
How much work is too much work? & job market is stagnant
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Good Morning Brew Daily Show. I'm Neal Freyman.
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And I'm Toby Howell.
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Today is the grind set back and where has workplace loyalty gone?
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On a special episode, we chat with Morning Brews resident workplace experts. It's Monday, October 13th. Let's ride.
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I really hope you all remember to turn off your Monday through Friday alarm because today is Indigenous Peoples Day and Columbus Day in the United States, meaning most of you are getting the day off of work. We did kinda, but still have an awesome special episode out this morning. We're talking everything, work and Jobs with Kayla and Kyle from the Bruise. Per my last email podcast, we dug.
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Into some of the biggest storylines dominating the labor market right now. How many hours should you be working? Is the labor market frozen? If it is frozen, what does that mean? If you do or don't have a job or all the stuff that Neil and I briefly touch on during MBD shows but don't get to do a deep dive on. That's what this episode is for. But first, a word from our sponsor, Remarkable. Neil, are you writing in a notebook right now?
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Yes.
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You can try Remarkable paper Pro for 100 days for free. If it's not what you're looking for, get your Money back. Visit remarkable.com to learn more and get your paper tablet today. That's remarkable.com and without further ado, here's Kayla and Kyle, Kayla and Kyle, welcome back to Morning Brew Daily.
D
Thanks for having us. We're excited to be here.
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All right, to kick things off, I want to talk about three numbers. 9, 9, 6. It refers to the grueling work schedule sweeping Silicon valley this year. 9am to 9pm Six days a week, adding up to 72 hours of work per week. The concept of 996 began in China, where tech giants like Alibaba required these hours from their employees to stay ahead of cutthroat competition. But thanks to the AI frenzy, 996 has moved across the Pacific to San Francisco, where young tech workers are embracing the grind to capitalize on what they believe is a once in a century technological revolution. It's a pretty remarkable 180 from just five years ago during the pandemic, we when work life balance was championed and the corporate world was moving away from the hustle culture of the 2010s. So, Kyle and Kayla, why do you think 996 is the talk of the tech world? What does it say about our current moment that some workers are openly boasting about being on the grind set?
E
Yeah, I mean, I don't know if this is necessarily like new or newsy because I think it's just like a nice way to call the grind. You know, it's always been expected in many sectors, especially in Silicon Valley, that you're kind of working really hard to get something out, especially if you work at a startup. So, yeah, I mean, I think it is definitely new that we're talking about it again and that we're kind of a little bit more open about the grind set or whatever it is, but I don't think it's new behavior.
D
Yeah, I think whenever we talked about work life balance, Neil, that you brought up like that was for corporate America. I don't think anyone was joining a startup saying, I'm really excited for Work Life Balance to be the third employee at this SF startup. Like, you have to work very hard to be in a startup. And so I also think like, all things being equal, the person that works more is going to get more done. And when you're a startup, like, the truth is you're disrupting, you're trying to bring down an incumbent, you have to put in a ton of effort. You're also like rewarded very differently where if you have a job in corporate America, typically you're paid a salary and you don't have any equity. So if the value of the company goes up, like, you don't see as much upside In Silicon Valley, if you're working for a startup, you see the upside. So the incentive to go above and beyond is there. And I think that's always been the case in Silicon valley. I think 996 is a new marketing way to talk about it.
C
So I'm a little deep in startup and founder Twitter or I guess X now. And some of the backlash that I've seen in those circles is that more people spend time tweeting about 996 and actually fulfilling the duties of 996. So do you think there's a performative angle to this?
D
Yeah, 100%. I mean I think we grew up with like worshiping the Steve Jobs of the world watching Silicon Valley. It's kind of this like dream as someone who wants to get into tech to go to San Francisco and work very, very hard. And I think messaging that to the world maybe has become more important than doing the actual work. So I definitely think that's the case. I don't think it's a flex to like tell everyone you're working hard, particularly if you're miserable. But I do think you ever got.
