[00:13:41] Jess Bahr: And it was my boss sets a good example of a healthy work life balance.
[00:13:46] Jess Bahr: And my entire team voted, like, strongly disagree.
[00:13:50] Jess Bahr: Everyone did.
[00:13:51] Jess Bahr: And I was like, oh shit, you're setting an example.
[00:13:55] Jess Bahr: And so when you take PTO, because I had grad school and you're still in line and working, that tells me that I have to do that.
[00:14:03] Jess Bahr: And I don't want to do that.
[00:14:04] Jess Bahr: I want to take PTO.
[00:14:05] Jess Bahr: And I was like, oh my God, I'm being like, a shitty role model for them.
[00:14:10] Jess Bahr: And then I started actually taking PTO.
[00:14:13] Jess Bahr: The driver was that I felt bad that I was setting a bad example for my team.
[00:14:17] Jess Bahr: When I finally started actually taking it and not looking at my phone, I uninstalled slack.
[00:14:24] Jess Bahr: It was like, wow, this is actually regenerative and a little anxiety inducing to come back to so many emails, but I can just step away.
[00:14:33] Jess Bahr: And my team has it.
[00:14:36] Jess Bahr: This is good.
[00:14:37] Jess Bahr: But it took a lot for me to get there.
[00:14:41] Jess Bahr: I'll admit I'm not proud of it.
[00:14:46] Nirosha Methananda: I think what I hear a part of that as well is it's a term that gets tossed.
[00:14:52] Nirosha Methananda: It's like that impostor syndrome, right?
[00:14:54] Nirosha Methananda: You're in a role, you know, how high?
[00:14:57] Nirosha Methananda: And I think it's also something that is associated with high performance, where you're performing at a certain level and you feel like, I have to keep performing, performing, performing, because if I don't, then someone will say something or they think I'm not doing whatever it is.
[00:15:11] Nirosha Methananda: And so I think part of it does come back to that as well.
[00:15:15] Nirosha Methananda: But I think from I understand where you're coming from with that because I had gone through this period in my most recent role where I had over committed the team and I have this habit of doing that.
[00:15:30] Nirosha Methananda: I overcommit myself and I'm like, okay, well, I can take it on.
[00:15:34] Nirosha Methananda: But when it impacts the team, that's when it really starts to put it in perspective.
[00:15:39] Nirosha Methananda: And I took a big step back after that to really look at, okay, well, what is it we're doing?
[00:15:45] Nirosha Methananda: What do we need to achieve?
[00:15:47] Nirosha Methananda: How can we do that and have balance and be checked in?
[00:15:51] Nirosha Methananda: It's nice how sometimes from that perspective, your team can be a mirror, right?
[00:16:00] Jess Bahr: Well, it's so much easier, I feel like, to also be so I started my agency.
[00:16:06] Jess Bahr: One of the big motivators is I want to create a spot where marketers can just do the marketing work that they love in an environment where they don't have to work 50, 60, 70 hours weeks.
[00:16:15] Jess Bahr: So for us, full time is 30 hours a week.
[00:16:18] Jess Bahr: I have quite a few part time, actually entirely part time employees.
[00:16:22] Jess Bahr: I'm doing the first full time hire coming up soon.
[00:16:25] Jess Bahr: Every part time employee of mine has a 401K option.
[00:16:29] Jess Bahr: We're a three month old agency.
[00:16:31] Nirosha Methananda: Right.
[00:16:31] Jess Bahr: And I'm trying to build the environment that I would have loved to work at when I was in my mid 20s.
[00:16:38] Jess Bahr: When I look at it, I work 70 hours weeks for a decade.
[00:16:41] Jess Bahr: I would never work at a company like that.
[00:16:43] Jess Bahr: And so it's like holding that mirror up and be like, I don't recognize the reflection.
[00:16:49] The Impact of Work-Life Balance on The Future of Business and Technology

[00:16:49] Nirosha Methananda: But I was going to say I think that model, one of the things that I really strongly believe about the future of work is I think people will be able to choose what they want to do.
[00:17:01] Nirosha Methananda: And I can see it starting to move in terms of, as he said, a lot of people have come out of the workforce and they're choosing not to go back to a company full time.
[00:17:12] Nirosha Methananda: They're choosing to be a consultant or they're choosing to be a contractor or whatever it is that allows them to use part of their time to support themselves.
[00:17:23] Nirosha Methananda: That also allows them to perhaps spend time with their kids, go and learn, go and travel, do whatever it is, allow them that flexibility.
[00:17:31] Nirosha Methananda: And I think where I kind of see things headed is around.
