--:-- **Host:** There's not a lot of increase around why people should come and return back to work. And is it return to work or return to office? If it's 47% that want something, 53% have not listed that as something very significant. We're probably at the point now where we need to bring in the nuance. Organizations that can be transparent to say that's just not something we can provide may actually even retain their critical talent a little bit longer. They're effectively paying for people to be on site. Even though it's more expensive for them to have people on site a lot of times, I'll just say two words, Elon Musk. The word top talent, by the way, is also subjective. Remote work is a big, divisive topic right now. In fact, some people think it's the future, while others say that the pivot to full-blown remote work was, quote, one of the tech industry's worst mistakes. How can so many smart people have such different opinions on this topic? Well, remote work is actually just one of the many facets that come into play when you're trying to attract top talent. And quite frankly, that equation has only gotten more confusing as several trends intersect, whether it be layoffs or emerging technologies like AI. So how can companies navigate this storm and truly attract talent that really matters? And as they try to do this and they make changes to company policies, how can they tell if they're actually moving in the right direction? Let's just use a simple example. Let's say a company changes the policy and several people leave. Now, is that unwanted attrition or is that the company culture becoming more aligned? Today, we have three people from different perspectives joining us to discuss some of these questions. The first is Rob Frohwan. He is the co-founder of Keep Financial, which is a tool designed to help you enhance engagement, retention, and performance through vesting cash bonuses. Our second guest is AJ Thomas. She's an advisor and leadership coach that has led several people in culture teams from startup to enterprise. So you can bet that AJ has a pretty unique perspective on what it means to attract and retain top talent. And then finally, we have Hung Lee. Hung is the writer and founder of Recruiting Brain Food, which is actually one of my favorite newsletters. All right, I am so excited to dive in. But before we do, I just wanted to share that this episode was actually inspired by some of the unique perks that I had never seen before until I joined A16Z. That includes a full body health scan that we get from QBio or five weeks of full firm shutdown. Yes, that's right. Five weeks where the whole firm is shut down. In fact, we're actually on one right now. So if you're hearing my voice, if you're seeing my face on screen, I'm actually on vacation. The real Steph Smith is out of office. All right, let's dive in. As a reminder, the content here is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice, or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any A16Z fund. Please note that A16Z and its affiliates may also maintain investments in the companies discussed in this podcast. For more details, including a link to our investments, please see A16Z.com slash disclosures. Okay, so I feel like there are so many trends intersecting right now. There's the macro climate and layoffs. There is a return to office or in some cases, people being forced to return to office. There are technology trends like AI. And so I guess just to kick things off with so many things happening at the same time, what are each of you paying attention to? What's really grasping your attention when it comes to this question of what it takes to attract talent in 2023?
--:-- **Rob Frohwan:** Yeah, I think you're right to mention all of these trends. I think they call it polycrisis these days, don't they? And I don't think you need to be like any sophisticated academic to be aware of it. Just being kind of in the washing machine that's been the last three years can tell you enough about sort of how much these trends are sometimes in tension, sometimes they're accelerants, sometimes they're suppressants, and they're all just moving us around. And the overall sense that most of us have, if we're truly honest with ourselves, is this sense of discombobulation, you know, this sense of, oh, I'm not sure previous confidence that we had prior to 2019, 2020. I don't think any of us are as confident as we are, as we were back then, because we all know that we're in a world that is in the cusp of these huge changes. And you've mentioned a few already to the geopolitical angle, hostile deglobalization, the cost of living crisis, record inflation, the huge shift that COVID pushed everyone to remote and now push everyone back. And then if that wasn't enough, you know, only six months or so ago, OpenAI launched ChatGPT, completely changed everything again. So I think all of us are thinking, okay, it's going to be completely chaotic. It's going to be difficult to predict. It's thinking about how do we kind of build a resilient business against unpredictable change. And I believe it's actually an inflection point for us. It's an inflection point for those that are thinking about ways to attract talent, thinking about ways to actually even help talent self-select. And I think a lot of that is going to be grounded on what assumptions are we questioning? So with the wave of all of these things that are happening, it can be very easy to kind of mass, you know, collide into that and say, OK, all companies need to be doing this now or most companies need to be doing this now. I actually believe that where you want to land should be around what assumptions are right for the organization that you are trying to steer forward. You know, when I think about it from an employee's perspective, and by the way, this varies from industry to industry very significantly. I think a lot of times we think about the tech industry only, and many industries are still going through a lot of the pain that, you know, we all saw in, you know, healthcare, transportation, logistics, other areas are still seeing incredible challenges hiring employees and retaining them. But, you know, getting back to the key thing I'm thinking about is how do you create some stability in the system, right? When you have all of these things happening, you know, macroeconomic climate, when you have, you know, AI creating questions, I think folks are looking for stability more than they were necessarily thinking about a year or two years ago. And from an employer's perspective, that's frankly what they've wanted forever.
