work life balance w/ gabe greenberg

full transcript

auto-generated from the audio, so expect a few typos. the audio is the source of truth.

Hello, hello. Thanks for listening to Guidance Counselor 2.0. Listen, I want to give you a quick rundown of what this podcast is and what you're about to get into as you listen to these episodes. We had Guidance Counselors in middle school. We had Guidance Counselors in high school, but we didn't really have Guidance Counselors in college and now as professionals, we don't really have anybody to turn to to ask a quick question to learn something about the job search or to navigate your career. And so that is what I want this podcast to be for you. I want it to be a tool for you to navigate the job search and your career.

So that being said, I hope you enjoy this episode. And if you need to reach me, Taylor at vaco.com is how to get in touch with me old fashioned email social media at tdesint D E S S E Y N. And finally, please rate and review this in the app store because I want this to be discoverable for others so they can navigate their careers. Hope you enjoy the episode. Gabe, let's give the people what they want. Give back about who you are, what you do, and then obviously we'll dive into your story. Sure, yeah. I'm Gabe Greenberg, the founder of G2I. We run a two-sided marketplace for software engineers.

It was started actually by accident six years ago. So there's a little bit of a story there. But today, we match engineers with jobs, and our focus is on developer health. So we're really focused on the physical, mental and emotional health of software developers. We're planning on investing in more programming on that side to care for software developers and also to teach companies to care for the developers better as well. So that's what we do today where we're headed and you can find me at game underscore G2I on Twitter. I love that. And then also to, for those of you If you want to check out G2I, we had Michelle on unicorn finders, because a man can't have too many podcasts, my other podcast.

We broke down what G2I is, what they stand for, culture, mission, value, all that stuff. So go check out unicorn finders on our LinkedIn page. So one thing I was, you know, what endeared you to me was your openness, your vulnerability, especially as your story, you know, talking. You know what I saw? I saw your thread you put on Twitter about your story. I think that's what it was. It's like, man, vulnerability is hard, you know, to put yourself out there, to put yourself out there on social media especially is very difficult. And Gabe out here was like, just telling it how it is and kind of his struggles and his story.

So Gabe, can you kick it off, man, and just kind of talk and kind of frame it up and kind of what you're talking about with obviously work-life bounce, kind of finding your truth, but definitely kind of stage it and set it up and kind of your story and then kind of go into that. Yeah, yeah, sure. Well, I mean, my history in tech is, I guess is not average, you know, I don't know how to describe it. But I found tech basically through missionary work in Africa. We were working with street kids, you know, and these kids just, I mean, I literally remember the last day I was there in 2013.

I lived there for a couple months at a time doing filming and taking some of these kids off the streets. One of these kids touched my hands. He was like 13 years old and then he goes, your hands are soft. It touched mine. Mine are rough. And that's because I've worked in my life. And he was serious. He had worked on the streets and had a hard life. And my hands were smooth because I was designing websites. So I got into tech because this missionary group asked me to build them a website. And I figured it out, on WordPress, and got involved in web design.

And for a number of years, all the way up to 2015 was doing web design. And we had a big client, and they pulled out, they got sued. They refused to pay us money. I found out this guy was a con artist. And so we won a lawsuit that I really didn't want to have in the first place. And I was newly married, had a baby on the way, and had no money. And so that's when we went to this new model where we said, you know, we're not going to put all our eggs in one basket. We're going to do a marketplace, you know, and it wasn't really on purpose.

But a couple of years earlier, I had, this is Well, I had started getting headaches every single day, massive migraines. I never had an headache issue before. I was tired all the time. I was irritable. My mood would swing crazily. I felt like I was going insane. And I got diagnosed with mercury poisoning from eating too much swordfish. Swordfish and tuna. Because I've been working through, I've been working at a restaurant, a fish restaurant, like an upscale fish restaurant. and yet your shift meals were like whatever you wanted. Right, yeah. So I got this mercury poisoning, and at the same time I had started the web design portion of G2I back in 2012, and was getting maltoxicity at the same time from this.