[00:17:37] Nirosha Methananda: And I've been chatting to a friend of mine.
[00:17:41] Nirosha Methananda: She has a wellness business in the Netherlands.
[00:17:44] Nirosha Methananda: And so the way that her business works is she set it up with a core team and then she pulls it on the people who are contractors and they have some interest, but in the business and obviously skills, but they're not locked to that business.
[00:18:01] Nirosha Methananda: So they may be psychologists and therapists and so on and so forth to fit that business, but they can go off and they do work for other organizations.
[00:18:12] Nirosha Methananda: And I think I really loved that model and that concept of what it was because it allows people the freedom to do the work that they want to do, have that choice to go and explore other things for themselves if they want to.
[00:18:27] Nirosha Methananda: The other thing that she does, she had someone in HR, but she wanted to get that person in HR on, but the person she wanted to get on board has a daughter, and she had no childcare.
[00:18:41] Nirosha Methananda: So what the business did was pay for the childcare or pay for on those days.
[00:18:47] Nirosha Methananda: And I'm like it's.
[00:18:49] Nirosha Methananda: That kind of thought for someone's actual personal situation where I see the future of work kind of being right.
[00:19:01] Nirosha Methananda: It's not about the stacks that you give people and this and that.
[00:19:06] Nirosha Methananda: All of these sort of for me, those campus type organizations.
[00:19:14] Nirosha Methananda: I worked in an organization like in a business like that early on, before Google, Facebook, sort of popularized.
[00:19:21] Nirosha Methananda: I worked at a law firm in the UK.
[00:19:24] Nirosha Methananda: And I'll tell you, the way that they're designed is it's designed so you don't leave.
[00:19:31] Nirosha Methananda: Yeah, because you can go to the gym.
[00:19:34] Nirosha Methananda: You can go to the cafeteria if you want to sleep.
[00:19:37] Nirosha Methananda: They had rooms to sleep at.
[00:19:40] Nirosha Methananda: It was sort of designed to be able to keep you there.
[00:19:43] Nirosha Methananda: And I think the future of work is actually probably going to be more not designed to necessarily keep you there, but designed to allow you that flex and that freedom to do what it is that you want to do to suit your life.
[00:19:58] Nirosha Methananda: But maybe I think that's the utopia I look forward to.
[00:20:00] Nirosha Methananda: Who knows?
[00:20:01] Jess Bahr: Well, the companies that are able to attract really good talent, that are able to grow, are going to be the companies that care about their employees and that are good to their employees, because employees now have the upper hand in many situations.
[00:20:18] Jess Bahr: They have the ability to say, I'm not going to work with you.
[00:20:23] Jess Bahr: I'm not going to work with you.
[00:20:25] Jess Bahr: You don't offer X, Y, and Z.
[00:20:26] Jess Bahr: I'm not going to work with you.
[00:20:27] Jess Bahr: I'm not going to do it.
[00:20:28] Jess Bahr: You can't have 40 hours a week of my time.
[00:20:30] Jess Bahr: You can have 20 hours a week, and in those 20 hours a week, I'm going to show up, and I'm going to be 100% dedicated to you in those 20 hours.
[00:20:38] Jess Bahr: The rest of it, no, I'm not answering emails on Saturday.
[00:20:41] Jess Bahr: I had an employee in a recent past role who we were talking about responding to clients, and someone else in the said, if your client pings you on Slack on Saturday, you can acknowledge and say, hey, I saw this.
[00:20:53] Jess Bahr: I'll go back to you on Monday.
[00:20:55] Jess Bahr: And I was like, oh yeah, that's reasonable.
[00:20:56] Jess Bahr: And she was like, no, I'm not looking at shit on the weekend.
[00:21:00] Jess Bahr: And I was like, whoa, hold on.
[00:21:01] Jess Bahr: Then I thought about I was like, oh yeah, no, you shouldn't.
[00:21:05] Jess Bahr: You shouldn't.
[00:21:07] Jess Bahr: Your client should know you're available during these working hours.
[00:21:10] Jess Bahr: And like, yeah, but my initial response, growth at all cost, tech, culture, brain, was like, of course you should reply, right?
[00:21:19] Jess Bahr: And I was like, oh shit, no you shouldn't.
[00:21:24] Nirosha Methananda: Yeah, I was going to say it's.
[00:21:26] Nirosha Methananda: That growth at all cost culture.
[00:21:28] Nirosha Methananda: That culture and puzzle.
[00:21:30] Nirosha Methananda: And now from an investment perspective, especially in tech, it's not that growth at all cost that's going to be driving investment and certainly driving business.
