Episode 340 · 29 September 2026 · 1:04:12

Meta's management u-turn, trolling A.I and The Great Compliance. PLUS! Does purpose make us work harder? With Bill Yost

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Leanne ElliottComing up this week in work with the awesome Bill Yost.

Al ElliottOh, my turn. Are we seeing the return of the middle manager? Meta has spent the— you know who Meta is? Evil Zuck in his evil cave. Meta has spent the past year stripping out layers of management and pushing flatter, leaner teams, he says. But now he's asking some employees to step back into management roles. So, What does that tell us about the limits of flatter organisations? And obviously, AI— we're only 10 seconds in, I've said AI already— changes the way teams work. So could managers actually become more important, not less?

Leanne ElliottAlso this week in Truth or Lie, does purpose make us work harder? We're hearing loads more about people searching for more meaningful work, especially our Gen Z and millennial colleagues. Is this the workplace Holy Grail, or is it a sneaky way for organisations to take advantage? I've read the research and I've got a verdict.

C — REVIEWAnd in the Workplace Surgery, one listener asks, Can I actually be honest in an engagement survey? Their company is promising anonymity, but they're worried it might come back to bite them. I will be sharing my take on this later in the show. This is—

Leanne ElliottI was just gonna say, come on, bro. First time, nailed it, Phil.

Al ElliottNailed it. Sexiest voice in podcasting. See, I need to build myself a studio.

C — REVIEWThat's it. That's it.

Al ElliottAnyway, sorry, you were about to do our contractual—

Leanne Elliottcontractually, I have to say this. This is Truth, Lies and Work. Welcome, the award-winning podcast. Where behavioural science meets workplace culture, brought to you, of course, by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.

Al ElliottMy name is Al. I'm a business owner, and I'm here to ask the questions you might be afraid to.

Leanne ElliottAnd my name is Leanne. I'm a Chartered Occupational Psychologist, and I'm here to answer them. And together, with the help of our brilliant guest host, Bill Yost, we'll help you simplify the science of work and build amazing workplace cultures.

Al ElliottWe'll be right back after a quick word from our sponsors. And you're also gonna learn why Bill is the coolest man in the world, in case you don't know who he is. 35,000 people on LinkedIn know who he is. You might not, so we'll tell you in a second. See you in a second. Does your experience with AI sound a little like this? You prompt for 20 minutes, the output is polished, is confident, and is completely flipping useless. Well, that's what happens when AI doesn't know anything about your business.

Leanne ElliottMm-hmm. But you know what does know something about your business?

Al ElliottHubSpot?

Leanne ElliottHubSpot's AI. It works with your actual customer data, every interaction, every signal your team has generated over time. So instead of prompting and hoping, you ask once, And ship it.

Al ElliottCheck out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. Welcome back. Welcome back. I'm glad you rejoined us after that chaotic intro. I am so sorry for everything I said and done. Um, Bill.

Leanne ElliottWelcome, Bill.

Al ElliottHey, Bill Yost. For those people on the earth who don't know who you are, there's very few of them. Tell us who you are. Why are you famous? Why does everyone love you?

C — REVIEWWell, I am a data analyst by trade. I work in HR data analytics for Netflix currently. I started my career at Google, was working there for a very long time, and about a year ago, about a year and a half ago now, I just decided to start posting on LinkedIn in my voice in the way that I would want to read the posts. So using humor and just satire and jokes to try to make LinkedIn a little more compelling because I had this notion that there was this underbelly of data analysts, at least, who felt very underserved and frankly bored by the platform. And so I just started to kind of poke at that notion and it turned out it was kind of right. I mean, it was just very, very quick growth on the LinkedIn profile. I'm called things like a creator and an influencer now, which is a fucking weird thing, to be totally honest with you. Like, not— I did not have that on my dance card even 2 years ago. But it's opened up a lot of really cool opportunities, such as doing this podcast. You know, I love this show and I'm so glad to be on here again. So I really appreciate you guys having me.

Al ElliottAnd also you've got your own gig, Dashboard Confessions, that you do with Morgan.

C — REVIEWYes. So I do a LinkedIn Live show with my former teammate Morgan Deppensbush. It's called Dashboard Confessionals, which is a delightful pun on the band name because we're actually talking about dashboards and other analytics type of stuff. We do About once every 2 months or so, or maybe once a month at best. We're actually about to film our 10th episode live at People Analytics World in San Francisco with our former VP of People Analytics at Google, Prasad Setty. So it's like a big capstone moment for my career, you know, in addition to being on Truth, Lies and Work, being able to interview our former boss live at like the biggest people analytics convention that exists. So that's been a really cool opportunity. I also run A cookie company with my mom, Sharon. It's called Cookies Worth Sharon. And if you're in the US, we would be happy to sell you some cookies and she'll ship 'em right away. You can find us at cookiesworthsharon.com.

Leanne ElliottI think I'd started to kind of dip in my toes into the, the weird LinkedIn world that was kind of a thing like 12 months ago. And you very quickly came up as somebody who was always tagged. And what I love so much is you do post a lot of satire and the number of people that take it seriously who just don't get the joke. And you're still kind of bantering in the comments going like, Dude, come on. Do you get it now? Do you get it now? And it's just so funny. It's so our humor. I think for anybody who just thinks like LinkedIn, ick, ooh, no, not me, go and find Bill Yost because it just changes everything about your feed. It's just brilliant.

C — REVIEWYou're far too kind. And I'm so glad that at least some people appreciate the satire. It's how I kind of frame the world. I always look at things through the lens of humor and to try to make sense and understand things. And sometimes LinkedIn content, work news, corporate stuff. It's so ripe for satire and there's no real downside to posting it other than the people who show up in the comments and get really mad because they aren't catching in on the joke. This is a 50/50 coin flip though. Like sometimes I'll come in and they'll respond a little bit and they'll be like, oh yeah, okay, I get it. This is satire. We're cool now. And they're in on the joke or they get really, really mad and potentially block me. There's just, there's no gray area in between. It's like we're going to be buddies or you're going to become my mortal enemy because of the satire. But this is a trade off that I'm going to take because I quite enjoy writing it. It's also therapeutic for me.

Al ElliottI love this. So what am I thinking, that when you did a fireside children's book, you hit like some crazy numbers?

C — REVIEWYeah, it was a good video by LinkedIn standards for sure. I had a new colleague actually join who had known me for my LinkedIn content. And, you know, she's Gen Z, Gen Zed, as you all say. And she said, hey, you should put that on TikTok. And I was like, I'm a little I don't know. I feel like just TikTok's not really my place. Maybe I'm a little on the old side for it. I don't know. And she's like, no, just post it. I bet it'll do well. And I posted it and nothing happened for like a week. And I kind of forgot that I posted it. But then on a random Monday, I start getting texts from people I haven't heard from in years that are like, dude, you're on my FYP, which I learned was For You page that day. I'm not even kidding. That's how like far removed from TikTok I am. And I looked at the app and it had over a million views or something. It just popped. I don't know what happened, but it was all over the place. And so then I posted the follow-up video to it, and that subsequently popped. And so I do still owe a 3rd fireside chat video recording. I've written it, I posted it. I just haven't had the opportunity to like sit down and record it. So maybe this is the impetus I need to finally finish the trilogy of these fireside chats.

