Ilya Talman, Author at Roy Talman & Associates

The Truth Behind The U.S. Building New Chip Factories

Posted on January 19, 2023

This year may be remembered as the one when chipmakers decided to truly commit to manufacturing in the U.S., with companies like Intel, Samsung and TSMC announcing their intent to build factories here for the purpose of producing semiconductors.

Not long after the industry giants stated the proposed factory projects, the chipmaker Micron announced that it planned to build the largest factory in the U.S. dedicated to making semiconductors. It may spend as much as $100 billion over the next 20 years to fully build out this massive (i.e., size of 40 football fields) facility in upstate New York. All in all, manufacturing memory chips domestically would dramatically impact how the United States gets its supply of chips.

However, there is always a danger between potential and reality that we must watch out for.

Suppose three years from now, all of these factories go “live” in the U.S. At that time, the prospect of U.S. chipmaking may be very expensive. Why? Contrary to what some may hear, there are many chips on the market right now. So many, in fact, that it is driving down the share price of certain chipmaking companies – in some cases, by hundreds of dollars per share.

Therefore, the risk of manufacturing chips is that by the time the U.S. factories come to fruition and reach full production capability…we could be spending a fortune to enter a market that may or may not be a highly unprofitable venture, at least in the early going.

Talman Advantage #3: The Preparation For The Interview You Deserve

You can’t go into an interview armed with only a resume to represent you. Roy Talman & Associates gets you ready for the experience with a far more in-depth level of preparation, including an evaluation of your skills in light of what today’s marketplace demands. Through testing on certain subjects and measuring your scores against what our clients expect, you’ll be able to head into the interview knowing so much more. You’ve come too far to settle for anything less. So make sure you Talk To Talman First

The truth is that the motivation to build semiconductor factories here is less rooted in dollars and more driven by global relations.

What happens if China decides to invade Taiwan, which has many fabrication factories, the largest of which is TSMC? Being efficient in receiving chips domestically will not be the primary factor. It will be more from a “defense spending” perspective.

We may not think of it that way compared to spending on a military fighter jet, but from a defensive position, it does make sense.

The trick is to avoid mixing this with the interests of certain politicians. At the moment, it’s OK to say that manufacturing chips in the U.S. is strategic and defensive. But later on down the road, the pace and location of chipmaking facilities could be influenced by people in power who say, “I have a responsibility to my constituents to build a factory in our state, which could bring thousands of jobs.” A tug-of-war could ensue, tying up the timelines of these factories going live. That’s called building bridges to nowhere.

At a glance, manufacturing chips in the U.S. may appear to have the purpose of being more competitive or profitable. However, that’s not my take and it’s not bearing out. The real purpose, I believe, is to act as a national defense against the event of China taking over several of the chipmaking facilities in Taiwan.

Yes, having leverage in the form of several U.S-based facilities could guard against this prospect, as long as we as a country are prepared to pay a whole lot for that international position for a very long time.

I have a feeling the final tab in getting those factories up and running will be much more than anyone projected.

How might global events impact your industry? Nobody can say for sure, but at Roy Talman & Associates, it’s better to be prepared than be caught off guard. That includes having the pulse of the top technical talent you can access. So as the winds of global change demand your company to change with them, be ready by trusting your talent pipeline to the tech recruiter with more than 40 years of experience. Talk To Talman First.

DALL-E, Copilot And The Deep Learning Models You Need To Know Now

Posted on January 4, 2023

One of the new deep learning models I’ve been fascinated by is called DALL-E, developed by OpenAI. This technology with roots in GPT-3 can generate digital images from your voice commands.

For example, if I have a picture of myself on vacation and I’d like to add a funny hat to my photo, I can simply command DALL-E (now in its 2^nd generation as DALL-E 2) to “add a funny hat.”

That’s just the beginning, however. The real potential I see here is that, up until now, much of the imagery we’d be able to use is based on what we have available – what we know and can see. DALL-E 2 gives us a new dimension in which the unknown can be created in picture form.

Let’s say I’d like to have a painting of a fox sitting in a field at sunrise in the style of Claude Monet. Good luck finding that stock photo, right? DALL-E 2 doesn’t need luck. It will create that image for you. Like anything in beta, you may or may not find the image to be precisely what you intended, but the quality is certainly getting better all the time. And since all the images you’re creating with DALL-E 2’s deep learning are practically guaranteed to be original in their form, there are no royalties to pay.

What Makes DALL-E 2’s Deep Learning Model So Different?

In one sense, what we’re describing is part of a pattern we’ve seen in AI: We human beings have a hand in what we want to be done before the technology goes to work. DALL-E 2 is not going to create images for us without that direction (yet, anyway). We are still in control.