[00:21:41] Nirosha Methananda: And so those organizations that have been doing that are really going to have to look at profitability and sustainability.
[00:21:48] Nirosha Methananda: Right?
[00:21:48] Nirosha Methananda: So if you're working your people to the bone and they are getting burnt out, they are not going to be productive.
[00:21:57] Nirosha Methananda: They're not going to be productive.
[00:21:59] Nirosha Methananda: You has this halo effect on whoever's left behind, that's one thing.
[00:22:05] Nirosha Methananda: But it's also like you're going to have to at some point replace or backfill those people, right?
[00:22:14] Nirosha Methananda: So you think about the cost to go and recruit, to onboard, to ramp people up, especially in certain roles.
[00:22:23] Nirosha Methananda: It's a bigger cost and it's a bigger investment.
[00:22:26] Nirosha Methananda: So I think even you can see it with the scale between demand and retention, right?
[00:22:33] Nirosha Methananda: Right now a gross at all cost was so focused on demand because it was like, okay, cool, we need to get the newer, we need to get whatever it is in.
[00:22:43] Nirosha Methananda: And the scales weren't necessarily looking at retention of your existing customers and being able to grow them.
[00:22:50] Nirosha Methananda: Right.
[00:22:50] Nirosha Methananda: That wasn't a priority.
[00:22:52] Nirosha Methananda: I think you're going to see the same thing in work where it's like rather than bringing all these new people in, it's like, okay, we have this organization that we have.
[00:23:01] Nirosha Methananda: What is it that we need to grow our own base and be able to retain them to get the best?
[00:23:08] Nirosha Methananda: Because when you lay off so many people, it's not a hudget, it's just a headcount that walks out the door.
[00:23:15] Nirosha Methananda: It's that effort.
[00:23:17] Nirosha Methananda: It's all the knowledge of the system, the zone and so forth.
[00:23:21] Jess Bahr: That's the person who built your stuff.
[00:23:24] Nirosha Methananda: Right?
[00:23:24] Jess Bahr: It's a massive oh my God.
[00:23:26] Jess Bahr: Yeah, 100%.
[00:23:28] Jess Bahr: I was at a company, did a layoff once and one of the people impacted had worked across almost every function and when they left, there was no access to a bunch of files because they loved analog.
[00:23:39] Jess Bahr: Also they wrote everything down, they didn't type their notes electronically, we couldn't get into systems and all of a sudden no one knew how things worked.
[00:23:48] Jess Bahr: And so you have to rearchitect everything.
[00:23:50] Jess Bahr: And when you bring in, because I'm seeing a lot of companies, they are laying off experienced talent.
[00:23:56] Jess Bahr: When you bring in that junior talent, we're going to have a really interesting workforce in five or ten years, because they're going to come in and they're either going to be overwhelmed that they don't know how to do this stuff, because they're not just doing the job.
[00:24:09] Jess Bahr: They're unraveling a system that someone else built over a decade plus of time, and that's a ton of work.
[00:24:17] Jess Bahr: And so you're asking someone without experience to do that or they're going to come in and they're going to thrive and they're going to love it.
[00:24:24] Jess Bahr: And we're going to have a bunch of 20 something CEOs building the future of tech because they went in and redid systems that took decades to build.
[00:24:33] Jess Bahr: Yeah, it's going to be a weird world.
[00:24:35] Jess Bahr: But you know what?
[00:24:35] Jess Bahr: They're going to bet you that they are going to have much healthier work life balances than any of us did when we were in our twenty s.
[00:24:44] Nirosha Methananda: I wholeheartedly look forward to that.
[00:24:49] Jess Bahr: I can't wait to work for a 22 year old CEO who treats their employees well and invest in education and diversity initiatives and learning and has daycare offer that's not onsite daycare that indoctrinates your kids into the company.
[00:25:07] Nirosha Methananda: Mean, I think I think it was interesting because I saw this article recently.
[00:25:13] Nirosha Methananda: It was published in was I saw it excerpted the article published in a Wall Street Journal, and it was about SVB and their board and referring to just being distracted by diversity.
[00:25:28] Nirosha Methananda: And it's going to be very interesting to see.
[00:25:33] Nirosha Methananda: For me, I'm certainly looking at what's going to happen over the next, I don't know, three to six months from that perspective.
[00:25:41] Nirosha Methananda: And for people's focus on diversity, on how the employee experience, things like that.
[00:25:52] Nirosha Methananda: Because I think it'll start to be quite telling in terms of what a lot of organizations sort of purport to be like, oh, we're all about our people.
