Welcome back to the David Pakman show. It's great to welcome to program today, Neil Erwin,
who is the author of how to win in a winner take all world and new book about navigating
a successful career in the modern economy. He's also a senior economic correspondent
at the New York Times. Neil, so great to have you on today.
Thanks for having me, David.
So I think that in the last six to 12 months of the political cycle, increasingly discussions
about work are related to number one coming, technological unemployment and what jobs that
will destroy versus what jobs it will create. Questions of minimum wage, some broader questions
about the relationships of humans who work humans to work. But let's step back from that
a little bit. I mean, if we look at the last 50 years and the idea of working for a company
for an entire career pensions, which are increasingly not available to more and more workers, how
is the landscape kind of changed about the relationship of people to, to their jobs in
the United States?
Yeah. I think what it means to have a job has really shifted underneath our feet over
the last, uh, last 30, 40 years as you say. Uh, and I think the important thing is to,
is to understand those changes and understand what that implies for, for how you navigate
your own career. So what I did with this book is I tried to go around to these big companies
that are dominant in the modern economy and asked, okay, what does it take to succeed
and thrive in this organization? And then what does it take to have a long and durable
career? Uh, we can talk more about some of the, some of the lessons I learned, but I
think you're, you're fundamentally right. I think when in a world where, uh, you know,
employers are not going to be loyal to you necessarily, you can't count on that job,
you have being the same job five or 10 years from now. I think the important thing is having
a kind of reciprocity and having a sense of honesty that, uh, you know, a career is a
series of changes, a series of steps. Uh, it's more like a series of hookups than it
is like a long time, a long term marriage. Uh, and I think that's the most important
lesson about how this economic change, uh, what that implies for the rest of us.
So there are some who will hear that, a sort of general overview and say, well, that there's
nothing natural or necessary about that change in the sense that if only there was x type
of regulation that may or may be that that change may have been restricted. For example,
there are others who will say that those changes are more, uh, about life expectancy and the
fact that people may just by their nature live in more places and work different jobs.
And that's a good thing. And companies are just sort of reacting to those desires and
there's really not a problem per se to be fixed here. How much of this do you think
is regulation related? How much is socio cultural change in the states? How much is something
else altogether?
Sorry. I think there's two pieces of it as you suggest. And, and part of this is, uh,
choices we've made as in through the political system and, and as a society that don't have
to be made this way, right? Uh, you know, unions have become less powerful. Uh, there's
been kind of a shift, you know, the entire Gig economy rests on the legal interpretation
of independent contractor law and, and you know, companies are able to kind of outsource
things because the law allows them to, um, and you know, are choices that that could
be made in Washington that would tilt the other direction. And that's kind of what this
next presidential election is going to be all about is what, what should those, uh,
what should those settings look like? Um, but I think, I argue and I really strongly
believe that part of this is driven by technological fundamentals and, and things that aren't really
going to change no matter what happens in the political system.
So things around, uh, rapidly changing business models. For example, I work in the newspaper
business, right? Um, you know, there was nothing that could have, that government could have
done that would result in, uh, the print newspaper monopoly monopoly is still existing the way
they did 20 years ago when I started my career. Uh, W it's digital media and, and that has
an entirely different way of working and, and requires different types of skills than
the old, a more linear kind of print model did. Um, you know, in every industry you see
changes like that. Retail, finance, uh, you know, certainly any element of technology.
And I think we'd be foolish if we don't acknowledge that those changes are driven by really powerful
fundamental forces and learn how to adapt and respond accordingly.
Yeah, I mean, so thinking about those forces in, in preparation for our interview, I read
some opinion pieces which suggested that actually, uh, there's certainly going to be significantly
different outcomes in one's career based on the industry in which they work. I mean, there
are industries that go under or significantly reduced in size and that in those cases there
may be factors bigger than one's own sort of education and, and kind of actions and
personality, but that in many cases it's not so much about particular skills, but it's
more about personality and I guess you would call it social skills, understanding such
basic concepts as it's really important for your boss to like you because if your boss
doesn't like you in corporate culture, it's going to be extraordinarily difficult to get
ahead no matter how good you are at what you're doing and sort of these other social dynamics.
And I find that really interesting, but I also find it dangerous because there are people
who take that approach who like to use it to defend drastically unequal economic outcomes.
So while I find it interesting and probably partially accurate, I don't want to go overboard
in that direction. I'm curious what your thought would be on the skills, education, personality
factors in terms of dictating or, or predicting success.
