Finding an edge in HR & Culture for growing Startups, with Jeannine Seidl of Density
This week’s podcast guest is Jeannine Seidl, my beautiful and brilliant fiancé. We keep it professional, and talk about all things HR (now known as the People Team) in growing startups. Jeannine is leading the People Team at Density, which has grown from 40 employees to 180 in the last year and a half.
Jeannine talks about some of the misperceptions of HR. She taught me the People Team spends more time and energy fighting on behalf of employees than holding employees accountable.
Links to Platforms:
Key ideas from the episode:
HR is not black & white – it’s one of the most gray areas of an organization. It’s all about interpretation of labor laws and a company’s philosophy of how they want to treat their people.
The people team serves every team at the company, and they are functionally on every team.
Inflection Point #1: The first inflection point in a company is when you can no longer spontaneously go out for a drink together. This is around 12 to 15 people.
Inflection Point #2: At 25 to 30 people, you need a dedicated HR person, a generalist. When you reach 50 employees, you need a lawyer in-house.
Inflection Point #3: At 100, people don’t know everyone anymore. Now, company culture needs to being intentional, not just a passive blend of personalities.
Internal Communications serves as a voice of the company to its employees. It’s important to remove the burden of an individual having to share information.
A new role in the person team role: Remote Experience. Meta is hiring a Head of Remote Experience, possibly a job that no one has ever had before.
Many companies forget to seek feedback from employees about the company. This comes from quarterly Pulse Surveys, Exit Interviews, and more.
Based on a pulse survey, the startup Density implemented a program called Flex Fridays where the company takes roughly every other Friday off.
Exit Interviews are opportunities to thank an employee for their service and to get a lot of honest feedback. People who are leaving often speak more honestly about concerns they see around them.
“People don’t leave companies, they leave bad managers” is true. Most employees who love their managers aren’t open to leaving.
Small companies can have a flat organizational structure. But as companies become more complex and roles become specialized, there has to be a hierarchy.
Giving people clearly defined roles and levels is much more valuable than the charade of “we are a flat organization.”
If you have an employee who is struggling or not performing well, document it and give feedback. A lot of times, an employee is not meeting expectations because the business hasn’t set the individual up for success.
A great HR leader is someone who aligns with the CEO ethically on treating employees, is creative and thinks out of the box, and has a deep well of optimism and energy they can get up after a hard day and do it again.
Learn more about Jeannine Seidl:
Additional episodes if you enjoyed:
Episode Transcript:
Eric Jorgenson: Hello again, my friends, and welcome to Jorgenson Soundbox. This show is a series of conversations where I learn from smart friends, or in this case, my fiancé. The wonderful, beautiful, and brilliant Jeannine has been in HR functions of two high growth startups and is currently leading the people function at Density, which I've written a little bit about before. It's a very cool startup. They went from 40 employees to 180 in the past year and a half, which is an incredible lift that she has been really in the center of. And we get into that experience here today by exploring HR for startups, which is something I've had a front row seat to for years. I think it is very commonly overlooked, misunderstood, and underinvested in specifically. So, we start by dispelling some myths, then we get into the details of building culture, getting feedback as a company, giving feedback to employees, hiring, firing, and what those playbooks look like at different stages of companies. If you are a founder or a leader, I think you're going to find this episode incredibly valuable. And if you do find it valuable, please take 30 seconds to leave a quick review or text this episode to a friend as you are listening. Those are the two most helpful things in the world to a new podcast like this, and I super appreciate it. Now, please enjoy this conversation arriving at your ears in three, two, one.
I am lucky enough to have gotten sort of a backstage pass to HR for the last however many years. So, I feel like I have this kind of, sort of x-ray vision into this whole world that it goes very much underappreciated and misunderstood and underutilized, and I hope that we can do a little bit of setting the record straight today. Do you think we can start with the misperceptions of HR? I feel like that's a good chapter to start on, and then we'll kind of go through the story arc of all the pieces and parts and tactics.
Jeannine Seidl: Yeah. I think TV shows like The Office and Office Space have done HR a disservice, and they have furthered a stereotype of the stodgy, archaic teams and coworkers whose existence is to enforce rules and make your life more difficult, when in fact it's truly the opposite. Now that is the opposite of our goal, but I don't think the Toby's of the world to help with the perception of HR. And the term HR itself is quite archaic. We don't call it personnel anymore.
Eric Jorgenson: What is it now?
Jeannine Seidl: It's trending toward People.
Eric Jorgenson: So, it is the people team or the people function. And you said it's not really meant to enforce black and white rules, although of course, there are some. What is it then? I mean, are you constantly sort of having to- like the perception of HR is very policy-driven. Is that not true?
Jeannine Seidl: There is a lot of policy and there's a lot of compliance and regulation. And that depends on the country, and in the case of the US, it depends on the state and even the city in some cases. So, there is a lot of hard and fast legal compliance, but HR itself, I think, is one of the most gray areas of an organization. And it's all about the company's interpretation of and their philosophy of how they want to treat their people.
Eric Jorgenson: Interesting. So, you're constantly making judgment calls about how to interpret things or how to allocate things or-?
Jeannine Seidl: Yeah. And also, the exceptions that you want to make. When you have a policy, oftentimes there are exceptions to the rule and being comfortable with the exceptions and why and still being able to sleep at night.
Eric Jorgenson: One of the other sort of misconceptions is that HR has this kind of- that it is meant to hold employees accountable, exclusively, when really I have seen time and time again, behind the scenes, you're kind of fighting for the employees.
Jeannine Seidl: I think, yeah, employees, team members, particularly those who are early in their career and don't understand how an HR organization is there to help them likely never see all of the tiny little micro battles that we fight on behalf of employees behind the scenes. And that extends from everything like enriching employee benefits and generous time off and leave policies and trying new cool shit. Am I allowed to swear here?
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. Do you know me?
Jeannine Seidl: And I think employees only ever see or interact with HR during difficult times, and it's rare for an employee to proactively reach out to us when things are going great. So, they don't often see these like micro little positive things that we're doing on behalf of the employee. And yes, of course, a people organization is in place to act in service of the company, but we also act in service of the individuals and do our absolute best to do right by people. Something that I know you've heard me say 500 times, you can already know what I'm going to say based on your laugh, is the people team are people, too. And I think it's really easy to lose sight of the fact that the people making these policies are impacted by their own policies and that we are human beings with feelings also.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, you tend to get treated like, I don't know, almost like a contractor internally. Like you are a service organization within the company and you're kind of-
Jeannine Seidl: We are. We are the internal customer support, and our customers happen to be our peers, which is also something you've heard me say 500 times.
Eric Jorgenson: And people come in real hot demanding shit like you don't have other stuff to do.
Jeannine Seidl: I think it's easy to lose sight of the fact that our customer is the entire company. And when an employee has an issue, it is all consuming for them, but we have many, many customers and I think it's easy to lose sight of the fact that we are spread generally thin and support the entire organization, but we do our absolute best to treat every issue and every question and initiative with the same care because everyone is equally important.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. I mean, spread thin, I think- something that I will probably keep advocating for is or trying to build a case for it is like over resourcing HR, because I think it's so under- like, to me, from my perspective, it's a little bit obvious that it is like upstream of all of the good things that come out of every other department.
Jeannine Seidl: You also are deeply biased because of me.
Eric Jorgenson: I am extremely biased. But it seems, yeah, it seems always like you are spread thin. It's very easy to just see, I know one of your other standard jokes is like I run a P&L, but there's only an L. And it's easy to just see that as a cost center instead of actually like the starter engine of the engine of the company from which all other good things come.
