Transcript, E173- Navigating the New Office: New Job Opportunities

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Network ID: LinkedIn News.

Jessi Hempel: From the news team at LinkedIn, I'm Jessi Hempel.

Sarah Storm: And I'm Sarah Storm.

Jessi Hempel: And this is Hello Monday. Hey, Sarah, a question, when should you leave a job?

Sarah Storm: Like one I can't stand or a good one that I love?

Jessi Hempel: I mean, one where you're comfortable. Maybe you've done the same thing for a decade and things are pretty good, but you're starting to wonder could they be better?

Sarah Storm: Right after the pandemic, there was a scramble as people moved around.

Jessi Hempel: We did a whole episode on it, right?

Sarah Storm: We did.

Jessi Hempel: It was called the Great Reshuffle.

Sarah Storm: The market for talent is still tight and people still have a lot of opportunities, but I think, right now, we're seeing a more measured approach to people taking them.

Jessi Hempel:

Welcome to episode four of our summer series, Navigating the New Office. We're going to get some sound advice on this topic today. I first met today's guest when I was really young in my very first year as a reporter at Fortune. She was an executive at Motorola in Chicago. She's somewhat of an elder stateswoman in Silicon Valley. Her name is Padmasree Warrior, but she goes by Padma. She's on the boards of lots of companies you know, like Spotify, and this one, LinkedIn's parent company, Microsoft, and, these days, Padma runs a virtual book club startup called Fable.

Sarah Storm:

Wow, she has the kind of career that makes her an expert at careers.

Jessi Hempel:

And that is why I wanted her advice, and, of course, Sarah, you and I will break it all down after the interview, but, for now, here's Padma.

Padmasree Warrior:

I always choose what I do next based on can I learn more? I think what happens inside a big company often is the learning peaks off. In the early part of your career, you're learning, but, as you get to bigger and bigger roles, the learning becomes incremental, and it's not transferable. If you're successful in one corporation, for example, getting to a C-level doesn't mean you can move up to C-level to another corporation and be successful. So the transferability of the skills and the learning you have dramatically slows down.

Padmasree Warrior:

Um, and I think, for me, it's really important to be constantly learning and so, when I choose my next role, whether it's inside a big company or switching company, I always look at ... like a formula that's worked for me is 70% of the job content I know how to do and what to do, 30% is totally new. You know, I went from Cisco to building cars, so I had never built a car in my life before, but I was CEO for a car company. So I think those are the types of things that I look at.

Jessi Hempel:

I really love the idea that there might actually be a formula for this, and that's 70% of the scope of a new role should be something that you trust that you already know enough about how to do that you can deliver and, that 30%, should you know that you can do it or you should walk straight into the unknown?

Padmasree Warrior:

I think you should walk straight into the unknown. In my case, at least, the 70%/30%, you know, obviously, it's, it's not super scientific, but, in general, directionally, that works is, when you go to a new role or you take a next-level role, you have to have enough confidence that you can hold your own, because people are going to watch you and people are going to question you and I thi- ... especially probably men, um, and a person of color, I think you have to have enough self-confidence you can say, "I know how to do that and I can hold my own."

Padmasree Warrior:

30% could be completely different and I think, in my case, it was. I went from Motorola to Cisco. I had, didn't know anything about networking. I came from the mobile world. Then I went from Cisco to building cars and now I'm building a social startup. The 30% can be completely new, completely different industry, and, actually, I think you learn a lot more when you do make that switch. Um, and all these skills add up, right? So like each time you're learning, you're figuring out a new industry and adding that to, quote-unquote, your tool bag of skills.

Jessi Hempel:

How long is the right amount of time to stay at a company?

Padmasree Warrior:

Wow, great question. I guess it depends on the company. Now, in looking back at my own career, I wish I had moved earlier in my career faster. I was at Motorola for some 20 years. The company's big enough and broad enough where you can move from one area to another. You can get that 30% new knowledge by being in the same company but moving domains. I think the thing, though, that you have to remember is are you reaching a point where the things that you're learning are how to manage the politics in that company versus a new skill that you can go apply someplace else, which happens when you're in the same company for a long time. You figure out you have muscle memory on how to get things done in that company-

Jessi Hempel:

Yeah.

Padmasree Warrior:

... you know, is that applicable somewhere else? And so you have to question have I stayed here too long, where what I'm learning is really not transferable-

Jessi Hempel:

Yeah.

Padmasree Warrior:

... um, and then it may be time to go.

