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Backstage Interview With Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha

I am here with the Hopman bed has no go. They just had an amazing presentation on the main stage. Have another big round of applause. Theo. Book is the start of of you a radical reimagining of the contract between worker and employees and approach our lives. I'd like to talk a little bit about the idea of a permanent vada and the implications that has for education particular, always retreating, acquiring new skills. How do you guys think about education as it hits into into that idea? One of things that's strange about the primary education model we have That's somewhat of a relative kind of the industrial age. In the past, you kind of go to school. No school for high school college. Then you maybe go to professional school. But you've been basically on the workforce. You don't You do very limited focus on any reeducation, given how much the world is changing and given that the needs to adapt as a as a as a professional workers and personal life, actually, one of the things that is de...

sperately needed we're seeing great service like creativelive and others. This is how do you get kind of Mawr compact education as you go through life in smaller chunks and learning the things that you need to do to adapt to how the industry has changed, how your life has changed and everything. So going off this one, you know, monolithic model to a more of a semi continuous model where you are doing some education while you're working or is a brief break, and then work and live your life and then mawr and as an adaptive pattern. How this relates the permanent beta is that we should always think of ourselves as a work in progress is adapting how the world's changing on acquiring new what we call soft assets skills networks and that education should follow you your entire way through life. And it should be. You should think about it. Responsibility yourself as an individual, you shouldn't go. Oh, great. My company is going to train me. They might if you're lucky. But more often than not, you actually will need to take care of this yourself. And if so, if the assumption is that you're gonna be continuing to retrain yourself and acquire additional education, how do you represent that? Because the way that rep education has traditionally been represented as, ah, line on the resume, I went to seven set school. Here's my degree education over and done with. So how do you represent that continuing acquisition of new skills? Well, so obviously co founder to service helps with this a little bit way have heard of it. And so, uh, but not just the obvious ones where you can put in your own skills, you can add in your own education and you can self represent. You know, part of what we have is we have an ability for people to endorse each other and say that they have. These skills were actually. For example, if there's particular skills that you think it's important to be known by, get folks toe. Yeah, I'm actually really good at, you know, public speaking or writing or coding or negotiating. Or, you know, the skills index. Arlington is very broad, includes ballet, dancing, boxing, a whole set of things, and so I have to add the box only if you think it's appropriate. Actually, on eso eso those obvious way to do doing that with him like then, But also, for example, if your skill is more on the creative side, obviously having some examples of what you do either on a blogger or website. You know there's there's functions for this Onley then, but these sorts of things is a way of doing that. And so but to make sure that you are essentially giving some evidence of the skills you have, right, right in a way that people can discover it, they confined it and then they can quickly understand it when they encounter you in the world. And this is actually kind of a core value of creative life. And I think it's one of the ways in which the sort of traditional corporate world is merging with the creative community in that creatives have always represented themselves to report folio of work, the photos they've taken, the pictures they've drawn, etcetera, etcetera and one of the things that I really like about linked and is the opportunity to highlight certain projects that you worked on that can essentially function like a portfolio in the traditional world. Yes, and you know that is, I think that's one of the things that is going to continue. Teoh, B'more and Mawr focused on as people look for their first job out of school. So maybe that's something worth talking about in terms of education. So since a simple degree isn't really enough to define you and help you get that first job, you're not gonna get that on the job training used to. What are some of the things that you should be doing as a young person in college to set yourself up, maybe with a portfolio to come out of school? I'll start with this one. Given that, Yeah. And I think by the way, these air really interesting themes work that you're touching on it. And just to fall on the on the on the credentialing theme that you brought up like if you graduate from college and you come out of college with a bachelor's degree that used to signal a whole lot, I think it's increasingly signaling less and will need to find, uh, not only will need to be acquiring new skills as we've been talking about, but also find ways to signal that we have those skills and with kind of micro credentials or other other things. I mean, I think the question coming out of college or really, at any point in your career, but especially come out of college when you're when you're still trying