Ilya Talman, Author at Roy Talman & Associates

Where The Chips Fall: How Changes In Chip Making Can Impact So Many Of Us

Posted on January 26, 2022

When you think about it, the number of computer chips surrounding us is absolutely mind-boggling. We simply don’t realize how many things have chips in them or how many chips are in our devices.

If you are staring at a giant computer screen, how many chips are in it? You have to factor in the depth of the screen. The camera. The microphone. And guess what? We’re not even talking about the actual computer itself yet!

Just think about all those potential chips that impact each of our lives in this way. Now multiply it for every person in every developed country of the world. If this sounds like an infinite number of chips required, you’re right – and it’s only about to be taken up several notches to new levels of need.

Here’s why: The pandemic, in essence, supercharged a massive shift in efficiencies as remote work has taken hold in markets across the globe. Rather than spending 90 minutes one way commuting on a train or in a car, we are already counting on new technologies to make remote work possible in a way that feels easy for us to slip right into, whether we’re working remotely for a couple of days per month or a couple of days per week.

All of which is to say that, with the need for ever-more intelligent technologies to bring us together as millions of us are working remotely, we may soon be relying on a staggering number of chip operations more so than we ever have.

Are we ready for that kind of shift and reliance? Maybe. But in the same breath, we have to face facts: The way chips are now designed and manufactured has fundamentally changed from several years ago. Let’s take a closer look at what we’re talking about, with a little trip back to the past for some context here.

The Early Dominance of Intel

Most of the people unfamiliar with computer hardware likely believe that the marketplace is still exclusively comprised of the likes of Intel and AMD. The answer is no. Plus, it’s essential to recognize that there is a gigantic difference between designing a chip and manufacturing a chip.

For many years, it used to be that Intel would design and manufacture chips that most of the population used. In fact, it was such a given that we could say if a chip existed, Intel was the likely name behind it seeing the light of day.

However, as time progressed, the landscape changed and gamers were at the forefront of that change. That’s right. Gamers! How so? Gamers use a game co-processor – a graphical processing unit essential to the gaming experience because the screens on every game need to be refreshed faster and faster.

With the arrival of this processing unit, Intel wasn’t the only “game in town” in the chip business. Companies such as Nvidia emerged for this particular market segment, while AMD and Intel made acquisitions to grow their market share. Chips could now feature a CPU and a GPU, resulting in them being called “system-on-a-chip” technology.

That said, in the minds of most people, “he who designs it also manufactures it” – regardless of whether or not that’s true. For instance, AMD used to manufacture their own chips, but to focus purely on design, it gave up chip manufacturing in favor of trusting another business to handle that responsibility.

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Talman Advantage #8: True Help To Hit The Ground Running

With an offer coming, do you have a solid understanding of what you’ll be doing in the first 6 months? The first year? Having placed a variety of senior people at each client’s firm, Roy Talman & Associates can help you clarify a whole lot about the environment you’re about to join, your role and the true expectations of your new manager. A recruiter without the overwhelming credibility that we do may not be able to shed as much light on what’s in store for you on Day 1 and beyond. So get the insight you need and Talk to Talman First.

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Apple Changes The Game Of Chip Design

For many years, like a variety of other companies, Apple had relied on Intel for chip design until a major problem presented itself: Intel’s manufacturing had fallen far behind others in the field who could manufacture more chips at a higher rate.

Namely, chipmaker TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing) was simultaneously investing so much money in designing new fabrication factories that they could manufacture more chips of a smaller geometry. Chips are measured by the shortest stretch of silicon – referred to as nanometers. For an exceptionally long period, Intel’s chip was measured at 10 nanometers. Then, TSMC created a seven-nanometer chip, causing it to leapfrog over Intel.

That was all Apple needed to see and hear to make a monumental decision – they didn’t need to rely exclusively on Intel for its chips anymore.

What’s more, Apple viewed a lot of components within Intel’s chip as non-essential. They would design their own chips and turn to another manufacturer like TSMC to produce those chips.

Chips Get Cooked And Potentially Burned

If there’s one thing that’s rarely been a problem for chip manufacturers, it’s the question of speed. After all, the speed of chips has been continuously doubling every two to three years. When manufacturers found that a chip could perform more than 10 billion operations per second, the real issue arose. While impressive on the surface, that level of speed is so intense that it doesn’t take long before the chip needs to be cooled down. Otherwise, it will be literally cooking.

That’s why an alternative route was required so that manufacturers would refrain from making unbelievably fast chips and instead focus on low energy consumption. As a result, chips were made to have more considerable capabilities without going faster. These simple, tiny chips could go into all kinds of applications and practically any device you could think of. That type of versatility is exciting, but the world of making chips wasn’t done evolving.

Raising The Stakes

Today, those who can design highly complex chips stand atop a hierarchy of companies where, quite frankly, the price of a chip doesn’t matter to them.

The manufacturers we’re talking about producing very complex chips are playing by an entirely different standard in which multiple steps are required, involving photolithography in which hundreds or even thousands of layers after layers of photos are superimposed over one another. In the end, it’s not surprising to hear that it can take hundreds of steps using specialized lithography equipment to produce a very complex chip – which also explains why it costs as much to make these types of chips as it does. It is so expensive that you need all of these machines because each machine produces its own codes or next layer. Acquiring such an array of machines is incredibly challenging from both a cost and a logistical perspective.

In other words, we have two very different categories in chip manufacturing: One that calls for a chip to be run through a variety of steps in a process, creating a chip that costs much more than its predecessors. The other avenue is to make a straightforward chip worth much less than the first kind but can also be manufactured in far fewer steps, using older machines.

The stakes of all this are raised significantly, knowing that there are only so many facilities in the world capable of manufacturing chips, period. A company could spend $10 billion building a foundry to make chips, but you still have to ensure that a large percentage of the chips get made and sold.

