#266: Ruben Harris on The Future of Education and Training

Ruben Harris is the Co-host of the Breaking Into Startups podcast, he is also the CEO of Career Karma, an organization that matches people who want to learn to code with the right support circle and coding boot camp for their needs. In this conversation, Anthony and Ruben discuss the current unemployment numbers, what part of the workforce is most affected, how individuals can gain new skills, what the job prospects in technology look like, how education will change in the future, and what people who are laid off can do now to position themselves for success. =============================== BlockFi allows you to keep your crypto, put it up as collateral, and receive a USD loan funded directly to your bank account. Visit try.blockfi.com/get-50/?ref=pomp50 to get started with BlockFi today and earn up to $50 in BTC when you create an interest account and make a deposit of $250 or more. =============================== TaxBit is a refund-maximizing, cryptocurrency tax software you can depend on. Visit taxbit.com/invite/pomp and receive 10% off your tax plan today by signing up for a free trial. ===============================

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off.

• 0:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Ruben Harris is the co-host of the Breaking Into Startups Podcast. He is also the CEO of Career Karma, an organization that matches people who want to learn to code with the right support circle and coding bootcamp for their needs. In this conversation, we discuss the current unemployment numbers, what part of the workforce is most affected, how individuals can gain new skills, what the job prospects in technology look like, how education will change in the future, and what people who are laid off can do now to position themselves for success. I really enjoyed this conversation and learned a ton from Ruben during it. Before we get into the episode though, I want to quickly talk about our two sponsors. The first is BlockFi. As you guys know, I'm a huge fan of the company. I'm an investor and a user.

• 0:55Anthony Pompliano?

  BlockFi has three products. You can deposit crypto and receive a US dollar loan. You can deposit crypto and earn interest in an interest-bearing account, or you can buy and sell crypto on their cryptocurrency exchange. You can go to blockfi.com/pomp and learn more. Blockfi.com/pomp. It's awesome. You can earn up to 8.6% APY in their interest-bearing accounts and I highly suggest you check it out. Blockfi.com/pomp. Our second sponsor is TaxBit. They make paying taxes super easy for cryptocurrency users. TaxBit automates your cryptocurrency taxes, enabling you to effortlessly track, calculate, and report your transactions. You can easily connect your exchanges to securely sync your transactions and run them through TaxBit's tax engine.

• 1:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Generate your completed tax forms with a single click. The company is founded by tax attorneys and CPAs. TaxBit is the most trusted cryptocurrency tax solution. Get 10% off your tax plan today with a free trial by going to taxbit.com/invite/pomp. Again, taxbit.com/invite/pomp. All right, now let's get into this episode with Ruben.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 2:27Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Ruben here with me. I've known Ruben for a while and I'm super excited about this because I think, one, he's got a great understanding of a whole bunch of stuff that's going on. And then, two, he's working on some things that could be potential solutions for all of you sitting at home, listening to this and might need to get re-skilled. So thanks so much for jumping on and doing this.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me on the show, man. It's been a minute.

• 2:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. You're in San Francisco, right?

• 2:51Speaker 02

  San Francisco. We met in LA. You've traveled a lot of places. We've traveled a lot of places, but here we are again.

• 2:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. So maybe let's just run through your background real quick and then kind of what you guys are building today, and then we'll jump into kind of the more macro environment stuff.

• 3:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I'm the co-founder and CEO of Career Karma, which is a marketplace that helps people get high-paying jobs in tech in less than a year. So when people download our app, they get matched to the job training program that's best for them, and they get coaching to not just start the program, stay in the program, but also find a job after that. Anybody can upload their projects. We finish Y Combinator, so we're connected to over 4,000 companies. So we can send it to the top recruiters. And even in a COVID-19 era where some companies aren't hiring, there are companies that are hiring, so we can always connect them, not just to the recruiters, but also individuals themselves. Before this, I worked at three different startups. Alt School, which is personalized education. Honor, building out two-sided marketplaces for nurses.

• 3:53Speaker 02

  And then also Hustle, which is a political technology text message company. And then I was an investment banker for three years. My co-founders are bootcamp graduates. We met in Atlanta as well. And then we started a podcast in 2016 called Breaking Into Startups that you joined as well. And it was, it was, it was highly, highly acclaimed. Um, and, and we essentially built this reputation um of, of not just running a company to help people get jobs, but uh we are the product. We, we, we, this is the product we wish that we had when we were breaking the tie, you know, so when you and I met, you know, I had bought a one-way ticket to San Francisco. I knew nobody. Three weeks later, I found a job. I wrote a story about it called Breaking the Star. It was uh Balashe Srinivasan who talks about COVID.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  He reached out to me, Mark Andreessen talked about it. So that's how I started developing a big reputation um through that blog. And so personal brand has been key for us. And we make sure that um everybody in the community that now has over eighty thousand people is able to build a, a personal brand as well. I mean, we're currently positioning ourselves to be the number one destination for career advice on the internet.

• 4:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Well, what's really cool about, I think, your story um in, in uh Timor and, and uh your co-founders is basically that you guys did everything that people now are starting to realize like this is the path. But there was no playbook for you, right? Like you, you bought the one-way ticket. Um, and you guys all had careers before, wanted to get into technology. Um, that uh blog post that you wrote, the whole idea of like, hey, create content if you don't actually have the connections, like those people will find you. You did that, right? And then um the podcast, like one, you guys were early in podcasts, right? It was before I kind of like really took off. And then two was uh, if I remember correctly, as you guys were starting the podcast, what would happen is people would basically reach out and say, hey, man.

• 5:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Thanks so much for the content, but can you help me do X? Can you introduce me to somebody? Can you get me in, you know, an interview at this company, et cetera? And so it's almost like you built the distribution and the audience before you ever had a product, right?