Leanne ElliottIt's what everybody wants, Bill. It's what we all want.

Al ElliottBill, wonderful to have you here. Lovely. Also, I'm looking forward— I believe you told me when you were doing the fireside chat, you were in a big thick jumper and sweating your Verbials off. So probably not one to do in summer, I don't think. Maybe wait until the winter months or the fall.

C — REVIEWThat's good advice. I will take that under advisement. I think it was the fireplace actually being turned on, which I needed to do for effect, and then sit right next to it so it all frames up properly. I was just definitely getting toasty on my back, and I need to do these things in one take because takes 2 and 3 and 4 are me just wiping my brow because it's happening for real. But I need the sweater for the Mr. Rogers aesthetic. I don't know if that resonates with your audience, but he's a big deal here in the US.

Al ElliottYes, we, we, we've heard of him. And yes, we understand the sweater. And by the way, Sora, that's what you need to, to put an AI fire in the background. Anyway, it is time for our world fa— no, it's not. I've got the wrong bit there.

Leanne ElliottIt's time for News Roundup.

Al ElliottNews Roundup. This is where— do people know what they are? Lee?

Leanne ElliottIt's not, it's not me today, love.

Al ElliottIt's you. It's me. How well is this going on a scale of 1 to 10? I look forward to your emails. Okay, so something I saw recently was all about Meta. Now, we kind of like shitting a little bit on Meta because they moved, recently moved everything over to AI. They were like, no, everything's AI, everything's AI. But now they're asking some employees in their applied AI division to become managers again. These are people who previously were managers, then moved into IC, which I think is individual contributor.

Leanne ElliottYeah, I believe so.

Al ElliottRole when the division was created. And but apparently the move is opt-in now. Knowing Zuck, opt-in means, yeah, you can do it or you don't have to do it, but you look for another job.

Leanne ElliottWe'll see. Total coincidence, you're gonna get laid off next week.

C — REVIEWYeah.

Leanne ElliottWhat?

Al ElliottNo. So just the history of the Applied AI division. Meta launched it this year, reassigned roughly 7,000 employees into the group. But this looks like, and this is what makes it quite interesting, it looks like it's a partial reversal of their recent management philosophy. So regular listeners will know for much of the past year, the company's been cutting middle management and pushing for smaller, flatter teams. Zuck, Mark Zuckerberg, has publicly praised lean startup organizations. I'm reading from here, particularly in the context of AI doing the more work. So Meta has really taken this on board. They've been aggressively cutting costs. They eliminated around 10% of their workforce this year through layoffs, supposedly to make the company more efficient and help offset its huge investment in AI, which apparently one of his AI things is actually working. We'll talk about that in a second. Now, managers were hit particularly hard by those cuts. Business Insider's analysis of public layoff notices found the layoffs disproportionately Guys, there's a little more to this article, but let's stop here. Where do we want to start with this? You're part of FAANG, aren't you, in Netflix? So are you all like Facebook buddies? Are you not allowed to say anything bad about Facebook or Meta?

C — REVIEWI'm here on this podcast on my personal capacity as a LinkedIn influencer, and I'm certainly not speaking for any current or former employers. So I do have a couple of thoughts on this in a capacity of someone who's worked in tech for a while, but also knows a little bit of the context here or background. So my mind immediately goes to, at one point in history, Google said, what if we just didn't need any managers at all and just went completely flat? And they tried that and it failed for many, many reasons, um, that ended up being outlined in research called Project Oxygen, which was led by Prasad Setty, the guy that I mentioned I'm very excited to be interviewing. And so Project Oxygen effectively justified the existence of managers in a corporate ecosystem. Like, you need them. You need at least some level of management, right? And so this then gives us 2 polar ends. There's the no managers end of things, which we know is like not great. And then there's the whole lots of managers, very small teams, kind of maybe you're 50/50 IC to manager sort of organizational structure. And the truth has to lie somewhere within the middle, right? I think we can discern why one Or the other on those polar extremes wouldn't work very well. So you do see this, this tug and pull across all of industry, tech companies, FAANG, sure. And you've seen it kind of happening even before the advent of AI, right? They're always trying to fool with this as a cost maneuvering lever that they can try to control. And there is some sort of unknown, but they're of course going to try to get their arms around it. It productivity tangible here, tangible outcome in that there, if assuming there is some optimal ratio of managers to employees where you hit maximum productivity, of course you want to be at that exact org shape and size. But the problem is that looks different across job profiles and industries and levels of experience and basically any dimension you can think of that's going to vary. Like there is no, 7 managers— or sorry, 7 employees to 1 manager silver bullet solution that works here. But this part is particularly interesting because I was following the Meta layoffs closely and they were hitting managers really hard. And when they were doing that, I thought to myself, I wonder how long this takes to swing back in the other direction, because it has to swing back in the other direction. It always will. And so my take is this is Kind of status quo for companies with a tinge of AI and I told you so sprinkled on top of it, which does make it a really interesting story. But this is— this type of organizational maneuvering will be happening 50 years from now, even when AI is well and settled and done and clear. I'm confident of it. Or we've all been replaced by the robots. I don't know. One of the two.

Al ElliottWell, I was going to say, I was going to say, That if you've got to butcher the older adage, if you've got an LLM, everything looks like an agent. Is this that where, like, the tech companies, because they're on the cutting edge and they understand what agents can do, they're the first ones to go, oh, we don't need people, we can just replace them with agents?

C — REVIEWI mean, possibly. I think there is, of course, an underlying incentive to reduce costs by moving towards agentic stuff vis-à-vis I don't need a human, I need an agent. That said, I think the reality of what this costs is setting in. I see this across industry, talking to a lot of my peers at other tech companies. Like, we're definitely in the, hey, let's take a hard look at how much money we're spending on tokens era of things right now. About a year ago, it was spend as much money as possible. It doesn't matter. Figure out what this technology can do for us and make us more productive. And there are, of course, lanes in which it has made us more productive.

Leanne ElliottYeah.

C — REVIEWIt's not all of the lanes, and it's not all of the things. And in some instances, it's actually way more expensive to do some of these tasks with an LLM than it is to just go do it as a human. And so these tokens are not getting cheaper over time. I mean, maybe they're getting cheaper over time. I'm not totally sure as they build more data centers and use more water and stuff. But there's still a cost over time that is becoming larger and larger on the balance sheet. And this is something that. I think they're going to start looking at heavily in that equation of, well, do we need an agent or a person? It's going to be, well, that agent might actually be more expensive than the person when it's all said and done, if we look at what they actually need to do.

Al ElliottLeigh, thoughts?

Leanne ElliottI remember when last summer we were on, as in summer '25, you and I were on a podcast called The Nerd Journey.

Al ElliottOh yes.