[00:26:00] Nirosha Methananda: But those are words.
[00:26:02] Nirosha Methananda: Being able to actually show up and have some skin in the game when things are down I think is going to be very telling for organizations.
[00:26:13] Discussion on the Future of Work, Management, and Marketing

[00:26:13] Nirosha Methananda: The other thing is I think with that, and that's something you and I, I think we've discussed is what's this next generation coming up and how can you be able to help them come up and instill some of the soft skills and support that they need to be able to empower them into those roles.
[00:26:33] Nirosha Methananda: That's something I'm pretty passionate from my perspective.
[00:26:36] Nirosha Methananda: I kind of think I'm in a bit of an older generation, I feel, which I'm not sure that there's necessarily going to be like a massive change, but I do see a great potential and opportunity for the next generation of elite is coming up to actually take and learn from this time.
[00:26:56] Jess Bahr: Right now, I think the generation coming up, let's say like early 20s, recent college graduates, Nursha.
[00:27:04] Jess Bahr: You talk about seeing your dad work so many hours.
[00:27:06] Jess Bahr: Then when he got to the point that he could enjoy what he had worked for, he was older.
[00:27:11] Jess Bahr: You and your brother went around the generation of 20 year olds.
[00:27:15] Jess Bahr: They saw their parents do similar, but they also experienced their parents trying to kind of break free and I think they're the ones who are going to change it.
[00:27:25] Jess Bahr: I'll make a bold statement because I don't care.
[00:27:28] Jess Bahr: I've been doing it recently quite a bit.
[00:27:31] Jess Bahr: The companies that Peter Thiel built and Elon Musk and similar, those companies are not the type of company that will survive in 2030.
[00:27:42] Jess Bahr: When we look at Twitter and the challenges that Twitter is having, elon Musk came in and he brought the growth at all cost, bro culture, tech that you and I probably came up in, I definitely did, for sure.
[00:27:55] Jess Bahr: He brought that into Twitter, which was an organization that was built for the future.
[00:28:00] Jess Bahr: It was an organization that cared about its employees, that cared about like, you don't need to work 40 hours a week killing yourself to make this.
[00:28:08] Jess Bahr: What can we do in 25 to 30?
[00:28:09] Jess Bahr: It was a good organization.
[00:28:12] Jess Bahr: I will say on paper, you could say it had some growth challenges, as many do.
[00:28:15] Jess Bahr: But guess what?
[00:28:17] Jess Bahr: Companies also exist.
[00:28:18] Jess Bahr: Not to have aggressive growth numbers, 30, 40% growth year over year for 20 years is ridiculous.
[00:28:26] Jess Bahr: But he came in and he brought in that culture that built a lot of the tech companies of today.
[00:28:32] Jess Bahr: And that's why I think we're seeing such an aggressive response and just an aggressive approach to it is you have the tech culture of the 2000s meeting the tech culture of like 2020 and beyond, and it's not working well together.
[00:28:48] Jess Bahr: And so we look at SBB and other large organizations.
[00:28:51] Jess Bahr: They're not failing because they're shifting focus to 2030, or maybe they are because they can't make the pivot.
[00:28:57] Jess Bahr: They're failing because Peter Thiel and Elon Musk's approach that has gotten them success for 20 plus years is not what is going to drive them to success tomorrow.
[00:29:08] Jess Bahr: It's not the way the world should run.
[00:29:10] Jess Bahr: I never want to have an employee that works as hard as I do.
[00:29:13] Jess Bahr: I never do.
[00:29:18] Nirosha Methananda: I don't want to work.
[00:29:20] Nirosha Methananda: I'm beginning to realize my time is finite, it's not sustainable.
[00:29:29] Nirosha Methananda: But I will say, on top of adding to that, the reason that I think it also won't work is because a lot of people are using their voice and saying, no, where before that's?
[00:29:42] Jess Bahr: What?
[00:29:43] Nirosha Methananda: When I was younger.
[00:29:45] Nirosha Methananda: When I was younger, in earlier in my career, I just like, yes, okay, cool.
[00:29:50] Nirosha Methananda: Okay, you need me to do that?
[00:29:52] Nirosha Methananda: Yes, I'm definitely going to do that.
[00:29:57] Nirosha Methananda: I'm certainly not the same way because I just don't have the bandwidth to say yes all the time.
[00:30:02] Nirosha Methananda: One.
[00:30:02] Nirosha Methananda: But I also find in the generation coming up that that understanding of what my boundaries are and what I can and can't do, there's a lot more awareness around it from that perspective.