You know, like whatever you text startup, you start in a garage or a storage closet. So I chose the storage closet route, you know, in Delray Beach, Florida. It was $200 a month, I think, you know? I wanted to separate out. I wanted to have a little spot to go and work. It was right down the street. It was that historic marina, and there was no, like, they couldn't do any upgrades. They couldn't really, like, restore this place. So it was water damage. And so by the time I got through years of treatment for the mercury poisoning, I was still sick with the maltoxicity. So I spent 2012 until 535 days ago.

So 2012 until about 2026, and tired, and headaches, and eight years. Yes, every single day I was sick and tired. And I would sleep on the floor of my office and get up and do a little bit of work. And sleep on the floor of my office and get up and do a little bit of work. So talk about, I could never think straight. And I liked being around people, and I didn't want to be around people anymore. So I did all my networking, and everything I did was online. Everything anyone I connected to was either on Reactaflux, which is a Discord group for React developers or Twitter.

We're the various Slack channels out there. And the other part of my story is that with all these health issues, I couldn't put my health first because I was a workaholic. I was pouring in 60, 70, 80 hours of work every week as a startup founder, you'd say, well, that's what you need to do. And now I know that's not the truth. But I can never put myself first. I can never put my family first. My life was very out of balance. So I just burned out at the same time and I came to a bottom and now I'm no longer unhealthy I no longer put in 60 hours a week, but I was in that transition, that period of transition and coming to the end of myself was the most painful time of my life.

And it's been a gift because it's created a company that has the primary focus. So that being said, again, thank you for sharing that. I want to kind of dive in and we talked off air kind of about hiring managers and work-life balance. Like, what do you see right now? what's your advice to founder CEOs right now, both to them, and then also to their teams as well, like share some Gabe's nuggets from that perspective. Yeah, I think you're missing out if you think that not putting people first is going to benefit you in some way, or putting people first in a very superficial way is going to make any change.

And one example of that is a four day work week. Working less should not mean less productivity. And I frame it like this. As a founder, I'm worried about runway. I'm worried about paying the bills. I'm worried about people doing what they say they're going to do and doing great and coming in a top performance, right? But I think that your bottom line should increase if you do something like a four-day work week. As one example, there's many different ways for people first, right? But if you, let's say you enact a four-day work week or even experiment with it because there's lots of ways in and we have a four-day work week guide on g2i.co under resources, right?

talks about. You can do every other Friday. You know, you can do Mondays or Fridays off for split teams so that you have coverage through the whole week. There's so many ways. You can do a 32 hour work week, which I do, where you're working like a half day Friday and a half day Wednesday or whatever your schedule would be. But the point is, if I'm doing this as a founder, I should be able to get better people on my team because they're Like, I mean, and there's been a lot of competitor employees from our team members from competitors that have joined our team inbound.

We're not going out and- Sure. Because they've seen the job descriptions of what we're talking about and they see that they're putting in 12 and 14 hours. And one of them waited about five months to get in to our organization. Five months. And she was just like, I still wanna come. I still wanna join. And we, she signed, I think, yesterday. Right? So, you know, amazing talent should join your company, right? And then those people are feeling cared for in a real and true and deep way, and then they're not leaving. You know, and the one person that did leave our organization recently is looking for a new job again, and she's like, this is the, she's still emails me, and she's like, this is the best, you know, work life outs I ever had.

So you have less churn. And then the last piece of this puzzle is if you're really reducing the work hours and you're really focusing on them doing what really matters at work, taking away some of the busy work or the extra meetings or all this inefficiency, then they're doing higher quality work because they're more rested like an athlete would, right? They have scheduled rest days even against the teams where you want them to beat my Sixers. James Harden, NMB did not play last night, right? But it was scheduled. It was scheduled for James Harden because they want to make sure his hamstring, you know, the team won anyway.

It's just the heat anyway. So then when they come back, they should be more rested and they should do better just like, you know, there's no difference. I just don't see a difference between, you know, an athlete and a soft engineer or any type of worker in tech, you know, there's no difference. So our bottom line should increase, our profit should increase because we have better people, more leaving less, doing better quality work, and so your bottom line should go up, knock down. I just feel, and you know what's so funny, so a few things that I wanna highlight, but the first thing I wanna highlight is you just say anything about pay.