--:-- **Host:** Given so many things going on, are there any specifics that you're seeing, whether it's in data reports that you're reading or just anecdotally what you're hearing? Like, Hung, you have so many readers of your newsletter. What do people really care about?
--:-- **Hung Lee:** I think the remote revolution, so to speak, opened a lot of people's eyes on this. And we've got multiple data points to suggest that companies that are operating a remote first policy typically have a significant advantage against companies that do not. And this pertains to, you know, the, if you like, quote unquote, top talent. Let's talk about them in terms of, you know, the software engineers, the high demand people that we've always been looking to recruit. I think VMware, for instance, did a sort of before and after comparison in terms of their time to hire when it comes down to where they're doing on-premise hiring pre-COVID period, and then they switched to remote hiring. And they reduced their time to hire by 100%. So they went down from basically half the time. And in fact, not only through speed of processing candidates, but also through reduction of assessment load. Because, you know, the logistic simplicity of doing a Zoom call compared to in-person interviews, having to configure everything with the idea that this person, you know, may never come on site, suddenly unblocked a lot of sort of other things they felt they had to do. So I think that's still the case. And I still think it is the case that the job seekers would ideally prefer a remote or at least a flexible working environment. And there is a bit of a tension at this point where some companies are rolling back the remote policies, or at least they're starting to put additional conditions upon it, which you can see it's kind of a mission creep back to the office. But I think companies are trying to do this now maybe because they feel a bit more confident. Market has a swing away, if you like, from the candidate control. And maybe now the companies are seeing a little bit of an opportunity to claw back some of what they may have always perceived to be an overly permissive position when it comes down to working mode.
--:-- **AJ Thomas:** Thinking about your question, what trends, what data, what things we're seeing, what's some anecdotal things, fractional work has hit the knowledge workers. And I think if you think about top talent, you're seeing a lot more folks really wanting to take control of the things that they are working on. I think there was a study and a research that was done that around 65% of folks would actually choose a job with slightly lower pay if it meant working at a company that aligns with their mission or their personal values. And that's specifically true, I think, for the new generation that's getting into the workforce, right? They want more autonomy. They want more freedom. They want the ability to be able to say, this is the stuff that I'm working on and it is creating impact. There is more of that type of critical thinking that is happening, I think, in the next generation of the workforce. What I'm seeing, at least, are organizations that can provide ways in which to engage their current workforce to say, okay, what are the things that are truly impactful that you want to lean into? It's going to be great. But also organizations that can be transparent to say that's just not something we can provide may actually even retain their critical talent a little bit longer, at least. And I know that's a little bit different than what you'd normally see, like a point A to point B. But at least what I'm seeing is the more transparent the conversations you can have, even in hiring, right? I think years ago, it was like, come join this company, really awesome benefits. Here are all the things you're going to experience. Here are all the perks. And I think the companies that are going to win, and I tend to be a little bit more future-oriented on this and also curious, this is what it means to be at this organization. And here's what you're going to be signing up for. And if you can sign up for that, we're in for a wonderful road ahead. And if you can't sign up for that, we may just be frustrating each other for the first year that you here Until you leave right That right Those are the maximum things that I seeing is I think the workforce especially those that are knowledge workers in the advent of AI coming into place and disrupting a lot of that kind of knowledge work. You know, folks are starting to think about more fractional work, side hustles, things they want to lean into that are closer to what they're passionate about and what they want to contribute to.