to figure out what your competitive advantages detection I think we just talk about on stage is to is to figure out what are the skills that I need to to know the skills that I need to have the knowledge I need to know in order to succeed at the job of men of the job. I want tohave and the way you learn those things by talking to people in your network, right? You talk to people who are a couple steps ahead of you, you know, talk to your boss, talk to your boss's boss. What are the things that they learn? What are the things that were important for them to be successful? Deconstruct how they learned those things and then go do that yourself? I think the best way to learn anything is to find people who already have skill and understand their process for acquiring the skill and then do it yourself. So it's very much a network theme, I think, and uh, especially early on when you really don't know once you're on a path. Uh uh. It's more obvious of Oo like I'm trying to get really good at Cody and I need to go to this boot camp. I need to go to this class, but early on, you want to be talking people. What are the things I need to know before I begin signing up for classes and attending seminars? Which creativelive class should I view today? Let's a function of what I'm. But my competitive advantage is what my assets are, what my aspirations are with the market realities are in. The last thing I would emphasize on this. This such the last point that we just covered with taking intelligent risk, which is four high school students. College students. When you're thinking about you the length of your career, what's much more important is what the nature of the opportunities not what you're being paid for a summer internship. It's a going volunteer for work. When I put you in the right network, get you the right skills, get you access the right industry. It's so much more important to do that than it is to say Well, you know, this one will pay me X dollars an hour, and this will pay me why. Dollars an hour? It's How do you acquire those networks? Those skills that, uh, start in an industry that will be important, so much more important? Yeah, And it's not the degree that you have from the school you went to necessarily. It's what you can provide on Day One recent examples. I happen to be a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and I get hit up from the alumni network pretty regularly. I'm a liberal arts grad. You know, I want to come work in Silicon Valley and do marketing. I see you do that. Um, and I'm like, Great, What can you dio and where is there's this this kid who approached me in a really smart guy working way. He's 20 years old. He's going to community college in Arizona and has been working in camp political campaign since he's 18. He knows ECM. He can copy, right? He has a portfolio of stuff that he demonstrated. And, you know, I don't care that he didn't go to a name school. This kid has skills and can contribute on day one. I think that's something that people miss in in college so often. And, uh, you know, can you talk a bit about building up that that portfolio of skills, maybe for career changers as well. Like, how do you, um you talk a bit on the main stage about doing projects in work and volunteering. Like, what are some other ways you've seen people sort of moved between current to future. You know, I think the key thing when thinking about a career transition are what are your transferrable skills, right? What are the things that you're learning that are? Generalize Herbal? We tell a story in the book of Ah, the guy that was editor in chief. Time Magazine's got James Gains, who at 62 years old under one a pretty significant career transition. You left print journalism, left the old media world and went to join a young online media start up on by a bunch of twentysomethings. And the way that he was able to take a risk that very few of his colleagues and industry willing to take is he. Ri conceptualized his identity as storytelling from print journalists to storytelling and focused his last couple years that time on building, like not just focusing on hitting 600 word deadline by Tuesday night to hit the Thursday press run, but rather building skills. You read, uh, re studying the craft of writing, no matter the medium. He reached out to professional story tellers in New York City to learn about the art of constructing a narrative, things that are broadly applicable, as opposed to the narrow industry specific still. So, as he geared up to make a transition, he doubled down on the things that he could bring with him the assets he could bring with him to a different but related field. And then, you know, the other obvious ones are when we talked about in the stage, which was essentially volunteering like I did and product management Apple volunteering things that will get you new skills, you know, taking time to go get education, take creativelive class of the things which are relevant, and then also sometimes, by the way it's it's figure out a larger project like, say, for example, you decide like you know, the kid you referring to With this, you have to say, Look, I want to learn ECM Well, then set aside every weekend for the next six months in time and work on that and make something that would adopt a project where you're learning that, ideally, do it with some of your friends were doing collaborations. Keep thinking like every time you watch creativelive clause, have someone in Network watched the same class and then talk about what you learn from it and reinforce the learning. It's always better and collaborate. That's actually a really exciting trend that we're starting to see