You literally talked about all the other things. Now, pay's important, right? Like, where I'm not dismissing that. What I'm saying is that game went at it from what I call a holistic approach. basically anything outside of money to me is a holistic approach when it comes to retaining talent. And so props to you on that. The second thing I want to highlight is you mentioned job descriptions. And I have become a fanatic and really pointing out job descriptions and the importance of it. One of my posts today is going to be around three things I think companies can do to stand out and the sea of companies right now to attract talent.

I simple, concise, and fun job descriptions. And so talk about that. I mean, what is your thought process with the job descriptions because there are very few managers and founders I have on this show that actually bring that up. Yeah. I wrote the job descriptions for the recent jobs that we had before. And there are some important roles that we're hiring for. And the way that I focus on doing that is I love the simple, fun aspect that you have, Taylor. I also love the transparency that you can offer. That's like the driest and most boring area that you can possibly think. You're a nice job descriptions.

Everybody. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so you can disrupt it very easily. And you can disrupt it by saying, how can I give a transparent view into the company? I've chosen to do it. We have chosen to do it through sharing like our three year vision video that was supposed to be internal. I'm like, why are we keeping this internal? It was a pitch internally for a three year vision. And I'm like, nope, this is going right in the job. I'm like, you know, so it's, it's like a 20 minute video. Not everyone's going to watch it, but, um, but it talks about my, my, my story a little bit.

It talks about our vision. It talks about where we're headed, you know, for the next three years. So if they're wondering where we're going, it's like it's right there. And then there's other things you can do with video. I think video is the most underused aspect in job description. I am not paying Gabe to say this for the record. Underused aspect in job descriptions. And it's why you work so well on Twitter and all these different domains is because you're constantly you're a human being. I feel like I know you because we're talking and I've seen you talk so much. So, Loom, a buddy of mine, a climbing buddy of mine I was the founder of Bloom, Vinay, who's a genius.

If there's one company that I would want to join other than G2I, it's Bloom. And I've said that to many people. Yeah. And, and Bloom allows you to very quickly, you know, record a five minute video screen share. And we use that to talk about the role from the hiring manager, you know, itself. And I, and I require the ideal loom video for everything that goes up because why not? You could tell us. That's amazing. That's going to interview you. Not only not only do you write your job description, you also do a loom video to talk about the job as well. Yep Yeah, because there's context that you're not gonna get yeah think about you know and and and it's like giving another another Transparent you know view into your company so you really want to give away as much as you can you know process And that's why like in the interview process When they talked to me it's a two-way to a street So I give people 15 minutes to ask questions about the company and I let them know in advance that they should come with questions.

And if you think that's a waste of time, I'd say, well, you can actually learn sometimes more about the questions they ask you and the quality of questions and what they're asking about in terms of what they care about and are they're a good fit by giving them some time. You know a job description that's you know that's in depth and transparent gives people of you and they it sells them It's the first touch, you know, so I love that. That's awesome. That's awesome. Dominic comes in. Thanks for your time today Mr. Greenberg. I love it. What can we do as employees to advocate for better work-life balance for our managers or the companies we work for?

So, Tommy, this is a great question. So I had Heather downing on the show yesterday, and we actually talked about managing upwards. And I think this is kind of a really good question almost to piggyback on yesterday's session to today's. So, Gabe, how would you want to be addressed as a founder CEO, if an employee comes to you? What's the best way an employee can communicate what they need? We do things that we've been experimenting, you know, a G2I. I've been doing an opening ritual for the past two years with my executive coach and that opening ritual covers two things. How's my health? I grade myself and give some updates on it and then how's my essentialism?

Meaning I write a plan every two weeks. How well am I doing on that plan of the hell yes, right? And some highlights and lowlights around what's going well and what's not. So with the people that report to me, this is an experiment, they've been reporting that work life balance through literally grading how their health is and we talk about it. So we've allowed for the space everyone on one, it's being discussed. And I think the depth that they're able to get into and the conciseness is a great place and if they're not doing well, we spend more time time on that. So if I were to go to an organization that doesn't have that built in, because most aren't going to have that built in, you know, you could go to the g2i.co website, click on resources, there's a four day work week PDF that talks about experimenting.

You know, you could talk about it from this will help you all. This will help the companies will help me be productive, I'm less productive because I am feeling overwhelmed. Because there's too many requirements coming at me and the products management just isn't up to snuff. There is, I'm dealing with physical issues, I'm dealing with emotional issues. So I would want that to be transparently shared and to say, hey, at the end of the day, yes, this is my own life, and you should care about me, right? That's, that's like an obvious, but, but there's also the element to, hey, this is, this is getting in the way of me producing and being productive for the organization, for the team as a whole.