Jeannine Seidl: Yeah, and I guess to that point, payroll is, I would say at 95% of companies, maybe even more, the single biggest line item on their company's P&L, and a lot of times the second is their facilities, their offices, the costs, the rent, everything associated with physical spaces, that's generally way up there also. And those, I mean, payroll obviously, but the facility side also at times falls into HR. So, we are a massive, massive cost center, but also without human beings, you have nothing.
Eric Jorgenson: For now. I want to go back to a little bit of the piece about sort of fighting for employees as often as you fight, not fight against them, but on behalf of them. How much time do you spend, do you think, like holding employees accountable to the company versus holding the company accountable on behalf of employees?
Jeannine Seidl: Probably 70% of my time is quietly fighting behind the scenes on behalf of employees. Our CEO would probably agree with that; he might think it's even higher. Yeah, 70%.
Eric Jorgenson: But that's not obvious to team members because most of the things that you fight for end up coming from their managers or the CEO, right?
Jeannine Seidl: I think that is common a lot of places. And something that I really, really appreciate about Density is that our CEO does a great job of handing the microphone, I guess, so to speak, to those who really did the work, and he allows the good news to be shared by those who kind of carried it across the finish line. And he also really, really takes and shoulders the weight of bad news as the CEO. And that is, I think, an exceptional quality in a CEO, one who amplifies great work and shoulders the burdens of the business.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. So, speaking of the CEO-
Jeannine Seidl: Hi, Andrew.
Eric Jorgenson: Hi, Andrew. Shout out to Andrew Farah, the CEO of Density, this podcast is not sucking up to Andrew in any way. But we will- like talk to me about the relationship between the CEO and the people team. Because I think some of this seems in response- it's not obvious who's responsible for what.
Jeannine Seidl: I think this might be a controversial opinion to have, but I think the CEO is on the people team. The people team exists to act in service of every team at the company, and we are almost on every team. And so, it is the same with the CEO. All roads lead to the CEO and the people team supports all roads. And someone once said to me that the two loneliest positions at a company are your head of HR and your CEO. And I do generally believe that is incredibly true because the burden of information that you have is hard at times. And also, your relationship with your peers is different. You are perceived differently. And in my situation, my boss is not the CEO. My boss is our Chief of Staff, but my relationship with the CEO is equally as important as my relationship with the boss.
Eric Jorgenson: And especially at a company like Density where, I mean, Andrew is very involved in the people function. Like I know he interviews every candidate, he is involved in all the policies, which I don't assume all CEOs are.
Jeannine Seidl: No, I would say most aren't. I think it's easy for a CEO to live most intensely in product and marketing. Andrew particularly does a very, very good job of equal care and attention across the organization. And unlike any other CEO I've ever worked with before, he cares so deeply at the individual level for every single employee. He also interviews every single employee before we go to offer. And that single act is a massive time burden that he is very, very happy – I guess burden has such a negative connotation – but it's something that he's so, so happy to do because he feels equal accountability to getting hiring right.
Eric Jorgenson: Is that the main reason for it? It's an amazing signal to candidates and it's amazing signal to the team.
Jeannine Seidl: I think it has so many benefits. It creates shared accountability in hiring decisions. It is another kind of check and balance to ensure that what the team sees in a candidate, he also sees. And also, sometimes we tell him, go in there and sell. Like, there is no person more qualified to sell this company and close a candidate than the CEO themselves.
Eric Jorgenson: How much of recruiting is that kind of like- does it truly feel like selling? Is it like dating? Is it like selling? Is it like marketing?
Jeannine Seidl: All of the above in a weird, blended way. Recruiting is very much a two-way street. And you are testing the waters with a candidate and getting to know them just as much as you are showing the candidate what you are all about. And you've also heard me say this 500 times, I self-identify as the world's worst recruiter because I very much believe in showing candidates the company’s underbelly and painting a very, very realistic landscape of what it's like and the current hurdles you're facing because every company has them and really, really setting a candidate up for success to come in and understand what they're getting into. Because if you don't, then a candidate might leave a job, especially if you're poaching a candidate from a job they love, they're leaving a place that they love and potentially coming to a place where they don't understand what they're walking into and what a disservice to the new employee and the company itself.
Eric Jorgenson: So, let's talk more about the recruiting function. And then I think we should expand into like all of the other parts of people because it's a more complicated function than people tend to assume. It is a lot more than just recruiting. But even recruiting itself is- I don't want to put words in your mouth. So, what are all the pieces of recruiting?
Jeannine Seidl: Recruiting generally, actually in startups is oftentimes split into two different kind of distinct functions. There's recruiting and then technical recruiting. And the technical roles are filled and sourced quite differently, the engineers, the product teams, the product designers. Filling the technical roles because of the state of the market is more difficult, and they generally have a dedicated team to that. And then there are recruiters themselves. There are sourcers who source qualified candidates. There is often at big companies a small army of recruiting coordinators who are handling the logistics end to end of the entire candidate experience – every interview, every Zoom link, every feedback link, making sure every candidate is in your ATS, applicant tracker system. Don't quote me on that. Lever or Greenhouse are the two most popular. But all of those people generally work in tandem on specific roles or are supporting specific teams or functions within a company.
Eric Jorgenson: And how many roles can a recruiter like fill per year or per month or something? I mean, the general rule of thumb, I think like, as you described that I'm picturing like, holy shit, that's like a whole extra sales organization. Like you have your leads, you have your SDRs, you have your closers, and then you have the hiring manager has to get kind of like pulled into this and, in your case, the CEO, and a ton of roles to fill. So, that is an incredibly complex machine.
Jeannine Seidl: Yeah, it isn’t easy to answer that with a singular number. There are so many things that come into play, like the seniority of roles you're filling across the board. Are you hiring 20 backend engineers? It is easier to hire 20 backend engineers than 15 different types of engineers because you're generating one pipeline of the same skillset. And also, the state of the market, your business, your employer brand. Stripe has no problem finding qualified candidates, but if you aren't one of these kinds of tech darlings, and you have to work harder for people to get to know you and to meet you and to find you, then that's more difficult.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. I imagine especially the more niche roles or especially a first role at a company.
Jeannine Seidl: And in our particular case, we are a hardware software company. We are hiring hardware engineers who are deeply, deeply technical and specialized, and we're also hiring for sales and marketing and accounting and HR. And I think the breadth of what we're hiring for is very varied. We are lucky to have the single greatest recruiter I've ever worked with in my entire life.
Eric Jorgenson: Shout her out.
Jeannine Seidl: Shout out to McKenzie. And it is working with exceptional people really is just such an accelerant to the hiring process. And exceptional, exceptional recruiters care most deeply about the candidate experience and rolling out the red carpet for every candidate, and that also increases your likelihood of closing a candidate, which then in turn means you can hire more people.
Eric Jorgenson: So, I think we should go deeper into that when we kind of go through the employee journey. But let's do kind of a broad view of the milestones of like what companies feel like at different stages from an HR perspective, like your sort of, I don't know, the phase changes almost.
Jeannine Seidl: The inflection points in a business.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, inflection points is a good word for it.
Jeannine Seidl: I think the first is when you as a company can no longer spontaneously go out for a drink together.
Eric Jorgenson: Okay. So, like, I don't know, 10 people, 15 people?
Jeannine Seidl: 12 to 15, when you can't just on a Friday afternoon be like, “Hey, let's go grab a beer around the corner at the local watering hole” and that becomes logistically more difficult, things feel different. I think the 25 to 30 milestone is when you need a dedicated HR person for the first time.
Eric Jorgenson: Okay. So, if you're a growing company, that's the first time you hire HR, a couple of dozen. And what does that first HR hire look like?
Jeannine Seidl: Generalist.
Eric Jorgenson: Part recruiter, part-
Jeannine Seidl: Understands basics of compensation, can run payroll, benefits administration, hiring, onboarding, off boarding, everything.