• 5:51Speaker 02

  Uh huh. That's exactly right. Um, and, and it's actually even before technology, you know, it's, it, it, we, we learned it through experience. Uh, because um I, I went to a really small school um in Tennessee. And nobody, I was trying to break into investment banking because that's what everybody was trying to do at the time. And so I wrote a blog telling people that I don't qualify. I got into investment banking after sending out 9,300 emails, got thousands of people coming through. And essentially like, once we got into banking, we found one of our buddies. He left and became an engineer at a bootcamp called Flatiron School. And Jack Altman, who now is the CEO of Lattice and the brother of Sam Altman from Y Combinator. He was a bootcamp grad and was like, what is this bootcamp thing?

• 6:35Speaker 02

  And so like, just through osmosis and learning it ourselves, we're able to figure it out. So, yeah, that's, that's.

• 6:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Well, and I think the other lesson, right? If people kind of look at the story both individually and then what you guys have built is it's all about the propensity for action. Right? It's just the fact that you guys would just start things and do things. And, and there was never a, let's sit back and play chess. Let's try to like, you know, plan out move seven, eight, nine and 10. It's like, hey, here's where we are. We generally know where we want to go. Let's, what's the next, what's the next move, right? What's the next move on the board? And, and you guys have navigated this really, really well into what you're doing today. Let's talk about, uh, what's going on in the world because there's absolute chaos going on. What's kind of your take on all this and, and, and what are you paying attention to right now?

• 7:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, you know, there's about 10 million people, 10 million Americans that have lost jobs in the last two weeks. Which we personally believe is a vast undercount. Because it doesn't include like gig economy workers, freelancers and more. Also, some states have even stopped reporting their daily unemployment claims at the request of our current administration, which is kind of scary. But what I like to think deeply about is, um, who are these people, right? So it's concentrated mostly in the service sector. And, and I, I think it's super important to focus on women because, uh, women are 60% of hotel workers, 53% of bar staff, 70% of clothing store workers.

• 8:02Speaker 02

  But on the positive side, if you think deeper, if you look at history, it can point us to where things are going in the labor market. Personally, I think, um, even though the federal government or Federal Reserve is predicting 47 million Americans unemployed over the next few months because of Corona. We're looking at the, the largest reallocation of labor since World War II. And in World War II. Something to keep in mind is that the female labor force grew by six point five million during the war, which in my opinion is probably the single most important economic event of our lifetime. And so when I see the spike in downloads inside of CareerCom, which we're getting about fifteen to twenty thousand downloads, fifteen to twenty thousand downloads

• 8:43Speaker 02

  per month, it's majority women that are mothers that are coming through the platform. And it's super, super interesting to think about. And so I've seen you tweet this out, you know, since we are quarantined, not having time is not an excuse. Yes, it's difficult because we got kids at home and things like that, but we all have the ability to take advantage of this moment, to reflect, to reassess what to do with our time, apply it to a new skill set that will be relevant in the future. Yes, companies are laying people off. Yes, people are having hiring freezes. Some of them are hiring in categories that we will talk about later related to anti fragility. But if you really, we, I can, I'm

• 9:25Speaker 02

  not Nostradamus, but I can probably bet that there will be more technology in the future. And if there is more technology in the future, you're probably going to need to be able to speak the language of tech and engineering and things like that. And so I think there's a huge, huge, huge opportunity to think about how to take advantage of these moments. But people are suffering and it's going to require more than skill sets because, yeah.

• 9:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And part of this, I think, right, is, look, it's already bad, right? Ten million Americans in two weeks is bad. It's likely to get worse, right? And, you know, I keep kind of hammering on this point, the economy is not going to recover until we get out of our homes, right? I mean, it's just, that's how it works. You can't spend money, can't have jobs, can't have businesses running. We're all sitting at home. So that is, that has to be balanced with the virus, right? And kind of the health crisis. And so there's not a black and white solution. It's not, okay, turn back on the economy, forget the health piece, right? And it's not shut the economy off a hundred percent and only we're about the health piece. So we've got to navigate that. But what ends up happening here is now we have millions of people, tens of millions probably at the end of this, that are sitting

• 10:27Anthony Pompliano?

  at home unemployed. And part of that is, there will be stress financially, there will be challenges. Will be things where people need assistance, relief, etc. But also, there will be a group of people who retrain their skills. They switch careers, right? They use this as an opportunity, whether they wanted to do that already or not, they see the opportunity. And so I guess that's really where I want to focus on like, what can people do? Right? Part of what you guys do is actually help people find the right roles and kind of training and skillsets. But also, I think that there's this element of like the mindset first. You have to switch your mindset. Because really what ends up happening is if you don't switch your mindset, you're not going to stick it out.

• 11:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Like you like Ruben can be the best coach in the world. If I just don't want to do it, I'm not going to finish, right?

• 11:16Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. Mm hmm. That's exactly right. So I I love that you brought that point because we tell people that most barriers in life are psychological, not technical. You know, most people don't finish what they start. And as as you're going through this process, I tell people a certificate or a degree is not going to get you a job. And neither is learning how to code, right? The way that you communicate, the way that you tell your story, the way that you brand yourself personally, the projects that you build, the the the way that you work with other people, pair programming, how you handle the whiteboarding interviews, things like that, all of that type of stuff matters. Um, and so what I would say is a part of the reason why when people download our app,

• 11:56Speaker 02

  the first thing that they do is share their career goal and their current level of experience with us. And a three minute profile called fast track at the bottom of the app. Um, is because we can't coach you if we don't understand what your current level is. Once they do that, then the app will match them with the right individuals that will help them get to where they want to go. But even then, a lot of people drop out if they don't have guidance. So we created a system called the 21 day CK challenge that you all can look at on Twitter, where people are tweeting all the time. And during that, those 21 days, which are five minutes a day check-ins through the app, they get put into a group called a squad. That's an accountability system, that's a daily reminder that where they can self organize their own study groups to make sure that they start and finish the program,

• 12:41Speaker 02

  or encourage themselves through this process. I think the, the, the, the thing I really like about what you're bringing up here, that a lot of people don't think about is that most people during this process, especially if they've been shocked by an unemployment situation, they experience self doubt. And we call that self doubt imposter syndrome. And it's a feeling where you are fully qualified to do the work, but you trick yourself and you tell yourself that you don't belong. And so the whole reason why CareerCom is not just a matching platform to boot camps, but a LinkedIn for the invisible workforce and the social network is because you need community in order to make it through. That's part of the biggest values of schools and why only five to 50% of people

• 13:22Speaker 02

  complete the 100 million online courses that people have taken on the internet in the last seven years.