[00:30:16] Nirosha Methananda: And I think that's why you will always have those people that will work hard.
[00:30:22] Nirosha Methananda: But I think those boundaries and using that voice to be able to say, look, no, I can't do that.
[00:30:31] Nirosha Methananda: No, I'm not going to take these and respond on the weekend.
[00:30:35] Nirosha Methananda: No, I have PTO, and can you please reschedule that or whatever it is?
[00:30:41] Nirosha Methananda: There's a stronger voice and I.
[00:30:43] Nirosha Methananda: Love that that's coming through, because I think that's kind of what you need to be able to help change things.
[00:30:50] Jess Bahr: From my I agree 100%.
[00:30:57] Jess Bahr: It's a different world, and people can also I think there's many people like you and I, too, who are hearing them say no and saying, okay, cool, I'm going to respect that, where there are still a lot of people who be like, kids these days, no work ethic and blah, blah, blah.
[00:31:12] Jess Bahr: But hey, working stupid hours doesn't mean that you're successful.
[00:31:17] Nirosha Methananda: Yeah.
[00:31:19] Nirosha Methananda: In this article I wrote, I used to wear that as a badge of honor that I would be working all the time, first in, last out.
[00:31:31] Nirosha Methananda: But it came to a point with me where I would get, like, if I didn't have work in the evening, I remember this, I was still in Australia at the time.
[00:31:39] Nirosha Methananda: If I didn't have work in the evening, what am I going to do now?
[00:31:45] Nirosha Methananda: What should I do with my free time?
[00:31:48] Nirosha Methananda: I don't have work.
[00:31:49] Nirosha Methananda: I'm just like I think about that now, and it's so crazy.
[00:31:53] Nirosha Methananda: That's such a crazy thing to think, right?
[00:31:56] Jess Bahr: The anxiety that can come with not having anything to fill your space with and fill your time with, 100%.
[00:32:08] Jess Bahr: It's real.
[00:32:09] Jess Bahr: But I'm excited for the next generation.
[00:32:10] Jess Bahr: I know a lot of people kind of shit on them and say there's no work ethic and this and that, but I am really excited to see what comes out of the generation that's entering the workforce now because a lot of these companies that are having mass layoffs, they are backfilling with inexperienced talent.
[00:32:31] Jess Bahr: And for some of them, it's going to be a really fast path of growth, and they're going to excel at it.
[00:32:37] Jess Bahr: Some people are really going to hurt and struggle with it.
[00:32:39] Jess Bahr: And so I think I'm excited to see and a little nervous to see what they look like in five or ten years.
[00:32:48] Nirosha Methananda: Right.
[00:32:49] Nirosha Methananda: What I'm interested to see is how the generational management works.
[00:32:56] Nirosha Methananda: That's another factor, right?
[00:32:58] Nirosha Methananda: Because you have what are we, gen?
[00:33:02] Nirosha Methananda: What's the next generation?
[00:33:03] Nirosha Methananda: I'm embarrassing myself.
[00:33:10] Jess Bahr: We're millennials, right?
[00:33:12] Nirosha Methananda: Yes.
[00:33:14] Jess Bahr: I saw a chart the other day.
[00:33:16] Jess Bahr: I saw a chart, and it had it broken down, and it was like, x percentage of millennials think, and then X percentage of adults think.
[00:33:23] Jess Bahr: And I was like, we are the adults millennials.
[00:33:28] Jess Bahr: You can't put us not in the adult category.
[00:33:30] Jess Bahr: Millennials are the adults.
[00:33:34] Nirosha Methananda: Right?
[00:33:35] Nirosha Methananda: Yeah.
[00:33:37] Nirosha Methananda: I sit on the cusp of being between the generations into millennial, and I think a lot of senior leadership tends to be of the generation before me.
[00:33:56] Nirosha Methananda: I will say that and looking at how at the differences in those generations and how management is going to work and how your ideals of how your business is going to work, even things like when it comes down back down to marketing.
[00:34:13] Nirosha Methananda: I was speaking to a friend of mine, and she was talking to a marketer who was an NFT business.
[00:34:24] Nirosha Methananda: I think it was an NFT business, right.
[00:34:27] Nirosha Methananda: And the marketing that they are doing, they don't have a website.
[00:34:33] Jess Bahr: They don't blows my mind.
[00:34:37] Nirosha Methananda: It's all about content creation.
[00:34:39] Nirosha Methananda: It's all about and I was like, you know what?
[00:34:43] Nirosha Methananda: That's a really cool way to be able to look at it.
[00:34:46] Nirosha Methananda: And for me, I'm like, that's great.