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On the Internet, I know the only thing people do on the Internet is they flex about how hard.
D
Exactly. I don't think it's cool like it. That incentive is definitely there and I don't think it was in the past, which is why I think people are talking about it more, making it seem like a bigger deal than it is.
E
I've also seen some people that are basically like, you're only working from nine to nine, six days a week.
D
Like I'm doing 8 12, seven.
E
Yeah, like, like those are baby hours, you know.
B
Double oh.
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Yeah, Double oh. Seven is midnight to midnight, seven days a week.
E
So you're just, there's, you're always on.
B
I'm always incorporates multiple people.
C
I do think though, just to play, I mean, devil's advocate a little bit to young people in general, a trend that we've talked about is how they don't drink as much anymore. Like drinking is declining for Gen Z and Gen Alpha. They are not going to party as as much because of the lack of drinking. So maybe it is a cultural shift that people are prioritizing the 996 lifestyle because what else is going to fill the gaps of socializing is probably going to be work in some regard. So do you think that maybe this is a generational thing or again, just a branding exercise?
E
I think it's a young person thing.
D
I think.
E
Yeah. Young people have forever Just like, you know, invested in something and sometimes that's spending crazy hours at work.
C
Young people. You mean like across generations? Yeah, generation of young people.
E
I mean, we had the same thing, right? We had the girl boss era. Like, there's, there's always been those expectations for right out of college. You have to, like, work really, really hard in order to make a name for yourself, whether you're in corporate America or in startups. I think in startups that like those long hours and that high output is more expected than in corporate America. But I think that's always been a thing for younger people.
D
And I feel like there's a good and a bad version of 99 6. The bad version is you don't actually like what you're doing. You're not inspired by the mission, and you're doing this to fulfill this, like, thing you see on Twitter, like, we're talking about where working hard just for the sake of working hard is celebrated. I think you're going to end up miserable. But if you have a job you're really passionate about, you're excited about the company, and Toby, to your point, you're not drinking as much, you're not going out as much, and you're fulfilled by the work, then I think996 just becomes a natural extension of work life harmony, where you want to be doing the work, so you're doing more of it.
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I think one name we really haven't mentioned in the 996discussions is Elon Musk. And I know a lot of people just rolled their eyes, but I do think he was a huge factor in driving this, quote, hard tech era of Silicon Valley. And I'm talking about when he purchased Twitter or X, he went into the headquarters in downtown San Francisco, cut 80% of staff and said, the rest of you 20%. You're essentially sleeping at the office with me. We are working extremely hard. And then Mark Zuckerberg down In Silicon Valley, 45 minutes away, is looking at what Elon Musk did up there and saying, you know what, maybe I should drive a similar culture here at Metta, because they look like they're being a more efficient business. And so he wrote out this huge year of efficiency memo. And then all of the other Silicon Valley CEOs kind of hopped on that particular trend. And so I think when you see these young people moving to San Francisco, yes, they're thinking about Mark Zuckerberg leaving Harvard and going to San Francisco, or Steve Jobs or Bill Gates working hard. But I also think they're looking at what happened with Elon Musk and Twitter and all of his other companies and that really hard driving culture that he demands of his workers and saying, well, Elon Musk is worth $500 billion and if I want to be worth something remotely close to that, I got to work like this guy Neil.
D
Or they might be trying to model their behavior after you because you actually were an early employee at Morning Brew. Were you all doing 996 in the early days?
B
We were doing 996. We were doing 10, 10, 6, 11, 11, 7. Yeah, we were working hard. But it goes back to what we were talking about earlier in this discussion, which is that we were all 25, 20, 24 through 27 years old. No other responsibilities in the world. We were very invested in this product and this is what we did. And we were even at the we work during we work prime days of 2017, when there was beer flow and there was free beer, you know what? We didn't drink any of it because we were working till 2am So I completely sympathize with these people who are working hard on a startup.