No wonder so many foundries need to run at a 24/7 pace, often with every one of their multi-million-dollar machines running simultaneously and with robots moving things from one station to the next.

All of this, technically speaking, refers to hardware. But how are you going to use hardware if you don’t have a language for it? That requires sophisticated software to be developed. Nvidia was one of the first to do so through a language called CUDA, specifically the language to program their GPUs.

As time has gone on, a great deal more software has been developed. One of the things that is happening now to some degree is that when you look at GPUs, they’re reverse-engineered so that software can run very well on them.

Conversely, in the old days, you designed things for any and all potential problems, making it very hard to predict how your chips were going to be used. Intel would focus on creating a chip that could allow any software to be run on it as a “Swiss Army Knife of Chips.” However, if you could understand precisely how the chips would be used most of the time, you could design software in a certain way with confidence.

Today, you don’t need to spend $10 billion to build a foundry. All you need to do is design the chip. Instead of building a massive facility for manufacturing, what if you hired a few hundred people? How much would that cost? Would that be as bad as you think?

Here’s what I mean: I was watching Elon Musk of Tesla present during the company’s special “AI Day,” showing us people on staff who were likely superstar designers of his that he could pay hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. If those people added up to $10 million a year, that’s chump change for the likes of Elon Musk!

In other words, as a designer, you can go to a manufacturer and receive access to state-of-the-art fabrication technology that would otherwise really cost you if you were approaching manufacturing on your own. All of this is causing many people to say, “We don’t need Intel. We can design our own chips, then partner with a manufacturer. Plus, with potentially four more global foundries on top of the original ones out there, we don’t have to look at just one manufacturer as our only option.”

That’s the dynamic of designing a chip yourself and sending it out for manufacturing to a select number of shops as we sit here today. Might it change tomorrow? What kinds of companies and fields might be affected most? It demands a watchful eye because it could impact us all in some form or fashion. It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve seen this particular area evolve.

Fortunately, if there’s one form of consistency that companies can rely on, it’s the dependability of Roy Talman & Associates to communicate the nature of how specific processes, technologies and industries are currently shifting to impact how we work, how we hire and how we live. It all could start with the design and manufacturing of one tiny chip that’s the domino to a host of other events occurring.

Rather than try to decipher where those chips are falling, Talk To Talman First. We’ll supply the much-needed perspective from 40+ years of experience on these kinds of technological movements to help you plan accordingly, move forward and go full speed ahead in the direction of your goals.

Chicago Implores Top Tech Talent To Come Home. But Will Enough Of Them Return?

Posted on December 23, 2021

We’ve often focused on the movement of tech talent back and forth, including migration from Silicon Valley to new cities for remote work (just don’t expect to be paid precisely the same in your new town if you do make that move). Interestingly, there’s been a campaign taking the angle of bringing the very best tech talent with ties to Chicago back to the city.

It’s a little different than attracting all kinds of people to a new area they’ve never lived or worked in. It’s an ambitious effort to lure back thousands and thousands of “homegrown” technical professionals over the next few years who already have a connection to Chicago, thereby deepening our talent pool in a variety of categories.

Is this part of The Great Reshuffle going to work?

In theory, this “lifestyle” play approach may make sense, but the real world may say something much different. Namely, if you’re going to pick up and leave one employer for another across town, that’s easier to do. But if you’re going to uproot your life for a new job, it had better be to work for someone offering a fantastic opportunity you can’t stop thinking about.

It’s not abundantly clear at this point that “The Great Reshuffle,” as it’s referred to, would occur in this way.

Instead, it’s more realistic to picture a scenario such as this in another year or two: Bob is doing well working for Google – a top performer, in fact. Bob has also performed well working remotely and hasn’t missed a beat. It’s just like he’s in the office when he’s not. He communicates exceptionally well with his team and superiors.

After some time working from a remote location, Bob is promoted and takes on a more prominent role. We know he can do well working outside of the office and from home. Then, one day, Bob approaches the management team at Google and expresses a desire to work for the company but in the place he grew up – Chicago.

See, Bob doesn’t want to leave his company for a lifestyle change. That’s not enough. He likes working for Google and there’s no guarantee that he’s going to find something inherently better and more satisfying simply because he’s where he wants to live, even if it’s with the same company! Yes, there’s a Google office in Chicago, but what if he can’t have the same career path there once he moves as he does now? Once Bob is assured that he can stay on that career path, he must potentially make some trade-offs. His salary will likely change, but the cost of living may be better and quality of life being around family and friends may be better too. So, in Bob’s case, because he has an employer he likes and already works remotely for, the transition feels smoother. But not every technical talent will be a Bob who works remotely and not every employer is going to be a Google.

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Talman Advantage #6: The Technical Expertise Clients Highly Respect

How many account managers within a recruiting firm have technical PhDs and MSs? Not many. Yet, you’ll find several of them at Roy Talman & Associates, which our clients in the technological space have come to highly respect over the course of 30+ years. No wonder they respond quickly in real time. And when we suggest the creation of a new position just for you, they seriously consider our suggestion at a minimum and frequently call us to discuss further.

See yourself represented from a higher place right from the very beginning. Talk to Talman first.

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The proof as to whether a “boomerang” approach to recruiting back top tech talent is going to work depends on how much remote workers find they are giving up in terms of their career or personal life. The less they’re giving up, the more working remotely will be desirable – and the farther the remote location they may travel to, across several states and thousands of miles.

Yes, in Chicago, you may know what you’re getting as a former and returning “homegrown” talent. But the key will be whether or not you can effectively work for a top-tier company without physically being at your former location consistently, other than flying back to headquarters once a quarter.

To be successful in luring back Chicago tech talent that grew up here, that talent must be able to see that they are not making above-and-beyond sacrifices that would compromise their professional growth or impact their personal well-being.