[00:34:49] Nirosha Methananda: I would like to see more of how we can do that.
[00:34:52] Nirosha Methananda: But I know for a lot of people who are in marketing, that would be like, what?
[00:34:58] Nirosha Methananda: What do you mean?
[00:34:59] Nirosha Methananda: How do you get.
[00:35:04] Jess Bahr: How do you measure that conversion funnel.
[00:35:06] Nirosha Methananda: Right.
[00:35:06] Nirosha Methananda: Exactly.
[00:35:07] Jess Bahr: Dark traffic.
[00:35:11] Navigating Ageism and Changing Job Dynamics in the Tech Industry

[00:35:11] Nirosha Methananda: Quite fun to watch.
[00:35:14] Jess Bahr: I like when I see, like the Duolingo TikTok account is ran by a woman who I think is 23 or 24 now, and that account blew up in a matter of weeks.
[00:35:28] Jess Bahr: And if it's not a Harvard Business School case study yet, it will be.
[00:35:34] Jess Bahr: It grew so fast.
[00:35:35] Jess Bahr: And so you have these organizations, though, where they're because there's a lot of ageism in tech.
[00:35:41] Jess Bahr: Both directions.
[00:35:42] Jess Bahr: Both directions, yes.
[00:35:44] Jess Bahr: You have these companies that are trusting these really core, visible things that maybe they don't value as much.
[00:35:51] Jess Bahr: A lot of people still don't think about this power of social media, but they're trusting them to these individuals who are just super talented at understanding how people think that are closer to their age group, closer to their generation, and they can run with it.
[00:36:05] Jess Bahr: Like the Forbes 30 under 30 list.
[00:36:07] Jess Bahr: Some of the people in there are so impressive with it.
[00:36:11] Jess Bahr: You do also have people in their sixty s.
[00:36:14] Jess Bahr: Seventy s who built multiple businesses who understand the fundamentals.
[00:36:18] Jess Bahr: And I think oftentimes the shiny objects like social media are just a different distribution channel that bring a ton to the table and don't get listened to because of their age.
[00:36:27] Jess Bahr: There's ageism on both ends of the spectrum with it, but I feel like our future bosses will be more considerate and empathetic towards those who do not fall into those who don't look like them than our previous managers were.
[00:36:46] Jess Bahr: Where if you weren't like I can very vividly think of an exact company where I was told I didn't have enough gray hair for leadership.
[00:36:54] Jess Bahr: But there was a guy my age who was fast tracked to leadership.
[00:36:59] Jess Bahr: And when I talked to him, I was like, how did you become VP?
[00:37:02] Jess Bahr: He was like, they just said I should be one.
[00:37:05] Jess Bahr: And I was like, I've hit every milestone they've given me.
[00:37:10] Jess Bahr: I've delivered outsized, return for the investment that I've had.
[00:37:15] Jess Bahr: I've gone through layoffs, I've gone through so many challenges.
[00:37:18] Jess Bahr: And ultimately they said they want executives with gray hair and I don't have enough gray hair.
[00:37:23] Nirosha Methananda: But this other individual I leave this right here.
[00:37:28] Jess Bahr: Also I have gray hair.
[00:37:31] Jess Bahr: Okay?
[00:37:31] Jess Bahr: They're just not, like, prevalent.
[00:37:35] Jess Bahr: But it's like, what?
[00:37:37] Jess Bahr: There's so many situations where that has happened.
[00:37:40] Jess Bahr: And I have a strong hope for the future that in ten years, that's not going to be as common of an experience as it is today and as it's been for the last ten years.
[00:37:49] Nirosha Methananda: Yeah.
[00:37:50] Nirosha Methananda: And this is what I'm meaning.
[00:37:52] Nirosha Methananda: I think there are these ideals around what a business should be and the hierarchy in it.
[00:38:00] Nirosha Methananda: And look, I don't think age or grade or any heap of the derivatives that you could think of should determine how someone accelerates through a business.
[00:38:15] Nirosha Methananda: I think experience and understanding and the value they bring is what should determine that.
[00:38:21] Nirosha Methananda: But I think that's the big change that needs to happen is being driven.
[00:38:27] Nirosha Methananda: And that's why I think it's going to be interesting to see as the older generations come, graduate and what happens with the next generation.
[00:38:38] Nirosha Methananda: Because even for me, as I sit on that cusp, I'm like, oh.
[00:38:44] Nirosha Methananda: And I've seen the way that my parents have worked and I also have a bit of a cultural thing from an Asian cultural thing as a work ethic.