Yet, something different is happening with the release of DALL-E 2 in that so many more people will get to experience it right away. We’ve heard of promising deep learning models that have been accessed by a select number of individuals to test. OpenAI had a different idea with DALL-E 2: It simply opened the technology up to the general public. By now, there are already at least a million people using it. All you need to do is to sign up for free.

Not only is access to this model wide open, but people from all walks of life find it easy (and fun) to use right away.

What Industries May Be Disrupted By DALL-E 2 And Other AI?

We can see where companies that sell stock photography and charge for it, such as Getty Images, may have a problem. They offer various image licenses, which is how they make money. You could pay at least $35-40 for just one image. And when you buy it, what you see is what you get. There’s only so much you can do to that image.

On the other hand, if you had the idea of an image based on something you’ve seen but with a nice twist on the concept, you can give DALL-E 2 some instructions and have your original image, which is excellent for the public. Perhaps less so for companies who charge a substantial licensing fee.

Coding as we know it stands to undergo a powerful shakeup in its own right, thanks to an AI-powered application called GitHub Copilot. Developed by Microsoft’s GitHub and OpenAI, Copilot can recommend entire lines of code based on your activity, essentially saying, “Ah! I see what you’re trying to do here. How about you just use this type of code?”

The AI “learns” enough from your direction to transform you from a traditional code writer to a better one. Is it designed for the highest-level software developer right now? No, the target is likely to be more on mid-level software development at this time.

Still, just as DALL-E 2 was opened to a broad public audience, Copilot has quickly moved from being at the stage of technical preview to being an application that will generally be available to all developers and accessible to students.

Currently, there is a talent shortage in several critical areas of the technical space. Software developers’ salaries have gone from $10 an hour in Ukraine to $50-60 an hour for the same workers. Similarly, salaries for software developers have skyrocketed in India.

What does that tell us? While there’s a lack of supply, there is ample demand for software developers. But what if user-friendly tools such as Copilot allow more software to be developed at a less expensive rate?

We’ll likely see more people wanting to adopt and use it, which could be especially helpful for organizations experiencing a talent shortage. The developers they have on staff can use Copilot for programming languages such as Python, JavaScript, Ruby, Go, and more.

Copilot won’t reduce the number of developers. Far from it. In fact, it will only make developers more productive. And, as more people use it, it will only achieve better results.

Talman Advantage #4: Better Positioning For Your Best Opportunity

The reality is that, in so many situations, that “perfect job opportunity” may not be formally listed by a company. In that instance, where some may simply fire your resume off to an HR person’s email and hope for the best, Roy Talman & Associates takes a more creative and purposeful approach. If an opening isn’t currently available that’s an ideal match for you, we’ll discuss the kind of role with you that you would be interested in and potentially prepare and present a very specific case to that particular firm to create a unique role for you. That’s called a recruiter that goes further for you – and why you need to Talk To Talman First.

The medical field is another candidate ripe for disruption by deep learning.

Think about a hospital where a surgeon is viewing the x-rays of a patient. How many images is that surgeon typically viewing? Five images. Maybe as many as 10 images.

Imagine the same environment with a machine learning tool that enables a surgical team to view an entire “movie” of you at 60 frames per second. We’re not talking about a collection of static images that aren’t completely clear and precise. No. It’s a 20-minute experience where the camera constantly moves and vividly captures images.

As a result of machine learning, you don’t necessarily have fewer radiologists. You may have more radiologists, which has created a new field called active radiology. Instead of reading pictures, active radiologists are part of the surgery team responsible for taking X-rays on the fly during surgery. Machine learning can make this imaging process far more effective, which likely means more active radiologists will demand the tool.

That’s not all – patients may demand machine learning tools and make their choices in healthcare based on which hospital has such tools. One hospital doesn’t have machine learning tools for your colonoscopy but another one not only does, but they have a team that has been highly trained on how to use such tools.

Armed with this new information, which hospital do you think the patient elects to have their procedure at? You can probably guess.

From our vantage point, there will be such a continual expansion of machine learning capabilities that we will reach the point where any business that figures out how to incorporate AI seamlessly will potentially be in an extraordinary position. It will essentially resemble a new business that has the capability to put a bigger, slower-moving, more traditional firm out of business.

After all, you have to evolve to survive and thrive.

In a future divided by those who embrace deep learning and those slower to do so, there’s bound to be a significant change. It won’t happen overnight, perhaps, but it will happen. And when it does, the companies that have trusted Roy Talman & Associates to help them stay ahead of the race for top talent will be in an ideal position for the next era of growth. Don’t wait for the future to sneak up on you. It’ll be here before you know it. Talk To Talman First.