--:-- **Rob Frohwan:** There's two missing elements to this. One is what's actually in the best interest of the organization as well. Can they get the performance they want? And I think the argument is yes, their productivity is great and all these things. But I think some studies are sort of coming out. Meta is sort of saying they've noticed that people are back at the office three days a week or more effective, or if they've already been in the office for a while before they went out on remote versus native remote because they joined the company right during the remote phase. I don't even know if that term has been used, but I think about it from that perspective. Look, if you give an employee an option that says, hey, you know, would you like to work from home five days a week, you know, with the complete option of coming into the office or not, like who's not going to say, okay, they're going to say, okay. People talk about performance and the productivity of people in the office. The thing I don't think that is very clear right now, unless you all have information on this is what is the ultimate impact going to be on attrition, on retention for people who are native remote or significantly remote now? I think we're too early in this process to know whether those people are still going to feel the connectivity to the organization or whether they're going to feel like they can just leave sooner because they haven't made the personal connections as strong as they made the personal connections when they were in the office all the time. So that's like one body of questions that I have and I think about. The other thing I brought up earlier was I still don't know what the long-term impact of attrition is going to be due to remote work. I don't know if on average, people are going to work longer for the same company or going to work the same amount of time or they're going to work a fewer number of months or years because they never got that personal, in-person connectivity with people. I have no idea. If anybody's seen any statistics on that, I'd love to see them. The final thing is we actually have some clients who are devising financial benefits And we got to be careful on these things because you don't want to create pay discrepancies, but they're effectively paying for people to be on site. Even though it's more expensive for them to have people on site a lot of times, they believe productivity makes it worthwhile to actually pay people more if they come in the office. That way people have a choice. They can work from home and effectively earn less money, or they can come into the office and effectively earn more money. by doing that?
--:-- **Hung Lee:** I'll just say two words, Elon Musk. The word top talent, by the way, is also subjective. Remote work is a big, divisive topic right now. In fact, some people think it's the future, while others say that the pivot to full-blown remote work was, quote, one of the tech industry's worst mistakes. How can so many smart people have such different opinions on this topic? Well, remote work is actually just one of the many facets that come into play when you're trying to attract top talent. And quite frankly, that equation has only gotten more confusing as several trends intersect, whether it be layoffs or emerging technologies like AI. So how can companies navigate this storm and truly attract talent that really matters? And as they try to do this and they make changes to company policies, how can they tell if they're actually moving in the right direction? Let's just use a simple example. Let's say a company changes the policy and several people leave. Now, is that unwanted attrition or is that the company culture becoming more aligned? Today, we have three people from different perspectives joining us to discuss some of these questions. The first is Rob Frohwan. He is the co-founder of Keep Financial, which is a tool designed to help you enhance engagement, retention, and performance through vesting cash bonuses. Our second guest is AJ Thomas. She's an advisor and leadership coach that has led several people in culture teams from startup to enterprise. So you can bet that AJ has a pretty unique perspective on what it means to attract and retain top talent. And then finally, we have Hung Lee. Hung is the writer and founder of Recruiting Brain Food, which is actually one of my favorite newsletters. All right, I am so excited to dive in. But before we do, I just wanted to share that this episode was actually inspired by some of the unique perks that I had never seen before until I joined A16Z. That includes a full body health scan that we get from QBio or five weeks of full firm shutdown. Yes, that's right. Five weeks where the whole firm is shut down. In fact, we're actually on one right now. So if you're hearing my voice, if you're seeing my face on screen, I'm actually on vacation. The real Steph Smith is out of office. All right, let's dive in. As a reminder, the content here is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice, or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any A16Z fund. Please note that A16Z and its affiliates may also maintain investments in the companies discussed in this podcast. For more details, including a link to our investments, please see A16Z.com slash disclosures. Okay, so I feel like there are so many trends intersecting right now. There's the macro climate and layoffs. There is a return to office or in some cases, people being forced to return to office. There are technology trends like AI. And so I guess just to kick things off with so many things happening at the same time, what are each of you paying attention to? What's really grasping your attention when it comes to this question of what it takes to attract talent in 2023?