You know, so I think that's always a safe way in, you know, there's an interesting study that's been done with a consulting company. They looked at 115 different people that worked for a consulting company. And it was recently published. I saw it on Twitter a day or two ago. And the people that went to the managers and said, I need better work-life balance, they were the ones that got passed over for promotion. And the ones that figured out a way to work less in different ways, like they would have more local clients they didn't have travel, they would like fake it, but they would want people to still think they were working 80 hours a week.

They were the ones that were getting the, you know, four star reviews and the praise. And they were secretly going to this interviewer that was doing this research and saying, I'm not working these hours, they think I am. Huh. Right? So there's a perception of that. It's all about like, I don't know what the perception is, But my assumption is that that is something along the lines of you're putting yourself first rather than the company. And I think you should put yourself first. That's the point. Yeah. And also Dominic too, I'll just tell you this, just to wrap this question up. Just come out of from how you feel, right?

I mean, if an employee comes at it to me, say, Hey, I feel this way. This is how I'm feeling because of this. That goes a really long way. not saying I need, but I feel a certain way. I think we'll go a really long way. But and Gabe, going back to what you said specifically, retention is something that's not being talked about right now. And which is baffling to me because all the things you're saying about, and I'm not even saying right, because companies, I've had some pushback when I talk about the four day work week, like can it scale, blah, blah, blah. And I don't want to get into the nuts and bolts here.

I think to each their own. But I think that I think the most important thing is to talk about what you're doing for retention and what works within your organization. If a four day work week, even, you know, so my brother works at Eventbrite as a product owner. Yeah. They have started, so they started the four day work week once a month. That's all. And then now I think they're experimenting, I think, I don't know if my brother's still watching on Instagram. He can chime in. All right. Are they talking about every Friday or every other Friday now? They're slowly starting to build that in there.

So again, I think it's what's best for organization. I think retention's got to be at the top of your conversation. And here's the deal. I don't think retention. Retention's going to be an issue for the next few years. Yeah. Like I don't think it's like the world opened back up and, oh, retention's fixed. Like, no. I think what has happened is COVID's flipped this entire work on its head with it being a global thing now and that people can go anywhere. So I don't know if you have any more color or thoughts on that. If you want the best people to join your organization, they need something that is different.

And I think that was a great statement. Yeah, because the FANG or whatever we're calling it now, with the Facebook name change, is going to be able to offer RSUs and salary that I, little G2I, cannot compete with. And honestly, most companies can't compete with G5. Most companies are in our boat. We have 25 people and 50 plus people on our working full time, our platform. So you call it a head count of, you know, somewhere between 25 to 75, 100 people, right? You can never compete with a million dollars in stock, right? Right. However, there's some people that come to a certain point in their career and we've met quite a few of them and hired some of them, you know, and they're saying, I have everything I need and most of the things I want and what I really want is to go like climb this mountain or to go kiteboarding or to like work on my cars more often, or just to be more present for my young family.

And they're really considering saying no to those massive salaries and saying, I'm going to take a really good salary. You should not get paid less for a four day work week. Correct. 100% of what you get paid at another place. And I'm going to take a great salary, and I'm going to take some stock options. And I'm going to join this 100 person company because they care about me. and I can do great work here, right? And I can put whatever, I can have the slice of the pie, and now, you know, work is like 80%, and it can go down to like 50% of the pie.

And I had so many, you just have more room, right? You know, on a Friday off, it's like, wow, I start thinking about what I wanna do by noon. You know, I wanna go climbing this and that, and then I'm back at five o'clock for my family, you know, or with them for the day or whatever it is, you know? So I think you need to be completely different to compete for the best talent, the best world, building the best teams. Is Jason Langstorf speaking? You're right, Miami? Jason, I don't believe he's speaking. Okay. So Jason, so I had an interview with him. I would check him out.