Luring Tech Talent Back Home Takes Sophistication, Not Sentiment.

Posted on October 28, 2022

As remote work shows no signs of slowing down in the technology space, several cities and states continue to explore all kinds of creative ways to lure more technical talent. One of the more unique approaches companies have taken is an outreach campaign to appeal to supremely talented technical workers in Silicon Valley to return to their roots in other geographic locations.

For example, let’s say you already had a previous connection to Chicago from being born and raised here. But several years ago, you took a job in California. It’s possible that returning to Chicago with your skill and a lower cost of living compared to California would pay great dividends as a real “comeback” talent, right?

It’s an excellent concept in theory, but we don’t see much of that approach happening in the real world or working among the highest levels of technical talent in an organization. Especially not in terms of leaving one company in one state to join another company in another state.

That said, the events that may very well happen in another year or two are more similar to what I’ve referred to as “The Great Reshuffling” – a moving about of high-level talent in different locations based on lifestyle choice while still working under the same employer.

If you’re the type of employee at, say, Facebook, who has performed very well, has been promoted at least once or twice and the company knows you’ve done well in working remotely, then a quality-of-life conversation can occur. So, if you grew up in the Chicago area and still have family and friends in the area, they may be a part of your quality of life. By moving to Chicago from Silicon Valley, you may also improve your quality of life if, instead of living in an apartment, you want a house of at least 3,000 square feet with a yard and a pool.

In a house of that size in Silicon Valley, you can expect to pay $3 million and up. If you’re making $300,000, you can’t afford that because you need to put down 20% and the taxes are high. But that story is likely very different if you’re based in the Midwest.

Therefore, the critical factor for people working remotely is that the less they give up, the more working remotely will be seen as desirable. At which point, cities like Chicago or even smaller states and cities such as Madison, Wisconsin or Vermont could become more populated to a certain degree.

Conversely, suppose someone believes they would be giving up a lot in terms of current career status (money, title, opportunities for advancement, responsibility). In that case, it’s a very tall order to get them to move back to their hometown.

States and cities are hedging their bets on this “boomerang” talent returning home, but there’s one scenario that works better than others: The person who long ago always had the intent to return, even before they left. They said, “I’m going to the coast today and that’ll be OK for a while, but I’m going to make it a goal to come back here because I know what I’m getting and it fits me.”

That may not necessarily mean leaving the company, however. More on this in a moment. In reality, we know that even those with intentions of returning home can change their minds and plans. Life happens, after all. In the most extreme example, consider Marc Andreessen, founder of Mosaic and Netscape, now a partner in his own Silicon Valley venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz. Andreessen was born in Iowa and attended the University of Illinois in the early 1990s, but he’s not returning to the Midwest. Max Levchin attended the University of Illinois as well and then, later on, would connect with an unknown person at the time named Peter Thiel and founded a little company that became PayPal. We can safely say Max isn’t coming back this way to stay, either.

Talman Advantage #10: Stronger Negotiating Power On Your Side

The terms of your employment aren’t to be taken lightly. With our 30+ years of industry expertise, Roy Talman & Associates has a keen eye for detail during negotiations. In fact, if the help of an attorney is required for this purpose, we can suggest one. Can any recruiter offer the same result? Don’t wonder about the outcome. Stand with a recruiter who has the track record to negotiate firmly in your favor. Make the right call and Talk To Talman First.

A Smarter Strategy For Recruitment And Retention

Of course, those founders, inventors and venture capitalists don’t represent everybody.

Here’s what we do believe makes more sense: When a person can effectively work at the top tier level at a company without being required to be there consistently physically, perhaps they can be based out of where they prefer, such as their hometown, then fly back to company headquarters once per month or once per quarter for crucial in-person meetings.

To the point that this dynamic becomes the norm rather than an exception, allowing managers and directors to have increased say on the location of their permanent base while staying well connected to their employer, The Great Reshuffling will accelerate.

Despite what some CEOs in the financial and technology space have stated in wanting all employees to return to work, it’s hard to put the genie back in the bottle regarding remote work. The shift is not temporary for many companies and could be essential to a candidate’s decision. But it’s not the only factor.

That’s why it makes all the sense in the world to Talk To Talman First.

As we understand what your organization values most in a “best of the best” hire, we can make recommendations based on each candidate’s ability to excel independently and respond to sophisticated challenges we’ve tested them with. In a changing world where remote and hybrid work is more expected as an option than ever, knowing how to position your company to new candidates while staying true to your values is the fine line that calls for the 40+ years of experience Roy Talman & Associates brings to every financial and technology recruitment engagement.