When more tech talent discovers how they can enjoy the same or better advantages of the remote work they’re doing right now for their current employer, only in a new location, then “The Great Reshuffling” will really pick up steam.

Will 10,000 or more of those types return to Chicago over the next couple of years? Maybe, maybe not. One thing we’re confident of is considering we’re talking about top-tier talent, it won’t be anywhere near as simple as expecting all of them at that ultra-high level to return home just because they miss the area.

At Roy Talman & Associates, we find the “best of the best” talent requires a high degree of sophistication and all the correct elements to align if they are to confidently agree to transition from one location to another, even if it is with the same employer. Being curious about making a change is one thing. Being assured long before the moving truck shows up that it will be a change for the better – in all the right ways – is quite another.

Luring best-in-class talent is a multi-layered approach that requires a partner who understands what you are looking for in talent as well as one who can convey what your culture, management style, opportunities for growth and more are all about. Priorities and values can look different for every single candidate. That’s why it’s vital to Talk To Talman First.

For over 40 years, Roy Talman & Associates has helped a wide variety of companies from Chicago to New York identify, attract and onboard talent of many shapes and sizes. The homegrown talent that wants to return to the area. The adventurous talent that has never lived here before but craves the challenges your company can provide. We strive harder to be on the same wavelength for what they need in their next employer, valuing the cultural, personality and work style fit as much as the skills they fulfill in a job description. If you want to source outside your area for the most impactful hire possible, you’ve found a place where you’ll never have to settle.

Fresh Tech Talent Ready to Catch the Machine Learning Wave

Posted on November 11, 2021

In many Talman Tidbits, we speak of systems and trends as they pertain to machine learning and AI. Still, any momentum these areas might have requires an influx of people to embrace machine learning to the fullest.

Fortunately, the signs there are increasingly positive too.

In the last year alone, we see significantly more top talent with skill sets based in machine learning. That, in turn, should bring more companies to the table for developing machine learning applications.

It’s certainly a far cry from where we’ve been.

Two or three years ago, most people with a career in machine learning were working for either Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft or IBM. These huge companies, at their core, were trying to figure out how to approach large-scale problems and then how to develop tools so they could follow through with that mission.

Fast forward to the present day: Besides the five giants mentioned above, we’re beginning to see an appreciation of more “regular” companies saying, “We think we can take on this machine learning project.”

Now, when they take on the project, in the beginning, they may find out the endeavor is much more expensive than expected, although there are some more accessible areas of “low-hanging fruit” they can address as part of the project.

The point is this: What companies consider to be that low-hanging fruit is being continually redefined as to what makes sense for their set of capabilities.

Years ago, this might have been unthinkable for a company smaller than Google or Amazon to take on. Today, smaller players see more of a door opening to their involvement in machine learning projects based on where their people are on the learning curve and the higher level of their in-house resources.

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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.

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In the financial sector, we’re seeing several companies realizing that they need to bite the bullet on entering the machine learning space via multi-year projects. But make no mistake: These are still expensive propositions. It’s not as if the leadership of these companies can essentially say, “OK, we’re going to start working on a machine learning project and one week from today, we’re going to start making significant money.”

So how do you know if it’s the right time to upgrade your team’s knowledge base?

Well, if you see that many people are working on machine learning projects to some degree and making money from that, you’re probably going to be far more confident about it, right?

If you’re going to jump into the machine learning pool, you want to feel like you can swim. On the other hand, if you’ve heard that only two people are making money with machine learning projects and 200 people have “drowned” working in machine learning, you might wait just a little bit longer to jump in.

It just depends on whether or not you’re a fantastic swimmer.

No matter what frameworks and plans you have in place to take on more machine learning projects in the near future, it’s having the very best talent aboard that sets everything in motion. Don’t underestimate that one moment longer than you need to. Talk To Talman First.

At Roy Talman & Associates, we see a time when it will be unthinkable for certain companies to avoid integration of machine learning and AI. It’s rapidly approaching for some and for others, that moment is already here. By talking to us now about how to plan for your increased bandwidth, you can move into an era of machine learning projects with much greater confidence that your talent pipeline is filled with just the right skill set. And having that foundation in place can open the door for many more new business development opportunities too.

Forget “Someday”: Machine Learning’s Growth is Serious Business NOW

Posted on October 27, 2021

One of our people is working with an international startup company that has spun off from a much larger company (and the larger entity is still very much supporting the smaller one) and the startup is figuring out how best to utilize machine learning in the healthcare process.

It’s hardly the only one.

It appears now, more than ever across many industries, companies are incorporating machine learning tools into their process of doing business.

For example, when people first used computers, all files were flat files in the early days. Then databases came along – and the idea of knowing how to use databases became very important because you couldn’t have a system without a database. Similarly, we are on the verge of another significant technological evolution, approaching a time when a wide variety of machine learning capabilities will be built into more systems that we don’t think of as machine learning-enabled at all.

How so? Take the insurance industry, for instance. Insurance companies are building machine learning into the claim adjusting process so that if you get into an accident, they’ll ask you to take a few pictures of your car. Then they’ll tell you which shop to take your vehicle to and how much the insurance company is willing to pay to have the car fixed. With this machine learning evolution, you don’t need a human appraiser involved in the process at all.

In another case, Chinese company AutoX is the only company in the country operating a driverless RoboTaxi service on public roads. The Chinese claim AutoX’s system carries 2,200 trillion operations per second (TOPS), a very sizable supercomputer to put in a car. Specifically, AutoX has 15 million data points, 28 cameras and 220 million pixels – all streaming per second. Thanks to machine learning becoming used on a more industrial scale, compute requirements are escalating even further.