For those of you who are watching, we talked about developer health. He's got amazing thoughts. We talked about one of the best quotes. I'll never forget with with Jason what he said is developers need to stare at more walls AKA giving them more of a break a mental break To allow them to think better. So check out that episode. I have with Jason. He's incredible individual around, you know health and balance of the developer But I think to I think Getting I talked to more developers recently how to developer I won't say who but they are speaking at your event and this individual will message me and they were like, hey, a lot of my friends are getting calls for a lot higher salaries than I'm at, and I'm at their range, like I'm at their skill level, should I go look and I said, listen, you have a lot going on right now.

And like side stuff, I was like, do you wanna go take another job that pays more, but probably not have this side, Project that you're working on and that individual is like yeah, I guess you're right I guess I guess where I'm currently at gives me the balance to do more than just work and here's the deal right listen If you I tell you this if you just want to go get money go get bread go get the bread, you know get your bag Go do it. That's fine. I there is nothing wrong with that. I don't fault anybody for that but I think too you need to you need to think about what all else you're doing outside of work and And if you want to go take another job, will that allow you to keep that?

And I want to impart that on everybody. Bobby, it's Jason Langstorf, L-E-N-G-S-T-O-R-F-F. He was like 10 or 12, 15 episodes back for me on my podcast. So, okay, as we wrap up here, 30 minutes flies by when you're having fun with friends. And it's over ready. Well, so I want to leave the last like three to five minutes to kind of chat up just anything else you're passionate about right now. You know, we can talk about React Miami again. We can talk about hiring, talk about job seekers. I mean, any last wise words of wisdom for the next three to five minutes to wrap up here?

Oh, there's so many things we could talk about. I know. Man, I am really excited about React Miami. I think it's going to be a great event. I would love for, you know, some of the, that you're guests to come down and check it out. And Michelle and Joseph work so hard on it. And I can't wait to hang out with you. I really think there's an element to what's fueling a lot of this desire and the ego to do more and to work harder when we put ourselves last is the idea of workaholism. And that's really not talked about in tech. We don't talk about work allism.

We don't define it. Work allism isn't just working 60 hours a week, or 80 hours a week, or 100. It's not this very well defined thing around just hours. It's the idea of overdoing that leads to a constant reliance upon adrenaline. Right? Right? So it's actually a substance addiction, just like you would get addicted to alcohol or heroin or something like that. Adrenaline is extremely powerful. And so on one hand, yes, go make the money that you need to make or you wanna make. On another hand, you need to look at the cost, right? Cause there's always a cost. And I think just like technical debt, or management debt, right?

where you're focused on the short term and saying, okay, I can pay this off later, well, there's gonna be a health debt that a lot of people are tackling in a play. Make the workalls in peace is beneath, for some people, you know, that. And that's the conversation I wanna start to bring the public because there's a lot of discussion around burnout that a lot of us are experiencing burnout, have experienced burnout, will experience burnout. but not a lot of discussion around solution, right? And that's what I want to do with G2I. So me and Michelle are writing something called a RESTful Work Operating System.

RESTful Work, we're defining as a Work Week you look forward to, fill with joy and rest and an unhurried pace. It's a place you do your best work, yet it's just one part of your life. The day is comprising a RESTful Work Week, you have a clear start and end, undisturbed personal time and consistent ample time for sleep. Restful work means we are better parents, partners, employees, and friends, and restful work leads to putting our health first and finding more often than not a place of deep contentment. So we're focused on not just a mass acknowledge, but wisdom. We talk a lot about wanting to get little bits of knowledge in our brains, but wisdom is that applied in a lived way.

So we're writing this Rust 4 Aguarating System. I think it'll come out at some point after React Miami. And that's one thing that I'm passionate about is helping people where they're at. And to move away from some of the things that we think we should be doing, or should have, or should be making, it's like, what do you really want? And I'll end here. I really want to be not living my life on adrenaline. really want to not be time stuffing, fitting so many things into every hour. I really want to be working with my team members at G2I and like slowing down enough to have that emotional connection with them, right?

As a coworker, I really want to be present with my wife and my kids, you know? And I really want to have rock climbing and my relationship with God and my recovery, you know, journey, you know, these different health thing as like, as like a bigger slice of the pie, you know, and I'm doing the best work I've ever done in my entire life. It's not a coincidence. It's not. It's not. It's the foundation. It's the foundation of doing better work. Well, and I'm going to, I know Gabe was going to wrap it up here, but I want to add to this because I want to share just for 45 seconds kind of where I'm at, right?