Companies Push Their Machine Learning Capabilities to the Max

Posted on October 7, 2022

On a global scale, including among the clients we have at Roy Talman & Associates, we’re witnessing more and more companies viewing machine learning tools as a powerful resource to be incorporated into their business process.

It’s the kind of titanic shift we’ve seen play out before.

Many of us remember early on in our careers when all files were flat files from a computer. Those, in time, gave way to databases and the idea of knowing how to use databases was paramount – ultimately, you couldn’t have a system without a database.

Once again, we’re now on the cusp of another momentous turn in the technology landscape. In a growing number of situations, various machine learning capabilities will be built into systems that we don’t even think to be machine learning enabled at all.

For example, insurance companies will experience extraordinary change by building machine learning into their claim adjusting process. If you get into an accident, the company will ask you to take a few pictures of your car, tell you where to go to have it fixed and share how much the company is willing to pay to have the car fixed. You don’t need an appraiser whatsoever.

In another example, AutoX, the predominant self-driving (and driverless) car on the road in China, has touted its vehicle’s ability to handle the most challenging traffic scenarios possible. As a result of so many variables, AutoX claims its system delivers a computing capacity of 2200 TOPS (Tera Operations per Second Operations – the number of computing operations a chip can process in one second).

To give this some context, 2200 TOPS represents a very sizable supercomputer. Now, 100% of that capacity is in a car with 15 million data points, over two dozen cameras and 220 million pixels streaming per second. How does just one vehicle reach this unfathomable capacity? Broadly, machine learning is being used on an industrial scale, forcing compute requirements to escalate even further.

We see that same trend toward an increased machine learning presence with AutoX’s counterpart, Tesla. During Tesla’s special “AI Day,” most of the content was focused on developing a chip that Elon Musk calls Dojo. The surface of a Dojo chip is used to build a Dojo computer for Tesla, which allows Tesla to train their systems for autonomous driving. The company will be taking on some major competitors to become the most valuable semiconductor company in the world, courtesy of the Dojo chip.

Essentially, it takes that much more computing to train machine learning systems. What companies are quickly realizing is this: The bigger the system, the more intelligence and better quality required.

Talman Advantage #9: A Smoother Transition Into The New Environment

Thanks to close rapport with senior managers and relationships with clients that have lasted for many years, Roy Talman & Associates has the in-depth knowledge of a firm’s work atmosphere that few can bring to the table.

As a result, we can often guide what to expect from the culture you’re about to join, hopefully making your integration into that environment all the more seamless. Make your first days in a new role better than you ever expected by talking to Talman first.

The Virtuous Cycle

The bigger the system, the better it is. Suppose you can figure out how to spend the money the right way to benefit from it. To put things in perspective, it used to be that a system with 500 million parameters was considered significant and a system with 1.7 billion parameters was very large. Over time, computer scientists found that the more parameters a system had, the “smarter” it became in a variety of areas.

Fast forward to today, in which GPT-3, a system that has learned to code, blog, tweet, summarize emails and more in the last year, has a gigantic 175 billion parameters.

The future systems are likely to have – get this – over a trillion parameters.

That substantial jump from a system of 175 billion parameters to a system having over a trillion parameters is for a good reason. By all indications, systems will need to be that big to enact the unprecedented change felt across our society. As more high-capacity systems proliferate on the level of Tesla and AutoX, it should ultimately lead to an explosion of machine learning capabilities in many industries and applications.

Machine learning is rapidly becoming today what electricity was for people in the early 1900s. It took a few decades for electricity to permeate because the “killer app” for electricity was truly electric motors. Then manufacturers needed to redesign everything to accommodate electric motors and do away with steam power.

We’re approaching a very similar situation with machine learning today. Building systems that can be taught to solve real-life problems is relatively painless and the learning curve is shortening. There is still far to go, but the pace at which we are moving upward is accelerating. This should, in turn, lead to increased velocity in hiring talented people who understand machine learning and helping these companies push the full-throttle adoption of new systems. As machine learning is still relatively new, identifying top talent for it is critical to a company’s success.

With hiring smarter in mind, Talk To Talman First. Roy Talman & Associates has 40+ years of experience in interfacing with ideal candidates, challenging them and recommending the very best options based on the person you need today and the person that can potentially grow by leaps and bounds in your organization in the days to come tomorrow.

When On-Site Policy Causes Increased “Looking Around”

Posted on September 9, 2022

A friend of mine’s wife is a lawyer who works at a major university reviewing contracts. She figured she would likely finish her career working in that job.

In the meantime, she and her husband got a house in Arizona. It wasn’t a problem with her job because she hadn’t gone into the office in a long time – until she got a new boss. The new boss said, “You know what? I think I’d like to start seeing our people here in person twice a week.”