Closer to home, Elon Musk recently hosted a “Tesla AI Day” in which he talked about advancements in artificial intelligence and autonomous driving. One of the highlights of the event was Tesla unveiling a chip called Dojo. The surface of a Dojo chip is used to build a computer for Tesla that allows the company to train its systems for autonomous driving. But it was what Musk brought out at the very end of AI Day that got people’s attention – his announcement that he believes sometime year, Tesla will have the prototype of a humanoid robot.

With this in mind, what Tesla is positioning itself for may be even bigger than electric cars – it is positioning itself to be at the forefront of machine learning and with the Dojo chip announcement, it is taking aim squarely at Nvidia, the most valuable semiconductor company in the world and one that is now worth even more than Intel. What companies are discovering is the bigger the system, the more intelligent and better the quality.

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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 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.

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Supersized Systems Have Arrived

To put things in the proper context of how much systems have evolved and will continue to do so, it used to be that a system with 500 million machine learning parameters was considered large and a system with 1.7 billion machine learning parameters was very large. Then GPT-3 arrived with its 175 billion parameters, which is humongous.

What’s next? Get ready for systems with over a trillion machine learning parameters.

From autonomous driving to humanoid robots, by all indications, we’re approaching a point where we should see a true explosion of machine learning capabilities. We will be able to build systems painlessly – systems that can be taught to solve real-life problems.

What can companies do about this right now? Get on top of the learning curve associated with machine learning as soon as possible. It may feel like we’re walking uphill with a very long way to go, but the pace at which we are traveling and upward is accelerating.

Someday is today. Not only for machine learning and AI applications but for how you can think proactively on your hiring goals. From the technical talent you need right now to the best of the best talent you believe will be mandatory to bring aboard one year from now, it’s never too early to Talk To Talman First.

Roy Talman & Associates is always thinking ahead for your next potential hires based on your goals and the newest technology for your space that’s coming around the turn. It’s why we’ve set the pace as the most trusted name in technical recruiting for over 30 years. Want to do more than keep up? Let’s talk about how you can lead rather than follow.

How To Evaluate Employee Performance When More Want To Work From Home

Posted on September 16, 2021

Here’s a question that won’t be easy for some companies, even though I’m confident they will figure it out eventually. If an employee can’t be seen, how do you know they’re working hard, focused on the highest priorities and well on their way to producing positive results for you?

In traditional workplaces, it wasn’t a challenge to know someone was a hard worker if she was always asking to help, always on the phone talking to clients or always on the computer getting things done. You could literally see the work happening. It wasn’t a stretch to assume that the worker was producing results.

It could be a different story, however, if you’re talking about a Software Engineer or some Architects. Can their jobs be done from home? Not necessarily at the beginning of a project. They may need to come into the office to work on the more significant phases of the work, such as the overarching design. Could they work from home to finalize the finer points of the design? Perhaps.

Don’t be surprised if some companies allow work-from-home but also demand certain sacrifices in the way of money and independence. They may say, “Sure, you can leave this environment and go work in Idaho. We’ll allow it. But you have to take a bit of a pay cut, we have to see your texts and have access to all of your work equipment remotely to see what’s going on. You’ll have a full suite of connectivity with Office and Slack, so we expect you to use it. All of it.”

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.

Are conditions even to that extent going to prevent migration away from Silicon Valley to nearby places such as Arizona, Utah, Idaho or Montana? Venture capitalists may need to be in Silicon Valley, but the greater affordability of real estate is a decisive factor for many others. A mid-level engineer in his mid-40s who can do what he needs to do from home and doesn’t have to be physically around a group of 15 people can be perfectly happy working from another location.

Will his employer be as happy? Rather than trying to force an employee’s hand on location, consider this as an option: Put them to the test. If they truly have the passion and purpose of work to not only be just as productive but perhaps even more so from a remote location, you’ll have yourself a win-win situation. If they falter, you’ll see that too and can adjust accordingly.

It’s this scenario where I’m reminded of a famous quote attributed to Warren Buffett:
“Only when the tide goes out, do you discover who’s been swimming naked.”

In other words, if they’ve got what it takes to perform exceptionally well from a remote location, let them prove it to you. Do your part to be clear in your direction, communication and benchmarks for success on a very consistent basis. Once you’ve done that, remote workers just may surprise you with how much better they can help your company reach its goals – even from a greater distance.

Is there any way to cover your bases in advance to get a much better sense of the potential your next hire brings to the table? You may think it’s a tall order, but not if you’re working with Roy Talman & Associates to sufficiently identify not only the candidate’s unique skill set but also the type of workplace culture they desire.

After all, even if they are all about returning to work five days a week, there’s still a long way to go before you can consider them a fit for your culture. Especially since that culture is bound to change to some degree due to the global atmosphere we’re presently operating in. We factor in a variety of aspects to present you with a candidate who has the passion and purpose to succeed while being in alignment with your approach to remote work, a complete office return or a hybrid of the two. Doesn’t it feel better to have more answers than questions in these moments? Our clients certainly think so. That’s why it’s wise to Talk To Talman First.

Is the Great Talent Reshuffle Upon Us?

Posted on August 27, 2021

When we talk to candidates, one of the very first questions that they ask is, “Can I work from home?” Yet, when we talk to our clients, such as those on the east coast, they often want people who will be working in New York or Florida (a large number of mid-sized financial firms are establishing their presence in Miami). These firms are not giving up their office space in New York or Connecticut entirely, but some of them may maintain a smaller space.

In early May, JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Diamond said he wanted people back at work because working from home “doesn’t work for young people.” In the same breath, however, he also spoke of some employees working under a hybrid model and even a tiny percentage of employees with specific roles working from home full-time.

This doesn’t fully align with what we continue to hear from the candidate’s point of view, which is that some of them – not all – want to work from home. They see a balance there and like what that represents. One of them we know quite well just moved his family to Vermont. Is he going to want to return to Manhattan anytime soon? Unlikely. That’s a values-based move for lifestyle and family. He wants to live life on his terms and has the experience to offer his superb talent to an employer who can be flexible on where their workers are located.