• 13:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it is really crazy too, because I think part of, especially when you talk technical, right? So like, let's say that I just had a, um, you know, let's use a kind of an egregious example. So I'm a bartender, my bar is now shut down by government mandate. Uh, the owner comes to me and says, hey, you are unemployed now. I literally can't pay you. Uh, so I go, I get my unemployment claim in. Now I'm waiting and trying to figure out when is this going to end? And so I started thinking about a career. A lot of people, I think the first question uh, that they would ask themselves, if you said, well, why don't you go be a computer scientist? Is I don't understand how to code. I'm not technical. That's really hard, right? Like, like the mental barrier of just what is that is so big.

• 14:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Whereas I think what you guys are really trying to do is say, look, there's millions of other people who figured this out, right? There's no reason why you can't, but what you need is you need persistence, you need discipline, you need people to tell you, you can do it. And kind of you guys provide not only here's where you should go get the training, but here's the support system that goes into that. And it seems to be like that support system may actually be more important in some ways than simply, hey, put this, you know, line of code here, put this line of code there, right?

• 14:40Speaker 02

  Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. And I think on top of that, if you think about it, to your point, uh, people are aware that tech is where the jobs are or where they're going to be. But most people aren't aware of the roles in tech, the skills that are required to get those roles. And if you think about a coding boot camp. Like if you're, if you're, even if you're Don Draper, you're in New York, if you're Don Draper from Mad Men, you made the best marketing and you reach the audience that wants to learn how to code, your coding bootcamp is not going to resonate if those people don't even know what code is. All right. And so what we tell them is like, we created this community, you can see on the homepage, you see questions all the time and discussions of people asking questions in the beginner section about, what is code? What is a bootcamp? What is this? And then other people answering it,

• 15:24Speaker 02

  which creates trust, credibility, creates the network effect and we get bigger and bigger, bigger and stronger and stronger. There's more and more people make it through. So yes, the support system, the, the trust of people helping people is, is absolutely the biggest key.

• 15:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And, and I guess really right now, like as we're seeing the unemployment numbers kind of continue to accelerate, what, what do you think is likely, right? So you talked a little bit about women are going to be disproportionately affected by this because they're the ones who have the service and hospitality type occupations. Are there other things that you're looking at or paying attention to in the unemployment numbers? Or just that alone is, is kind of the big takeaway and then it becomes, okay, there's a problem. Let's go try to solve it.

• 16:08Speaker 02

  Well, I think a few things like, so first I think that like historically, we think about like the education and labor piece as separate. Like thinking about there's a department of labor, department of education, when I think they're actually both interconnected. All right. There's a reason why companies have like dedicated university recruiting programs, right? But that's only a limited portion of the world. And even if all tech companies have dropped their college degree requirement, it's very difficult for them to identify talent that didn't go to a college background. All right. So when I think about education and the virus, you know, education has changed more in the last two weeks than the last 200 years. There's 3.5 billion people on lockdown.

• 16:54Speaker 02

  The school closures have now affected 1.4 billion people and forced 900 colleges to go online. And they were already struggling to keep in touch with the curriculum to help them get jobs. And college has not historically been outcomes driven. I'm not saying college is not valuable because I'm a college graduate. I learned a lot from college.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  You, you get to open up your mind and a bunch of other things, but it's not focused on getting jobs. So what I think is going to happen. Is, you know, students are now questioning the cost of tuition. I think our education systems is to, is gonna really start focusing on becoming outcomes driven, where the only reason why people are going to your program, whether it's college, a bootcamp, or self-taught, is to get a job. There will be some people that wanna do it just for shits and giggles, which is great, but for the most part, people wanna get money. And so, if that's the case, then the things that people were giving people a lot of heat about before this are on income share agreements, or deferred tuition model, or a money-back guarantee model, if they don't get a job, are gonna come back and vogue.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  You're still gonna have people that are gonna have opinions on both sides, but there's enough people that have gotten jobs through an outcomes-driven model, where I think it's gonna accelerate. If you point to history as well, I think that it's gonna be inevitable for government to step in and help on the education side. So, if I was an educator right now, I would probably be doing everything that I could to focus on outcomes, and the only outcome that matters is getting people jobs in your completion rates, right? And so, I think that's important. The other thing that is important to understand is that it's not enough to give people a free education, cuz I, in my opinion, I think income share agreements, money-back guarantees,

• 18:43Speaker 02

  all that type of stuff is a temporary solution. I actually think the cost of education is gonna go down to zero, like it is in like most of the world, right? That's another conversation. I think that even if you have your education at zero, like we said earlier, there's parents, there's people that have rent to pay, right? So, it's, even if I could go to school for free, I gotta pay bills, and so, you're starting to see a lot of job training programs and bootcamps, like Thingful, for example, that just got acquired by Chegg for a hundred million dollars, or eighty, a hundred million dollars with the earnouts, whatever. They're providing a living stipend, where they'll pay you fifteen hundred dollars a month through the program, if you've been affected by Corona. They'll give you a laptop, so you can go through the program. There's different scholarships and things like that, because it's not enough to just

• 19:28Speaker 02

  have access to training, you need additional support sometimes. And so, I think, I think those are the main things that I'm thinking about, and I don't, I, I also think what we're gonna see is- Clay Christensen, rest in peace, he actually already said that half of the colleges were gonna go away. And I think that this is going to accept this whole COVID-19 situation is gonna accelerate that trend. I don't think all colleges are going to disappear. But when you see institutions like Stanford that have billion dollar endorsements doing hiring freezes and tuition costs and things like that. I think that is a major harbinger about what's gonna happen with the rest of higher education.

• 20:07Speaker 02

  And if I was gonna say just in one sentence, I think whoever's listening to this should start thinking about the education system and the labor system as interconnected. And to start thinking deeper about places outside of college, because LinkedIn only has like 600 million people and there's about 8 billion people in the world. And we're gonna reach 10 billion by 2050.