Yeah, so I'm, so I have a concept. I kind of developed in this book of a, of something
called a glue person. And what we see in these, the big technologically sophisticated companies
that are the superstar firms, they're the real winners in the winner take all economy.
Um, they have team based work and pulled together people on teams with very different technical
skills. So, you know, you might have a software engineer working with a, you know, a finance
person working with a, you know, user interface person, uh, working with a strategy person
and you need all of those skills to come together to create a great product. And so the people
who are really effective are those who can make a team more than the sum of its parts,
who can help that team stick together. That's why we call them a glue person. And, um, I
think cultivating your ability to be that person is really important. And, and it to
the personality piece, it doesn't come naturally to everybody. It is something we just have
to work on. Um, but learning how to communicate and collaborate with people who have a different
kind of technical background than yourself is just a really, really important, uh, thing.
And I think is, is really a crucial thing to being the kind of worker who's really valuable
and needed in these types of organizations that, uh, that are really the future and the
present of the, of the economy
when it comes to technological automation. And there has been so much written about the
degree to which this is going to be a problem. And specifically in which industries or types
of industries, is this going to be a problem? How much is it being discussed now within
the corporations you interviewed people and talk to for your book?
Yeah, I think it's the, it's the predominant, a shift that's going on. And I think the real
question is, um, you know, is automation, AI, machine learning, all these things, all
these technologies that are, uh, potentially enabling lots of different jobs to go away.
Uh, I think for most of us, the thing to do is ask, okay, how can I be the driver of that
change? The person who is creating those algorithms, creating those new ways of working and not
a victim of it. And, um, you know, it's a, it's a scary thing to think that, you know,
a computer might be able to do my job in 10 years. Um, but if I'm the one trying to figure
out how to create the algorithms, create the software that can do that job, uh, I can have
a long and viable career. Uh, it's, it's certainly scary, but I think, uh, you know, there's
always been productivity. There's always been technological change. Uh, the question is,
can you become the driver of it rather than the victim?
Yeah. I'm, I'm currently in the middle of reading the book life 3.0 by Max Tegmark,
which is mostly about artificial intelligence, but it does address issues of, of technological
automation more broadly. And one idea he had, and it may have been him quoting someone else,
I don't remember off hand, was the idea that the jobs that are going to persist and remain
through automation are likely to be the ones that operate in subjective spaces rather than
objective spaces, jobs where for example, personality does play an important role or
jobs that are more related to a, um, uh, subjective advice rather than objective analysis of data,
so to speak, that type of thing. Do you have any strong feelings one way or the other?
If we were to start trying to categorize now the types of jobs that will and will not be
automated away?
Well, I think we can definitely start doing that. And I think that framework that you
just laid out is very much accurate. Um, so I, you know, I have some examples in the book.
So if, uh, you know, in medicine for example, uh, if you're a radiologist who looks at,
uh, you know, [inaudible] all day and tries to identify things in the x rays, that's the
kind of thing that really can be automated and increasingly is, uh, you know, an area
where software can be really effective. If you're an emergency room doctor, uh, that's
never going to be automated. That's very much a human touch. A very requires great flexibility,
a great kind of quick intelligence to see what's wrong with somebody. Um, you know,
it's, that's not going to be automated in our lifetimes. Um, in, in the law and legal
business, right? If you're reviewing contracts all day, if you're a lawyer, just reviewing
contracts for, um, you know, possible problems.
That's the kind of thing that software is getting better and better at. Uh, if you're
a courtroom lawyer, if you're a trial lawyer, well as long as we have the legal system we
do now, that's something that, that's still going to be viable. Um, so I think, uh, you
know, there's basically two choices. One was what I was saying a moment ago about being
the driver of technological change in your industry, being the radiologist who helps
make that software work. Uh, the other approach is, uh, is put, choose one of those jobs,
choose one of those paths that's going to be very hard for computers to catch up to
humans.
Is this something that should already be figuring into the majors that students in college are
selecting?
To me it's less about what your major is in college. It's more about what you do while
you're in college. Um, I think the, the, the key thing I've learned over and over is the
importance of adaptability and the, uh, cultivating an ability to try different things, stretch
outside your comfort zone. And I truly come to believe that adaptability is not just a
trait you're either born with or not. It's something that you can cultivate in yourself.
And the way you do it is by pushing yourself in new directions. And the best time to do
that is when you're either in college, Grad School, early career jobs, where the stakes
are relatively low. And if you, you know, fall on your face, it's not as big a deal.