Meanwhile, Diamond is probably correct in saying working from home doesn’t align with younger people, which may create more opportunities to apply for positions based in an office five days a week.

Welcome to the verge of what some might call The Great Reshuffle.

How did we get here?

Thus far, we hear clients say, “Right now, we’re not planning on bringing anybody into the office.” The only thing that appears to be certain in a pandemic is more uncertainty. So, while some leaders may have a strong desire for their teams to return to work on a large scale, how do they plan on reconciling a situation where a talented candidate in a niche specialty prefers to work 100% remotely? Do they make exceptions to bring in the best of the best?

It’s also fair to suggest that while executives can state they want a full return to the office five days a week, perhaps 30-40% of their current staff, if not more, may resist that kind of move. This becomes all the more relevant as we grapple with COVID-19 variants, but even post-pandemic, many people have discovered something new about themselves that came from working from home. Perhaps that “something new” was a new job opportunity or the new revelation that they could get just as much done working from home as they could at the office.

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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.

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No going back to the past – or to the office?

The picture of the workplace during COVID-19 has been more or less frozen in time with minimal movement toward a return to the office. Throughout this period, employers and their workers have gotten a sense of what works with working from home and, with a few exceptions, it’s surprisingly more productive than what they thought.

Now, with more employers in the financial and tech space addressing working from home vs. returning to the office, the picture is rapidly changing. Hardcore demands of an office return by one firm could be highlighted by a competing firm that touts flexibility. Workers who have received a taste of the work from home life may resist a full return and lead an exodus from their employer.

At the same time, workers who could hardly wait to return to the office and being around others will welcome what they see as a return to normalcy. They may also see new opportunities in that office environment from those who left in search of a better work-from-home situation. And, in the middle of it all, with talent coming and going, employers may wonder what kind of corporate culture they have now.
We see a very fluid situation and a changing dynamic with people moving from job to job, so calling it The Great Reshuffle may prove accurate. If firms can’t be moved from their positions of a full return to work and workers can’t be moved from their positions of working from home, at least on a hybrid basis, we won’t see one or the other back down but rather both sides look for alternatives in terms of talent and employer.

When the deck changes due to The Great Reshuffle, we’ll be ready at Roy Talman & Associates. Are you? By turning to the 30+ years of experience we bring as a technical recruiter, you’ll be well-positioned to roll with the changes that may seem new to some. But in fact, we’ve been placing the “best of the best” talent based on culture, management fit and the nature of the work for decades. So don’t get thrown off course of your hiring plan by the winds of change swirling around you. Talk To Talman First.

Where’s the Puck Going Next? Virtual Reality, Coding Nomads and More…

Posted on July 26, 2021

We’ve frequently used hockey icon Wayne Gretzky’s phrase, “Skate to where the puck is going next” to describe where technology and trends are headed, so as we face a return to work, school and life as we know it, let’s do a roundup of where we see some vital “nexts” that firms and candidates alike should be skating to (or at least preparing to skate to).

The Next Zoom: Augmented Reality

By now, many of us are using videoconferencing technologies such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams all the time on a global basis. How can we not, really? What comes next is the answer to this question: What will take the Zoom experience to the next level to be even better? We certainly know that Zoom has its flaws. If the bandwidth is not there, an echo or “frozen” screen may occur. It’s also not the greatest to have multiple people talk simultaneously and hear each other.

Enter augmented reality or virtual reality.

There is a fair amount of chatter that Apple is developing new technologies in the augmented reality space. It appears as much as 20% of the employees at Facebook are working on virtual reality projects too.

As these advancements come to fruition in time, it’s essential for you to take the temperature of how much your team is currently working remotely. The more you’re working in that kind of environment, the more reliable tools you’re going to need to work at the highest level of productivity and efficiency when communicating.

So, as we move to augmented reality, virtual reality, a Zoom with a much higher bandwidth and more, pay close attention to how these applications are moving more of the things you’re doing to the next level of progress. At the same time, note how these applications are pushing the things you may be doing in person to a technological platform for remote communication as well.

The Next Definition Of Remote Work: Out Of State Or Out Of The Country

There’s no doubt that many companies are having a serious conversation about how they will return employees to work. As they do, we’re seeing the de-coupling of work from location. One year ago, we might have thought of remote work as working from home 45 minutes away from the office. That definition is rapidly changing and likely expanding.

Prior to this point, wherever your job was, that was where you would live. Or, for most people, the idea of moving typically was because that was where a job was. Now the mindset of “job” equating to “location” is about to change radically.

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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 provide guidance on what to expect from the culture you’re about to join, which hopefully makes 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.

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We can see significant changes happening sooner rather than later where people who haven’t been to an office in the last year will be residents of other states or even other countries. Business owners once thought, “Well, I have my customer base here, so I need to be here.” That is no longer the case.

During the pandemic, while you were working remotely, you couldn’t go anywhere. You couldn’t even investigate where you should go. Everything was frozen in place. As the pandemic restrictions have eased, people have begun asking, “If I am working remotely for the rest of my life and all I essentially need is a computer and solid Internet connection, where do I want to live?”

Expect to see deeper discussions of the logistics and the technologies to make remote work even more, well, remote. The speed of our technology should surely only help. This brings us to our next “Next.”

The Next Broadband: 1GB

Everything we talk about in relation to remote work has to involve a component of bandwidth for broadband. For communications, 10MB used to be the measuring stick for effective broadband. Those days are over. Now we’re considering 1GB to be the appropriate bandwidth for broadband.

The more we deal with bandwidth-hungry applications such as Zoom, the more we see that while it can technically operate at 5MB or 10MB per second, it’s so much better at 100MB per second.