• 20:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, what's really crazy to me, I think, so there's two pieces in there that kind of immediately, one stoked my anger and the other, you know, I think is a great point. The first is the universities are a complete sham in one way, which is most of them are actually asset management firms that have a school. Right? And what I mean by that is they've got a billion plus dollar endowments that it has a very, very advantageous tax structure to it. But then you see this quote unquote rainy day fund or this thing that is supposed to be there for the education, for the students, for the teachers, etc.

• 21:07Anthony Pompliano?

  All of a sudden, when we do have that rainy day, they say, you know what, we're not gonna hire more people, we're gonna freeze raises, we're gonna get rid of our vendors. And then we know that that's gonna lead to them firing the cafeteria staff or the janitorial service workers, etc. And so what happens is like, why do you have that $30 billion endowment, right? And now there's some that actually will step in and they'll use it the right way and do the right thing. But I think it's just exposing kind of the incentive structure, right? And kind of what it's actually there for and what it's not for. So I think that's the first thing. But then the second thing you said that's really interesting is you said earlier that there's been more innovation in education last two weeks and last 200 years, right?

• 21:48Anthony Pompliano?

  And I think that that's very tied into this idea of outcomes based education, which I think most people today would admit. College has 50% education benefits, 50% social benefits, right? And part of this comes down to how can we actually get people the education benefit? Or I'm sorry, the social benefit, right? The, the things that help you would uh learn from other people, open your mind uh mentally, kind of uh mature your brain, all that kind of stuff. Without requiring you to pay fifty thousand dollars a year, take out a bunch of debt, and also move somewhere to go do it. Right? It just feels like those two things um where it's previously been thought to be incompatible with each other over time is actually going to be uh figured out, and this may be the catalyst that does that.

• 22:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm not, I think it's a very exciting time. You see the growth of um things like Khan Academy, Outschool, um and a bunch of other things like that that are are. Yeah, what I think Khan Academy, I saw an article that said um they normally get like eighteen million downloads a month. Um, I think it's like three or four times when they said because of Corona, it's that's that number is about to increase by seven or eight times, which makes their their bill, their like server bill like. Tens of millions of dollars or twen- over twenty million dollars a year, which is insane, but it's awesome that people are excited and like. As uh one of my uh good venture capital friends, uh Jamara Herrera at Cowboy, she said, at tech is sexy again.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  Um, which it always should have been and that it never went out of style, but like education is key. Uh, work is is also key to occup- identity, like occupational identity. There's something else that we didn't cover. About this that I think is important to understand is that uh that I think deeply about is I think our labor market has now entered into um. Free agency equivalent of the sports world, right? If you think about the sports world, if you're like a, a player. You would join the, the team in your hometown. Um, you will go to the school that you went to in your hometown and you play with that team forever and just win a bunch of rings, right?

• 23:55Speaker 02

  But then free agency came around and then like if you're LeBron, you're in Cleveland, you're in Miami, you're in LA, and you just, you just went everywhere, right? And I think what we're entering into which people were talking about this before Corona with the Fourth Industrial Revolution is um lifelong learning where people don't stay at one company forever. They don't stay at one school forever. They go from company to company to company and school to school to school. People like Reid Hoffman. Talk about this with alliances and tours of duty. And how, you know, whatever you want to be in the future, you're going to spend a little bit of time from here to here to here. So if there's no loyalty to a school or a company and no loyalty to, um, yeah, no loyalty to a school or company and the cost of education has gone down.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  Then what becomes valuable is your network of people that are going through this process with you during work. And your identity is not always tied to your role. For some people, it used to be like, I'm a doctor, I'm a lawyer, I work for this big firm, King of Spalding, if I'm a lawyer. Like, that's dope, but like now it's like, I'm pop, right? You know, I'm, I'm Ruben, like, I'm like, whoever you are, that's what makes you cool. And then when people say your name, what do they think? Like before, I thought Facebook page is Snapchat, right? Now I think Facebook page is Snapchat, Bitcoin, mega podcast, mega star, right? So when people say your name, what do people think? And I think that matters when people Google your name, what pops up?

• 25:21Speaker 02

  And so I think as these people that are leaving work or considering a change, start reflecting on what they should do in the labor markets. Or if there's entrepreneurs that are focused on helping these people, these are the things that you should be thinking about, in my opinion.

• 25:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and, and part of this, I think, is a, a mental shift, like, um, you, you mentioned Balaji earlier. He was talking about like, look, there's this shift underway from like the industrial revolution, right? To now we're entering like the in- information revolution, right? And he laid out a whole bunch of things, uh, everything from like internet homeschooling to, um, you know, the, the death of kind of mainstream media to social media, all this kind of stuff. Uh, but really what ends up happening is many of the people who have recently been laid off are actually the last ones to recognize these shifts. Right? People who work hourly wages, who work for small businesses, who are in the service or hospitality or travel industry, et cetera. They're the last ones to benefit from this stuff.

• 26:16Anthony Pompliano?

  In some weird, uh, almost awkward way, because they have been, um, you know, they've lost their jobs in that industrial age type company or, or role. Now all of a sudden. Then they're presented an opportunity to try to make the switch. Now, there's short term pain in there, right, which is really, um, I think where people are focused like, how do we, how do we bridge that gap? How do we try to solve some of that pain for them? But ultimately, what ends up happening is the ones who choose to make that shift. I think will come out, you know, a year, two, three years later and be in a much better position, right? And I think you guys see that on a daily basis with the people who, who kind of come in and say, look, I, I want to find training.

• 26:55Anthony Pompliano?

  I want to find a new skill set so that I can go get a job at a technology company and, and make more money and, and be in a better position in life.