Jessi Hempel:

Another thing that I'm very curious to know about from you, you are such an advocate of women in STEM in particular, you have a technical background yourself, I'm curious if, over the course of your career, you have worked with or managed people who've come from other fields into tech and had very successful careers in tech.

Padmasree Warrior:

Yeah, I have. I actually think that's a myth. Not, not everybody needs to be an amazing coder, right? There's tech everywhere, every company, in a sense. I know it sounds a little cliched, but every company's a software company, right? So you don't have to be a coder to be in a technical industry anymore. I think this is a misnomer. I think what is really important these days is the ability to learn. Tech itself is changing so quickly, right? Like you ask 10 people what Web 3.0 is, you get 10 different answers, and so I think people have to really be curious about things and learn things. As long as you have that mindset, you can have a great career in tech, um, so you don't necessarily have to say, "Oh, I don't know how to code. Maybe I shouldn't pursue a tech industry." We have a lot of editors in my company who are great writers and readers and they, combined with engineers, is what creates the magic in a company like Fable. Um, so, yeah, I think, these days, the beauty is every company is a tech company.

Jessi Hempel:

Well, I remember about 10 years ago when every company and every industry suddenly wanted to say, "No, no, now we're a tech company. Yes, we're Ford, but we are a tech company," right?

Padmasree Warrior:

Right (laughs).

Jessi Hempel:

Um, and now you see that, actually, they were right. Everyone was right, that everything is, is tech. Tech is the infrastructure for all things. Tell me a little bit about the company that you're at now and how you got there. What, what is Fable trying to do?

Padmasree Warrior:

Yeah, Fable is a, uh, company I started two years ago. We are a social platform for communities to read together, read books, great books together. And so why reading? I was, got interested in the wellness space. I felt like what I wanted to do next is apply tech to help people with our wellness, and I actually started exploring the physical wellness and physical, uh, health space and, as I was exploring that space, I came upon so much data that was talking about how mental wellness is on the decline, things like anxiety, depression, stress, loneliness, feeling a lack of self-worth, feeling a lack of purpose. All these things are going the wrong way for literally everyone across all age groups, across all income levels, across the globe in every part of the world, and this was sort of fascinating to me.

Padmasree Warrior:

I started to dig more into it and I was searching for is there an equivalent of walk 10,000 steps, uh, in the mental wellness space, and, as I was searching, I came upon a lot of research papers that talked about how reading and stories are actually great for our mental wellness, and so there's now a lot of neuroscience that supports this. When we read a story, we remember the characters, we remember the timeline, we imagine the setting of where that story is taking place, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, we laugh out loud, we cry sometimes, it makes us think, we question our assumption. All these things help us unplug from whatever is causing us stress at the moment.

Jessi Hempel:

Yeah.

Padmasree Warrior:

So I then wanted to build a social platform to bring communities could ... you know, I just feel like all the social platforms we have today, we need, we still need a place just for reasonable to have reasonable discussions-

Jessi Hempel:

Yeah.

Padmasree Warrior:

... right, about whatever their topic is, so that's what we're building at Fable. Um, it's not a social media company. It's not a social network. It's a social platform where, basically, communities get together, choose a book, they discuss as they're reading the book, and we host events with authors. And we're very popular with Gen Z, which is counter ... also, people told me, like, "Oh, young people, they don't read," but it's not true at all (laughing). They read quite a lot, and they look for a lot of representation, which is amazing. They have a lot of LGBTQ clubs, where they're reading ... where the main character is someone who's different, who looks like them. And so, yeah, we're very proud of what we're building.

Jessi Hempel:

We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, more with Padma Warrior.

Jessi Hempel:

And we're back. Padma has always taken the road less traveled. When she was in school getting her technical degree, she was one of just five women out of 250 students. She's comfortable with being the only person in a room who looks or thinks or acts like her. Quite honestly, it's something I wish I were better at. So we talked about her earliest influences.

Padmasree Warrior:

So I grew up in India and, um, growing up, I was ill quite, quite a lot, I had severe asthma, and I was homeschooled for a couple of years because I was not able to attend school. And, back then, there was really no internet, so lessons were sent to me. My mom worked with me. I did those lessons. I think that experience taught me that I really had to simplify a lot of complexity and be able to absorb things faster, and I learned it maybe the hard way because I had no choice but to cram a bunch of lessons and figure out how I would take the test. So I think, from that moment on, I would say I wanted to be self-reliant. I had this hunger to learn different things and I became really good at simplifying lots of complex things into the essence of what they are saying.