The lawyer approached the organization and said, “Look, I can come in for a week or months during the winter, but I cannot be here twice a week because my husband and I will be remote.” Her managers asked her to make her case. So she wrote up an explanation and while she was making her case, a new job opened up that was a level above her. Inspired to apply for this promotion, she updated her resume.

Talman Advantage #5: A Real Partner With A Plan

When a recruiter talks to you on the phone for 20 minutes just once, there’s only so much they know about you beyond the resume. On the other hand, Roy Talman & Associates will work with you to gain a robust understanding of your skill set, goals, work style preferences and more. Then, rather than “blasting” your resume out to the hiring universe with random results, we’ll make a plan with you on what order we will present you to various firms that we feel are a best fit.

Your career deserves more than a quick chat. Partner with a recruiter who can help you feel more in control of the process – as you should be. Talk To Talman First.

End of story? Not quite.

As long as she was updating her resume, she decided to do some interviews. Those interviews opened her eyes to opportunities that were even greater than the one she considered applying for.

Ultimately, she accepted a job at another major university on the west coast, stepping into a fantastic new role. She has the lifestyle she wants with her husband, greater flexibility to work from their home in Arizona and has reached the next level in her career on her terms.

The moral of the story is this: You may be in a role that you’re currently very content and happy with, but it doesn’t take a lot for that world to be altered suddenly. With one change to a manager, a policy or a few key team members leaving, you may begin to wonder what other possibilities exist for you in the job marketplace. The process accelerates from passively “looking around” into a more active search once you meet with Roy Talman & Associates.

Our team will learn everything from how you’re seeking to level up your skills to the essential elements to preserve for your lifestyle. With that knowledge, we’ll provide a series of challenges that reveal your readiness for specific roles, which can, in turn, position you to make an unexpected jump into what could be your most rewarding environment yet. Bet you didn’t see that coming. But that’s what can happen when you Talk To Talman First.

On-Site Policy Causes One Executive To Move. Domino To An Exodus?

Posted on July 17, 2022

We’ve used the phrase “The Great Reshuffling” in the past as we don’t feel it’s merely The Great Resignation we’re experiencing. The “deck” of what we’ve always known for traditional work and the way it’s done is being reshuffled. We’ve talked a lot about remote work and the impact that it’s had on the office environment. Remote work can be acceptable. But what happens if a company encourages more on-site work as part of a blend or even pushes for a full return to the office?

Let’s say a company in Chicago has just opened an office in Florida as well. At the same time, the business would like its people to come into the office again – at least three days a week on-site.

Suddenly, we have an interesting convergence of events happening – a new office and a new policy.

It causes a key executive – the company’s CIO – to realize that an opportunity to move may have just presented itself. He likes the company, has a certain sense of loyalty and has little issue with the policy of working on-site more often.

However, if the policy is about being on-site again a few more days than before, he sees the chance for a lifestyle change where he can move to Florida and work out of the new Florida office at least three days a week to be in compliance.

Is he going to be the only one moving south? Hardly.

*******************************************************************************

Talman Advantage #4: Better Positioning For Your Best Opportunity

**********************************************************************

Here’s a real-life variation on the above example – one or more vital leaders decide to move, causing the firm to establish an additional location.

We’ve seen a number of these instances in finance in which the firm’s founders moved from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to Miami, a location that is rapidly becoming a tech hub in the finance space. Thanks to the founders moving, firms are opening offices in Miami for them to work out of.

Typically, when you have one high-level executive move to another office that a company is establishing, it’s just the start of a wave of other employees to follow. These people are still with the company, so it’s not necessarily a bad move in the big picture, but it’s also a big move that the company has to accommodate in real life, not just on paper.

The takeaway? We have to plan proactively that a return to on-site work could lead to one person moving to another location and could lead to other talent following.

Therefore, in either of these examples, we must plan to tap into an influx of new talent now to ensure the company’s level of service delivery remains consistent in both the original and new locations.There’s a difference between a company hampered by growing pains and a company that moves full speed ahead into growth mode. The latter works with us at Roy Talman & Associates. Because as our clients in the technical and financial technology spaces expand into new markets, they rely on our extensive track record to help them build the highest qualified team of rare talent. If that kind of direction is something you’re thinking about sooner rather than later, make a point to Talk To Talman First.

Don’t Minimize The Pull For Getting Back Together

Posted on June 10, 2022

In the last couple of years, we’ve all heard a familiar refrain: “I miss being around people.” It’s grown louder as conditions for masking relax. This poses an interesting question for those who assume everyone wants to work remotely or even engage in a hybrid arrangement. Do they?