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For sure they did not brew in Morning Brew. They put the coffee brew in Morning Brew. All right, the next workplace trend I want to talk to you all about is work slop. Workslop is a new term coined by researchers from Stanford that refers to AI generated content that appears polished but lacks substance and ultimately ends up creating more work for others. The example I gave on our podcast when we talked about Workshop was this. I send a message to Neil with a list of topics I think we should cover on the show. But I used an LLM to suggest the stories, and some of them are a week out of date. Neil is left with a few options, none of them good. He can call me out about it, but that's awkward because we're co hosts. He can ask someone else to look for stories, like our producer Ray, but then that's just more work for Ray. Or he can do it himself, which is more work for poor Neil. So when I take a shortcut and use AI poorly in the workplace, what I'm really doing is transferring effort downstream from mean to my colleagues. And Harvard Business Review put a dollar amount on this and found that based on salary data, time wasted on Workshop costs big organizations, 10,000 person organizations, up to $9 million a year. So this is not only a time waster, it's a money waster too. Now, Kayla and Kyle, I won't ask if you've come into contact with work slot because we all work together at the same company. But have you heard other people complain about this before?
D
Toby, I'll be honest, I'm a master of the work slot. This is my domain. I've been work slopping for years of the founders of this trend. I personally, I have not come across it at Morning Brew yet. I'm sure Kayla is going to hit me with a work slot one of these days. What I, what I think this is doing is a usage is up from 21% to 40% of employees say they're using AI at least a few times a year. Which that number is probably even out of date at this point. I think that's even going up. What I get from this is there's now an employees who have been encouraged to use AI.
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They're not just encouraged to mandate.
D
There might be a mandate to use AI. Exactly. And they're not really sure how to use it yet. They haven't been trained. So what they're doing is like very low effort AI usage. Type in the chat, chatbots, make me a report and then sending the report without even checking anything. And so it's creating, as Toby said, a ton of extra work for people. If you encounter work slop, you're spending an average of 1 hour and 56 minutes decoding and fixing it. And so I do think this is an issue that needs to be addressed with more training about how to properly use these tools.
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What if I'm an employee at a company and the CEO sends out an email to all of us? Maybe he or she wrote it themselves and said you all need to use AI. You need to put your emails into AI to make them 50% shorter during your self reflections. You need to also put those into AI. You need to use AI or else you won't be at this company anymore. And I'm a person who's sitting there thinking like, wow, I really don't need this or I'm not exactly how to use this in my workflow. Like how do you guys think they should approach this?
E
How to approach it is a challenge, right? Because it's like, yeah, you've been, there's this big promise of AI and the expectation is that it can handle all these things and it can make you more efficient. So of course if you're putting, you know, you're asking for an email from Chat GPT and it puts out an email, you're like great, I just saved 45 minutes, I'm going to just send this out. I think what we need to do is really think critically about the actual possible output of current AI capabilities. So yeah, if you're being asked to use AI and you don't know what you're doing and you're not being properly trained, I would use it as a brainstorm tool as like a first draft. But I would not ever use that as the final output. It might, you know, instead of saving you 45 minutes, it might save you 15 minutes to use AI as a thought starter instead of the final draft. But I think where you can making sure that you're not eroding trust with your coworkers by sending out garbage will only help in the long run.
C
I want to dive deeper into that idea of eroding trust because this Harvard Business Review report found that 50% see senders of workshop as less creative, capable and reliable, 42% see them as less trustworthy, and 37% see them as less intelligent. So on to Neil's point. A lot of leaders are setting their employees up for failure, but they're setting their organizations up for failure because an organization with less trust and you looking at your fellow coworker as less intelligent is not going to be one that is performing at a high level. So how do you think it can infiltrate an organization and what are the trickle down effects when that lack of trust starts to reduce rear its ugly head?