--:-- **Rob Frohwan:** Yeah, I think you're right to mention all of these trends. I think they call it polycrisis these days, don't they? And I don't think you need to be like any sophisticated academic to be aware of it. Just being kind of in the washing machine that's been the last three years can tell you enough about sort of how much these trends are sometimes in tension, sometimes they're accelerants, sometimes they're suppressants, and they're all just moving us around. And the overall sense that most of us have, if we're truly honest with ourselves, is this sense of discombobulation, you know, this sense of, oh, I'm not sure previous confidence that we had prior to 2019, 2020. I don't think any of us are as confident as we are, as we were back then, because we all know that we're in a world that is in the cusp of these huge changes. And you've mentioned a few already to the geopolitical angle, hostile deglobalization, the cost of living crisis, record inflation, the huge shift that COVID pushed everyone to remote and now push everyone back. And then if that wasn't enough, you know, only six months or so ago, OpenAI launched ChatGPT, completely changed everything again. So I think all of us are thinking, okay, it's going to be completely chaotic. It's going to be difficult to predict. It's thinking about how do we kind of build a resilient business against unpredictable change. And I believe it's actually an inflection point for us. It's an inflection point for those that are thinking about ways to attract talent, thinking about ways to actually even help talent self-select. And I think a lot of that is going to be grounded on what assumptions are we questioning? So with the wave of all of these things that are happening, it can be very easy to kind of mass, you know, collide into that and say, OK, all companies need to be doing this now or most companies need to be doing this now. I actually believe that where you want to land should be around what assumptions are right for the organization that you are trying to steer forward. You know, when I think about it from an employee's perspective, and by the way, this varies from industry to industry very significantly. I think a lot of times we think about the tech industry only, and many industries are still going through a lot of the pain that, you know, we all saw in, you know, healthcare, transportation, logistics, other areas are still seeing incredible challenges hiring employees and retaining them. But, you know, getting back to the key thing I'm thinking about is how do you create some stability in the system, right? When you have all of these things happening, you know, macroeconomic climate, when you have, you know, AI creating questions, I think folks are looking for stability more than they were necessarily thinking about a year or two years ago. And from an employer's perspective, that's frankly what they've wanted forever.
--:-- **Host:** Given so many things going on, are there any specifics that you're seeing, whether it's in data reports that you're reading or just anecdotally what you're hearing? Like, Hung, you have so many readers of your newsletter. What do people really care about?
--:-- **Hung Lee:** I think the remote revolution, so to speak, opened a lot of people's eyes on this. And we've got multiple data points to suggest that companies that are operating a remote first policy typically have a significant advantage against companies that do not. And this pertains to, you know, the, if you like, quote unquote, top talent. Let's talk about them in terms of, you know, the software engineers, the high demand people that we've always been looking to recruit. I think VMware, for instance, did a sort of before and after comparison in terms of their time to hire when it comes down to where they're doing on-premise hiring pre-COVID period, and then they switched to remote hiring. And they reduced their time to hire by 100%. So they went down from basically half the time. And in fact, not only through speed of processing candidates, but also through reduction of assessment load. Because, you know, the logistic simplicity of doing a Zoom call compared to in-person interviews, having to configure everything with the idea that this person, you know, may never come on site, suddenly unblocked a lot of sort of other things they felt they had to do. So I think that's still the case. And I still think it is the case that the job seekers would ideally prefer a remote or at least a flexible working environment. And there is a bit of a tension at this point where some companies are rolling back the remote policies, or at least they're starting to put additional conditions upon it, which you can see it's kind of a mission creep back to the office. But I think companies are trying to do this now maybe because they feel a bit more confident. Market has a swing away, if you like, from the candidate control. And maybe now the companies are seeing a little bit of an opportunity to claw back some of what they may have always perceived to be an overly permissive position when it comes down to working mode.
--:-- **AJ Thomas:** Thinking about your question, what trends, what data, what things we're seeing, what's some anecdotal things, fractional work has hit the knowledge workers. And I think if you think about top talent, you're seeing a lot more folks really wanting to take control of the things that they are working on. I think there was a study and a research that was done that around 65% of folks would actually choose a job with slightly lower pay if it meant working at a company that aligns with their mission or their personal values. And that's specifically true, I think, for the new generation that's getting into the workforce, right? They want more autonomy. They want more freedom. They want the ability to be able to say, this is the stuff that I'm working on and it is creating impact. There is more of that type of critical thinking that is happening, I think, in the next generation of the workforce. What I'm seeing, at least, are organizations that can provide ways in which to engage their current workforce to say, okay, what are the things that are truly impactful that you want to lean into? It's going to be great. But also organizations that can be transparent to say that's just not something we can provide may actually even retain their critical talent a little bit longer, at least. And I know that's a little bit different than what you'd normally see, like a point A to point B. But at least what I'm seeing is the more transparent the conversations you can have, even in hiring, right? I think years ago, it was like, come join this company, really awesome benefits. Here are all the things you're going to experience. Here are all the perks. And I think the companies that are going to win, and I tend to be a little bit more future-oriented on this and also curious, this is what it means to be at this organization. And here's what you're going to be signing up for. And if you can sign up for that, we're in for a wonderful road ahead. And if you can't sign up for that, we may just be frustrating each other for the first year that you here Until you leave right That right Those are the maximum things that I seeing is I think the workforce especially those that are knowledge workers in the advent of AI coming into place and disrupting a lot of that kind of knowledge work. You know, folks are starting to think about more fractional work, side hustles, things they want to lean into that are closer to what they're passionate about and what they want to contribute to.