The Next Remote Worker: Code Writer

Not every industry will automatically and naturally be remote-oriented. Surgery, for example, is still likely going to be done in-person as it takes too much effort, time and cost to do a certain percentage of surgeries truly remotely.

On the other hand, writing software code could, in time, be 30-40% more remote, if not more, than it currently is. Between the rising cost of living in places such as California and high taxation issues, don’t be surprised to see code writers look to move beyond state lines to have the life they want to go with the work they do. For example, let’s say you’re in California writing code for a company. You love the mountains but hate the cost of living you have to put up with where you are. What do you do? You might look at a state such as Utah for the mountains and better cost of living as opposed to being in California. You have work and life on your terms while still being just one time zone and a couple of states away from your company headquarters.

We’re keeping a close watch on coders to see if this potential move becomes a reality. The seed of working from home has been planted from actually doing that and many tech companies appear open to the possibility that up to half of their workforce could be remote. And for those who don’t need to be physically in an office to perform their work, it could represent a brand new world.

Your Next Career Move

Let’s say you’re working in a company dealing with older technology and platforms designed in the 1990s (or earlier). Some updates are in order. Yet, none are coming, so this is what you have to use at your job, which is less than ideal.

This puts you in a position where you have to learn on your own to stay ahead of the accelerating pace of change to have more career options down the road than fewer

That’s precisely where your drive to open up new options should inspire you to Talk To Talman First.

Roy Talman & Associates’ vast knowledge of the technical opportunities before you can be an excellent guide on those roles that are an ideal fit now and the ones that may require a bit more training for proper alignment. Consequently, you don’t have to operate in the dark, wondering when the perfect moment will be for you to leap into a new chapter in your career. We know the “Nexts” in technology, financial trading and more – as well as the companies that are going beyond talking about change and actually moving toward the next era of their growth. If you want to get serious about change in the next era of your career, that’s a conversation with us worth having today.

What Remote Work Means For Redefining Your Culture

Posted on June 25, 2021

As we’ve been talking a great deal about remote work and how we expect it is here to stay post-pandemic, the first impression would seem that company culture is the loser of this evolution. At Roy Talman & Associates, we’ve always gone beyond viewing people through the lens of a job description to look for a great cultural fit. But what will that culture represent when a decent portion of our team no longer needs to come to the office? How does a company cope with that?

Put another way, how does a candidate evaluate a company on culture…when that environment may be less populated than ever?

We suspect that many cultures will change. There surely has to be an emphasis on measurable accomplishments when you work remotely. Before, it was easy to run into an employee in the hallway any day of the week and quickly discover what they were working on. Now, that window into performance won’t come as easily. Fortunately, this might be an area where an explosion of tools will help companies evaluate performance from remote workers. In addition, when bandwidth increases sufficiently, we’re going to have much more interaction in groups. The problem with Zoom is that, while it is good in a one-on-one setting, the experience starts breaking down very quickly, even when you add just three or four people – and it’s still one person talking. A big jump in bandwidth capability can make this experience much more inviting to teams.

The Hybrid Culture / “Bootcamp” Approach

With such changes, the definition of a company culture might start changing. This is not to say you will forego interactions in person altogether, of course. Instead, you could have an emphasis on getting together once a quarter for four or five days of intense interaction rather than seeing each other daily.

Seeing people quarterly, in a setting much like a “bootcamp” with a particular theme, can bring together people across several days, learning specific things based on a goal. Put the energy of making this change into a three-to-four-day model where you’re getting together and then returning to where you live after that. The potential here is that many of us could make real progress while still having some semblance of culture.

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Talman Advantage #7: We Already Know Many People At The Top

The built-in advantage of being a more specialized recruiter for over three decades is that Roy Talman & Associates established many strong relationships with senior leaders in the C-suite and Director level. How do we truly leverage that? Prior to your interview, we can provide you terrific insight on the person’s background, the questions they’re likely to ask you and even a few clues into why prior candidates were likely rejected.

A recruiter that equips you with more information in advance of the interview? That just might make all the difference – if you talk to Talman first.

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The Productivity – Cultural Tradeoff

I believe that when we emerge from COVID and put it behind us, the improvement and productivity we should be left with will be tremendous. For one, we can expect to have far less commuting, but that’s not the only measurement of change. People may be working longer hours at home and/or more productive because they’re working at their preferred pace. So a variety of us may no longer be physically together as much as we once were, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be even more productive as a cohesive unit.

Think about it. Does physical closeness guarantee greater productivity? Not really. Can we be remote yet even more productive than we once were, maintaining a unified team that feels ever more on the same page? Yes. We can. Let’s illustrate.

We’ve previously spoken about the change in lifestyle that may come about from remote work. So let’s say you have a software developer who presently works a certain number of hours per week in the traditional office setting. But when you take the time and expense of daily commuting out of the equation, several hours can be put back into the day of productive work. If they spend an extra two hours at home per day, five days a week, that’s 10 hours per week, 40 hours per month. You just added an entire week’s worth of increased productivity into that software developer’s schedule per month, all while enabling them to live the life they want. Some could take this concept to a whole other level by working in another state or country to get more for their money while being more productive. If the technological bandwidth can accommodate that, who’s to say that this isn’t a better option?

Therefore, in the changing landscape of remote work, productivity might be measured not in terms of dollars produced per day or per hour but by how many hours need to be worked to obtain one’s ideal standard of living. The way we measure a thriving culture can change too – not by how we feel and work together in physical proximity but how we consistently interact and achieve as a team, regardless of location.

In this sense, as an employer, you might find that not only might your workers achieve far greater productivity and happiness to live life on their terms but that their loyalty to your team is even greater too. Call that an improvement to your culture – a culture with expanded boundaries.