D
Yeah, I think people have to be very clear that your work product you own, whether you use AI to like help you create it, at the end of the day you're responsible for your work product. And if it sucks, you can't just say, well, you know, it's kind of, kind of Sam Altman's fault. He didn't build chatbots good enough. Like you are responsible. And so an example from my own life, I use this tool called Gamma to make presentations and I have to, I had to give a presentation external to Morning Brewing. If I would have just typed in the prompt and like got a presentation and not looked at it, it would have been shit. But I like spent a lot of time then going through and manually creating it. It produced a better outcome than I could have done on Google Slides just myself. But it took just as much time, but the quality of the work went up. So I think thinking that AI is just going to save you so much time, you're never going to have to think again is wrong. If you're doing that like your work is terrible, you still have to think critically. But if you do think critically and use the tools responsibly, I do think it can increase the effectiveness of your work?
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We're going to take a quick break, but come back with more Kyle and Kayla right after this.
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Get started at disney campaign manager.com that's disney campaign manager.com Toby the modern workplace is a digital mess.
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Is my laptop dusty again?
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Yes, but that's not what I'm talking about. Teams are scattered across locations using a chaotic mix of apps and devices. It's a logistical nightmare that creates security risks and eats up valuable time.
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Toby, you should really keep some screen wipes around. As for the rest of us, clean up the digital mess. Learn more at jumpcloud.com/brew that's jumpcloud.com/brew all right, let's move on to the big picture of the jobs market. We don't know the latest numbers on unemployment and jobs growth because of the government shutdown. But economists generally agree that A, the labor market is slowing down and B, we are in what's called a low hire, low fire environment. Employers aren't hiring much at all, but at the same time they're not doing layoffs in any substantial way. So we're essentially in a frozen state. People aren't leaving their jobs, but they're also finding it hard to get one if they aren't currently employed. And I didn't even mention AI, which throws a whole new variable into this equation with some studies showing it's starting to reduce the number of entry level jobs on the market. So guys, what are you seeing? What are you hearing about the current job situation?
D
Yeah, I think low, higher, low fire is a perfect way to put it. And my perspective now is that your best opportunity to grow in your career because of this job market is to actually excel in your current role. And think about like, if I had to stay at my company, what would I do to grow there? Because I think job hopping is down. The wage premium you get from job hopping has actually decreased. So you're not making as much money to job hop as you used to in the past. And so I think the best opportunity in this current job market is to really lean in and your current role and figure out how to grow at your current workplace.
C
But so what do you do if you are a new entry into the job market? If you just graduated college, you don't have a role yet, and if it's a very stuck, a very frozen job market, what do you say to those people? Because I've been on, I've been on some Reddit forums where people are posting these articles from the Financial Times, from Bloomberg about this low hire, low fire environment and going, well, we're screwed, we're doomed. There's nothing we can do because no one is moving jobs.
D
I would say if you are an early career, you just graduated and you got a job, like pray up, like thank God you somehow pulled it off. I think you're fine if you're in. It's getting in as an early graduate that I think is really hard in this environment.
B
Yeah, go ahead.
E
Oh, I was just going to say there's a few things here. Like first, it's more important than ever to have a good network because of, we're talking about AI works up. Like that applies to the job application process as well. One single job, you know, can have thousands of applications and they're all AI slop, or many of them are so wading through and getting noticed is very challenging. So I think if your early career or you've been affected by layoffs and you're having trouble finding a job, like it sounds kind of obvious, but using those in person network connections that you have is going to be more important than ever before because people want to know that you are real, you're legit, you're qualified for a position. And I think it's only going to get harder for those people. But I would also say that, like, we've. The job market shifts. It's not forever. If you have a hard time right now finding a job, it does not mean that you will never have a job for the rest of your life. The market's going to change. The economy is going to change. It can become an employee market, just like, you know, a few years ago when we as employees had all the power. So it'll change, I promise.
B
Eventually. Yeah. Let's go back to the person that Kyle was talking about a few minutes ago, which is the person who has a job and they are understanding the labor market dynamics right now that they're probably not going to go anywhere. So they have this house that maybe has a few holes in it. They're not totally in love with it, but they've unpacked everything. They bought all the furniture. They're going to stay for a while, sort of. What is the mindset there to be able to grow with the understanding that job hopping isn't necessarily in their immediate future?