Eric Jorgenson: That sounds like a hard job. I know it's a hard job because it's the job that you do. And ideally somebody who can scale, like if you're expecting to grow quickly, somebody who can figure out how to fill those roles and turn them into full-time jobs over the next couple of years. Okay, so a couple dozen people, things start to get professionalized, that's your first HR hire. What is the next inflection point?
Jeannine Seidl: 50. It's when you have a lawyer in house. It's when you need structure and you also need to be more conscious of setting precedent and that every decision you make for an individual is – this is such a negative way of saying this, so maybe I need to reword this – but it's a decision that can be used against you. And just being so conscious of precedents that you're setting and when you're making an exception and why. And then I think the 100% mark is where people don't know everyone anymore. And that's where I think culture needs to transition into something that you are actively working on, not just a passive kind of blend of the sum of personalities. And then at 250 is when you are a company, you are an organization. But 250, it doesn't change until I think you hit like a thousand. You have a lot of time before you feel another thing shift.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. What changes at 250 when you become a “company”?
Jeannine Seidl: Policy becomes more formal. There's more of it. I think it's for a lot of companies a time in which some legacy policies fade away and get kind of transitioned out because they're no longer sustainable. And it is when a company feels like more like a job and less like a lifestyle.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. Probably especially to the early employees who were there before the policies and they were used to exception.
Jeannine Seidl: They know about the “good old days.”
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. Okay, so with that sort of groundwork, let's talk about like all of the component parts of HR.
Jeannine Seidl: It depends where you are.
Eric Jorgenson: Pick your milestone maybe and talk us through it. But as soon as you get to a few dozen, you were kind of like you need a generalist who does all these things, but I think most people don't appreciate all of the roles that are HR. And you kind of say when you go into a company of that size, like these responsibilities tend to be kind of scattered around the team.
Jeannine Seidl: Yeah. There’re definitely different buckets of types of work. And depending on what stage a company is at, there are either people who keep to multiple of them or people who are very, very specialized. Public companies have an equity admin who exclusively works in the administration of the equity of the company where that is not something that a 24-person company would ever, ever need. And I guess the main buckets are the first and most tactical and numerical is the total rewards category, which is compensation, benefits, brokering, the equity administration, what the company provides to employees in exchange for the work that they do for the company. There is the traditional HR practice, which includes the HR business partners, and the day-to-day facilitating and helping employees with anything. So, they are kind of those who keep after the employees and the leaders in different departments, organizational design, planning, there is learning and development, which is how you grow and train and teach your team. In some organizations, payroll is housed within HR, and in some places, it sits within finance, sometimes facilities, the office spaces sit within people. At times the employee experience and program and employee communications, our internal communications can sit within people. And, in our case, IT.
Eric Jorgenson: Oh, extra fun. Will you expand on internal communications a little bit? I think that's something- I know what the words mean, but I don't know what all responsibilities sort of go into that. I feel like a lot of employees may not either or teams. It's a function that's easy to miss because it kind of happens naturally but increasingly chaotically probably until someone owns it.
Jeannine Seidl: Also, I didn't say recruiting on that list, but I feel that's a whole completely different side. That's the other side of the coin of the people world. The employee communications function oftentimes sits within the marketing organization because of the comms function within marketing, the PR side of the house. But employee communications exist to serve as a voice of the company to its employees. And that is everything from holidays and open enrollment schedules and changes within the organization and annual planning and goals and an operating cadence that the company operates within. And I think it's important for a company to really, really start honing its voice as a company and removing the burden of individuals always being the person to have to share information. So, something that I have done previously in my career is give a name to internal communications, and it also increases the ease of employees interacting with it, even if the person in charge of it changes hands.
Eric Jorgenson: Can you give us specific examples from Casper? Because I can't remember any of them, but I know that they were incredibly thoughtful.
Jeannine Seidl: One of the most fun things about Casper was that bedtime and morning routines were ripe with very adorable puns that we could use for everything. And our internal communications function was called Early Bird, and our L&D team was called Night Owl. And so, we would send emails from earlybird@casper.com, and employees always knew that if they were in search of something and they didn't know where to start, they could just start by searching Early Bird. And even after I left the organization, the person who ultimately took over that carried on that name, so it's not like you're having to search for a different person. And it removes the burden of being the individual sharing the information.
Eric Jorgenson: So, if it is bad news, it's not like, oh, Jeannine gave me bad news today, I'm mad at her.
Jeannine Seidl: Yeah. A change in the policy that isn't super favorable by the employees, you are removing the individual, and it is putting the onus on the company.
Eric Jorgenson: That's smart. That seems like a good policy. Okay so that's internal communications and employee experience encompasses stuff like-?
Jeannine Seidl: A lot of training, systems and organization and how employees find information. We use Notion, and it includes often diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, events, employee resource groups, building community.
Eric Jorgenson: And I know that you said this, I don’t know, you almost took it for granted, like the basic HR function, and then you were like HR business partners. And this is actually like a term that confused me the first time I heard it, kind of the basic lock and tackling of HR or people now. What do people go to their HR business partners for? Like what is that relationship?
Jeannine Seidl: If someone has a baby on the way, we’ve got to know, if someone needs a visa and we need to do a visa activity for an employee, if someone's having an issue with their manager or a peer and needs to talk through it and figure out how to work better together, if someone decides to leave the company, if someone wants to apply for a different job internally and is interested in transitioning. It's far reaching. And the HR business partner often serves as almost a catch all. If someone doesn't know where to go, you can come to us, and we can air traffic control you a little. It is a very difficult job. And it is one in which you oftentimes are dealing with hard situations and doing it as thoughtfully as possible.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, one of the things that I think makes you incredibly good at this job is like your strong sort of moral compass and conscientiousness. And like it's just over and over again I feel like these hard things come up. And now that you list them, I'm like, oh, there's a whole bunch of really good reasons why somebody might not want to go to their manager, or in startups, it kind of defaults to like the COO or something is usually like the head of HR. Like, oh, that's kind of a special person that you feel like you can go to with that kind of information.
Jeannine Seidl: We are your safe place. We are your local bartender and therapist and hairdresser and priest.
Eric Jorgenson: Which is absolutely the opposite of the Toby law enforcement. It's almost like you're the account rep or customer service for the company for employees. Yeah, for your peers. Which yeah, when you put it that way, hard job. Okay. So how does- taking now these parts of all the components of HR and the milestones of a company, like how does this grand thing unfold slowly over time as the company grows?
Jeannine Seidl: How do you build out an employee- or people organization?
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, I mean, we are going from a 20 person company that is maybe hiring its first generalist or starting to feel the pains of like, oh God, this hurts, but we don't know what we're missing, we don't know who to hire. Like what are the first cracks that kind of start to show? And then maybe we can like overlay these sort of two things.
Jeannine Seidl: I think it's important to think about where the work currently sits and where there is an unfair burden on people and what type of work. And that's where I would start in determining what to hire for next. And a good example of this was when I started at Density, we didn't have a recruiter. The person who had been doing absolutely everything, soup to nuts, related to people, and she's a total Swiss army knife, was hiring every single human being and scheduling every single interview, managing all of the insurance, everything. And the majority of her time was spent on recruiting, which meant that other things had to be pushed to a back burner, and hiring managers had an increased presence and ownership in their recruiting process because when you don't have a recruiting organization, we are all recruiters. And I think, look at where the work sits and how you could alleviate and increase bandwidth for someone if you hired someone dedicated to it. It's so situational. Do you need a recruiter? I don't know. Are you hiring? If you're not, definitely no. But if you are growing, then yes. And recruiting is an interesting example because if you are going to be going through a hiring spurt but ultimately see it kind of tapering off, then you might not necessarily need someone in house, and bringing on a full-time resource dedicated to it, that is when I would recommend you leverage agencies. I mean, there are thousands of them that exist for this very purpose. So really, really focusing on where there is burden and where you see longevity and sustained work needed and then kind of going from there.