A lot goes into the culture you’ve built and the culture that may evolve from here. For every chapter, it’s good to know there’s a highly seasoned technical recruiter who knows what you’re all about. From your mission and management structure to the technologies you’re embracing and the markets you’re entering. For over 30 years, Roy Talman & Associates has partnered with firms just like yours to successfully identify the top-tier candidates made for where you’re heading next.

It’s why more companies in the technical space trust us to keep up with their changes without missing a beat. And a big reason why you should Talk To Talman First.

Why Machine Learning Needs So Many More Humans

Posted on April 27, 2021

A while back, I read a book that proclaimed a very simple formula of how to succeed in business. Imagine you’re in the year 1910 and you’ve found a way to add electricity to a new product you’ve invented. Electricity is still relatively new at this time as it hasn’t genuinely propagated throughout American manufacturing and other industries. Since you’ve figured out how to harness it in your product, it’s going to be a winner.

Around this same time, you find a way to make a car that runs on an internal combustion engine. Once again, since the use of this kind of car isn’t widely adopted yet, you’re going to be a winner.

In today’s world, if you take any product you’ve made and then add machine learning to it effectively, you’re going to be a winner. In the author’s view, conversely, anything that doesn’t add machine learning to it will be destroyed (that’s easier said than done).

Still, the idea is sound – once we understand how to adapt to and deploy new technologies, the old way of doing business will cease to exist. We see this in the example of machine learning and technologies such as GPT-3, which uses 175 billion machine learning parameters – so many that it can “learn” how to complete a task once given a small sample size of instruction.

Think about this application for a moment if you’re a coder. When dealing with such a machine, you don’t need a true blue programmer because the machine will learn how to program without being taught. Some challenging problems will take much longer, but the easier problems will get solved.

As soon as people in the organization figure out that customers will go along with a change and there is a way to change how you do things, you need to change your workflow.

Let’s take the insurance business, for example. In the insurance industry, you have a process whereby an underwriter has to come up with how much to charge customers depending on their vehicles. Things related to that customer’s driving will change, but you don’t want to change that policy every 15 minutes. However, we have heard about discounts by some car insurance companies where they will lower your premiums if you share your driving records. Eventually, we probably will arrive at a quote that will charge you by the minute. If you’re driving at 120 miles per hour, it will charge you a great deal for those minutes that you’re driving at that speed. The point is that you need to have a reasonably sophisticated system in machine learning to accomplish this change in billing and dealing with customers.

One client of ours is very much focused on machine learning to build medical advancements. Well, you can’t just insert “machine learning” on Step 1 of a process and arrive at a solution. We’re at the beginning of an exciting new era, but it’s one that can feel as though progress is slow for two reasons:

1) Machines Don’t Address “Human Factor” Yet

Machine learning advocates talk about how their system is better than a doctor in diagnosing cancer or other medical symptoms. What they don’t talk about is the interaction and dialogue with the patient. Is a clerk talking to the patient because the physician isn’t there and needs to focus on directing a machine? What steps will be required to feed that information to collect information from the patient so that the machine can start working on it?

It may very well be that a machine learning system is better at finding cancer cases than a panel of doctors given the same information. But it doesn’t address the workflow aspect. You need a machine learning system that is “human friendly” enough to interview the patient, have enough information to observe what’s going on with the patient and recognize that the patient is having a heart attack, living with cancer, etc.

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Talman Advantage #4: Better Positioning For Your Best Opportunity

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.

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2) Data Collection Great – But Evaluation Capabilities Questionable

Even as a machine learning system does collect data, what happens if it has 5,000 ideas to evaluate? Yes, it can continue collecting data for several more months, but at some point, the need to assess and make decisions with confidence is imperative.

Here lies the missing gap at present in so many industries, particularly recruitment.

See, a machine can identify some people based on a resume or another type of data. However, it still requires a human being to say, “OK, based on what we see here, what kind of candidate is the best fit for this culture and manager not only for today but for what we need from the same hire three years from now?”

There is much conversation about how a recruiter must judge candidates, cultural fit, managerial fit and more. The problem is that when you have a recruiter who does not have enough expertise to properly position them to evaluate whether one Ph.D. with a physics background from MIT should be chosen over a Ph.D. from Cal Tech is, that’s a significant challenge.

In our world of technical recruitment at Roy Talman & Associates, our clients care about the “latest and greatest” in technology, which means our recruiters must have a good idea of the technologies emerging in the industry and what skills will be required. If it’s a technology that’s been around for the last 20-25 years, we’re generally not asked to find someone with that talent. They figure that there are enough people available to meet that skill requirement.

Put another way, if you want to rent a penthouse, do you want the guidance of somebody who knows about penthouses? Or someone who understands how to rent a one-bedroom apartment?

Therefore, in our view, a fair percentage of recruiting activities have been automated or commoditized. Still, it hasn’t impacted the highly specialized technical positions in high demand calling for people with very rare skill sets. In that instance, you still have to rely on good old human intuition and experience. No machine can compete in that arena right now.

In the world we live in, companies want to be confident that their recruitment partner is fully aware of what’s going on in terms of technological trends, the extent of the talent base to meet it and an ability to discuss that in the context of their needs.

That’s why the best of the best Talk To Talman First.

Not only is Roy Talman & Associates in touch with the evolution of the technological and financial trading fields, but we’re also deeply connected with rare candidates that feature special backgrounds and skillsets too. After all, those candidates know where they stand in relation to the rest of the field and want a recruiter who can appreciate what they can achieve with that talent in today’s day and age. We know the breadth of what’s possible for them. And we know how they can specifically close any technical gaps between here and their ultimate career destination as well.

Pace of Change: Zooming Along Kurzweil’s Timeline

Posted on April 15, 2021

“We’re entering an age of acceleration. The models underlying society at every level, which are largely based on a linear model of change, are going to have to be redefined. Because of the explosive power of exponential growth, the 21^st century will be equivalent to 20,000 years of progress at today’s rate of progress. Organizations have to be able to redefine themselves at a faster and faster pace.”