• 27:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, you, you know, it's interesting, I'm seeing, so now that MBA is canceled, NFL is canceled. I actually see a lot of professional athletes downloading the career karma app. Um, and like really interested in working for like gaming companies. I'm like, you know, shout out to Delay and will play versus, uh, was killing, killing the esports game. Michael Sevill, like with Twitch or whatever, like, um, you see a lot of, um, a lot of people that have been laid off from tech companies that are like in a sector that might be travel related. That see the opportunity, they got savings saved up. So these aren't just, um, blue collar, you see white collar people as well being like, oh, wow, this is a, I've always wanted to do this. Let, let me figure out how to level up.

• 27:43Speaker 02

  And I also see employers stepping in as well, which I think is super interesting to understand. There's a great report, um, um, by Georgetown called Colleges as the Beginning. And they talk about how the US spends 1.1 trillion dollars on workforce training every year. Um, and how employers are essentially our, our largest educator. Um, and so what you're starting to see is, um, there's things called like micro work. Where while you're going through a program, they'll give you work to do so you can get some experience while you're going through the program. Um, obviously internships and apprenticeships are a very big deal. Um, Adobe did something called Adobe Digital Academy where they partnered with General Assembly where they'll pay all of your things. And then they'll hire you at the end, which is very interesting.

• 28:28Speaker 02

  There's another company called Catalight, um, that's pretty interesting. That's doing a lot of staffing models where they'll take the work from the companies and, and help them learn. Um, and then level them up because a lot of these people are junior talent and the companies that are hiring sometimes are looking for senior talent. So there's a, a on-ramp or some kind of way to, to standardize that. That's going to be interesting and, and you're seeing more and more companies step up in that regard. So I'm excited about that too.

• 28:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, how how long do you see on average it takes for someone to get retrained, right? So let's say that yesterday I lost my job and I say, hey, you know what? Mentally, I'm in the spot. I want to make a change. Uh, I know it's going to be hard, but I'm ready to do it. What does that look like? What am I looking at from a time perspective?

• 29:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. So on average is about three to 12 months. So if you're doing it full time, it'll take you about three to six months. If you're doing it part time, it'll be about six to 12 months. Full time is about six to 12 hours a day. Part time is about, uh, for, uh, yeah, full time is six to 12 hours a day. Part time is about four to six hours a day. Um, the days of the week, whether it's five to seven days, really depends on which program that you go to. And again, you can see all these different curriculums at careercom.com/schools. But for the most part, it's about three to 12 months. There are some programs that have 18 month programs, um, as well. Um, but for the most part, that's the average. I am seeing in this type of environment, um, more programs with longer durations

• 29:54Speaker 02

  just because there are some people that have, um, different learning styles and might take a little bit longer to capture different concepts. Um, and yeah, and the ones that are more concentrated and shorter are usually people that have a prior background or at least some, some prior knowledge or they'll give you a prep course. But pretty much every job training program that we work with, every bootcamp that we work with assumes you know nothing and they're designed to take you from zero to 100 real quick.

• 30:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And I guess, um, are these things where I'm required to like move? So let's say I'm living in, uh, Topeka, Kansas, right? Versus New York City, obviously, uh, a little bit different. Um, or can I do this stuff remote for the most part?

• 30:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. So that's an interesting question. We, um, I think everybody should, you should link to this episode, uh, this report. But we did a report called the state of the bootcamp market 2020. Um, and you can actually see the concentration of locations for the bootcamps. Most of them are actually in New York and most of the outcomes are actually in New York versus San Francisco. Those are the top two places, but you can see it across the board. Um, but if you look at the history of, of, of bootcamps, it started off only in person, pay money upfront or alone, very similar to everything else. Um, and it was only full time. Then as more and more people started getting into it, then there started to be the flexibility with the part-time versus full-time.

• 31:16Speaker 02

  Then some people started doing it online and online started growing faster than in-person and having not just the same outcomes as in-person, but even better outcomes than in-person. Then we realized that the amount of people that have ten or fifteen thousand dollars to pay for a bootcamp upfront is limited. So then you had innovation with income share agreements and deferred tuition and money-back guarantees. And so the short answer is, yes, everybody can do it online remotely, which is a blessing in this day and age. But what I'll, what I'll say about it as well, that I think is very interesting to understand is it's not just part-time or full-time. You have self-paced courses as well with mentorship. So that's, that's, that's how I think about it. Yeah.

• 32:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And, and I guess, do you see people who are good at using the remote learning programs also end up going into remote work jobs? Like, like, is there a, hey, I either live in a geographic location where it's difficult for me to move for whatever reason. And so I want the remote learning and job? Or some people do remote learning, go and actually they want to work in an office? Like, what's the connection there between the, the program that they're in to get retrained and then where they end up actually getting a job?

• 32:32Speaker 02

  I'd say yes and no. So there's two recent episodes of People on Career Karma. There's a, a black woman that tried to go to college for ten years. And she went to a bootcamp in-person in Atlanta and got a job remotely at Stitch Fix, making ninety-eight thousand five hundred dollars. When she came to us, she knew, she did not know what code was. She didn't even have a laptop in three weeks. We got her accepted into four schools. She started and then she got that job. So that's a, an example of in-person and chose a remote work job. And then we have another guy who did a online bootcamp that also received a living stipend. His name is Jerick One, and you can find it on the podcast. And he got a job making a hundred forty-five thousand dollars.

• 33:14Speaker 02

  But he started in, in, in Modesto in California. He started the program and then.

• 33:22Speaker 02

  Um. He landed the job in New York and he moved to New York. I mean, that was going from online to in person. So I wouldn't say those two things are directly correlated. You definitely see people doing online remote or in person, in person. But it really comes down to what you want for your family and your lifestyle. Uh. Which is why when you download the app, we ask you from day one, what do you want? When you fill out the profile and then our technology can get an understanding of what your goal is. And then we'll create a blueprint for you and give you the people that can get you there.

• 33:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And I guess when you throw out numbers like ninety eight thousand, hundred and forty five thousand, that seems impossible to people, right? There's, there's some people who say, hey, that's my expectation. And there's other people who say that would be incredible, but like, how do I go from making thirty five, forty thousand dollars a year to a hundred and forty five thousand? That's, that just seems insurmountable. One, I guess is just like, what do you see kind of on average, right? As people come out of these schools? And then two is, um, you know, kind of what's your advice to the person who's sitting there saying like, it sounds great, but I, it's just not for me. I just can't do it.