Picture a candidate you are very interested in and things look very promising. Until the conversation turns to working remotely. You say, “And best of all, we only need you in the office twice a week.” Great, right? Wrong. He doesn’t want to go back to his place three days a week. And he doesn’t want to work in a place where he doesn’t know when other team members are going to be in. It all feels a bit…disjointed and uneven.

The candidate decides not to take the job. Instead, he finds an employer who offers him an environment where the team will be together more often, more consistently, giving him a sense of greater stability.

The takeaway here is that a company can set its remote policy, but it has to prepare for the ensuing consequences of that policy as far as what its prospective candidates and employees will do next.

What will it mean if you ask employees to come into the office more often?

We can’t pretend that ramping on-site work back up will please everyone across the board. Some employees will strongly resist returning to the office and may not love the idea of coming into the office more often. But some employees do miss physically being around other people and no longer want to work alone.

Talman Advantage #3: The Preparation For The Interview You Deserve

Through testing on certain subjects and measuring your scores against what our clients expect, you’ll be able to head into the interview knowing so much more. You’ve come too far to settle for anything less. So make sure you Talk To Talman First.

Are you prepared for these outcomes as your policy goes live?

It would appear that employees are calling the shots, but that’s not entirely so. Instead, the outcome we see at times is that some organizations will say, “Working remotely in our business just doesn’t work very well. We’d like you to come in each day of the week.” Make no mistake: Management is still calling the shots here. They get to decide what the policy is and to what degree that it changes over time.

If your company wants to shift its remote policy so that people need to show up in the office more often, it can put new rules in place for coming in. In the same breath, you should be proactive and plan as if certain people will leave the company due to such an approach. Who will their replacements be and how long might it be to find such talent? We can’t control everything about tomorrow, but if there’s one thing that we can control, it’s a plan for recruitment that is easy to deploy.

That’s where we come in at Roy Talman & Associates. Knowing how significant remote policies have become, even more so than many other amenities, you must proceed with the assumption that while some people will love a company that asserts its people be on-site more often than before, that position may not work for everyone. And that’s when some of your employees may start looking around.

What do you do next? You don’t wait for that to occur. Talk To Talman First.

By partnering with one of the most established recruitment firms for technology and high-frequency trading companies now in Roy Talman & Associates, you’ll be able to move seamlessly into a plan to attract new talent and the best of the best talent. That’s our policy. Make it yours too.

When More On-Site Work Strengthens Your Recruitment

Posted on May 6, 2022

As much as we’ve seen significant movement over the last couple of years from companies on whether or not to let workers go fully remote, an interesting shift is occurring. Some of those very same companies are changing their expectations, requiring employees to be in the office at least two to three times per week.

How will that hybrid approach work in the long haul? We’ll see how it plays out, but we believe that on-site work will be highly embraced again by specific industries, especially the technical and financial industries.

Simply put: When companies have employees who have fully bought into working on-site, it creates a unique edge for these businesses where they see the benefits in many ways. Some industries are just better equipped for on-site work due to the nature of the work as well as how teams interact more productively when they are physically closer rather than virtually.

What Do They Do – And Do Better – In The Office?

If you have people coming into the office for two or three days, it’s essential to be keenly aware of how their activities in the office are different from the activities they do from home. And considering the logistical questions that can arise with this greater understanding, it’s not a trivial issue.

For example, let’s say you have teams that frequently engage in brainstorming sessions. Where is it best for those to occur? In situations that involve multiple people talking at one time as they bounce ideas off one another, getting together in the office is likely a far better avenue to pursue. Allowing a brainstorming where half of the people are in the office and the other half are working from home may create communication issues.

Let’s face it: Zoom or Teams can be fair for one-on-one interactions, but these technologies are not the greatest right now when it comes to group interactions of many different people in many different locations.

Conversely, suppose an employee’s primary responsibility is sitting in an office and coding all day long. In that case, it could be productive for them to work from home some days rather than be interrupted in an office environment where people are constantly coming up to them.

With this in mind, what are the implications for a firm in attracting and retaining talent?

In a sense, favoring more on-site work allows a firm to establish a strong voice on the nature of how it views and recognizes its emerging leaders. Case in point: We’ve heard prominent leaders in the financial and tech spaces speak about how they believe people who are passionate about ascending in the organization will come into the office. Period.

It also communicates a potential commitment to establishing a culture where only a particular set of people can belong. That is not at all a bad thing. Culture will always be easier to establish when a company has its people under one roof. It becomes far more challenging to maintain a culture among a widely dispersed team that\ has variable days and times for when people come into the office.