Eric Jorgenson: Okay. So, we bring in this generalist, we bring in a recruiter, like when do sort of specialists enter in on some of these other-
Jeannine Seidl: I think the general rule of thumb is that it's like 5% of the company.
Eric Jorgenson: One at 20, two at 40.
Jeannine Seidl: Yeah. I think your fourth HR person is when things start, you start to define some lanes.
Eric Jorgenson: That's when you start to say you're the HR business partner.
Jeannine Seidl: You are HRIS, human resources information systems. That's your Zenefits, your sources of data and sources of truth. You have someone- eventually, you'll have someone who's completely dedicated to benefits administration. You'll have equity administrators, you'll have an office manager for every space, you'll have multiple recruiting coordinators, you'll have an L&D team that is, depending on what your company does, potentially doing a lot of training. So, it is all incredibly dependent on the nature of the company. A new role that I actually just saw start to pop up is Remote Experience, which is part of our new reality. And Meta is hiring a Head of Remote Experience, which I do not think is a job anyone has ever had before. And we are two years in to our new reality, and I think people are perhaps just now accepting that this is our forever and we're never going back to how it was, but figuring it out. Companies are definitely figuring it out together because there is no expert in this new way of working.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. We when we tweeted out questions, requests for questions for our HR, for startups expert, there were a number of questions around like, oh, it's so hard to build a culture remote, what's different about hiring and connecting people remotely? And I know Density is a very remote company. How do you think about-?
Jeannine Seidl: Something that I think really, really helped Density ease into the pandemic – what a weird sentence – was that the company was already significantly remote prior to the pandemic. So, the team understood and knew how to work remotely, and there's very much a culture of written documentation that is helpful. Something that caught me off guard a little bit was that there is no emailing. Almost no internal emails, all Slack, and it's just a very different way of working. And I think it's helpful when a company defines tools of communication and their purpose.
Eric Jorgenson: I wish you got some emails because then you could leave them on read. Slack just demands such immediacy.
Jeannine Seidl: And that is something that we're working through right now is the SLA of Slack. And if we're treating it like email and more long form content, then how are we creating space in our employees’ days to focus instead of feeling like you're constantly monitoring a chat inbox.
Eric Jorgenson: Do you think Slack is a synchronous tool or asynchronous tool?
Jeannine Seidl: I think that depends on who you ask.
Eric Jorgenson: I tweeted that question once because we were dealing with this at Zaarly, and hundreds and hundreds of responses, dead, even 50/50. And I was like, well, there's your problem right there.
Jeannine Seidl: I think it depends on who you ask. I think it depends on the company. I think it depends on the role that you're in. I think, especially in HR, when any Slack can be an emergency, it's less async than you would like.
Eric Jorgenson: Okay. So, we've done the functions and kind of the stages. Let's talk a little bit about the playbooks and the systems that you put in place. So, I've seen, I've borne witness to conversations where like overwhelmed CEOs of growing startups who have never encountered a real HR department before have a conversation with you about like it’s chaos, it's spreadsheets and emails, like what do I do? And you're like you need this system for this, you need this system for this, you need this system for this. And they're like, oooh. And I wonder if we can do sort of like a taste of that checklist, I guess?
Jeannine Seidl: The most obvious one is you need a way to pay people, the lowest hanging fruit. And I think that the tools and systems are almost like a tree ring situation. Like at the very center of the tree, you have your HRIS system, which is something that you need to have and is something that the CEO or the COO did three demos and picked one kind of blindly. And you're probably either on Gusto or Justworks or Zenefits. And that is what is alternately considered the company's source of truth. It is where every employee gets onboarded. It is home to their compensation. It is where people request time off. It is where you get your W2. That's where you change your address, so we can send you your W2. It's a tool that even if the company changes tools, or if you leave the company, you still have access to it for seven years. It is home to sensitive information. It's where we keep a log of all of your documents. And it is a lot of times, especially nowadays, it serves us a lot more; they're becoming much more rich in their offerings. But that is the most basic and the most obvious. That often is also home to payroll, particularly for early companies and open enrollment for benefits. So that is the number one, and everything kind of feeds into that. Different tools have different bells and whistles and different things kind of embedded within them, but that is your number one HQ above and beyond everything. Something else that I feel very deeply about maintaining is a second source of truth that is very much company owned. It is something that is not within a system. And I guess the irony is that we use Google sheets, so that is not company owned either. But having a second copy of every employee, all their comp history, their equity history, a list of every employee who has been terminated voluntarily or involuntarily. And it serves as kind of a second source of truth. We call ours the Central Directory and it is home to all of our employees.
Eric Jorgenson: And the importance of that is because you never know when you're going to need that for any variety of reasons.
Jeannine Seidl: Ease of access to information, I can sort and filter every person on the sales team by when they started or understand when was the last time a person got a comp adjustment and what is their full comp history. And a lot of HR tools also show you that, but the ease of access of it is exceptional. And I use it every single day.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. I imagine a lot of ideas or proposals or whatever, like things come up all the time that without that historical context, it’d be easy to make bad decisions. Okay so what's the next rung out?
Jeannine Seidl: Tools that help with how the company seeks feedback and gives feedback. We particularly use Culture Amp. There's also Lattice. And for us, it is home to our engagement surveys but also our performance evaluations, how we give employees formal feedback and also how the company seeks formal feedback from employees.
Eric Jorgenson: And both of those live in Culture Amp? And you think of that as kind of like that's the circle of life. That's how we learn what employees want and that's how we inform them how we're viewing their performance.
Jeannine Seidl: And that syncs with our HRIS. So, every employee who joins automatically gets uploaded into Culture Amp.
Eric Jorgenson: I want to come back to feedback briefly, but let's do the third ring before we do.
Jeannine Seidl: The third ring is your lag bells and whistles, your accessories, if you will. And we have, we personally have a peer bonus program in which employees can give out peer bonuses to their peers who go above and beyond. It is, I'm trying to think of another good example, learning and development platforms and tools. This also doesn't address any recruiting tools. I would put your ATS, your applicant tracker in the first ring. We use Lever and Lever has been good to us.
Eric Jorgenson: Employee knowledge base?
Jeannine Seidl: Yeah. So, here's the ethical question. Is Notion an HR tool? Is Slack? Is that a company tool? Yeah, who's responsible for tending to those and keeping to them? At a certain point, IT kind of takes over the system administration and access, but how is that handled in the interim? How do you make sure every employee gets a Slack account? How do you manage your fleet of devices, a.k.a. laptops? How do you know who has a monitor at home and who doesn't? And there are outside tools that can do that and services you can use for smaller companies. And then it kind of eventually transitions to a home-grown solution when you build out an IT function.
Eric Jorgenson: Okay. So, let's circle back to feedback because I think this is probably another thing that is a really weak motion in younger companies and is something that probably has to get installed, but it's also really, I imagine it's a very important piece of how you steer the company and how you steer the function and keep learning.
Jeannine Seidl: What type of feedback are you referencing?
Eric Jorgenson: Please list my options of feedback.
Jeannine Seidl: I think there are two. One is feedback given by the company/managers to employees and, in some cases, peers, and then there is feedback sought by the company on the company, and both are incredibly important. And younger, smaller companies tend to forget about both of them. I think there is this like idyllic place that small companies live in in which they say we're very open and we're transparent and there's room for everyone to be open and honest here. And if they have something to say, they can come forward and say that, and it will be heard and received, and there is not a single air of retaliation. And that is a wonderful, wonderful thought. And it is also easiest for people in positions of power to feel that way.