our local networks springing up to gather together, watch creativelive discuss what was, uh, what was taught and then go demo. What was taught to build that that portfolio and it becomes like a reinforcing local cycle. I think it is really, really exciting. And how are some of what are some other trends that you guys were seeing in terms of online education starting starting to impact, how people are retraining themselves? Well, I think one key thing is that while there's a lot of interesting innovation happening primarily through the Internet, it's still a heavily driven by individuals in terms of making decisions themselves. So you need to do that right as individuals. Second thing is is implication. And just in terms of what Ben was saying, which is it's much easier to do this education when you, uh, you have someone to talk about with and kind of ask questions or that I think you'll see on what you guys are doing a much I think it'll b'more kind of, uh uh, student to student interaction around the content. I think you'll see more and more of Then I guess the last would be is to keep, um, to be willing this to be a little experimental, right, because one of the things about the benefit of a lot of these, this kind of the online revolution educational allows you to take things in smaller bites. And so they're trying some things you would not have otherwise tried, right. As an instance, they kind of see what the range of possibilities is. Yeah, I think that's one of the trends. If we think this event as the secrets from Silicon Valley, I think that's definitely you know, some of the trends that we've been hearing from multiple speakers, the the willingness to experiment and the if something scares you, it's probably a good thing, like you want to kind of steer into the skid and take small steps, Teoh to gain mastery over whatever that thing is that you don't know. Just get and get started with with something something new that you you have necessarily done before. You know what? What's really exciting about to you guys about the changing nature of work right now. What do you most excited about with kind of this new contract that people have, I think what's increasingly a meritocracy? Um, and there are some serious, like social implications of that that we need to grapple with as a country in terms of, you know, an increasing winner take all economy or the rich, get richer and forget poor. But But I think those that have the skills to your example of the Notre Dame kid versus the human in college, right being able to acquire skills and represent those skills on to obtain various micro credentials, I think we'll let the rial talent bubble to the top. A supposed to folks that obtained, you know, the shiny degree 20 years ago are still riding that all the way to the bank, and so I think that's always a good thing when the best people can bubble to the top, more innovation happens. The world improves. I think overall, the thes education trends are democratizing education and allowing people from all walks of life and all backgrounds to participate in the education process and participate over their whole life on. I think that's a very exciting Yeah, I would imply on the meritocracy is it allows talent folks who might otherwise been in a remote area lower income all of a sudden have real opportunity. We all benefit from that. Um, I think that the ability of these for the fact that all these online resource is everything from education to inability to connect with through a network or to commute our content that helps you guide where you're going I think is really interesting. I mean part of how the Internet revolutionizes just beginning to revolutionize the way we work in orderto essentially to do as a professional, you solve problems if you can solve problems faster and more accurately increase creates massive productivity increases. And so, um, I think that that is all became much more possible, and I think that the nature of almost all workers collaboration. And, you know, even in when you don't have to co authors on a book, it's still a lot of collaboration because you're getting a lot of feedback. And what do you do? And editor that works on the cover? Yeah, exactly. And so, uh, uh, tools the evolution of the process of being efficient and effective in collaboration. I think we'll also have right productivity gains for all of us, but also kind of opportunities for each of us as individuals. And I think that's ah, broad trend that we're seeing in across society. It's less of a top down hierarchy, more of a networked interconnectedness, and that changes the very nature of how we live our lives on a daily basis, in fact, that education is heading in that direction as well, with things like creative, live and exit open access to information. People from Nebraska toe Nairobi, as Chase likes to say, can, uh, can you improve themselves, empower their own lives and skills to go after you know their dreams and passions, which is pretty exciting. Awesome. I want to thank you guys so much for coming to creative life before you go. Uh, What do you think of the main stage experience? It was, uh it was fun. Uh, good group people in the audience. Uh, I think you guys have the on the kind of the best setups. T make it very natural in human and what you're doing. I think that's awesome. The, You know, I just usually just stand behind Ben let him speak. But I thought the camera arm at the top was very impressive. Very well, three arm would reach out and come back. And that was mesmerizing. When Reed was talking about the book again Is the start of you. I want to thank reading Ben for coming by. Really appreciate it. Thank you.