—Ray Kurzweil,
Inventor, Futurist and Director of Engineering at Google

When he uttered these words, Ray Kurzweil changed the way we’d look at the pace of change in the 21^st century forever: 100 years that would equal 20,000 years of progress. Change will be happening all around us – some of it we’re not going to believe at first. Then we’re going to get used to it. Then we’ll assume that it’s normal.

Just look at how we can unlock our phones and pay for things with facial recognition today when the invention of the iPhone wasn’t that long ago!

Five years ago, Face ID technology was not accessible. Now it uses machine learning to identify the details of your face. So, as many other things become more mature and easier to use, they will spread much more comprehensively.

What else illustrates the dramatic pace of change in the 21^st century Kurzweil was referring to? You know it already. You probably use it every day.

Video Conferencing

It used to be that you would need to get in your car with any kind of business meeting and have to drive downtown, pay for parking and more. My, how times have changed. As we have the infrastructure for an excellent, stable, fast connection through Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet, suddenly these options are not just about convenience. Our fundamental business changes when we don’t have to be interacting personally to transact business. With some people, face-to-face interactions are all they’ve ever known and suddenly, they have to reinvent themselves based on technology.

One year ago, if you wanted to do “video conferencing” in your company, you had to talk to your IT people to set it up.

Now, for every person that says, “I wish we could get together,” there is no question our ability to be more productive and efficient has tripled or quadrupled based on this technology.

One of the things that people have discussed with me is why the financial markets (most visibly the stock markets) have done so well while the pandemic is raging. I suspect that society got dramatically richer because a great deal of technology got deployed so much faster and the rise in the stocks, at least in part, represents this newly created wealth. More technology tools got adopted sooner than they would have otherwise and the highly skilled people able to work remotely have become more productive and have been major winners in the new environment.

Think back to the early days of using Zoom. It wasn’t that good, was it? And people weren’t quite as comfortable using it as they may be today. Now, it takes about 30 seconds to set up a video connection for Zoom. What about live streaming? Two years ago, live streaming of anything was such a foreign concept. The reception at the time was low and spotty. Now, not only is it better, but it’s such a time-saver over the recorded version where someone has to edit the video for three or four hours.

It’s one more thing where, in a brief period of time, we’re seeing an acceleration of communication technology tools in the 21^st century that is not only making it better but literally changing the way we operate as businesses.

Think about what these technologies mean for remote work and how we hire. Just the other day, I received a text from a colleague saying that a firm that had initially insisted on people working at least partly in the office was now going to allow their employees to work 100% remotely. To which a person my associate was working with decided to move his family out of state to Michigan.

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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.

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Everybody has been guessing what’s going to happen next year when we don’t have to deal with COVID – to which we can potentially say, “What’s going to happen this year once we don’t have COVID?”

We’ve become so much more comfortable using technology that enables remote work. We should expect to see workflows that will get thoroughly redesigned. In the past, we plugged applications such as Zoom into an existing workflow and more or less left everything else as is.

We thought the conditions of remote work were rooted in the pandemic environment we were dealing with. We know now that these conditions will remain to some extent, even when the pandemic subsides.

We initially thought we might need to worry about buying more real estate so people could be socially distant. Now we ask, “In a world where not everyone will return to the office five days a week, how much space will we actually need?” Certain activities involving a fully staffed office are going to largely disappear. A redesign of processes will be in order.

Management Consulting

One of the segments where we’ve helped recruit talent for many years at Roy Talman & Associates is management consulting. This group stands to be phenomenally impacted by a post-COVID world. You might expect consultants spending three or four days a week in another city no longer needing to travel as much. Surprisingly, that type of pivot from consultants has less to do with out-of-town travel and more to do with commitments right here at home.

Here’s what we mean: Management consultants, as a result of COVID, have become very comfortable with the use of Zoom and Teams. That doesn’t suggest travel has been severely curtailed. In fact, even as recently as the 1^st of this year, management consultants at the partner level are making client visits again, primarily in the name of building rapport.

Meanwhile, many consulting firms are reducing their office commitments. We know of one very large firm in Chicago that signed one of the biggest leases in Chicago but only built out half the office. That’s because you have partners traveling to client sites but line level staff staying home to finish the work rather than accompanying the partners to the site.

Recruitment

In our business, a large percentage of what we do now is international. The amount of international recruitment work we did a year ago was practically non-existent. On a typical day, we speak to clients in Mumbai, Singapore and London, helping them build teams by recruiting worldwide, not merely locally.

We could not imagine doing this only a few years ago. The technology to perform this functionality was too suspect and the demand for local talent was too great. Imagine, with those limitations, having to recruit based on only a short description of the candidate. Talking to the candidate by phone halfway around the world would get pricey by the minute, leading to a short conversation.

Zoom changes the game on this front for international recruiting. We can speak to a candidate via Zoom for an hour without ever worrying about the cost. We have a much higher level of confidence in understanding the candidate’s strengths and background so that we can make a recommendation to clients as if they were right around the corner.

In the past, this would have been next to impossible. And long-term, it creates a whole new range of possibilities for recruiters to be much more international.

What we’re about to discover in the 21^st century, thanks to new technologies that feature more advanced capabilities, is the next level of globalization. It’s an era that should open new avenues in the tech, financial trading and management consulting industries to recruit the highest talent. So, if you’re seeking to leverage new technology to pursue closer relationships in these spaces, Talk To Talman First.

Roy Talman & Associates has the foundation in place to identify the best talent across cities, nations, and now, globally. Armed with advanced technological capabilities, our 30+ years of experience can open terrific possibilities for companies seeking to make a global impact. When having the most skilled individuals is your differentiator, you can’t afford to cede any ground to your competition. Talk to us today to ensure the odds are kept in your favor.