Eric Jorgenson: Or even for just really small, trusted groups. I think it's a lot more reasonable when there's eight people in a room to think that that's how that's going to work.
Jeannine Seidl: Yeah. But it's also I think easier for- It's much more difficult to feel safe and comfortable if you represent a minority group and creating a place for anonymous feedback, which is a battle that I was willing to fight, and it was a mountain that I was willing to die on when I joined the team, and it is one that I'm really, really glad and grateful that we implemented. On the company feedback side, we do four surveys a year. Every quarter, we send a poll survey, and in the summer, we send an annual big engagement survey, and it is completely anonymous. We can sort by demographics so we can learn how people feel about their manager or their team. We can understand if men feel differently than women do, how tenure impacts how engaged you are. We even look at time zone as a remote company. Do our Central time zone and Eastern time zone, friends feel like they have less work-life balance? Yes. And why is that? And we have uncovered some really interesting things and tested some really cool things as a result of what we have learned about ourselves through anonymous feedback.
Eric Jorgenson: I'd love if you'd take us through something that you gleaned from a survey and how it informed policy.
Jeannine Seidl: I think someone recently asked me what is the single thing you are most proud of that you've done at Density? And I think this is it. After our first poll survey, it was spring of 2021. Yes, spring of 2021.
Eric Jorgenson: Time is an illusion when you are staying at home all the time.
Jeannine Seidl: We were nearly a year into the pandemic, and we learned that our female team members felt less engaged and had significantly worse work-life balance than our male team members. And I believe there's a lot of outside factors that contribute to that as well, but it was very, very clear that women took on an unjust burden of Zoom school and in the home through the pandemic. And women felt like they had absolutely no space in their life. And as a result, we implemented a program we call Flex Fridays in which the company takes roughly every other Friday off. So, we run a four-and-a-half-day work week kind of. And it started off as beta in April of last year that we are still doing today. And it has completely changed people's ability to have space in their life. And I mean, I get so many amazing notes of dads who say I never have time at home while the kids are at school to tackle this to-do list and the ability for people to have a day off during the middle of the week to get things done for themselves personally that aren't on the weekend. We saw absolutely no impact to our bottom-line output, anything; the company is still as productive. And there is definitely a different feeling and sense of calm on Mondays following a Flex Friday, which I think is really interesting. People feel infinitely more recharged after a three-day weekend then a two-day weekend.
Eric Jorgenson: And just like time to clear that personal to-do list.
Jeannine Seidl: And maybe we should ask this question next time. I think also a decrease of Sunday-scaries.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. So, what are some of the things that you ask on those surveys?
Jeannine Seidl: It depends. The poll survey, well, every survey has the same five questions that we ask. In every single survey they are the same, they will always be the same. And that is things like I am proud to work at Density, I see myself working here in two years’ time, and it measures- it's almost a more sophisticated ENPS score. And then we have categories that kind of change in and out. We recently completed our first performance review cycle, and we asked a bunch of questions in our poll survey about that and how employees felt. Did they feel like their performance was managed fairly? Did their manager engage in the process? Were they surprised by the feedback that they heard? So, the remaining questions are based on our moment in time and the information we're looking to seek. The big engagement survey has everything from leadership to the CEO to their manager to alignment across the company, learning and development, do they feel like there's growth opportunities. And the really awesome thing about these tools is they hold your hand through it, and they have awesome, awesome team members who are behavioral scientists who craft surveys on your behalf, like templates almost that you can use and utilize because they are experts in their field at how to ask these questions. If you want to focus one on exit surveys, they guide you through that and how to set one up. So, it's not something that you need to completely create from scratch, which I think is also helpful. They created a bunch of surveys during the pandemic about remote work and comfort around returning to work. So, they're on it.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. That reminds me also, like what are the other sort of feedback mechanisms for the company? So, you've got exit interviews it sounds like in there. Do you get value out of those?
Jeannine Seidl: Yeah. People are very honest. I love exit interviews because, one, it is an opportunity to just thank an employee, and you get a lot of honest feedback and they raise a lot of flags. The employees are the ones who are out there in the field every day. And especially in startups, people have friends and people talk. And when someone says I'm leaving, a lot of times that triggers a lot of conversation, and that employee often acts on behalf of other concerns that they see around them. They'll often come to us and say like I would be worried and like pay special attention to this team. I think there's a little bit of risk there. And they really- most employees on their way out want the company to be successful, and they give good, honest feedback that is rooted in just trying to help.
Eric Jorgenson: What's the most common reason for leaving a company you hear?
Jeannine Seidl: Managers. People don't leave for comp. In extreme situations, they might, but people don't leave, and so many people have said this in the past, people don't leave companies, they leave bad managers, and I do believe that's true. If you are in love with your manager, most people aren't even open to entertaining the option of leaving. And a good manager is one that provides honest, fair feedback, that follows up, that is present, that can help an employee see their path of growth, and someone that an employee genuinely and consistently feels like is in their corner.
Eric Jorgenson: That's awesome. Speaking of comp, well you said people don't leave comp or leave for compensation and monetary reasons. One of the other things that tends to be haphazard that I feel like needs to be enforced is usually like comp leveling or bands and titles that accompany them. Is that a tough, messy process where there's all these sort of individual decisions that were made and you have to come in and say like, yo, we need to like put these things in perspective of each other?
Jeannine Seidl: Internal equity I think is what you are referencing. Yes, not in terms of shares and ownership of the company, but in terms of equitable practice across individuals. And I think it takes a while for a company to understand its comp philosophy, but it's very important to have. And it's also hard, it's expensive, it's the most tangible and limiting piece of it. And something that you have to consider is who is your peer? As a company, yeah. And we at Density, we pay generously, which we're lucky to be able to do, but we also don't consider the Fangs of the world to be our peers, and the Apples and the Googles and the Facebooks have levers they can pull that we can't. We do not have an equivalent of RSUs. We aren't a public company. And that means that our compensation structures are different, and we can do different things that those companies can't or aren't doing. And a good example of that is it's really compelling to tell a candidate, hey, we take every other Friday off, and they're like holy shit. And that goes a long way and that's free for us. So, I think understanding your philosophy, figuring out how geography plays a role. Do you pay employees who have identical backgrounds and identical roles, but one is living in Tulsa, Oklahoma, one is living in Denver, and one is living in San Francisco, do you pay them the same or do you pay them two different amounts, three different amounts? And understanding your philosophy and how you want to handle this is, I think, important to define.
Eric Jorgenson: Are there any like catastrophic mistakes that you can make early on? Because it's so hard to take comp away, right? Like if you overpay one person, does that mean eventually down the line, you're going to be overpaying dozens of people or do you have to manage someone out or something like that?
Jeannine Seidl: No. The smaller the company is, generally, the more underpaid, I think. When we were talking about our comp philosophy and how we wanted to handle the state of the market, which is bananas, I mean the hiring market right now is wild, wild west, and it is a candidates’ world, not an employers’ world right now, and how we wanted to handle that internally was a big conversation that we had because it's called, I use the term tenure tax. Someone should not be- an employee who has been in the business for a while should not be making less than someone who is in a similar role with a similar scope and similar expertise, they shouldn't be making less than someone who is just hired. And the company should be asking itself would I pay more to hire this person again today? If the answer is yes, then that person needs to have a comp adjustment.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. And is it common to go back and adjust team members comp based on the hiring marked?
Jeannine Seidl: We do it every single year for every single employee.
Eric Jorgenson: Is that because you're really good at your job or do most companies do that?
Jeannine Seidl: To me, that is doing the bare minimum. I don't think every company does it and sees it that way, but it's often called market pricing where you go out to the market and say, hey, if we were to hire Carrie today, what would they make? And there's a delta of $17,000, and what are we going to do about it?