[00:38:57] Nirosha Methananda: It's challenging for me at times as well.
[00:38:59] Nirosha Methananda: Kind of like, oh, okay, you're not going to do I have to build a bridge and get over it.
[00:39:04] Nirosha Methananda: And I think that's the mindset that you're either going to embrace and adapt to as from a leadership perspective or you're not.
[00:39:16] Nirosha Methananda: And it's going to be a hard thing, but no reason gray hair should be ever a qualifier.
[00:39:23] Nirosha Methananda: And I think when those types of situations come up, that comes back to choice, right?
[00:39:31] Nirosha Methananda: And using that voice to be able to say, okay, cool, that's great, well, I'll take myself off to a company that is going to appreciate me, value me, acknowledge what my experience is, and I'm going to get what I want from it as well.
[00:39:46] Jess Bahr: Yeah, quit your job.
[00:39:48] Jess Bahr: I realize in listening to episodes that there are, I'm going to say, 75% of episodes, I advise people to quit their job, but this is a quit your job situation.
[00:40:00] Jess Bahr: And that's what I did.
[00:40:01] Jess Bahr: I was in a spot and I talked to my coach at the time, my executive coach, I was like, here's what I'm seeing just as subjective as I can see it being in the situation.
[00:40:12] Jess Bahr: And he's like, yeah, if there's no attractive promotion because of things that are outside your control he also told me oftentimes executive presence is just a bucket to capture things like, you're not old enough, you're not white, you're not this, you're not that, which I am white as I say that.
[00:40:28] Jess Bahr: But it's a bucket to capture things that you can't say out loud.
[00:40:32] Jess Bahr: And he's like, if you're in a role where you're never going to advance because of things outside of your control, leave and go have an impact somewhere else.
[00:40:40] Jess Bahr: And that's what I did.
[00:40:40] Jess Bahr: And a lot of my team left, right?
[00:40:43] Nirosha Methananda: Yeah, I 100% agree.
[00:40:48] Nirosha Methananda: I have left throughout my career where a number of different roles for where I wasn't getting what I wanted or it wasn't the right thing for me, or whatever it is.
[00:41:01] Nirosha Methananda: And I think it's a very powerful decision to be able to make, and it's scary.
[00:41:07] Nirosha Methananda: But at the same time, what's more scary, I think, is it staying and being somewhere that it's not particularly fulfilling.
[00:41:18] Nirosha Methananda: It's not giving you what you saw and so forth.
[00:41:20] Jess Bahr: You're never going to get promoted, be.
[00:41:22] Nirosha Methananda: Open to those opportunities of what may be, and actually finding something that values you, gives you what you need, so on and so forth.
[00:41:31] Nirosha Methananda: And I think there's a lot more advocacy and freedom to do that than there was a lot a little while ago.
[00:41:41] Nirosha Methananda: Because I remember I went through this period where I was with organizations for sort of a two year period.
[00:41:50] Nirosha Methananda: I'll never get my friends.
[00:41:52] Nirosha Methananda: I used to do watercolor painting with one of my friends, her father.
[00:41:56] Nirosha Methananda: I used to go with him as though every week he used to ask me, he'd pick me up, are you still at the same job?
[00:42:08] Jess Bahr: I was just thinking about that, though, because for a long time, if you change jobs within, like, five or six years, it was such a weird thing.
[00:42:16] Jess Bahr: But in tech, it's so common because you're coming in at a certain point, and you help them get to another point, and then you leave, right?
[00:42:23] Jess Bahr: I had an interview in December because I was considering working for another company, and I was talking to the recruiter, and she goes, you were only at this company five years.
[00:42:33] Jess Bahr: It's like, only five years.
[00:42:36] Jess Bahr: And I was like, well, yeah, I went in.
[00:42:38] Jess Bahr: This is what I did.
[00:42:39] Jess Bahr: I restructured this team.
[00:42:40] Jess Bahr: I built X, Y and Z.
[00:42:42] Jess Bahr: And then it really became time for them to pivot into a different strategy.
[00:42:46] Jess Bahr: And so actually, I hired my successor, helped get her trained up, and then I left.
[00:42:51] Jess Bahr: And she's like, but it's just getting good.
[00:42:54] Jess Bahr: Why would you leave after five years?
[00:42:56] Jess Bahr: I was like, what?
[00:42:59] Nirosha Methananda: Right?
[00:42:59] Nirosha Methananda: Yeah.
[00:43:00] Nirosha Methananda: What?
[00:43:02] Jess Bahr: That's the norm.