D
Yeah. I mean, there's so many, like, tips and tricks to accelerate your career in your current role. I mean, the first step is to listen to. Per my last email, pretty much every week comes out on Monday. I mean, the number one piece of advice I would have is to get a really good relationship with your manager. I think having a great manager that can give you feedback that's been in the job world a lot longer than you and understands how to navigate these ups and downs is really, really important. And I've seen a lot of people grow in their career by basically riding the tailwinds of their manager and that manager growing and bringing you along. So the closer you can get to your manager, I think it's a really good strategy.
B
And Hathaway and Emily Blunt.
C
Is that a Devil wears? I was like, who's?
E
I was like, wait a minute, Is this what I think it is coming out? Yeah. I also think that when you're talking about, like, you're kind of at a place that you're not super happy with, it's like maybe your boss isn't that great. And in those situations, how to make the most of it is to like really find the things that you are excelling at that you find is meaningful for you and leaning into those things. And I think if you're in a situation where you're not super happy with the day to day of your job, you're not super happy with your boss or the quality of leadership at the company, but you want to stick around because there's not a lot of other options. This is where you start to look elsewhere besides the direct line of management for fulfillment. So whether that's building relationships with coworkers or other, you know, higher level individuals and on different teams, like do what you can to build that network.
D
And I would say, like we just covered work slop. So if I'm an early career professional, I see a massive opportunity to actually learn how to use AI. Most people are not going to put in the work to do that and they're just going to be slopping their work around and it's going to be terrible. If you actually can understand how to use these tools, one, you're going to be more personally effective. But two, you could probably tell executive leadership how to actually train, how to actually use these, because those people is a brand new technology for all of us. Those people are also a little behind. And so I think there's a massive opportunity to actually learn how to use AI.
C
I like how you turn slop from an adjective there.
D
And sloth is a noun, a verb and an adjective.
C
It's everything. Finally, even as everything feels stuck in the labor market right now, an interesting force bubbling beneath everything is the death of workplace loyalty. The big shift that set it off was when the AT&T CEO John Stankey sent a memo to employ saying that the company had consciously shifted away from a loyalty based employment, essentially announcing that the old school contract between worker and employer is dead. It was shocking to hear him say almost the quiet part out loud, without a lot of remorse either. AT&T is no longer your family. Your work with us is transactional. That was his main message. How does this fit into modern workplace dynamics? Is it really a lord of the flies arena with no trust, no loyalty and no long term investment on either side? And how does that complicate this stuck jobs market that we were just discussing?
E
Yeah, I mean, I think that this Statement by the AT&T CEO is really indicative of where we've been going for a long time. I think that the erosion of the Relationship between employee and employer has started, I would say, probably even 10 years ago. And the decline is that as people are feeling less supported by their employers, they are giving less. And so with the millennial trend of job hopping that started again, like 10, 15 years ago, there's no more like the expectation that I start as an entry level person and I work for 20 years and then I become the CEO. That's just not a traditional job process anymore or career. And so I think that as that has started to erode further, the natural end is that there's no loyalty between employer and employee. But I think when we're in this market of no, you know, low hire, low fire, you're kind of forced into some semblance of loyalty, right? Like, well, I'm here, I'm probably not going to move for a while. How do I make the most of this? And I think that if companies want to kind of reverse this trend, the first thing that they can do is reinvest in their employees. I think we've seen a decrease in investment in learning and development from employers to their employees. And if you wanted to kind of shoot that first shot and hopefully the employees will feel supported and respond.
C
What does that look like these days, though? Because during the, you know, early days of Silicon Valley, it looked like nap pods. It looked like ping pong tables in the rec room and snacks and like sweet cream catered every day. Is that what you think employees are out there craving right now? Is it the perks of that almost bygone era at this point, or is it something else?
D
I mean, personally, a sweet green and that would hit right now.
C
It's pretty hard.