So what that means is whatever your core major or your core subject to you know, uh, is,
uh, stretch yourself into some areas completely different from that.
So if you're a, you know, if you're a w literature, English kind of words person, uh, you know,
take a couple of hard computer science classes, try language that doesn't come naturally to
you. If you're more of a math person, a numbers person, you know, maybe right for the student
paper or you know, go out for a, for a play in college, do something that's uh, pushing
yourself in new ways and keep doing that over and over. You keep doing that in your teens
and twenties, it'll become a lot easier to do it in your forties and fifties when you're
in your career.
Uh, I believe that eventually, I don't know if it's in five years, 25 years or, or 50
or a hundred years, but eventually there's going to have to be some sort of serious reexamination
of just the relationship of humans to the concept of working a full time job, uh, either
for hourly wages or salary in order to be able to achieve a sort of a viable, uh, life
in the west, so to speak. We can talk about it more worldwide, but in the west, maybe
we can focus our conversation. Do you agree that that reexamination is going to have to
take place? If so, when do you think it's going to have to happen? And, but maybe most
interestingly, are any big corporations, um, thinking about that at this point in time.
So I do think we have to kind of reopen these questions. Um, you know, famously, uh, back
in the 1930s, John Maynard Keynes stopped it. By this time we'd only be working three
hour work weeks or something like that. Uh, it didn't quite go that direction. Um, so
I, I, in the last chapter of the book, I tried to kind of reflect on what I had learned about,
um, about having a thriving good career. And I did some math. And the math is this. So
if you start working at age 22 after college, if you retire at 65, if you sleep eight hours
a night, you do the math works out to about a quarter million hours you have to work with
over the course of you're kind of prime working years. Uh, you, those are your waking hours.
And, and look, that's the hardest constraint of the mall. And we all have trade offs too,
to engage in between our jobs, our, uh, hobbies and pursuits and our families and, and kind
of home life.
And I don't, I'm not trying to be prescriptive about how to juggle those tradeoffs. Um, I,
you know, I titled This Book How to win, not how to become a billionaire or how to become
a CEO of a fortune 500 company because those paths aren't for everybody. And I think there
can be a really rewarding life to be had, um, that that does treat work differently
than that's kind of always on. You know, we've got to got to put in 80 hours of the, the
office kind of culture. Um, and I think the important thing is being deliberate and thoughtful
about what you find rewarding where your ambitions go and um, and reacting accordingly. I think
smart companies are realizing that, you know, there can be a role for people who only do
a part time schedule, who are willing to sacrifice a little income to, you know, have a more,
uh, you know, 20, 30 hours a week instead of 40 or 50. Um, but, uh, you know, I think
the, I think as time goes on, I think more companies are going to realize that they need
that ability to, to, to adapt with people's desires and, and, uh, kind of Worklife, uh,
tradeoffs.
Are there specific decisions you've made in your life that most people wouldn't necessarily
think to because you work in this space and research this, this topic?
Yeah, I think the, uh, pardon me. I think the biggest thing that I've really kind of
internalized, uh, is, is an idea that, uh, is actually from Reed Hoffman who was the
founder of Linkedin. Yeah. He calls it tours of duty. And that's a concept that's existed
in the military and in the diplomatic world for a long time. But in the corporate world,
the idea is after you spend a certain amount of time doing a project, building something,
a whatever you were hired to do, uh, then you have a real discussion with your employer
and is there a way to stretch yourself in some new direction? Take on some new projects.
I'm kind of breaking up your career into, into units. So I, I call it the three year
itch. Uh, first year on a new job, you're just trying to, you know, get up to speed.
Second Year you're hitting your stride, you're getting good at that job. Then the third year
rolls around, it's time to start thinking about what's the next thing and can I stretch
myself in some new direction? Uh, it's doing that over and over. That helps. On that adaptability
theme we were talking about a minute ago. Um, in my own career, I've done that, um,
partly by changing jobs with few times, but also by doing something like this book. And
for me, you know, I had been at the New York Times for about three years when I kind of
looked around and said, okay, what, how am I gonna push myself, stretch myself in a new
direction? And this book was a, came out of that
super interesting book. We've been talking with Neil Erwin, who is the author of how
to win in a winner take all world. The book is about navigating a successful career in
the modern economy. He's also a senior,
your economic correspondent at the New York Times. Neil, thanks so much for talking to
me and congratulations on the book. Thanks a lot dated the David Pakman show@davidpakmandotcomthedavidpakmanshowatdavidpacman.com.