Talman Advantage #2: We See The Complete Picture Of Who You Are

At Roy Talman & Associates, we don’t just see you as a resume or even a candidate to fill an open job. Instead, we’ll ask to meet you because we want to get to know you on a deeper level – that includes your current skills, your knowledge of certain subjects, your special expertise, your work style and the environments in which you believe you thrive.

Compare that to others. But always Talk To Talman First.

So we’ve just tied two very important elements – promotions and culture – directly to on-site work. It’s not a standalone policy with arbitrary rules. It’s an approach that reinforces who we are. And that can serve as a rallying point to bring a team closer together – even beyond being physically closer by everyone coming into the office.

As you prepare to make changes in your company’s approach in terms of on-site work versus remote work, there are bound to be implications for recruitment and retention. That’s where Roy Talman & Associates can be an invaluable partner in strategizing a hiring plan that evolves as you do. With an approach that never settles for less than the top candidates in alignment with your goals, structure and culture. Head into the next era with the utmost confidence. Talk To Talman First.

The Great Reshuffling to Florida and Texas

Posted on March 17, 2022

If there’s a giant sucking sound you hear coming from the Rust Belt in the northeast, it’s no coincidence. Key people are being drawn from this area if working remotely isn’t an option. As a result, many are exploring their options in a warmer climate to the south: Namely, Florida.

In this scenario, it’s really not a question of remote, non-remote or hybrid. The policy is clear. It’s more “Which one of these locations are you going to live in?” For example, either Chicago or Florida. Or New York City or Florida. Or New Jersey/Connecticut or Florida. Being non-remote or close to it forces the individual to make a choice and, based on what we’re seeing at Roy Talman & Associates, Florida is one of the primary beneficiaries of this development.

If Florida is gradually sucking away talent from the northeast, Austin, Texas is doing the same to California. Elon Musk moved Tesla’s company headquarters and newest manufacturing facility to Austin. Oracle is in the process of moving its company headquarters from Silicon Valley to Austin. Beyond headquarters, major investments are coming to building a presence in Austin from Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Canva. Just to name a few.

Talman Advantage #3: The Preparation For The Interview You Deserve

What we see in these transitions, whether a total move of headquarters or substantial addition to the company footprint, is an opportunity. We’ve talked a lot about the importance and significant influence of a company’s remote policy – full-time in the office, hybrid or completely remote – can have on hiring. But beyond crafting the right remote policy for its employees and plans going forward, companies are discovering that new locations are presenting them with opportunities for expansion, certain tax advantages and, yes, a potential benefit of choice to offer new hires and existing staff.

Think about it. If yours is a technical environment that requires people to be present in the office most or all of the week, offering remote work isn’t an option. But offering in-office work in another location is. That opens up conversations with potential hires interested in a cultural fit based not only on the work environment but also on the living environment. Such as if they are in California but have always been interested in a different lifestyle in Austin, Texas. Or they are in high tax Connecticut but can reap the rewards of tax light Florida. No problem – if the opportunity before them is also portable, it could position your company as one that provides the benefit of choice even as you have a remote policy that demands in-office work.

We have provided examples of gigantic brands making an enormous investment in new locations in Texas and Florida. Still, The Great Reshuffling does not necessarily mean that your presence in such areas must be extravagant and expensive. For example, you might find that certain shared office arrangements enable your team to maintain an office in the new location while being part of a community of many different companies. Or you simply may find that a more cost-efficient office near a downtown area or the beach but not in the heart of it all saves you from paying office rent that’s through the roof. Is the office 15 minutes to the beach or downtown? That’s still a lot closer than where your headquarters is, thousands of miles away, isn’t it?

Remote work is a nice concept for some companies and industries, but it’s just not realistically applicable for the nature of what they do. In such situations, considering expansion to a new market may be just what you need to provide your next candidate with a greater array of lifestyle choices.

Speaking of which, long before you move in or break new ground, Talk To Talman First. Roy Talman & Associates is well versed in identifying, recruiting and hiring top technical talent that can help you hit the ground running as you move forward. Having a conversation with our team now about the kind of people you’ll need to staff up quickly with a powerful presence may be one of the smartest things you can do to plan ahead.

Where Is Machine Learning and AI Headed In 2022?

Posted on March 4, 2022

AI and machine learning evolved significantly in the past year, which begs the question: What’s next? Where are these technologies going and how will they further impact our way of life in a time that has been anything but predictable?

Healthcare

Large health insurance companies are using technology that’s been more or less proven and established for about two years. But in that time, they’ve also realized that taking this technology to the customer is a considerable expense and it takes them quite a while just to create usable applications from it. What’s more, it’s very hard for them to predict which of these applications will flourish and where. This would seem to be an exceptional opportunity to develop and deploy machine learning and AI applications that can more comfortably make these predictions on behalf of the insurance companies, hopefully helping them to answer the question of “which technology should we bet on based on the odds that it will pay off?”