Leanne ElliottAnd they were asking us about AI and manager layoffs and what we thought, and we said exactly the same, that it's going to swing back because it just has to. The thing that frustrates me is it's a, like you were saying, but it's a really easy thing to cut because it's an expensive item on the balance sheet in terms of salary, isn't it, having a manager? Add on to that that managers are completely overstacked in terms of what they have to do as an individual and then manage people on top of that. There's not enough time carved out into the majority of middle managers' roles to actually manage people effectively, and then you add on, and the majority of managers aren't trained, then it's almost impossible for them to have a really great impact on performance and productivity without having either great mentors around them or just time in the role to, to kind of learn on your feet. So, we kind of set them up to fail. So, when—

Al ElliottYeah.

Leanne ElliottYou're looking at an organisation that's got an expensive person on salary, they're not performing particularly well, and the team is all burning out. It's easy to blame the manager, but removing a bad manager isn't the same as like having no manager. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's not, it's baby with the bathwater type thing. So, I think my frustration is in terms of Meta, fine, we're now acknowledging that we do need management roles within the team alongside AI and individual contributors, but are you gonna train 'em? Yeah. And are you going to train them properly in the human skills that are going to be needed even more now that they're also managing with AI? Things like critical thinking, things like empathy, things like human judgment. If they'd announced that alongside this, I would be applauding Mark Zuckerberg. And overall, I think he's a bit of a twat, but I would be applauding him. So, it's kind of like, yeah, we all saw it coming. And do you know what? It'll all happen again because they probably won't train them. It'll probably all go horrible again. And so the circle of life continues until the robots take over.

Al ElliottOkay. Yes. Well said, Leanne. Well said. It's like if we flip back 26 years when you, when you had a company and you put .com on the end of your name, you suddenly were worth 100 times more. Now then, like 5 years ago, it was like powered by AI and now you're worth 100 times more. And now it's almost like all our managers are AI. It's like these are just fads. They go back. The inflatable slides at the office, they're going to go. Anyway, Bill, that was a very odd link into your article. Bill, what have you seen this week?

C — REVIEWSo I want to give you both a choice here because I got a sad one and I got a funny one, or we can do both really, really quickly.

Leanne ElliottI mean, I'd always pick funny, but equally, if sad is, you know, an important message to the world, then—

Al ElliottYeah, I mean, I can try and find some sad music to put on the back of this if you want.

C — REVIEWAll right, let's do this sad one real quick, and then we'll spend a little bit more time on the funny one because I I have thoughts on both of them. So—

Al ElliottLove it.

C — REVIEWSo oftentimes I'll make the cheeky observation at work, capitalism comes for us all. When, you know, cost cutting starts to happen or when there's layoffs or just like bad news in the job marketplace or whatever, kind of just, you know, this is capitalism rolling along. And there are some, there are certain employee perceptions that I think are very important to follow as we kind of measure where the public consensus is on these, on these different topics, particularly these kind of like rough edge, how should we operate in a business context? Like RTO would be an example of this, right? And so this article that I have is called The Great Compliance: Workers Back Down as Employers Regain Power in 2026. It's from this website called My Perfect Resume. I did not vet the methodology here, but let's just take it at face value for purposes of the discussion. The key findings here say only 7% of employees say they would quit outright over a mandatory RTO policy, compared to 51% who said the same thing in January 2025. Huge, right? This is something that people are sitting on and they're like, no, I will— you can't make me go back to the office. I'll move. I'll shuffle. 51% down to 7% year over year. I think there's a number of reasons why that might manifest. Tough job market might be one of them if I was going to paint with a broad brush, but just this precipitous drop that I thought was fascinating. 74% of workers predict that they will have the same or less bargaining power to demand flexibility in 2026 as they did in 2025. Again, kind of dire. 46% expect companies to become stricter about requiring onsite attendance. So the one hallmark of the COVID era that you saw every company doing was this like remote first, everybody can work from home kind of approach. And we're seeing The big windback of that. This is again a pendulum swing, right? This is the same thing as the managers. Look at number of managers question is, you know, you can go all remote, you can go all in office. The answer is somewhere in between. And companies are trying to find the one that skews more towards like, we want you to be as productive as possible. I don't think we're necessarily building for employee experience or engagement anymore. We're building for productivity. And that's the key decision factor in these return to office policies. At least in my view. Uh, and then the last one, the one that makes me sad. 73% expect employers to expand their use of surveillance tools to enforce accountability.

Al ElliottOh.

C — REVIEWYes. As someone who values a lot of autonomy at work and has always been, you know, getting my work done for the decade-plus that I've been in the workforce, I don't like the idea of someone just watching me to make sure I'm doing what I've been doing for years. And I think if you need to employ surveillance technology at work, that's an indictment of your hiring process. Who are you hiring that you need to surveil? Are you really hiring the best people then? I think you just, that if you are at that late stage, I think you need to back up and take a look at kind of the top of funnel here. So, that's my sad one. What are you guys' thoughts?

Leanne ElliottThat is sad, but so not surprising, which makes me even sadder. Yeah, I think you're right. I think a lot of it is this tough job market, isn't it? And this kind of swing back from from kind of that, that near post-COVID time. What frustrates me as a psychologist is that a really great employee experience is correlated pretty strongly to things like engagement and performance. So, it's kind of like by not investing in that, you're almost making it harder. And then, when it's harder to get that productivity and that engagement and that excitement about the work, you want to tighten control. So, then you bring people back in and you start surveilling them. And do you know what's weird? And I'd be interested to see if there's any studies on this. I'm thinking about way back to the Hawthorne studies in the '20s, 1920s. Kids, not this decade, honestly. In the 1920s. And it basically found that changing something in the work environment boosted productivity, even if the change wasn't positive, because our need for attention is so great that it can result in a quick boost in productivity. So, my concern would be organisations implementing this surveillance, we could hypothesise that there would be a little bump in productivity and performance, but I don't see that being sustainable in any way because it comes down to fundamentally, we want to be trusted, we want to be valued, we want autonomy, we want flexibility. So, I think ultimately, it'll always swing back again. And when it does, we thought the Great Resignation was bad.

C — REVIEWYeah.

Leanne ElliottIt's going to be a It's gonna be carnage.

C — REVIEWI believe that. What do you think, Al?

Al ElliottI mean, you two are the experts in this. Um, both got decade-plus experience in this. Uh, whatever you say, I totally agree with. I just think, um, from, from the slightly cheeky entrepreneurial point of view, I'm like, if I was, if I was being surveilled, surveyed, surveilled, surveilled, was that, is that the right?

Leanne ElliottIf it isn't, it should be.

Al ElliottAm I conjugating the verb correctly?

C — REVIEWI believe it's surveilled. Yes.

Al ElliottIf I was being surveilled, then I'd be like, cool challenge, right? Let's see if I can find a way to get around this.

Leanne ElliottLike the— Like the Mouse Jigglers.

Al ElliottWell, I mean, Mouse Jigglers is like sort of like to take this, that's like Ford's first car. I'd be like, no, no, no. Let's see, let's see what we can do here. So I'd see that as a bit of a challenge. But then also at the same time, I've been fired more times than I've actually, yeah, I've been fired every time, I think. So I probably, kids, don't do what I did. Don't do what I did. No, this is my— so honestly, I don't, I've got nothing important or essential or anything to add to this.