Padmasree Warrior:

Those things, I feel, even to this day, have helped me in my career. You know, when I was CTO at Cisco, we had a massive product portfolio. I had to be able to explain that in a minute or two to people who didn't understand tech, and so I think, by the way, that kind of a skill is so important in any kind of a career. But I would say I was, as young Padma, I was shy, but determined, and, you know, I think learned how to not give up and keep trying for things.

Jessi Hempel:

I can't imagine you as shy because, in the time that I have known you, you've always been outspoken. How did that aspect of your character evolve and what advice do you have others who similarly shy away from the idea of speaking up?

Padmasree Warrior:

I think a lot of women go through this. We hold ourselves back. We may have great things to say, but we're afraid to speak up because we think people will think us to be aggressive and, if you're small or have a soft voice, uh, you tend to like not want to raise your voice to speak up, but I think you quickly realize, when you have something of import to say, you should say it. And, you know, I think, in my case, that started happening probably when I was at IIT. I went to Indian Institute of Technology. We're a very male-dominated school, very tough to get into. I always tell the story there's only five women in my class of 250 students.

Jessi Hempel:

Just put some punctuation around that a second, Padma. It wasn't that long ago.

Padmasree Warrior:

It was not that long ago, no. Um, you know, and that was sort of eye-opening, um. You walk in and you realize, "Wow, there's nobody here that looks like me," and I think that's actually when I learned the power of supporting each other, how important it is for women especially to support each other, because I think the five of us, you know, we stuck together, we were like one unit, maybe out of self-preservation, but that's what we did, and I call this micro-communities. I, I still talk a lot about the power of micro-communities. Um, you know, these days, when we think of a community, we think of how many followers you have, are you an influencer or do you have 50 million followers (laughs)?

Jessi Hempel:

Yeah.

Padmasree Warrior:

That's really not a community. What a micro-community is, maybe 10 people that really will be there to help you. Um, but, yeah, that's a different topic. But back to, um, when did I learn to stand up for myself and speak up, I think it was at IIT. I just realized that, especially if you're a minority, unless you take and you speak up, you're, in fact, letting everyone that looks like you down, right, 'cause they're not getting heard by you not speaking.

Jessi Hempel:

That's a lot of pressure to put on yourself, Padma. It is true and, also, it is a lot of pressure to put on yourself.

Padmasree Warrior:

But it's true. You know, I think it's very true, especially for women in tech, right? Uh, you, we, we need more women in tech. We need more women to speak up so that other people kind of see us, um, as that person has a voice and I want to lend my voice in support of what they're doing.

Jessi Hempel:

Mm-hmm. Well, so, Padma, you know, bringing us back to 2022, the, the moment that we find ourselves in now, two years after the pandemic, and you're in a position where you're growing a startup, do you perceive anything to be different about the way that people are making their career choices in the aftermath of the crazy two years that we have had?

Padmasree Warrior:

Yeah. We now realize the world has changed forever, right, even beyond the pandemic, um, things we are going through now, inflation at an all-time high, 40-year high, recession or, you know, conflicts in society, gun violence, COVID, figuring out are we going back to office or not. The nature of work itself has changed. I think we are finally realizing it will be a hybrid workforce that we'll have to all contend with, and I think in, when I was growing in my career, that was not even an option. Even when I had a baby, I had to, I was expected to come back to work, physically come back to work.

Jessi Hempel:

Mm-hmm.

Padmasree Warrior:

This is all changing. I think we are still dealing with what is permanent and what is temporary, and we're now trying to figure this out, right, which part of it is here forever and which part of it is, is like a cycle and it'll go back to normal. I have opinions about it. I do feel hybrid work is a permanent thing. I don't think we'll ever go back to 100% everyone has to be back, um, in the office, so to speak. I think they will, people will have, will choose, um, where they work and how they work.

Padmasree Warrior:

Um, and I think tech ... at the same time, when all this is happening, you know, so what does that mean? Supply chain is stretched, right, like there's labor shortages, there's war for Thailand, there's the Great Resignation, all these things are happening. Um, at the same time, technology is moving at a pace where it has the potential to increase productivity 10 to 100X maybe sometime. So it's sort of like we have both these things happening at the same time.

Padmasree Warrior:

And then people's expectations are different. What we expect now from companies is very different. We expect leaders inside the company, uh, to behave very differently. Empathy, which was always considered a soft skill, is, all of a sudden, becoming a not only expectation, it's almost like table stakes that every leader you choose to work for will be empathetic and empathy is now like one of the strongest requirements for a leader to have. Even five years ago, that was brushed off as like, oh, that's a soft skill.