Separately, the next time you speak with your physician, ask them how often they’re using machine learning. You’ll probably get some hilarious responses and blank stares because they don’t know what you’re talking about. “Machine learning? What’s that?”

Yet, machine learning is creeping into the healthcare field because machine learning systems made for the industry are being “trained” at scale to perform. It might require millions of dollars to train them, but they can be deployed once the system is introduced. This process can provide a template for billions of subsequent systems to be developed, trained, and deployed in an environment. And guess what? The technology continues to improve over time. So much so that healthcare workers forget that there was ever an option before this one.

That’s the future that’s coming for healthcare and could arrive this year.

Autonomous Driving

Yes, autonomous driving is here and more people are driving cars with Full Self-Driving (FSD) than ever. Including myself. I have a Tesla now and I can say that I’m not particularly comfortable with FSD. The car itself has certain quirks that make it a little bit of a, well, “control freak.” For example, if you’re driving for the street and there is a car in front of you going through a stoplight, that’s no problem if the light is green. It will follow the vehicle in front of you. However, if there is nobody in front of you as you approach a stoplight, the car will start flashing a message that says, “Stoplight Coming In 400 Feet.” To avoid the car from stopping, I need to press the acceleration to indicate to keep going. But why do I get a message about an upcoming stoplight now rather than consistently, regardless of whether or not a car is in front of me?

When I tell the car to take me home, I’ll enter a highway in which the lanes will inevitably change. Well, the car doesn’t start changing lanes on its own. I don’t know when it’s going to change and if I tell it to change lanes, sometimes it doesn’t go that fast. That’s not perfectly safe.

Finally, it’s a car that may be autonomous, but that also means it’s not going to voluntarily go over the speed limit. Safe, yes. But we all have needed to go just a little bit faster at some point or another, haven’t we?

All of this is to say that autonomous driving may take you from point A to point B, but there is still room for improvement in filling the human driving experience gaps where we have complete control. We need to change lanes at a moment’s notice, not wait for when it may or may not happen. We need to lean on the accelerator at times, even if it’s a few miles over the speed limit. And we need the consistency of knowing what conditions and signs are coming up on the road, no matter how many cars are around us.

These are things that we know to do in the moment, but the autonomous car as is doesn’t know to do 100% of the time. They’re safe but not always selecting the practical option based on the experience around the car. This year, the next step in AI and machine learning could help autonomous cars evaluate the environment and respond in a more realistic, instinctual, intelligent way that is ever closer to the human experience. This is the gap that, once bridged, could be a phenomenal leap forward for autonomous driving as we know it. Will we see this in the subsequent software releases this year? It’s entirely possible

Talman Advantage #1: Our Connections Run Deep

Why is it so critical that Roy Talman be the first recruiter you talk to? Before your resume is casually distributed to others, it’s important to understand how valuable it is to work with someone who brings a credible and highly reputable network of hiring managers. We’ve cultivated relationships with these managers for over 30 years – in fact, many of them were our candidates at one point. But if you distribute a resume before we can leverage such connections to identify the best firm and role for you, it may be very difficult for us to help you further. So before you send out a resume, Talk To Talman First!

The Inflection Point Is Coming

We are approaching a moment in time of the very things that computer scientist and futurist Ray Kurzweil predicted would happen ten years ago. We are on the singularity spectrum. There are fascinating stories from China about a company backed by Alibaba that has developed a chip that performs 2200 trillion operations per second (TOPS). Wow! To put that in perspective, two computer chips that go inside a Tesla are 36 TOPS.

What does that mean for us in 2022? Imagine if a chip with this massive processing power is integrated into our way of life on a larger scale. It could happen as soon as this year. When it is normalized to have chips that perform 2200 total operations per second in autonomous vehicles, it will not be unusual in several locations to see truck deliveries made by fully autonomous vehicles following a fixed route. Or an autonomous vehicle that delivers your groceries. Even to some degree, we may see increased drone delivery. All of this is coming. It’s just a matter of when it occurs – in 2022 or 2023. From there, how much might it change lives? Not overnight. It could take five years to truly “feel” a national shift to such advancements as autonomous driving and it’s probably never going to be 100% adoption. But could it realistically be 40-50% adoption? Absolutely. And that is huge.

In a world where everything can change with the development of a single chip, it’s good to know there’s a partner to help technology and high-frequency trading firms stay ahead of the curve with a pipeline to the most coveted talent available: Roy Talman & Associates. Don’t wait for the future to arrive to identify the next great leaders for your team. Talk To Talman First.