[00:43:04] Nirosha Methananda: I think that stigma around it's an interesting thing when a company you see companies, right?
[00:43:13] Nirosha Methananda: I see a lot of job ads that are like, we want someone who's going to scale, can scale a company to 100 million plus, right?
[00:43:22] Nirosha Methananda: And they're either at a series A or a series B, and they want to scale to this 100 million plus the skills that you need from someone that is seed a B to the skills that you need from someone beyond that 200 million.
[00:43:48] Nirosha Methananda: They are very different.
[00:43:49] Nirosha Methananda: So different, right?
[00:43:51] Discussion on Company Scaling, Employee Growth and the Art of Management

[00:43:51] Nirosha Methananda: And that's one thing, but it's also, like, from an employee perspective, from my perspective, for example, I like building.
[00:44:05] Nirosha Methananda: I like going in.
[00:44:06] Nirosha Methananda: I like building.
[00:44:07] Nirosha Methananda: I like being able to set things up, run them, move on, learn, so on and so forth.
[00:44:13] Nirosha Methananda: And I think knowing that about myself and knowing what stage you belong at and understand what you enjoy is a really valuable thing.
[00:44:25] Nirosha Methananda: It's unfortunate.
[00:44:27] Nirosha Methananda: And I keep coming back to this idea of what leaders have about their businesses.
[00:44:34] Nirosha Methananda: It's not realistic to think the team that birthed an idea and birthed a company is going to take it to 100 million.
[00:44:45] Nirosha Methananda: It does happen, but it's very rare.
[00:44:48] Nirosha Methananda: And if you think about I know you and I have done CRS school through Pavilion, right?
[00:44:53] Nirosha Methananda: Right.
[00:44:54] Nirosha Methananda: Yeah.
[00:44:54] Nirosha Methananda: And if you look at, like, there was this interesting chart of like, how many companies actually make it to 100.
[00:45:01] Nirosha Methananda: It's like I think it was like 80% drop off every single time they have to scale up.
[00:45:09] Nirosha Methananda: And there's no acknowledgment and recognition of that, I think.
[00:45:12] Nirosha Methananda: And I think that's something that has.
[00:45:14] Jess Bahr: To sort of change.
[00:45:15] Jess Bahr: How many times do you end up with your original team?
[00:45:19] Jess Bahr: Your company grows, they get just promoted to managerial roles, and then you have these really amazing individual contributors that are the shittiest managers on the planet because no one has taught them how to be managers.
[00:45:33] Jess Bahr: If you're really good at being a first engineering hire, you're probably really shitty at running a 200 person engineering organization.
[00:45:41] Jess Bahr: It's a different skill set, but there's this expectation that your early stage employees are somehow going to all magically scale into these great roles where they'll just clone themselves.
[00:45:54] Jess Bahr: And then we got Django Fett and a bunch of FETs out there just running the world.
[00:46:00] Jess Bahr: That's not how it works.
[00:46:01] Jess Bahr: That's a topic, though, for another episode, is the number of the disservice tech has done to the art of managing people with it.
[00:46:12] Nirosha Methananda: Oh, my God.
[00:46:13] Nirosha Methananda: I can talk hours about that.
[00:46:17] Nirosha Methananda: Yeah, just because I 100% agree.
[00:46:23] Nirosha Methananda: I feel like the art of management is something that is preached about a lot, not practiced, and also so devalued by a lot of organizations that purport to support it.
[00:46:40] Jess Bahr: Nothing breaks my heart more than getting an employee who's on their fourth or fifth company they've worked on in their career.
[00:46:45] Jess Bahr: So, like, an experienced employee who's never had a career growth conversation.
[00:46:50] Jess Bahr: Yeah, it's like, how do we get there?
[00:46:52] Jess Bahr: But topic for another episode we have to wrap.
[00:46:55] Discussing the Future of Work with Nirosha Methananda

[00:46:55] Jess Bahr: Nirosha, thank you so much for joining me today, listeners.
[00:46:59] Jess Bahr: If you have any ideas about any everyone has ideas.
[00:47:02] Jess Bahr: Let us know in the comment below what you think the future of work is going to look like.
[00:47:07] Jess Bahr: If you're going to be our future employer, tell us too.
[00:47:10] Jess Bahr: We'd love to meet you and we'll see everyone on the next episode.
[00:47:15] Nirosha Methananda: Thank you.
[00:47:16] Jess Bahr: Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Marketers Talking Marketing.
[00:47:20] Jess Bahr: We have a ton of great content coming out to make sure you don't miss any of our future episodes.
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[00:47:27] Jess Bahr: Notification below.