Leanne ElliottI think you two have The last thing I'd say is, well, again, what really frustrates me is that these organizations, these leaders who are kind of enforcing this on employees to the point where they're now feeling powerless, do you think that energy's not gonna go somewhere else? That they're not gonna be investing in, in the work? Like, they'll show up and they'll do it and they'll do it just fine. But that's why we're seeing all these side hustles popping up. And, and, you know, it's, it's, ah, you know, you can't hold talent back.

C — REVIEWYeah.

Leanne ElliottThey'll find a way, whether it be with you, on their own, or with someone else.

Al ElliottOh, what a line.

C — REVIEWSo true.

Leanne ElliottI really like that one.

C — REVIEWIs that the subtitle of the episode?

Al ElliottOh, shoot me.

Leanne ElliottWhat was it?

Al ElliottYou can't hold talent back. They'll always find a way. Was that right?

Leanne ElliottOkay, sure.

C — REVIEWYeah. Put it on the t-shirt.

Leanne ElliottThat's totally not the first time I've ever said that out loud.

C — REVIEWI say that all the time. Okay, so in lighter news, I'm sure you all are aware of this new big trend of AI interviewers where you're going to talk to an actual AI avatar and engage with that as if you would in a normal human-to-human interaction. And I know it's, I know it's easy to kind of take a stand on this, but I'm learning personally it's kind of a more nuanced take. Like Bonnie Dilber is a good voice to follow in the recruiting space on LinkedIn. She posted about how really like this enables them to process a whole lot more resumes than they would otherwise, get people through that first round where they do talk to a human, where otherwise they would just be resume screening away because of sheer numbers, right? And so in that case, maybe it would make sense to try to do these if you're trying to float as many candidates as possible through, through the pipeline. But what I've been particularly enjoying is these like TikTok trends of people who are recording themselves messing with these interviewers, just saying ridiculous things. And so the one that just jumped out to me when I was looking at stuff this morning is from, uh, Artverse. Artiverse. I'm not totally sure. Artiverse, what this website is. But this article, the story is one candidate sends an AI recruiter into confusion. Graham Zip, a satirical influencer, launched a faux hallucinated spiel during a job preview with Dana Whitfield, an AI avatar. Instead of offering clear qualifications, Graham introduced a fictional identity and a stream of disconnected phrases that pushed the virtual recruiter outside its comfort zone. I'm Chick Habersplat, or Chick Bongo for short, and Q3 pipeline, Salesforce. Kayak Margin, Graham said. The AI bot answered, it's a pleasure to meet you, Chick Bongo, accepting the invented name without questioning the sudden shift in the conversation. Graham continued with another strange credential: 6 years of Sprucewood, actually 7 if you count Richard. Dana Whitfield translated the statement into a conventional employment history, replying, it sounds like you built up a significant tenure over the last 7 years, including your time with Richard at Sprucewood. This goes on and on and on. I could read this for days. I've gone down the TikTok rabbit hole of watching people filming themselves doing this, and I think this is just such a delightfully unexpected outcome of all of this. Again, 2 years ago, if you would've said people are gonna be trolling AI interviewers and posting it to TikTok, I would've said, what in the world are you talking about? But now this is a very real thing, and you can find this on TikTok, on the internet, and it Some genuinely funny content out there. And of course, as you guys might surmise, this is right up my alley. You know, this is perfectly my lane.

Leanne ElliottI love this so much. I'm gonna get on TikTok the minute we finish. I, I did what, again, isn't another example of just human creativity and humor and, and just all the beautiful things that make us human just coming even more to the forefront. And I also, it also reminds me of, did you ever hear, Bill, of that there is some kind of European like band, and I wanna say it was in like the '80s, that recorded a song that was complete gibberish, but to Central and Eastern Europeans, it sounded like English.

Al ElliottNo.

Leanne ElliottYouTube it. YouTube it. So, he's there and it's a whole like music video and it's like, it's one of those where it's like, it kind of makes sense, but it makes no sense at all. And I imagine that's how the AI's feeling. Like, it kind of makes sense, but I don't get it.

C — REVIEWAnd I will say we're in a very, Like, the AI interview, they'll do better, right? If you all remember the rocks on pizza era of AI, that was funny. AI is no longer telling us to put rocks on pizza. So like, they will close these doors eventually. So I think it's important to recognize when we're in this moment where you can exploit this thing before they close the door and you can exploit it for good, which is making everybody laugh. And I think in a world that has a really tough job market and prospects and economy and, you know, name it, A little laughter is definitely a good thing, especially in this specific lane.

Al ElliottTotally agree. We're in the, we're in the Will Smith eating spaghetti version 0.1 of AI recruitment. And yeah, in a few short months that it'll be perfect as if, as if the man's eating it himself. Right. Talking of spaghetti and breaks and hoops, we're going to take a short break here. What I try and do here, you see, is make the worst link into the, into the break I possibly can with no relevance whatsoever. We're back with Truth or Lie. You know what it is. If you don't know what it is, you'll find out in a few seconds. See you in a second.

Leanne ElliottWelcome to the break.

Al ElliottYes, my favourite part of the show. These, these 2 idiots have stopped talking.

Leanne ElliottYes, I want to tell you about my new favourite podcast. No, that's a lie. It's my old favourite podcast.

Al ElliottI've been on this for a while. Didn't know where that was going. Didn't know where that was going.

Leanne ElliottIt is called I Digress. It is hosted by Troy Sandage, and it is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.

Al ElliottYes, it's got shows that are under 30 minutes. And I Digress helps eliminate complexity, complications, and confusion in your business with frameworks and strategies that achieve scalable and sustainable success. At least that's what it says here.

Leanne ElliottAnd if you do want to hear a really personal story, go to episode 136. This is Troy's honest account of fatherhood, killing hustle culture, and what really matters when you stop performing and start living with intention.

Al ElliottListen to I Digress wherever you get your podcasts.

Leanne ElliottThat concludes this episode of Truth, Lies and Work.

Al ElliottLet's return to the scheduled programming.

Leanne ElliottBack to the studio.

Al ElliottWelcome back. Welcome back. This is our Truth or Lies segment. It's the time of the week we take a popular workplace idea and ask if the research actually backs it up. Leanne's doing it this week. She's been— she doesn't—

Leanne ElliottI've had a couple of weeks off.

Al ElliottYou have. We had—

Leanne ElliottIn a dream.

Al ElliottWe had Danny in last week and we got someone else in, in a couple of weeks' time. So stay tuned for that. Uh, this week we're testing the claim that purpose makes people work harder. So this is the basic idea. If you give someone a reason beyond the paycheck, they'll go further, try harder, put in more. They're just gonna be a dream employee. Start off with Leanne, then we'll go to Bill. Leanne, is that true? Is this, have we got any science behind this?