Jessi Hempel:

Right. And, if you flip it, the leaders who are not able to demonstrate empathy are not able to keep their talent in a very tight market, so it's real easy to figure out who they are quickly.

Padmasree Warrior:

That's correct, right, and, five years ago, if you were a leader and if you were considered empathetic, you were considered a weak leader and maybe you didn't get that promotion because you were weak, and so it's sort of like fascinating how these things have completely flipped over. So people's expectations are changing dramatically. So, when I talk to people, what they're looking for in their job is no long just negotiating salary, negotiating a full comp package, of course, those are important, but people are negotiating where they work from, is this a remote-first role or not? That's a big thing, right now, for people, right-

Jessi Hempel:

Yeah.

Padmasree Warrior:

... and am I expected to come to work every day, do I have to commute? Um, so these are becoming negotiating, uh, factors in, in what people look for. The other thing that I, I find, and as a little startup, we are able to attract people, is purpose, they question the purpose, uh, for the company and the values of the company. And this is something I, when I coach people even when they're looking for their next job, I tell them, "You do a lot of diligence on the company's business, um, and the company does a lot of diligence before they hire you, right?"

Jessi Hempel:

Right.

Padmasree Warrior:

"Like they do reference checks, they talk to people you have worked with in the past to get references on you. Are you doing diligence on the company's culture?"

Jessi Hempel:

Mm-hmm.

Padmasree Warrior:

Um, I think this is becoming even more important for people to do.

Jessi Hempel:

Yeah.

Padmasree Warrior:

One of the big reasons people leave companies, and actually what causes mental wellness issues, is the toxicity of the culture inside a company.

Jessi Hempel:

Yeah.

Padmasree Warrior:

So I think it's as much a person's responsibility to do their diligence on the company, and not just the company, but the people that you're going to work for. Go talk to people that have worked for your new manager and see what kind of a person they are, what kind of a leader they are. Comp, maybe, is less important to people. The location and the flexibility is more important to people, um, these days, and so I think, as companies, we have to completely flip what we prioritize and how we pitch the role to people and, and people need to do more diligence on the company and the people they're working for.

Jessi Hempel:

It's funny. I'd originally thought that I wanted to devote this entire episode to the idea that sometimes a new job helps you earn more money, but sometimes it helps you learn more things, so when should you prioritize learning over earning, but Padma had one succinct answer to that question.

Padmasree Warrior:

You have to expect both, and people are expecting both. I think it is not one or the other, just like, by the way, I hate the word balance. For the longest time, we always talked about work-life balance. I was like, "Why am I forced to choose this? Like why do I have to choose either work or my life (laughs)?"

Jessi Hempel:

Yeah.

Padmasree Warrior:

You know, work is part of life, and I always talk about integration. Like, you know what, I don't have two lives, I only have one life.

Jessi Hempel:

Yep.

Padmasree Warrior:

In that life, I have work and my family, so it's not about balance, it's about integration.

Jessi Hempel:

Yep.

Padmasree Warrior:

So same thing, I think now it is learning and earning, as you say. I think you have to have both.

Jessi Hempel:

That was Padmasree Warrior. Check out Fable.co to bring more stories into your life. Now I'm going to bring back our producer, Sarah Storm. Hey, Sarah.

Sarah Storm:

Hey, Jessi.

Jessi Hempel:

So I really loved talking to Padma. You can probably tell that we know each other already and that she's the kind of person that I would call personally for advice, but the thing that I most wanted to understand from her is when you should think about changing jobs yourself. Do you feel like you got a sense of that?

Sarah Storm:

I do. I feel like I have a clear sense, from listening to her, of what a good like "I'm learning" job entails, which is 70% things I, or we, feel confident in doing and 30% things that terrify us, things we have to learn and try and grow in.

Jessi Hempel:

Things we don't know we can do before we try.

Sarah Storm:

Correct.

Jessi Hempel:

Right? I, actually, I loved the ratio, um, because I often hear, specifically around gender, that, um, women raise their hand for a promotion when they can look at a list of things that the promotion entails and feel confident they can do all of those things, and men are more likely to raise their hand when they can do just a couple of those things. And I have often wondered, okay, well, but then like when exactly are you supposed to raise your hand, like how, how much of that list should you be able to do, and she's the first person I've ever heard from with a direct answer to that.

Sarah Storm:

And the bona fides to like back it up.

Jessi Hempel:

Right.

Sarah Storm:

I mean, if, if anybody knows, she knows. I've heard that before, as well, and I've certainly watched, um, other women that I know not raise their hand for things they might be great at because they couldn't tick every box, um.