--:-- **Rob Frohwan:** There's two missing elements to this. One is what's actually in the best interest of the organization as well. Can they get the performance they want? And I think the argument is yes, their productivity is great and all these things. But I think some studies are sort of coming out. Meta is sort of saying they've noticed that people are back at the office three days a week or more effective, or if they've already been in the office for a while before they went out on remote versus native remote because they joined the company right during the remote phase. I don't even know if that term has been used, but I think about it from that perspective. Look, if you give an employee an option that says, hey, you know, would you like to work from home five days a week, you know, with the complete option of coming into the office or not, like who's not going to say, okay, they're going to say, okay. People talk about performance and the productivity of people in the office. The thing I don't think that is very clear right now, unless you all have information on this is what is the ultimate impact going to be on attrition, on retention for people who are native remote or significantly remote now? I think we're too early in this process to know whether those people are still going to feel the connectivity to the organization or whether they're going to feel like they can just leave sooner because they haven't made the personal connections as strong as they made the personal connections when they were in the office all the time. So that's like one body of questions that I have and I think about. The other thing I brought up earlier was I still don't know what the long-term impact of attrition is going to be due to remote work. I don't know if on average, people are going to work longer for the same company or going to work the same amount of time or they're going to work a fewer number of months or years because they never got that personal, in-person connectivity with people. I have no idea. If anybody's seen any statistics on that, I'd love to see them. The final thing is we actually have some clients who are devising financial benefits And we got to be careful on these things because you don't want to create pay discrepancies, but they're effectively paying for people to be on site. Even though it's more expensive for them to have people on site a lot of times, they believe productivity makes it worthwhile to actually pay people more if they come in the office. That way people have a choice. They can work from home and effectively earn less money, or they can come into the office and effectively earn more money. by doing that?
--:-- **Hung Lee:** I'll just say two words, Elon Musk. The word top talent, by the way, is also subjective. Remote work is a big, divisive topic right now. In fact, some people think it's the future, while others say that the pivot to full-blown remote work was, quote, one of the tech industry's worst mistakes. How can so many smart people have such different opinions on this topic? Well, remote work is actually just one of the many facets that come into play when you're trying to attract top talent. And quite frankly, that equation has only gotten more confusing as several trends intersect, whether it be layoffs or emerging technologies like AI. So how can companies navigate this storm and truly attract talent that really matters? And as they try to do this and they make changes to company policies, how can they tell if they're actually moving in the right direction? Let's just use a simple example. Let's say a company changes the policy and several people leave. Now, is that unwanted attrition or is that the company culture becoming more aligned? Today, we have three people from different perspectives joining us to discuss some of these questions. The first is Rob Frohwan. He is the co-founder of Keep Financial, which is a tool designed to help you enhance engagement, retention, and performance through vesting cash bonuses. Our second guest is AJ Thomas. She's an advisor and leadership coach that has led several people in culture teams from startup to enterprise. So you can bet that AJ has a pretty unique perspective on what it means to attract and retain top talent. And then finally, we have Hung Lee. Hung is the writer and founder of Recruiting Brain Food, which is actually one of my favorite newsletters. All right, I am so excited to dive in. But before we do, I just wanted to share that this episode was actually inspired by some of the unique perks that I had never seen before until I joined A16Z. That includes a full body health scan that we get from QBio or five weeks of full firm shutdown. Yes, that's right. Five weeks where the whole firm is shut down. In fact, we're actually on one right now. So if you're hearing my voice, if you're seeing my face on screen, I'm actually on vacation. The real Steph Smith is out of office. All right, let's dive in. As a reminder, the content here is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice, or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any A16Z fund. Please note that A16Z and its affiliates may also maintain investments in the companies discussed in this podcast. For more details, including a link to our investments, please see A16Z.com slash disclosures. Okay, so I feel like there are so many trends intersecting right now. There's the macro climate and layoffs. There is a return to office or in some cases, people being forced to return to office. There are technology trends like AI. And so I guess just to kick things off with so many things happening at the same time, what are each of you paying attention to? What's really grasping your attention when it comes to this question of what it takes to attract talent in 2023?