D
No, I think people want the normal stuff, which is they want expanded opportunities at work to do more interesting work. They want to feel connected to the mission, they want to make more money. They want to have a clear career ladder where they can see where they're going. I think a lot of this is uncertainty. Like, if I stay here, am I actually going to get a promotion? Am I actually going to make more money? I think we're in a bit of a kind of prisoner's dilemma where companies see that employees are job hopping more historically, as Kayla brought up. So they don't want to invest. And then because employees aren't getting invested in, they end up job hopping more. And it's this race to the bottom. I do think this job market, low hire, low fire, is a potential chance to reset and to rethink about how we engage with employees long term. What I think Happens in what I Predict in this AT&T memo is the high performers actually leave. Like, if you can get a job elsewhere, why I'm going to stay at the place where the CEO is openly exclaiming that, like, we're not going to take care of you, I'm going to leave. So I think this will actually hurt at&t in the long run. But, I mean, look at us collectively. We've been at Morning Brew. I mean, Neil's been here like 26 years. I think, like this, this group on the screen probably has like 30 plus years of morning Brew experience. So I think it is also a company by company issue. And the best companies are thinking about how do we retain our employees, how do we create a great work culture, how do we make people excited to show up at work every day? Those companies are going to win.
B
All right, we just have a few minutes left. Want to hand it off to you guys. Is there anything that you are seeing in the job market that maybe those of us not deep in the weeds, you know, are looking for? And is there any particular jargon that we're missing as a new quiet quitting jump in that you guys want to talk about? What are you seeing out there?
D
I mean, I think we first have to say we are done with the noise. Quiet, loud, blank, stop doing it. That's.
E
Let's not name these trends anymore.
D
We've declared the death of it. Kayla, what is a trend that you're plugged into right now?
E
Okay. The one that is my favorite currently is that I think we are. We need to bring back the middle manager. And I've talked about this at length. I think that middle managers for, you know, decades, maybe forever, have gotten this bad rap. And I think that what can really help to reverse this trend of everything, basically we've been talking about of AI workslop, of decreased loyalty, is to really understand the role of the middle manager and like, allow them to thrive. Instead of trying to flatten an organization and trying to get rid of middle managers. When you do that, you make sure that there's entry level and there's C Suite. And how do you become C suite? You go up the ranks. If you're just a bunch of people that don't have a lot of experience, don't have a lot of management experience, how are you going to become an executive? And so I think that's one of those things that we're going to regret trying to eliminate that position in the future. And I could talk about this for hours.
D
So, yeah, the trend I'm paying attention to is how much more we should be paying podcasters. A big trend in 2026 will just be flat doubling all podcasts.
C
Wait, I like that. I was trying to figure out how to attach a noise word to the middle manager trend. So louder middle manager.
E
Yeah, exactly. That's exactly. We just need managers to be louder. That's what we're missing.
C
Perfect. Well Kayla and Kyle, it's always a pleasure to have both of you on. If you are listening to this episode, you should also listen to their show per my last email. Comes out once a week on Mondays and covers all sorts of work life topics like should you date a co worker? That one was a very juicy episode and why middle managers matter more than you think. So thank you both. Make sure you check out per my last email.
D
Thanks for having us.
B
Thank you guys.
Podcast Summary: Morning Brew Daily — "Tech's Polarizing '996' Work Life & The 'Low-Hire, Low-Fire' Job Market"
Date: October 13, 2025
Hosts: Neal Freyman & Toby Howell
Guests: Kayla & Kyle (from the "Per My Last Email" podcast)
This special "Morning Brew Daily" dives deep into the latest—and sometimes divisive—workplace trends: the resurgence of the "996" tech work culture, the challenge of "work slop" from AI-generated output, and the current "low-hire, low-fire" jobs market. Hosts Neal and Toby are joined by workplace experts Kayla and Kyle to unpack not just the headlines, but the real experiences and implications for today’s workforce.
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For more on these themes, including workplace advice and stories, check out Kayla and Kyle's podcast "Per My Last Email."