Jessi Hempel:

Right. Another thing that I loved that she-

Sarah Storm:

Yeah.

Jessi Hempel:

... said is that, you know, she is, she is a technical powerhouse, Sarah, and she has a reputation for being so. You would have to be to be the chief technology officer of a company like Cisco, which is like a nuts-and-bolts technology company. It is like an enterprise-focused, like infrastructure of the internet company and so I was a little bit surprised to hear her say that you don't need to have a massively technical background in order to move into a technical field.

Sarah Storm:

I specifically deeply loved when she started talking about that because there's so much opportunity. Sitting, like sitting here at LinkedIn, which is a subsidiary of Microsoft, I, a nontechnical person, have seen so many nontechnical jobs, and it's lovely to hear somebody sit in a position of authority and power and be like, "Yeah, you belong here too," because there, there's space for people who don't have engineering degrees, like you can come here, come to a tech company, and be a part of the action.

Jessi Hempel:

And if you're thinking about that for yourself even a little bit, you have to go back to our episode from the beginning of the year with Drew Overcash, who is an actor and composer-

Sarah Storm:

And your cousin.

Jessi Hempel:

... and also my cousin, (laughing) I will say, um, who went to coding school at Flatiron and, in the space of 10 weeks, learned to code, discovered, surprise, that the skills were actually very similar to the skills involved in writing music, and now is an engineer, a very happily employed engineer, at Spotify. You think about those kinds of transitions and it goes back to the 70%/30%, right? Get some training, take a stab at something you're not entirely confident you will be successful at, and you often will surprise yourself.

Sarah Storm:

I loved what Padma said about it's not about learning over earning or earning over learning and, at the same time, I think, if you are interested in a career pivot or interested in something completely new, being willing to take a set of time, like those 10 weeks that Drew took, to learn the new thing that gets you into position for the things you want is absolutely valuable. I'm watching another friend from the theater and performance world become an engineer. Like, on LinkedIn, I'm seeing him do all these internships and he's just gotten a job in a completely new field.

Jessi Hempel:

I think we don't get enough information at the beginning of our careers about the kinds of benefits and opportunities that various fields offer up, and, also, our priorities change over the course of our career. So perhaps when you're younger and you have no dependents, you can choose to live anywhere and you may choose to work in a field where your earning is limited because you love the work, and you should be encouraged to do that, but you should also go into that with full knowledge that, as you are ready, perhaps when you are older in life or you find yourself with more dependents or more financial needs, you can also make a pivot, at any time, into a different track, right?

Sarah Storm:

Absolutely. One of the things I love about the content types that are emerging in the world over the last few years ... we have like MasterClass, There's all these massive online classes. LinkedIn has a learning arm. There's so much. If you're curious about something and you think you maybe have a couple of the skills but you want to know, the lift to find out more is really relatively low in a way that I don't think it ever was before.

Jessi Hempel:

Which brings us to the final thing I want to touch on, um, that Padma said, which is, um, that, if she could do it again, she would have left a job earlier, that her ... like the, the thing that she did that she regrets is simply staying someplace too long, and I'm going to take that and remember it. When you feel like, "I'm comfortable, maybe there's something else," go see what the something else is if you can.

Sarah Storm:

Yeah, it does require bravery. I don't know about you, but when she said that, I absolutely thought back to a job where I stayed too long. I got complacent because it hit a couple of the benchmarks that I needed, and it never occurred to me that I could be doing more or that it could get better.

Jessi Hempel:

Well, there you go.

Sarah Storm:

Right?

Jessi Hempel:

Hey, let's keep this conversation going with you, Sarah, and with the entire community. Join us this Wednesday afternoon at 3:00 p.m. Eastern for our Office Hours. You can find us on the LinkedIn News page, where we are every Wednesday at 3:00 p.m. And, as always, if you like the show, please follow and review it wherever you get the podcast. Those reviews really help us. Thanks.

Jessi Hempel:

Okay. Here I go with the credits. You ready, Sarah?

Sarah Storm:

Go for it. I'm so ready. Hit me with those credits.

Jessi Hempel:

Hello Monday is a production of LinkedIn. Sarah Storm produces our show with mixing by Joe DiGiorgi. Florencia Iriondo is Head of Original Audio and Video. Dave Pond is Head of News Production. Michaela Greer and Victoria Taylor teach us new things every day. Our music was composed just for us by The Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. Dan Roth is the Editor in Chief of LinkedIn. I'm Jessi Hempel.

Sarah Storm:

And I'm Sarah Storm.

Jessi Hempel:

We'll be back next Monday.

Sarah Storm:

Thanks for listening.