• 34:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. So on average, we see pay ranges between seventy to a hundred thousand dollars. Depending on where you locate it, you're located is what I used to say. But now because of, um, remote work, um, I tell people that the fastest growing commuter is no commute. So if you, you know, landed a job somewhere that's paying that you'll, you'll get that money. I'm sorry. I think, I think, um, because of COVID nineteen, salary adjustments are probably gonna change. But we still see people that are getting between seventy to a hundred thousand dollars. We'll see how that plays out. Um, the reason why these jobs pay so much money is because the demand is high. It was high before COVID. Just so people know the numbers, since we're talking about this.

• 35:08Speaker 02

  There was over half a million open jobs, only fifty thousand people graduating four universities. And by twenty twenty four, it's supposed to be one point four million open jobs and only four hundred thousand people graduating for four universities. Which means that over a million people got to get a job from something that's not college, right? Whether that's self-taught boot camp or whatever. Now, the bit, the demand is even higher and we know that the university system is not going to be able to keep up with this type of a demand. Um, and that's not taking shots at universities again, but that demand and supply difference is what keeps the price high, right? So there's still competition. With that said, since there's a lot of layoffs, not just from junior talent, see a lot of tech companies dropping talent or reducing salaries.

• 35:48Speaker 02

  And so now, as a junior engineer, you're also competing with senior people. And this is the same dynamic I faced when I was leaving college as well. I left college during the financial crisis too. And I was a guy that didn't go to not leave school, badge U P A, blah, blah, blah, competing with laid off investment bankers to prove that I can do this thing. And so with that said, uh, for the people that are like, oh, no, I can't do this. Um, I, I just wanna encourage you to understand that the reason that you're gonna get this job is not because of your coding skills or the, the certificate or degree that you have. It's being authentically who you are.

• 36:32Speaker 02

  And, and this is gonna sound super corny, we're all natural as something that's not natural to everyone else. Think deeply about the problems that you've experienced in your life. This is very entrepreneurial too, like, think deeply about the problems you've experienced in your life that a company is currently solving or where you could get some experience or where you can be seen as an esteemed person, where you can be an expert on that subject. And then focus on building solutions to those problems while you're going through your bootcamp. You might end up finishing the bootcamp and not wanting to get a job in it, but now you have a skill set that you could apply for yourself or that makes you better at you, what you really wanna do, whether it's a teacher or, or, or whatever, which is also a noble profession, right? So.

• 37:18Speaker 02

  It doesn't hurt to try. What we tell people is like if all, let's say, all million of, of, of POMP's listeners right now want to start a coding bootcamp today, just download the CareerKarma app. And if you try to get a job in 2020 and you don't, the worst thing that happened is that you learned something and you didn't pay any money, uh, which is, you know, knowledge pays the best interest. That's what Ben Frankly said, right? So investing in yourself, right? Take advantage of that.

• 37:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And, and I think part of this, and I know you've got some thoughts on like kind of the anti fragility, um, type mindset, right? And, and kind of how that can be built. But part of this is, uh, there's a lot of people, if you sit them down and say, what are your skills? They'll immediately rattle off what they do professionally, right? But they actually have other skills. And, and people always ask me, you know, what do you think I should do? I said, look, I, I can't tell you because I don't know what you like to do. But ultimately there's something that you do, whatever it is, that other people hate doing, that you actually enjoy doing. And you probably enjoy it because you're either good at it or you don't need, you're not even very good at it, but you will become good at it because you naturally will do it in your free time. You don't look at it as work, et cetera. And people are scared to go after that.

• 38:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, like there's like, oh, that can't be a job, right? And, and one of the best examples is like the whole, uh, uh, e-sport stuff, right? You brought it up earlier of just like, how many parents told their kids, you know, stop playing video games? You gotta go get a job. Now, now this kid's making millions of dollars playing video games, right?

• 38:44Speaker 02

  Uh, I was one of those kids. I remember when I was in high school, I played a game called Counter Strike. I wanted to be a pro, pro player. This was before Twitch. I was on, I was in the cyber athlete amateur league and I would sneak away to play the video game at night. And now this is big old industry. But yeah, no, that's exactly right, you know? So.

• 39:01Anthony Pompliano?

  I, I love it. And, and so I guess really, um, as people are going through this, then like, how do you think about the anti fragility? Uh, you know, coming out of what looks like it's gonna be a pretty bad financial crisis?

• 39:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, um, for the people that aren't, aren't familiar with the term anti fragile, um, uh, it comes from the scene to let shout out to my, my, um, my buddy Kahin. He put me onto that book before all this happened. And so the scene to let cause about, talks about being anti fragile, which is a category of things that not only gain from chaos, uh, but they need it in order to survive and flourish. I do believe that bootcamps are anti fragile and education does thrive during times like this. And when I, when I reflect on the term anti fragile, it reminds me of the original breaking in the startup's post that we wrote. And when I thought about the companies that

• 39:55Speaker 02

  I wanted to work for, I pointed out in the article, and everybody could look this up, I wrote it in 2014, things goes in cycles, right? You just tweeted this too. There's, there's bull markets and there's bear markets, right? And if you think about the things that tech has created so far, now is a little bit different, but when I wrote the article, it was mostly things that are nice to have, like, you know, Facebook, Snapchat, like, Google, like, I would say some, some of those things are starting to become need to have, but before it was more like TikTok, like entertainment, like, let's have a good time, right? Y C talks about making something people want. Now, everybody who Y C's talking about, make it, make something people need, right? Because when I picked the companies that I

• 40:36Speaker 02

  wanted to work for, I wanted to focus on companies that are solving problems that are fundamental to life. And I put on the article Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And if you look at the three companies that I worked for so far, they are in education, healthcare, and politics. That is by design. I deliberately chose to go there because I knew that those categories are places where it does not matter what economy is happening, there will be strong economic activity there. Whether they're making money or not, who knows, there's strong growth there. Whether they're making money or not, that's another question, but we're able to pick a category that's fundamental solving people's problems.