--:-- **Rob Frohwan:** Yeah, I think you're right to mention all of these trends. I think they call it polycrisis these days, don't they? And I don't think you need to be like any sophisticated academic to be aware of it. Just being kind of in the washing machine that's been the last three years can tell you enough about sort of how much these trends are sometimes in tension, sometimes they're accelerants, sometimes they're suppressants, and they're all just moving us around. And the overall sense that most of us have, if we're truly honest with ourselves, is this sense of discombobulation, you know, this sense of, oh, I'm not sure previous confidence that we had prior to 2019, 2020. I don't think any of us are as confident as we are, as we were back then, because we all know that we're in a world that is in the cusp of these huge changes. And you've mentioned a few already to the geopolitical angle, hostile deglobalization, the cost of living crisis, record inflation, the huge shift that COVID pushed everyone to remote and now push everyone back. And then if that wasn't enough, you know, only six months or so ago, OpenAI launched ChatGPT, completely changed everything again. So I think all of us are thinking, okay, it's going to be completely chaotic. It's going to be difficult to predict. It's thinking about how do we kind of build a resilient business against unpredictable change. And I believe it's actually an inflection point for us. It's an inflection point for those that are thinking about ways to attract talent, thinking about ways to actually even help talent self-select. And I think a lot of that is going to be grounded on what assumptions are we questioning? So with the wave of all of these things that are happening, it can be very easy to kind of mass, you know, collide into that and say, OK, all companies need to be doing this now or most companies need to be doing this now. I actually believe that where you want to land should be around what assumptions are right for the organization that you are trying to steer forward. You know, when I think about it from an employee's perspective, and by the way, this varies from industry to industry very significantly. I think a lot of times we think about the tech industry only, and many industries are still going through a lot of the pain that, you know, we all saw in, you know, healthcare, transportation, logistics, other areas are still seeing incredible challenges hiring employees and retaining them. But, you know, getting back to the key thing I'm thinking about is how do you create some stability in the system, right? When you have all of these things happening, you know, macroeconomic climate, when you have, you know, AI creating questions, I think folks are looking for stability more than they were necessarily thinking about a year or two years ago. And from an employer's perspective, that's frankly what they've wanted forever.
--:-- **Host:** Given so many things going on, are there any specifics that you're seeing, whether it's in data reports that you're reading or just anecdotally what you're hearing? Like, Hung, you have so many readers of your newsletter. What do people really care about?
--:-- **Hung Lee:** I think the remote revolution, so to speak, opened a lot of people's eyes on this. And we've got multiple data points to suggest that companies that are operating a remote first policy typically have a significant advantage against companies that do not. And this pertains to, you know, the, if you like, quote unquote, top talent. Let's talk about them in terms of, you know, the software engineers, the high demand people that we've always been looking to recruit. I think VMware, for instance, did a sort of before and after comparison in terms of their time to hire when it comes down to where they're doing on-premise hiring pre-COVID period, and then they switched to remote hiring. And they reduced their time to hire by 100%. So they went down from basically half the time. And in fact, not only through speed of processing candidates, but also through reduction of assessment load. Because, you know, the logistic simplicity of doing a Zoom call compared to in-person interviews, having to configure everything with the idea that this person, you know, may never come on site, suddenly unblocked a lot of sort of other things they felt they had to do. So I think that's still the case. And I still think it is the case that the job seekers would ideally prefer a remote or at least a flexible working environment. And there is a bit of a tension at this point where some companies are rolling back the remote policies, or at least they're starting to put additional conditions upon it, which you can see it's kind of a mission creep back to the office. But I think companies are trying to do this now maybe because they feel a bit more confident. Market has a swing away, if you like, from the candidate control. And maybe now the companies are seeing a little bit of an opportunity to claw back some of what they may have always perceived to be an overly permissive position when it comes down to working mode.
--:-- **AJ Thomas:** Thinking about your question, what trends, what data, what things we're seeing