Eric Jorgenson: Does that only ever go up, it doesn't really- like you don't adjust down based on market pricing?
Jeannine Seidl: Correct.
Eric Jorgenson: Similarly, one of those idyllic things that small companies do is toss around ideas like flat organizations and somebody, another sort of Twitter question-
Jeannine Seidl: I saw this question.
Eric Jorgenson: It was like it seems like a scam, is flat organizations like a real thing? Is it just only a thing for small companies? What is your take on that?
Jeannine Seidl: I think small companies, yeah, sure. It's flattish. Like generally everyone kind of reports to the CEO. And then as companies become more complex and people become more specialized and you have more individual contributors, then there has to be hierarchy. Like you cannot have a CEO who has 20 direct reports who each have 30 direct reports. Like what a completely unsustainable way to operate. And I think the intention of flat organizations is actually rooted in transparency, not lack of clarity of levels. And I think you can have both. And something, I don't know a single employee who is like, yeah, I want to go to a company that has a flat organization.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. I feel like you hear people crying out for clarity much more often than I want less people between me and the CEO. Like that's a weird thing to want.
Jeannine Seidl: There are people who are conscious of their proximity to leadership or founders. But at the end of the day, I think giving people clearly defined roles and clearly defined levels is much, much more valuable and transparent than saying this like charade of we are a flat organization. There is a trend in titling, and titles are changing. The C level is still very much prevalent, but how does things like “head of” fit into the equation and using things like “lead” instead of “manager” and the titling structure of individual contributors is important. And I think something that employees often wrestle with is the expectation and the stereotype that the more successful you are in your career, the more people you directly manage. And I think something very important that we need to work on changing the stigma of is individual contributors have equal place and importance, and you can be an exceptionally senior individual contributor, and engineering organizations do this really well. They have staff engineers, principle, distinguished engineers, and you can basically be a VP as an individual contributor who is exceptionally specialized.
Eric Jorgenson: And well compensated and respected.
Jeannine Seidl: And making that as celebrated and important as the management track and equally okay is area where I think we just collectively have work to do.
Eric Jorgenson: And does that go through a similar process of sort of leveling or creating internal equity? Because it's got to be clear. I don't know. People are always kind of clamoring for titles and people in different teams are more liberal with-
Jeannine Seidl: Different teams have different ways of using titles. And how does a creative director compare to a director of manufacturing compare to a director of HR?
Eric Jorgenson: Is it problematic? Like do people compare across the organization that way and-?
Jeannine Seidl: From time to time. But I think the thing that is more important is people understanding their own leveling and being very, very clear with the company about leveling. And this is something that we are clear on for the manager track but less clear on for the maker track. And how do they port over, the translation between the two? Because people jump in between the two of them and that should be celebrated and embraced.
Eric Jorgenson: Let's talk about another set of questions from Twitter were really all about not firing humanely, but like how to know, how to communicate, when it's okay, when is it a failure of a hiring process versus a manager versus the employee. Like there's a lot of reasons for an employment to end. And I think there's a lot of like, the founders that I talk to, there's sometimes a lot of guilt or concern or fear or whatever around that, either people leaving or people needing to be fired or people needing to be fired or not fired, or- there's almost no positive feelings around that. But I think there could be or should be. And you've seen more of this than just about anybody, so I'm curious how you look at that, the end of an employment and all the reasons and thought that goes into it.
Jeannine Seidl: An employee is either voluntarily leaving the company or involuntarily leaving the company, and they're very different experiences. One is one in which they tell you they're leaving, and one is one in which you tell them they are leaving, which is really not fun for anyone, mostly the employee. And I think for voluntary churn, it's important to- and I think a lot of times the natural instinct is to, well, can we keep them, can we fight for them? And you can throw a retention bonus and a promotion and new comp, and a new title at them, but at the end of the day, that employee also made a conscious decision that they wanted to leave. And I don't think anyone is going to retire at the company that they're currently at. We are, our generation, and the new workforce is staying at companies max five years on average. And I think I heard the other day marketing team members stay on average two years at a company.
Eric Jorgenson: I heard one time the average tenure in all of San Francisco was like 11 months, which is just insane.
Jeannine Seidl: But like my dad retired from a company that he worked at for more than 30 years. And we have just changed the way we think about employment and embracing that if an employee decides that it's ultimately best for them to move on, the company wants what's best for the employee and what's best for itself, and what is best for the company and the employee is for that employee to leave if they want. So, I think being okay with that and embracing that. And also turning your community of former employees into a celebrated thing – your alumni group, and how do you engage with past members of the team who still have many fingerprints left behind on the business and honor that.
Eric Jorgenson: And sometimes equity and respect.
Jeannine Seidl: They're often shareholders, still very much a tangible part of the company, but honoring them and past work and making it okay to say it's time to move on.
Eric Jorgenson: And how often- I know another component of HR is responsibility in this, because this is another shared responsibility between HR or sorry, people, people and hiring managers and anybody, sorry, active managers and anybody else is like following the procedures. And this is a point that is hard for everybody.
Jeannine Seidl: The unfun side you are talking about.
Eric Jorgenson: I mean, there is no fun side of somebody I think getting let go. But there are- increasingly as you get bigger, I think as you go up this 12 to 50 to 100 to 250, like this is a process that becomes very different and more onerous.
Jeannine Seidl: The reality is that no company will make completely perfect hiring decisions across the board. And that means that the nature of the role might change, an employee might not be a great fit, they might be an asshole, and how a company decides to handle those is important and one of the more black and white areas of HR. There are a lot of laws around how you can terminate employees. And I think it's really easy for companies to say but this is the US, we have at will employment; we can fire whoever we want whenever we want, which is just really not true. If you ask any HR team member, they will be like yeah but. And I think the number one thing that I would just say over and over and over again on repeat is document everything. If you have an employee who is struggling or not performing well in the role, document it. Give feedback.
Eric Jorgenson: Document how?
Jeannine Seidl: Write it down, send it to them, their performance reviews, in writing, whether it's Slack or email, but create very clear precedent of communicating that the expectations are not being met and also investing in how you help an employee meet them. I think a lot of times an employee is not meeting expectations because the business hasn't set the individual up for success. And the shared accountability between an employee delivering and you setting them up to deliver is very real. So, document, get a good employment lawyer. I have one on speed dial.
Eric Jorgenson: Outside the company?
Jeannine Seidl: Yeah, there is outside counsel that specializes in employment law that can help. And also remember that at the end of the day, if you are terminating an employee, they're a human being and they chose to take a risk on you and your company, and don't forget to treat them like a human being on the way out.
Eric Jorgenson: You said no hiring process is perfect, of course, but how do you increase the odds of finding like the team members who will go the distance with you or be there for a long time? How do you know when it is failure of a hiring process versus a manager?
Jeannine Seidl: I think if someone churns within 90 days, I think that is a failure on the hiring decision and process. No one joins a job with the intention of leaving within three months, and that is a signal that it just wasn't the right fit. I think, for us, the last CEO interview is huge and asking really, really thoughtful questions and doing thoughtful reference checks. I like to ask insanely granular questions about things to try and dig in on if someone was on a team that accomplished something, or if they themselves accomplished things. I ask granular questions about very tactical things to test willingness of getting in the weeds and getting your hands dirty and the no task is too small attitude. Something that I love that Density does, that they've always done, that I don't want to say out loud – I don’t want to reveal the whole thing – we do a really, really fun and engaging exercise with all candidates as a part of our values screen. And it's generally not work-related, but it is a way to understand a candidate and kind of how they would fit in and how they could add to Density's culture and make us collectively better and how they handle a curve ball or two. So that I think is a very special thing that we do. And I get to do a lot of them, and I love them. But creating and being willing to put your own spin on the hiring process and not doing something because Google does it but doing something because it helps you as a company test for things that are important to you. And I guess, zooming out a little bit, defining what's important to you. I think it's like Amazon that says like tolerate the asshole or something. They have a value that is like- do you know what I'm talking about?