So I deal with workaholism for sure, right? I mean, I love work, which is a good thing, right? I mean, it's not something I dread. I wake up every morning jacked, but that's the adrenaline, right? And but it's fascinating that Gabe mentioned this. And so 2022, so my wife and I, we had her kid. She's 19 months old. We moved out to a farm north of town to try to get away and allow her daughter to be around horses and, you know, to get out of the city. And, you know, towards the end of last year, you know, I was, I'm in kind of this startup mode within Vaco kind of creating this remote engineering practice.

And I got really burned out. And I was like, you know what, 2022, I got to get back to physical relationship, spiritual and mental health. Um, and it's so interesting what Gabe said about adrenaline because I want to share, share kind of what I found. So I hired a nutritionist, um, who's been working with my wife. And she, so I went to go get us a blood drawn. And she basically said, I've been in adrenal failure for years. And so for those of you who don't, I didn't know what that was. I was like, do I have cancer? She goes, no, adrenal failure basically means your body's been trying to run through a brick wall for years.

And I was fasting and I was drinking a ton of caffeine on top of that. And typically you're not supposed to do both, I don't think you're supposed to do one or the other. And so my body was tired. And so I've gotten off caffeine except time changes really messed me up. I'm on caffeine for the week. I'm getting off it, I promise. But, but you know, I've been off of caffeine. I've gotten my macros in check. I'm back in counseling. We're in my first counseling session this Friday because our marriage counselor said everybody's every counselor is booked right now. Like like COVID as wrecks havoc on the mental health of individuals that we're not talking about right now.

So I'm getting back in there, trying to get back back into church. like things like that, working out, I have a home gym now, you know, I'm playing hockey again tonight, four days in a row, like trying to, trying to have this balance, and I will tell you this, I have this show to keep me accountable too, but it's something I continually get better on, but I'll tell you this, if you're working, if you're living just to work, that's fine, that's a season of your life, but you need to kind of look outside of that. And what does it look like five years from now, right?

I will tell you this, some of the best, most high performing individuals that I've seen in various companies usually have beat up home lives. And it's not a coincidence, right? And so I would just, I think we put the wrong thing on pedestals and that's why I was been so attracted to Gabe and his story and who he stands for because Gabe is one of those individuals that gets it. And is trying to flip the script on what we should value. We shouldn't value hustle culture. I'm all about working hard. Do not get me wrong, there was a difference in working hard in hustle culture.

And so Gabe, again, I applaud you for speaking out and being vocal about this topic is incredibly important. Yeah, man. Just another bozo on the bus trying to learn. Yeah. I'm a little bit older. Same. As I literally spilled my coffee as we were talking, so I have coffee on it, I'm not sure. No. So well, y'all, thank you again for hanging out. Gabe, I appreciate you staying on real quick as I wrap up, because I have a few things to ask you. But y'all go connect with Gabe on Twitter, on LinkedIn, go connect with Michelle. Michelle's fantastic. She's in the chat here. And y'all come down to react to Miami and let's all hang out together down in Miami because that sounds like an absolute ball.

So y'all have a great one. Tomorrow I am off. No guidance counselor 2.0 tomorrow. I have an internal candidate flying in for my team. So I'm gonna hang out with him for the day. And then Thursday's unicorn finers with Ryan Butler. She's with Kelly Vonn and Govello. So they are trying to redo the gift card industry. So if any of y'all got gift cards laying around, you should attend the show because we're gonna talk about the gift card industry. And then Friday, the one and only Nate Taylor from Pluralsight, I'm having him on again. I'm very excited to have that boy back on because we caught up months ago and we need to hang out again.

So that's the week. Y'all have a great one Gabe. I appreciate you buddy. Appreciate you. All right, I'll see y'all. Hey, you did it. You listened to an entire episode And I am very grateful because you know why? There's a lot of podcasts out there. There's a lot of episodes. And I myself rarely finish an entire episode. So I appreciate you so, so much for listening. Quick reminder, please rate and review this podcast in the App Store. I want this to be discoverable to others. And the only way that happens is if you take the time right now and rate and review it, please, like right now, unless you're driving, then don't do it.

So thank you again. If you need to reach out to me, tailor at vaco.com or at Tdaston on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.