Leanne ElliottThere's a load of science behind this, and I think it's something we've all heard of, isn't, haven't we? That, that kind of purpose is is the key to productivity. But I do need to kind of talk about what it is that psychologists are testing here, because we use slightly different words for things. We do look at purpose, but in this context, what we're really looking at is a sense that your work matters, that your work is meaningful. And we study that a lot as psychologists, like decades of research looking at looking at this. And also in terms of work harder, what does that mean? That's a bit vague for psychologists. What do you mean work harder? Well, yes, we could talk about things like productivity and performance, and we do, but I think the key thing here is what we call organizational citizenship behaviors. You can always rely on psychologists to be snappy, can't you? OCBs, as they're abbreviated, that's a technical term for basically going the extra mile, helping a colleague who's drowning a little bit, Maybe volunteering for something outside of your job description, or putting in effort that nobody's tracking. Nobody even knows that you're doing it, but you're going the extra mile. If we talk about working harder like that, then it's measurable, and we do have lots of data. So, in terms— you're with me so far?

Al ElliottYes, with you, Leanne.

Leanne ElliottOkay, cool. So, in terms of the argument for that purpose is good for performance and all the good stuff, I wanna start with a large study by a psychologist called Allen and many of his other colleagues. They pulled together together 44 pieces of research that covered a sample of more than 23,000 people. Al, what is that called?

Al ElliottMeta-analysis, is that right?

Leanne ElliottBeautiful. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. They found that when somebody experiences their work as meaningful, which is basically purpose in action, 3 things happened. First, they were more satisfied with their job. Second, they were more engaged day to day. And third, they felt more committed to the organisation. Those 3 things are what psychologists would deem attitudes, so the how somebody feels. So, the next question needs to be, do those feelings then start to impact how people behave? And the answer is basically yes. So, meaningful work was also linked to these organisational citizenship behaviours, so going the extra mile, helping colleagues, putting in all the effort. So, they did find that there was this kind of chain reaction of events. So, meaningful work Created these positive attitudes, these positive attitudes influenced behaviour. Yeah?

C — REVIEWYes.

Leanne ElliottCool. So, then we have some other researchers who basically found the same, but they looked specifically into what the outcome of these extra, um, mild behaviours were. So, these OCBs, they found that teams were more productive, they made fewer errors, they needed less management intervention, and were in the end more profitable. So, there's this direct line from how a person experiences meaningful work right through to actual hard business performance outcomes. Nice, isn't it?

Al ElliottNice.

Leanne ElliottGood stuff.

Al ElliottYes.

Leanne ElliottIt doesn't sound as fluffy now anymore, does it?

Al ElliottMeaningful work.

Leanne ElliottNo, it doesn't.

Al ElliottI know.

Leanne ElliottI know. So, but psychologists, we panic. We start to doubt ourselves when we see correlations or things related really, really strongly because it's not always that. common to see strong correlations between things in behavioural science. So, we start to panic that we're actually measuring the same thing. So, for example, can we be sure that meaningful work and something like work engagement are 2 different things, or are they the same thing? And which one comes first? So, are we engaged in our work and therefore finding it meaningful, or do we see the work as meaningful and then engage more? Chicken and egg, and psychologists obsess about chicken and eggs. They do, they do. So they went to answer this question, and what they did, after some very, very clever statistics I simply do not understand, they found that meaningful work does in fact come first. So there is this chain reaction. Meaningful work influences positive attitudes, then work engagement and satisfaction, and then all the, the lovely behaviors, and then the performance outcomes.

Al ElliottSo it does look as well that this meaningful work can be instigated So that's the case for, and I think I'm sold on that so far. Bill, have you— do you think there's going to be a decent case against?

C — REVIEWI think you could probably make a decent case against. I will say to all of the research that Leanne was outlining there, I always say my very favorite type of research is the kind that just affirms every single bias under the sun. I know psychologists don't like that, but I like when my biases are confirmed because nothing that Leanne said there was like, oh, that's not true. Wow, that's surprising, right? Because if I'm going to take the counterfactual to what she was saying there, the counterpoint to what she's saying, who is going to like want to wake up every morning and be like, I hate my job, I hate my company, I don't find the work meaningful, and then go and be a rock star performer in the office? It just seems really unlikely to me. So intuitively, yeah, I'm probably for this argument, and the research does sound compelling, but You know, I'm still open to hear the against, certainly.

Al ElliottOkay, Leanne, let's have a go and then we'll make our decision on whether it's right or not in the end.

Leanne ElliottYeah. All right then. The problem is that sometimes you can have too much of a good thing. So, there was a review, which is similar to a meta-analysis, in 2023. They pulled together 20 years of organisational research and they found a consistent pattern in what they called the dark side of meaningful work. So, jobs that score highest on meaning, so things they looked at were animal shelter workers, firefighters, healthcare staff, teachers, also show some of the highest rates of burnout and compassion fatigue. And their explanation was that when someone is deeply committed to the work, organisations can use that commitment to justify bad pay, excessive demands, poor conditions, because the worker's own sense of purpose is going to drive them in these, these OCBs that we talked about, still keep going the extra mile. There was then a 2020 study using a large Australian survey that basically backed this up. So, workers with secure, meaningful jobs had the best outcomes. They were calm, they were happy, low stress. But workers with meaningful and insecure jobs that were sold on purpose, particularly in things like gig or temporary work, reported high stress and frequently had to hide from their employer and their colleagues just how hard they were finding this. And that mask really had an impact again on their wellbeing. So yeah, this kind of insecurity was bigger than the kind of purpose was able to buffer. There was another paper in 2017 that gave this a name. They called it existential labour. Um, and it's what happens when organizations actively manage meaning and push values and mission on staff to boost motivation. Um, and employees respond by, um, not kind of feeling this work is meaningful because the conditions within the organization aren't facilitating or are at odds or this dissonance or the behaviors aren't backing up the mission that that is being pushed. Um, and they basically then saw this as fake, and it resulted in disengagement, cynicism, which is a key symptom of burnout and a breakdown in trust. We also see this as well in trauma-exposed professions. Um, so slight trigger warning, I'm going to talk about, um, sensitive topic here. So if you're not in the mood, skip forward 60 seconds. Um, a 2019 study of 151 child-abused pediatric clinicians found meaning in their work was actually linked to, um, to lower burnout and genuinely protective. But then there was a separate study, um, of organ and tissue recovery professionals whose work is about as purpose-driven as it gets, really. You're literally saving multiple lives. Um, they found that actually repeated exposure to death and trauma, um, eroded their sense of identity, safety, trust, and regardless of how meaningful they found the work, it didn't stop them from experiencing problems with burnout and wellbeing. So yeah, there is other studies that look at kind of the ethics behind this and whether purpose can be used to justify harm in certain professions and organisations. And worth being honest as well about the studies backing the for case, I must point out they were almost entirely self-report.

Al ElliottHmm.

Leanne Elliottsurveys taken at one point in time, and they were nearly all samples from Western societies.

C — REVIEWThis made me reflect on the times in my career where I've experienced burnout. It's non-zero, probably less than 20. Don't know how many times I could actually put a pin on it. I think, as saddened as I am to say, I think about half of those were self-inflicted in that I found the work so meaningful, and I was in this learning sponge mode where I would be making dashboards on Saturday night. Nobody was asking me to. I was just like, thought it was important work, was super interested in developing my own skill set, and I kind of just like found it fascinating to work on. And that was good for developing myself from a technical skill set capacity, but I definitely burned myself out unnecessarily because I found the work so both externally and internally meaningful. And so that part, I felt like you were speaking right to my soul there where you were explaining that, because I felt this, and this does seem to me like It still seems if it's a net good, but there's some things you should watch out for.