• 41:19Speaker 02

  So when I think about myself, or, or you're one of your listeners that's thinking about picking anti fragile categories, think about your own Maslow's hierarchy of needs. If you drew the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, where at the top is about like belonging and fulfillment and self-actualization, and I'm not going to go into that whole thing. My mom's a psychologist, that's why I think about it a lot. But if you focus on like housing, a roof over your head, food, education, you know, financing, you know, like,

• 41:48Speaker 02

  Things like that, you know, what, what is an area where you can become the best in the world in? And then just dive in that direction. What I'll say about this too is don't worry about perfection. I think our education system has historically focused on us on being perfect and getting the best grades and the perfect SATs. And if you look at my SATs, my SATs are straight garbage. I was the one that was making patterns on my SATs because I didn't care about it. Right. But I bring it up because you really want to just focus on being directionally correct. Just like go in that direction. And if you shoot for the moon, even if you miss, you'll land among the stars. And I'm not here to do the Nassim Taleb podcast, which I hope that you're going to be able to do.

• 42:31Speaker 02

  But just everybody here listening, look up the term anti fragile. We all know that black swan events happen if we study economics and COVID-19 is a black swan event. But like Kennedy said, you know, there's a, the Chinese character for, for crisis. One stroke is danger, the other one's opportunity, right? So we never want to let a, a crisis or an opportunity go to waste. So take full advantage.

• 42:56Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. And, and I think part of what you're talking about, like being directionally correct, there, there's two things that are really key here. So the first is one, I always tell people that whenever they get the opportunity to join a company, right? When you're coming out of school, you either want to one, go start a company. If you have that risk appetite and that's what you want to do. Or two is if you're going to go join a company, don't go join the IBM's of the world. Right. I think it was Adam Nash, maybe when, um, or, uh, the wealth front piece. They wrote a blog post that was basically like, go join the like series A or series B company. That most people feel like it's going to be, uh, the next Uber, the next Airbnb, the next Facebook, the next, you know, uh, Twitter or whatever. Because what ends up happening is you get inside, it's easy to move around. If you're good, you'll get more responsibility over time.

• 43:40Anthony Pompliano?

  You'll learn from a lot of people and then you are personally benefiting from the success of the company. So when you go to leave, now you're known as, oh, he was early at Twitter. He was early at this, she was early here, whatever. And there's this big reputational boost along with the information and responsibility boost you get by being early in a place that grows really fast and ends up being successful.

• 44:02Speaker 02

  That's exactly right. I mean, Sam Altman talks about like the value of having a, a W on your record. Um, and even Gary Tan, he just tweeted something yesterday, um, talking about how. The rate of learning is the most valuable startup compensation, right? The, the, the only differentiator between a startup and anything else is growth, right? But it's not just about moving fast, it's about your speed of iteration. And if you're an individual that has chosen to work at a company that's growing and iterating quickly, and your rate of learning is growing exponentially, that knowledge, that experience pays off very well. And then if you picked right on top of it and you get that W on your record,

• 44:42Speaker 02

  you are essentially not immortal, but like you're like, you're good in the labor force. Like you'll be straight, you're not gonna go hungry. So you made your rap.

• 44:53Anthony Pompliano?

  I should title this How to Be Immortal.

• 44:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Before, uh, before we finish up, I want to quickly touch on, um, you mentioned earlier, uh, these living stipends that some of the boot forces, uh, boot camps are providing for people, uh, and how it kind of ties into a universal basic income, etc. So you got a bunch of thoughts there, maybe elaborate on that?

• 45:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, um, there's a, there's a great, um, this is gonna sound kind of weird. There's a great Playboy magazine article that Dr. Martin Luther King did, uh, with, um...

• 45:26Anthony Pompliano?

  I never thought I would hear that sentence.

• 45:27Speaker 02

  Right, yeah. And, uh, it's, it's actually an awesome, awesome post, uh, article talking about automation, okay? Um, and he talks about how, um, tech is creating and destroying jobs. And if something, it, in, in black and white will be affected unless something grand and imaginable is done. And career karma is our version of that grand and imaginable thing that's gonna help everybody. Um, but the reason why I talk about universal basic income is because it's a concept that, uh, Dr. Martin Luther King brought up in that piece. Um, our, our government system has talked about it for a long time, not just our government system, it's a bipartisan issue.

• 46:07Speaker 02

  Um, many people have talked about it, but I think yesterday, um, I was really, really excited to see, uh, what, what, um, what Jack Dorsey did with the billion dollar commitment, uh, to, to help, uh, solve or, or, or kill the virus, right? And, and, or, and not just flatten the, the curve, but just completely demolish it. So he, he committed a billion dollars towards this COVID-19, uh, pandemic.

• 46:32Speaker 02

  But the other thing that I don't think everybody caught that that jumped out to me is he also mentioned, he not only just tweeted that he's gonna donate, he made a Google Doc that's transparent, which I think is awesome leadership, you could see where the money is going. But he also said that he's gonna, after this is done, he's gonna focus on um, girls' education and universal basic income. Alright, um, there's the, the reason why I like both of those things is it goes back to my point about women labor force and this women period. Um, I love my mom, my mom was a boy, um, I think that women are the most powerful in the world. Uh, there's more women than than men in the world, they're more educated, often they mature faster.

• 47:12Speaker 02

  Um, and what's super cool about universal basic income is that it goes back to the point about, uh, even if you have things that are free, or even if you have access to skill sets or companies, there's certain things that are are required in order to live. And so, universal basic income, for the people that don't know, is essentially um, money given to you by the government, so that you can have your basic necessities covered. Um, Alaska currently has this in place. Um, Native American tribes also have this in place. Um, my buddy Mi- uh, Michael Tubbs, who's the mayor of Stockton, has run an experiment for universal basic income. Uh, Y Combinator has run an experiment on us, universal basic income.