Eric Jorgenson: No, I feel like I've heard the no assholes rule. I haven't heard the like bring on the assholes rule. Amazon feels like it might be them though.
Jeannine Seidl: But they have a value that's like if someone's exceptional at their job and they're an asshole, like you tolerate the asshole. Which does not personally align with my ethos.
Eric Jorgenson: It's nice to hear that the kind of- I mean, it sounds like this is a very creative process.
Jeannine Seidl: Something that I say a lot is there are no rules here; we can do whatever we want. And in some cases, that is incredibly true. And in some cases, it's incredibly not. But I feel really, really grateful to work in an environment that promotes creative thinking and coloring outside the lines and not doing something because it's a “ best practice” or the industry standard. It is something that is unique and special and uniquely ours, and the willingness to go home grown is a lot more fun. And it is more true to you, you being the company.
Eric Jorgenson: It sounds like a lot of these decisions or these things end up very tactical, but they start with like defining a philosophy, which sounds a little vague but also important. If it's upstream of all of these kinds of things that’d have to feel really cohesive to an employee across their whole experience. So, like how does- did Density have a philosophy when you arrived, for example, or Casper? Did you have to kind of develop that? Like what is that process?
Jeannine Seidl: I wouldn't say that we have a written down philosophy in terms of- like in general, but there is a shared understanding and willingness to invest in employees and rich benefits that remove stress and make their lives better.
Eric Jorgenson: And now everybody kind of knows like, yeah, lean into more value for the employees, more care for them. You're not trying to minimize the cost per employee. You're not running a Walmart playbook or something like that.
Jeannine Seidl: Gone are the days of ping pong tables being the most appealing thing. And now I think employees are craving work-life balance and strong benefits and true wellness, which includes physical, mental, and financial health. And how does the company invest in all three of those things? That's something that my boss says all the time is healthy, wealthy, and wise, which one does this tie into? And how do we invest in bettering our employees and who they are at work and also who they are outside of work.
Eric Jorgenson: How much of that- I mean, the way you describe some of the internal communications and things, it sounds almost like a marketing function, like an internal- like is that how you think about it?
Jeannine Seidl: Kind of, which is why it sometimes sits within marketing. I often talk about my tiny little drum, and I've been carrying around my tiny little drum, getting interest in trivia night this Thursday. But it is very much marketing, and it is internal marketing is what it is. But I think the intent behind it is, not to knock on marketing, but more pure. We're not trying to sell something, we are trying to better people.
Eric Jorgenson: And their perception is really like what matters. And I imagine your background in marketing helps you make really good decisions on a lot of those things.
Jeannine Seidl: Yeah, I do weirdly think, and going from comms PR to HR is a weird pivot, but also, it was a really, really helpful background to have. And at the end of the day, we're running a business and we have an employer reputation to protect and nurture and being conscious of how the things that we do impact our reputation is a really, really important thing.
Eric Jorgenson: Where do you see that reputation?
Jeannine Seidl: The most tangible example, I guess, would be Glassdoor.
Eric Jorgenson: Is that something that you pay attention to? Do you trust your internal tools more?
Jeannine Seidl: Well, Glassdoor has public reviews of what it's like to work at the company. And that is what a candidate’s really only reference point is if they're going to look at it. They would never see what our internal surveys would say. So, I think Glassdoor is the most obvious. But also, people talk. And when someone joins a new company or when someone leaves a company, I think the ultimate test is if someone leaves a company and still recommends to people that they work at that company. Like there is no greater compliment and creating an environment in which people are going to leave and still recommend working there is, I think, you couldn't ask for anything more.
Eric Jorgenson: How did you learn all of this? Like that maybe a strange- Just by being on the team and being around- Like, I find it really interesting to see there's a lot of specialized knowledge, but I think, like we talked about, there's so much in the gray that a lot of this, I just see your common sense as like a huge weapon in this.
Jeannine Seidl: I think a lot of it is gut. A lot of it is knowing when you don't know. Like that's huge, saying I don't know. We have to fire someone in the state of California and California is different and saying I don't know. And that is infinitely better than acting like you do. And for me, it was just to being around exceptional people who I was a sponge around. And I think tying back to that lonely piece is when you are the senior most people person, you hold a lot of secrets, and you are often tasked with making recommendations for difficult things. And I am lucky to have a support group, a group of some of my best friends who are also in the people world. And we often will call each other and say like, hey, can you gut check this with me for a second? And we keep it anonymous and high level, but general frameworks of saying like this is how I'm thinking about this, or I’m facing this unique issue that I've never experienced before and being willing to ask is I think the most important thing. And a unique thing about the people world is marketing is completely different depending on what the company sells, and manufacturing is very different and how you sell, but HR is kind of just HR and people do weird things everywhere, and chances are that someone else has experienced this and just using them as a gut check and a point of reference or a different perspective. We all have our own internal tendencies and understanding where yours are is really important also. And assuming best intent. When you're in people, it would be impossible to get up and go to work every day if you thought every employee was out to get you all day long, like that would be terrible.
Eric Jorgenson: You can see how people end up like in dark places or with terrible reputations or super crabby if that's the spiral that they go down.
Jeannine Seidl: Yeah. And I feel really blessed and people ask me all the time what's your favorite part of your job? And I feel like such a schmuck every time because I'm like the people. And they're like okay, and I'm like but it's true. And I do genuinely get to work with people who are so rooted in kindness that it is heartwarming and that is a special energy for a company to have and one that a company is often very intentional about protecting. And I often describe the team as like a hundred and eighty nerds in the best possible way. And knowing that if someone does something that's frustrating, it's not because they're intentionally trying to frustrate you, it's because they don't know. And a hundred times out of a hundred, anytime I'm like, hey, actually we have a process or would you mind doing this thing? They're like I'm so sorry, I didn't know. Or they use it as an opportunity to learn. And that is very engaging and also helpful. So, assuming positive intent and finding a community of people who you can talk with, and you can give to them in return. They also encounter issues where they're like huh?
Eric Jorgenson: What are some of those crazy things that like stop you in your tracks?
Jeannine Seidl: We should've had drinks for this.
Eric Jorgenson: I mean, I imagine it's hard to get too specific without perhaps violating some things that-
Jeannine Seidl: Once in a while, someone will do something so weird that you're just like what went through your head? How did you-? How? Why? And I guess just to really bring it home, generally, it's not malicious, it's just not knowing. But there are head scratchers.
Eric Jorgenson: Okay. Do you want to do a few more- That is your PR answer. Do you want to do a few more Twitter questions at the end? Okay. I think this is a good one that we like danced around a little bit. What are the features of cultures that can survive the initial startup phase versus not? And how does a company evolve from what might be a very founder led culture to something that may not be?
Jeannine Seidl: Founder led cultures are generally very early and I don't think they are intentional.
Eric Jorgenson: That's the default almost?
Jeannine Seidl: Yeah. It is just kind of one of the founder's personalities shining through, and they're the ones who are like kind of beating this little drum of like, hey, let's do a Thanksgiving thing for the team. And I think that is more natural and easy when you are small. And when you grow up, choosing the things that are yours and you will fiercely protect and choosing the areas in which you are going to embrace change is really important because the reality is that a successful company will grow. And when you grow significantly, things change, they just do. And I think this is something that a lot of early employees face is they remember the like idyllic days of yesteryear of when we were 20 people and we did all these awesome things, and being able to embrace and celebrate what you can do now as a bigger company that you couldn't do before equally as much as what you could do when you were little is important and being intentional and creating community and space for conversation. So how are you supporting your LGBTQ plus community? How are you supporting both those that identify as that community and allies? And how are you- but that also extends to human interests, our bookworms and our chefs and our Peloton riders and embracing and creating community and the people who want to shit talk on a Monday morning in the NFL channel, and creating space for the ability for an employee to bring their whole self to work.