Leanne ElliottNo, exactly. You've nailed it. Purpose does make people work harder. That is true, but it does come with a warning. So, while there is genuine evidence that shows that purpose does increase effort and performance, and over years of data and different professions, like I kind of said, you can have too much of a good thing, which I think is your example, Bill, just perfectly Perfectly demonstrated. Purpose and meaning is not going to ever replace things like job security, fair play, fair pay, fair treatment. It's not going to help you manage your work-life balance. It's not going to help you set firm boundaries. It's going to do the opposite of that. And if you are in roles that have high emotional labor or exposure to trauma, then this is also really on the organizations to put in the things that are going to support people long-term. So, Real systems, policies, support. Yeah, you can't just have a sense of purpose and hope it'll prevent burnout. What we do know is that too much meaning does typically result in burnout.

Al ElliottExcellent. Well, I was about to say excellent. That's not excellent news, but I think this is really, really interesting and something which all of us share this. We've all been in parts of our lives where we've just gone a little bit too far down a rabbit hole of something we think we care very, very, very strongly about. And I think I almost feel like you have to, as a rite of passage, you have to ideally earlier in your year when you're a bit more resilient and you can bounce back quicker, you have to care too much about something and go, whoa, hold on. I should probably learn where to stop and not do dashboards on a Saturday night rather than going out and doing, well, I was going to say doing more fun things, but at the time that was probably the funnest thing you could think of, Bill, wasn't it?

C — REVIEWI really liked that Tableau license at the time. Just those consulting days were a vibe. And then Google as well, just when I had interesting problems to solve. Sometimes those Saturday nights are when you really get the quiet time. The pings aren't going off, no emails are coming through, and you just need to like dedicated focus on something. That said, I have 2 kids now. That's no longer an option. My workday is pretty much constrained to the work hours.

Al ElliottVery good. Brilliant. Thank you, my love. So that was my lovely Leanne, not necessarily my love Bill. Although if you want that, if you want that, that touched my heart.

C — REVIEWI'm warmed. Thank you, Al.

Al ElliottThank you. Oh, you're welcome, my love. Okay, so if you've got your own truth or lie, either something you want Leanne to cover, or perhaps you want to come and do it yourself, have a check out the show notes. There is ways to get in touch. We're always open to people, and we've had a couple of people come in, and we've got some more people in the pipeline. So it is time for— I'm just reflecting back on my link towards the break, and I'm a little bit disappointed because as you were talking about purpose, I was thinking I should have said spaghetti. Talking spaghetti, Pastel o' huevo, and then gone with that. And, and I would have been so proud of that.

Leanne ElliottOh, wow.

Al ElliottBut I've already just thought of it now.

Leanne ElliottI mean, that would have been a beautiful, beautiful moment, but I'm glad you shared it with us so we can still appreciate it.

Al ElliottI wanted it on tape. I wanted people to understand that I do have a sense of humor. It's just, it's—

Leanne ElliottIt's not very good.

Al ElliottIt's not very good, and it's slightly delayed. Okay, on to my favorite time of the week. It's the time for the world-famous weekly wrap-up segment where I put your questions to Leanne. But today I'm not putting questions to Leanne, I'm putting Mr. Bill Yost. 35,000 people on LinkedIn think he's awesome. Well, 35,000 people on LinkedIn follow him. There's probably 135,000 people who think he's awesome.

Leanne ElliottThose lurkers.

Al ElliottThose lurkers. Yeah, bad for them. Um, just the best guy in the world. And also big shout out to his mum Sharon. Uh, Cookiesworth Sharon, I think, is the domain. If you are in the US, you're gonna go and buy your cookies from there.

Leanne ElliottWe'll leave a link in the show notes.

Al ElliottWe will. Bill, are you ready for question number 1?

C — REVIEWYes, I am. Let's do it.

Al ElliottSo this one's titled, Can I Actually Be Honest in Our Engagement Survey? The king of engagement surveys is in the room. We've— this— we could not have picked a better question. In fact, we definitely did pick it because Bill wasn't coming. So my— this person writes, my company runs an employee engagement survey asking about culture, managers, job satisfaction, and even whether we're thinking of leaving. They say it's anonymous, but I'm never quite sure how anonymous these things really are. Is anyone actually looking at individual responses behind the scenes? I also wonder whether being too honest can come back to bite you. If I'm critical, could that affect how I'm seen for my promotions or pay rises? And if I'm just really positive, does that make me look like someone they don't need to worry about? Bill, I suppose the question we've got here is what actually happens to engagement surveys once we hit submit, submit? Are they truly anonymous?

C — REVIEWI love this question. It's, I know it's been on the mind of every single employee who's ever filled out an engagement survey. Uh, the very first thing that I should say before I get into the longer response is no, simply it's not an anonymous survey. You are putting your information into a survey platform or a Google Form or however they're capturing that information. At the very least, your device IP is there. But if it's a well-run survey, they're also intentionally collecting a lot of information, or rather tying your responses into your Workday or your HR information system set of records so that they can do more analysis on the results themselves. Because if you think about a survey, it's not just the company level, it's every manager can get a report and we're going to do reports for the countries and we're going to do reports for the functions and we need to cut it up, down, left, right and center. This means at the end of the day, we need to know who said what on the survey. So when we launch these surveys, it's always under the, the verbiage of confidential. That's the important distinction here, anonymous versus confidential. I talked to Al about this on our last show. You can go back to whatever number that was if you want to hear about this in detail. But for the purposes of this conversation, just know that yes, your answers can, at the end of the day, be tied back to you. But, huge but here, remember what we're doing when we're collecting an employee engagement survey. We're asking employees to give their honest and truthful feedback at scale Frequently and optionally. Optionally is the key term here, right? You can say, nope, I'm not doing it. There's no penalty for not doing so, or at least there shouldn't be if it's a good, if it's a good program. No one should ever, ever, ever feel pressured to fill out employee engagement survey. That said, I do know this will happen in pockets. There are, there are people who will try to game response rates and make a competition. And if their team is at 88% and another team's at 90%, they might start saying, hey, everybody take the survey and things could get Yeah. Putting that aside, let's just say in general, that shouldn't happen. So the ultimate, like, worst thing that could happen to an employee engagement survey is everyone stops answering it. And we know this to be the case, both at Google and at Netflix. I've launched— I'm over a dozen employee engagement surveys at this point, and we know that we need to treat that data with the utmost respect and expose just the bare minimum amount that we need for productive analysis and reporting for the business. Which means in principle, there are a very few number of people who can actually reach in and identify responses to an individual person. At Google, I was one of three people who could do that for a long time, and it was me and two other people just like me. I'll be totally honest: we have no interest in what you're saying on the survey. We're just trying to get that freaking thing to the leadership and out the door because it's a big program at the end of the day. And when you've seen the volume of feedback that we've seen, there are no. Like surprises in there, right? And we take great care so that managers, leadership, anybody that's not that core survey team cannot trivially identify you through reportings or other means. If we're doing our job well, you should never be able to get to what an individual said because we also do not want to— we're employees too. Like, we don't want to set up situations where retaliation could happen or awkward circumstances could result in you just going, you know what?