• 47:57Speaker 02

  Um, I like what GiveDirectly, which is a nonprofit, has done related to this. It's really, really exciting, but imagine a world where all your basic needs are taken care of. Like, you don't have to worry about rent, food, or clothes. If you don't have to worry about rent, food, or clothes,

• 48:13Speaker 02

  how would you use your time, right? And so, I think, I think time is a good concept. Um, it kinda like leads me to a whole nother place because um, we think deeply about like, how would he, how would we exchange value if money didn't exist? Um, I think um, there's a really good movie called In Time.

• 48:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Bro, it's one of my favorite movies.

• 48:35Speaker 02

  You know about that movie?

• 48:36Anthony Pompliano?

  It's one of my favorite movies.

• 48:37Speaker 02

  You know, and for the people that don't know about it, it's a movie where money doesn't exist. And the rich people got nothing but time and the poor people are always running out of it. Right? So how do we take our time sitting at home quarantine to invest it and create more time in the in the future? Time is literally money. And I think that universal basic income can give us more time to not just focus on ourselves, but to uh to make the world a better place. I mean, I'm really excited about that concept.

• 49:07Anthony Pompliano?

  So that movie's got Justin Timberlake in it. Uh, so anything with Justin Timberlake is supposedly uh good. I don't know. Uh, but on top of that, uh, the whole concept there of the rich people got nothing but time, right? The poor people running out is when they run out of time, they die. Right? And it's one of those movies where the first time I ever watched it, uh, a lot of it was over my head. I I just didn't understand what was going on, you know, and it was entertaining, but whatever. Watched the second time a couple of months later and I was like, wait a minute. And I started to see some of the underlying themes, right? What they were trying to really say, uh, time is money, all this stuff. By about the third time I watched it, I remember saying like, holy shit.

• 49:45Anthony Pompliano?

  This is probably one of the most prophetic uh movies ever in that it really hammers home core concepts for life. That if you can understand those concepts and apply them in your life, it'll it'll change the way you think about your time, what you do for a living, etc. Uh, and it's all kind of masked as this like, I don't know, weird like Justin Timberlake movie, right?

• 50:06Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. And and then like to to put a bow on it, um, and and how like universal basic income can create time. Um, it's not something that currently exists for everybody right now. Um, and who knows if the government approves it, they've already approved a stimulus. But living stipends currently do exist. And everybody that does download the career come up can be eligible to receive a living stipend. And more and more people are doing this and they can range between a thousand to four thousand dollars. Even people that are disabled, I think the government already has something called like vocational rehabilitation programs where they'll pay for your education and things like that. But take full advantage of living stipends, just Google it.

• 50:52Speaker 02

  And there probably will be something that exists. The other thing that's interesting too is outplacement services as well. Where if you get laid off, a company will pay for your, your training. I mean, then take advantage of the living stipend and then you're, you're in a pretty interesting place. So.

• 51:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I love it, man. Um, all right. This is a super helpful. There's a lot of people, I mean, literally millions of people sitting at home right now who, uh, who are wondering what they should be doing. Uh, any last pieces of advice for them, just as they're sitting there wondering, you know, what do I do?

• 51:21Speaker 02

  I think the last piece of advice that I would say is, um, uh, listen to more episodes on Pops Podcasts because I think it's, it's super important to, to understand what's happening in the world. Cause it's changing so fast and you know, we've known each other for a long time for good reason. Like we, we, we were aligned and we understand how things work and, and there's, you're always making sure that you're not just benefiting yourself, you're helping others. Um, I encourage them to find other podcasts as well to educate them to sign up to different newsletters, watch some YouTube videos, check out the Breaking Stars Podcast as well. Take some time to spend time with your family, uh, with the babies as well. And, and, and to realize that your occupational identity is not tied to what you do.

• 52:06Speaker 02

  And try to think about what your purpose is, cause I think this is a great opportunity to do that.

• 52:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I, I, um, one, I appreciate the kind words, but, uh, I, I think that if, uh, somebody asks me who, uh, who's helped more people, uh, in Silicon Valley, you guys have done a fantastic job of doing that. So, uh, I will, uh, I'll link to everything I can and then hopefully people will take advantage of what you guys have built. I think it's, uh, super important. Uh, where can they find you, uh, you online Twitter, anywhere else you can send them?

• 52:32Speaker 02

  Twitter is the main place. Um, Ruben Harris, R U B E N H A R R I S. Same thing on Instagram. I was on, on Afro Tech Live today. So sometimes I do some things on, on, on Instagram. I have a Snapchat, but I don't really use it, but those are. The main places, um, if you want to send me an email, it's ruben at career comma dot com. Um, especially, please, please, please email me if you have a clear COVID 19 offering that you want to provide to people, to workers that are transitioning. Think deeply about what could you do for millions of people that are transitioning careers? And if you have something to support them, let me know because I can blow that up and get them to a lot of people and make sure that some things can happen for them.

• 53:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. You spend more time on Twitter or Instagram now?

• 53:18Speaker 02

  Twitter for sure. I actually have like, uh, block limiters on my Instagram for like 10 minutes a day. Um, because it's literally like, what is it scrolling is the new smoking is what they say.

• 53:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Ah, I like that. I like that. Well, it's, it's a bad thing, but yeah, it, it makes sense.

• 53:34Speaker 02

  But I, but I do scroll a lot on Twitter. That's my guilty pleasure, but it's also like, I gotta know what's going on. So ever since COVID, I've just been glued to it. I had a blocker on, on Twitter too, but I took it off because I gotta know what's going on.

• 53:47Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it, man. Well, listen, I appreciate you taking the time to do this. Uh, you guys are building something awesome. So hopefully some people go take advantage of it and I hope people learn from this.

• 53:55Speaker 02

  Thank you, man. Likewise.

• 53:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Hey everyone, Pop here. If you liked this episode of Off the Chain and want to help us take crypto to the top of the apple, Spotify and other podcast charts, please do us a favor and rate, review and subscribe. To review, simply go to the Off the Chain homepage, scroll down until you see the five blank stars. Taking 15 seconds to fill those stars in and leave a quick review goes a long way in helping us take the entire crypto ecosystem to the top of the charts. I appreciate you listening and see you next time on Off the Chain.