Eric Jorgenson: And I imagine that's gotten- like that used to happen organically in an office maybe in some ways that has to be very deliberate now remotely. Like, has this changed? Have you felt more of a burden on the people team to create culture as things have gotten more remote?
Jeannine Seidl: Yeah. I mean, there's no water cooler anymore. There's no spontaneous like, hey, let's do this thing. There's no casual chitchat in the kitchen or while you're grabbing lunch. And creating and fostering the ability for us to celebrate different things, our differences as much as the thing that unites us. It's Chinese New Year right now and Black History month, and how are we honoring both of those things? And doing it authentically and genuinely is also important. I mean, DEIB is incredibly important part of a company – diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. And how a company grows and develops and creates space for diverse voices is everything. And it's chaired across the board. It's not one person's job, it's everyone's job.
Eric Jorgenson: How in a culture do you decide what's- or maybe not decide, but like how do you productively guide a culture and figure out what things need to be like trimmed or pushed back versus like, oh, this is the organic nature of an employee that needs to be supported versus like that's not the kind of culture we're building here?
Jeannine Seidl: Understanding your values and how they apply to everything is important. And if there is an aspect of your culture that you feel like genuinely is at odds with your values, then that's probably time for it to be sun-setted or changed or evolved. I'm trying to think of an example.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, I think, I mean, I like the assholes example actually, because a company could very reasonably say like we don't work with assholes and a company could actually, I hadn't heard this before, but like we will totally tolerate the brilliant jerk, which is an interesting thing. And that's what makes unique cultures and that's perfectly fine. Somebody asked, and I'm curious for your answer on this too, like measuring HR effectiveness over time. I think there's some ways, there's obviously a few probably like just really core metrics. There's a ton of really important un-measurables. And then I imagine there's like, I mean back to kind of like building a case for investing in HR, it's very like the second order effect of a good people policy is a thriving company and a healthy team and a happy team who are all doing good work. But do you, as a people leader, like do you have a dashboard? Do you look at numbers? Or is there an indicator to you that you're like, oh shit, that was a bad quarter, or this was a great quarter?
Jeannine Seidl: That is something- being data-driven is something that I am trying to be better and better at. And for people, there's a few kind of shining metrics that are examples. It's time to fill a role and engagement score and retention.
Eric Jorgenson: The engagement score comes from that survey?
Jeannine Seidl: Yeah, and retention.
Eric Jorgenson: So how long employees stay with the company. Do you separate voluntary from involuntary?
Jeannine Seidl: Yes. We look at voluntary and involuntary retention. There are things that we- like if you've been at the company for less than 90 days, we treat different types of employee departures differently because there are different types.
Eric Jorgenson: So those are kind of the three main things. Are there un-measurables or things that you take into account?
Jeannine Seidl: Happiness.
Eric Jorgenson: Vibes? Good vibes?
Jeannine Seidl: Yeah, just like general pride. When we send out a holiday gift for the team – this year, we collected recipes from everyone at the company, and we published a cookbook, got into publishing biz for a hot sec, in all of our free time, bought a $20 Etsy cookbook template, and one of our designers had to completely fix the entire thing, and we sent every employee a Density cookbook, that Instagram famous pan, and a cute towel that says “People count, calories don't.” And there were so many kind and wonderful posts on LinkedIn of employees receiving their boxes because it was a gift that showed we cared and it was a gift that celebrated the employees as much- the collective employees as much as the employee. And finding ways to authentically do that I think is hard, but when you do get it right, it is so, so freaking cool.
Eric Jorgenson: That's amazing. This has been an incredible sort of adventure through all of these things. We have two pages of notes and checklists and scribbles and things. I feel much smarter about HR and much more understanding about HR as a result of this journey.
Jeannine Seidl: HR is cool. I’ve got to say HR is cool and HR is everything. Like invest in your people. And I mean, I do genuinely believe that the CEO is a member of the HR team. And I think something that we didn't discuss, we discussed yesterday during the insane planning session that I made you do, but is the concept of what it means to be a shared service and invest and being a giver and how that really, really, for the right people, fills up their cups. So, I think I feel lucky to do HR and that my customers are my peers and I'm also my own customer.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. You eat the dog food that you make for sure.
Jeannine Seidl: Who does HR for HR? But I think HR is having a moment that is overdue and deserved and I'm excited about it.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, I think, I mean, we talked about yesterday how like the it's the most cross-functional team that there is, it touches everyone every day. No touching. It spiritually touches everyone every day. And I mean, is it your sense that, with no specifics to Density involved, like what are the opportunities to invest further in HR and what are the outcomes of like a truly world-class HR function?
Jeannine Seidl: I mean the outcome of a world-class HR function is the company doing something that's never been done before and achieving what they set out to succeed. If you don't have the people to do it, then you can't even get off the block. So, I think the stakes are high. And also, I believe deeply that work can be fun and like why not have fun? What's the harm in that?
Eric Jorgenson: We are having fun.
Jeannine Seidl: Are we? We are; we’re having a great time. But like, if your options are to not have fun or to have fun, why on earth would you pick not having fun, and HR is a lot of fun.
Eric Jorgenson: It doesn't always look fun, to be honest, from the outside. But I know that there is great rewards in it. And I am certain that everyone who has been the recipient of your hard work, whether they know it or not, is deeply appreciative. And it's certainly not lost on anybody with a front row seat like I have to the hard work that you do, how important it is to the outcome of any company. And I'm sure there's one or many of you like somewhere backstage of every great success that we all talk about the CEOs of but not the people teams of.
Jeannine Seidl: I think just you don't owe your HR person a thanks, but I think just know that they're doing it because they care, and it genuinely is fulfilling to people in HR to help fulfill others. And it's a cool thing to feel like you can help other people do the best work of their lives. And it's a gift in and of itself.
Eric Jorgenson: How can a CEO know that they have a great HR leader or person? Like if you're hiring someone to do your role, what do you look for and how do you know that they're doing a great job?
Jeannine Seidl: Someone who aligns with you ethically on how you want to treat employees, someone who's creative and thinks outside the box and has a deep, deep, well of optimism and energy, and a willingness to get up after a hard day and do it again. And something that I have learned from you is how do I choose my attitude? And even when you're having a hard day, you're still doing good things. And that is true for everyone, especially founders, but not losing sight of that. And something that we say a lot to each other is be sweet to yourself. And being okay to say this was a hard day and we're going to- it is 60 degrees in February and we're going to go get tacos on a patio and treat yourself and be kind to yourself.
Eric Jorgenson: Tacos are good for the soul. Well, thank you so much for doing this and being a guest on the podcast instead of just an audience member and moral support of the podcast.
Jeannine Seidl: And the roommate of the podcast.
Eric Jorgenson: Roommate, coproducer often, and we have brainstorms of many more episodes that we can do together, so perhaps we'll make a comeback. Would you like to be a regular?
Jeannine Seidl: I don’t know, we’ll see. I'll send over my rates.
Eric Jorgenson: I'll take that as a maybe.
Thank you so much for listening. Please review, subscribe, and text this episode to a friend. If you liked this episode, you will also love my episode with Andrew Wilkinson on people leverage and my conversation with Shane Mac where we went deep into company culture, especially in the second half of the conversation. If you want to get in touch with Jeannine to ask a specific question or just watch her make fun of me in public on Twitter, her handle is @jeannineyeah. She's an incredibly brilliant and helpful person. And I hope that you learned something from her today. I know I did. Thank you.
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