Al ElliottYeah.

C — REVIEWI'm never taking that survey again because that's the ultimate worst thing that can happen for us. I need to go find new work because we're not going to do a survey anymore if people can't, if people refuse to respond to it. And so that's why I like this domain specifically, is because it's so optional, right? It's something that's freely given from employees to the business. And so to that end, I would say take a look at what's called the consent language in your survey before you take it. It might be buried under a link or it might just be right there before you start the survey. But any survey that went through a legal review will have this language that outlines specifically who and what is handling your data. And using that, I would say apply your judgment, but also assume good intent. Like these employee engagement teams are doing it because they're, they're honest and they're earnest. And the companies, you know, might not like the results, but it's still incumbent on the survey team to report them accurately. So, respond freely. And if you are retaliated against in any way, or this becomes a challenge, go right to HR. HR's not gonna like this either, I promise you.

Leanne ElliottNo, nothing to add. Brilliant. And definitely go and check out Bill's full episode. We'll leave a link in the show notes, 'cause you go into it in loads more beautiful detail.

Al ElliottEpisode 283. Go to truthliesandwork.com/283, and you'll get the full episode there. Fantastic. I knew you were the guy to answer this. And we did talk about that, But lots of other things in the other episode. Question number 2 is all about getting tech interviews, and someone's asking, has it— have they completely changed? So they say, I'm applying for mid-senior roles. I've got 6+ years experience, including several years at manager level, good SaaS names on my CV, strong results, an MBA, and a decent network. A few years ago, even in a rough market, I could usually get a phone screen call, but now I'm tailoring every application I'm applying early. I'm messaging recruiters. I'm using mutual contacts. I'm getting absolutely nothing back. I've had 30 applications in the last few months and not a single interview. So this person asks you, Bill, is this the new normal for experienced candidates in tech, or is there something that works better?

C — REVIEWAt first, I want to acknowledge to whoever submitted the question, that fucking sucks. I'm sorry. This is a really tough market. It's got to be frustrating as all get out to be having a strong resume in hand, being confident about That being able to speak to your abilities and just not even be able to get the phone calls. I think unfortunately this is a, this is a long-tail reality of lots of layoffs in this industry over the past 4 years. There's just a huge supply-demand imbalance. For instance, I posted a role on the employee engagement team under, in talent analytics at Netflix on LinkedIn, and after 2 or 3 days it had to go down because there was like 3,000 applications or something more. It was just a lot. It was, it was so many.

Al ElliottMm-hmm.

C — REVIEWActually, I don't remember the specific number, so don't quote me on it, but it was just a tremendous amount of applications came in and it was just like, we can't, we can't process this. And it's just, it's a combination of lots of people are looking for work right now. And I do think there's lots of like AI junk resumes flooding the lane. Like there's definitely fake candidates out there that are happening quite a bit, but assuming the majority of all of these people applying for just one role are like legitimate humans that are just looking for work. Yeah, unfortunately, I think this is the real reality, even for experienced candidates. To get around it, as much as I hate to say it, referrals are probably your best path. If you know anybody who works for that company, try to do it because what I've experienced, at least in tech, the referral will at least get you to the resume screen. You'll still, you could still get screened away. I've referred a lot of people who just got screened away at the resume side of things. It's like, well, fuck, that sucks. I thought they were qualified. Because you're still up against a very, very big pool of other candidates. But a referral at least kind of guarantees you're going to get eyeballs on the resume. And from there, it's a little bit more in your control because you can make sure that resume is absolutely perfect and tailored as the question submitter mentioned. I've also seen just unconventional ways work on social media now too. I'm not saying like go out and just like start to harass companies or whatever and through tagging them or whatnot, but Companies are online too. And if you do some sort of interesting work, we've seen, we've seen instances where you can get roles or at least gigs out of being able to demonstrate that work in some, some useful capacity. So your portfolio still matters, I guess, is what I'm getting at there. Just have the strong portfolio behind the resume. Try to get a referral if you, if you can. Um, I will say that this is a slippery slope. I know it's, it's enticing to message like every person you're connected to on LinkedIn and ask for a referral. But like, I personally try to only really refer people that like I've worked with and can speak to their work capacity because I still like find that there's an element of integrity that we should hold for referrals. So I wouldn't advise just like coldly asking strangers for referrals. It could work for you. I definitely heard it work before, but you might just end up turning people off. And I know that's tough because It's a tough job market and people are going to do everything they can to try to get a leg up and get employed. So I get it.

Al ElliottExcellent advice. Excellent advice. Thank you very much. And yes, let's hope that everything works out for you because that's a tough situation to be in. Leigh, thoughts before we go into the next one?

Leanne ElliottJust very briefly, I've coached a few people through layoffs, including people from big tech. And one of the things that we talk about a lot is in climates like this, when there is such a a large pool of candidates and so few vacancies. The challenge we often have is people untangling their work identity and even personal identity from big tech, from being a Googler, from working at Netflix, from the Twitter layoffs. That is such an ingrained part of who you are as a professional and, to an extent, a person, because it started as a big lofty dream and you managed to achieve it and you've been living it and breathing it. And And sometimes there is a point where a bit of this untangling can actually help you look at the market a bit differently in terms of other opportunities that might be out there that maybe aren't in a big tech, but will still allow you to do a job that you really enjoy, that you find meaningful, that's going to use your skills and maybe even stretch them a bit more because you've not got the corporate resources of big tech. So, I think if anyone is really struggling and has had a long job search that isn't fruitful. I would say this is also a really good time to do some work on yourself in terms of what you want from your work, from your job, how that feeds into your identity, and perhaps then it may start to open up opportunities you hadn't considered previously.

Al ElliottGood advice. Good advice. Right. Well, just to finish off and round off, shall we talk about something a little lighter? And shall we talk about whether it's worth posting on LinkedIn?

C — REVIEWMm-hmm.

Al ElliottSo this person writes, says, I keep seeing advice that if you want to grow on LinkedIn, you need to post every day, or at least several times a week. Uh, but lately it feels completely random. You can spend ages writing something useful and it disappears while some throwaway posts by a guy with a pirate flag in his name suddenly take off. I'm trying to use LinkedIn properly, not become an influencer, just build my network and hopefully create some opportunities. So does posting consistently actually matter anymore? Or is it more like commenting personal stories or having a really clear niche? What's most important? We've got the right person in the room to answer this. Bill, talk.

C — REVIEWSo first I have to say, I started my little LinkedIn crusade punching at the thought leaders and the bland, just performing art LinkedIn posts that people were putting up with their thought leadership and all that nonsense. Recently I've been trying to promote some stuff that is in the realm of thought leadership, like my live streams at At a conference or this like personal project that I did around like superhero box office data that I wanted to share with people and found myself so freaking mad at the algorithm because like those posts just didn't work, like not even for me, right? And it's just, I had this feeling like I got a big following, I'll just post this and it'll happen. And like, nope, those are just some of my worst performing posts, period. So yeah, thought leadership is just, it's tough right now if you're trying to like actually post like, and I, and I, I I punch at the term thought leadership, but I kind of mean this broadly as just like if you're trying to post like helpful industry stuff or tricks about how to do your job or how to handle difficult interactions at work, like stuff that would actually be useful for somebody to read. For whatever reason, it's just not rewarded with the algorithm at this point in time. Like I think this the cheap jokes, the throwaway stuff, memes, like they are having their moment on LinkedIn. I thought this would have passed if I be totally honest because like. A year ago, when weird LinkedIn was popping, memes were a thing. I'm like, how long did that really last on LinkedIn? But like there's still some accounts that do pretty well just posting memes. I will dabble in them a handful of times, but I typically keep it like in the data analytics space. Like I keep it contextual to my content pillars. But there are accounts who are just reposting memes from Twitter and like doing fine, and that just like seems really strange to me for a network for what LinkedIn purports to be. But to answer the the question specifically. Like, I would advise growing your LinkedIn presence just as a failsafe mechanism in case something might go wrong at your job, or more succinctly, having a personal brand that you could lean on if things— if it becomes a rainy day is not going to hurt you. Doing it through posting alone, if you're a small account, is going to take a while and it's an uphill battle. I mean, even it's like a night and day difference now. From just 18 months ago when I started, of how easy it would be to just like grow an account. It's harder to get followers. It's much harder to get exposure right now. You're fighting in a sea of AI slop that's just creating so much noise that the algorithm sometimes can sort through, but oftentimes struggles with. So I think the answer is actually right there in the question. It's commenting. So I would just look for accounts in your niche, your industry, your field, whatever you're interested in. Turn the double bell notifications on for them. You go to their profile and you like click it, and then you'll get in your notifications every time they post. Go into those posts and engage with them. Leave a thoughtful comment. Press the like button. If you really, really like it, press the save button because that functions as a super like for them. And the creators like me really find that helpful when you press that button. But then I think what you'll find doing that over time is you'll grow a community of people because those people will come to your posts too and start to engage, and you'll just find yourself all at once having like a group of people on LinkedIn and you won't feel so alone anymore. And I think once it feels less alone, it becomes a whole lot easier to just show up and post and be yourself. And so does it matter? Yeah, I think it matters. Like, I wouldn't be on this show, period. Leanne saw one of my posts, thought it was funny, or Al saw one of my posts and thought it was funny, connected me with the other one. And like, now I've been on the show twice. It has led to tangible opportunities for me and brand partnerships that just straight up paid me money. Like, I'll be totally honest. So like, there is upside. to doing it, even though it's very difficult in the immediate start of it. So just find your people, make comments, thoughtful ones, make people laugh every now and again, post stuff that you personally find interesting, and I think everything else will come out in the wash. Or maybe I'm just a naive optimist jerk, but, you know, I'd like to think it's all true.

Al ElliottAnd also, there's something in this email that says, um, I'm trying to use it properly, not become an influencer, just build my network and hopefully create some opportunities. Well, why are you worried about followers? Why are you trying to count followers? Look at engagement. If you do a post and you've got 60 followers, but you get 45 likes, wow, you're doing so much better than some of these people who've got half a million followers. And, you know, as a percentage, they're getting 0.5% likes. Leah, you're another LinkedIn queen. What do you think?

Leanne ElliottNo, I'm nowhere near Bill's level, but I dabble. One thing I have definitely found, because mine started to kind of have a little growth spurt about this time last year when LinkedIn seemed to be having a moment, my reach is in the toilet and has been for a few months, but my engagement is all right. And I think it is because I did exactly what Bill said, where I just genuinely wanted to get to know people. And people that made me laugh or said something I found interesting, I was like, you're my people, I want to know you more. So I think now when I look at my LinkedIn posts, I might not have as many impressions, but I'm still getting, you know, loads of comments from people that I know or people that I've, I've kind of been in, in their LinkedIn world for, for a while as well. We have met so many cool people through LinkedIn. And when I started LinkedIn, I hated LinkedIn. And I hated it because I was seeing content that I didn't enjoy consuming. I think as much of LinkedIn is kind of training your feed, as Bill said, to kind of request notifications from the people that you do enjoy following, because if you're enthusiastic by reading content that you're enjoying, it kind of motivates you to create content. It motivates you to comment. It motivates you to get involved. And one thing I can absolutely guarantee is somebody who has done a podcast for 4 years, 2 episodes a week, if you don't enjoy it, it's just too freaking hard. So, find the joy if there's some in there.

C — REVIEWAnd I'll say, I do appreciate the 35,000 followers. Big numbers are fun, but I truly don't look at that to the degree that I would engagement rates on my posts. And the community that I'm bringing to the comments. Like, I actually take the most pride in the fun laughs that happen in the comments section of my posts. Oftentimes I'll make comments that are like, as always, the real jokes are in the comments because what they said is arguably funnier than what I posted. And I acknowledge it, you know, I welcome it actually. So I like to think of my comments section as kind of a cross between a town square and a circus. And I just want everybody to have a good time.

Al ElliottThere's a guy called Aaron Francis who I think is amazing, and he says, to be interesting online, be interesting offline. And I think that's such a great way of looking at it. Yeah. Bill, Bill, Bill Yost, thank you so much for coming on. If people want to find out more, are you on any social platforms at all?

C — REVIEWLinkedIn, Bill Yost with the pirate flag. I'm on TikTok. I post there occasionally, but not very frequently anymore. And cookiesworthsharon.com. Buy some cookies, please.

Al ElliottYes, definitely go and check those websites out. Check our show notes. Coming up on Thursday, we don't know because we're recording this a few days before and I'm not quite sure when it's going out, but it will be a really great episode.

Leanne ElliottIt's gonna be someone awesome.

Al ElliottOh, it always is.

Leanne ElliottIt's always someone awesome.

Al ElliottApart from that one person, you know, episode like, I can't say which episode, they weren't very good.

Leanne ElliottOh yeah.

Al ElliottYeah. Now everyone's gonna be scrolling back through and like going, who are they talking about? Talking about me. And if you're that one person, then yes, we were talking about you. Okay. Right. So if you want to connect with Leanne, go to LinkedIn and search for Leanne. If you want to want connect with me, to follow the podcast, it's all over LinkedIn. And if you want to subscribe, leave some comments. If you're on Spotify, we're enjoying the Spotify comments.

Leanne ElliottYeah, loving them.

Al ElliottSay some stuff and we'll share them with Bill. And I don't think Bill can comment back. Maybe he can. We'll find a way.

Leanne ElliottI think he can. If you're on Spotify, Bill, I believe you can.

Al ElliottYeah.

C — REVIEWOh, sure. Yeah. Let's have some fun in the comments section. I'll see you there.

Al ElliottBrilliant. Anything to add before we say hasta luego? Oh, she's shaking her head. Bill, anything to add before we let you go?

C — REVIEWRemember that everybody everywhere is just faking it. We all have imposter syndrome. You can figure it out. That's probably— leave it on.

Al ElliottMic drop. See you next week. Bye.