You Might Be Too Woke to Get Work
The nation's most
powerful law firms just sent a warning to the nation's top law schools and
their students about the rights of others and that actions have consequences.
The message is something that all businesses should keep in mind as they look
to hire graduates.
BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS@HOWARDTULLMAN1
As a federal court
litigator who left trial practice after 10 long and painful years, where no
amount of money could salve the pain of the daily soul-sucking, nitpicking, and
navel-gazing, I have long believed that there was nothing that the lawyers at the
largest corporate law firms could do that would surprise me. This was even
before the Trump horror show of "legal" thugs, crooks, criminals, and
insurrectionists -- all claiming to be adherents to and servants of the law.
And yet, I guess you should never say "never."
Over the years, my
cynicism has not only served me well, but also saved me from countless cases
and instances where -- had I invested any remaining belief in their good faith
or honor -- would have only led me woefully astray and cost me time, pain, and
money. Shakespeare's advice in Henry the Sixth, in which Dick
proposes that "the first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers" has
never been far from top of mind. Let's just say that 99 percent of lawyers give
the rest a bad name.
Which brings us to the
staggering number of disappointing, decrepit and disgusting members of Congress
and the Senate who are lawyers. They are simply further evidence of how low the
profession has sunk over the years. As the applicable Latin phrase goes, Res Ipsa loquitur
-- "the thing speaks for itself." The corrupt clowns and crooks
charged with making our laws who spend their days in performative and stupid
stunts while trying to fatten their own wallets are an embarrassment to what's
left of the legal profession.
So, I was shocked and
pleasantly surprised to see a recent joint and public pronouncement by more
than two dozen of the biggest firms in the country issuing a warning to the
nation's largest law schools that they needed to take immediate steps to get
their students' and their faculties' shit together. The firms reminded them
that their harassment of students on campus, their support for antisemitism and
Hamas terrorists, their destruction of other's property and materials,
their pompous statements, and their offensive leveraging of their schools'
names and reputations would all have clear and dramatic consequences when those
students and graduates came looking for jobs. The unequivocal message was that
they and their lies wouldn't be welcome and would further be a stain on their
institutions as well. This will hopefully wake up a few of the college and grad
school presidents who've been sitting on the sidelines to date or hiding behind
some gibberish.
I have written before
about the new challenges involved in trying to figure out hiring among the
growing group of wokesters, snowflakes and deluded do-gooders pouring out of
our schools. Covid didn't do us any
favors in this regard, either. It's increasingly critical
that every business leader take the time and effort necessary--as the law firms
just bluntly did--to tell it like it's going to be to these prospective hires
so that they get off on the right
foot. They need this help to find the kind of places where they
can succeed. Startups aren't a great home for goons, loons, the poor dears
still struggling with their work-life balances or those who need to bring their
whole selves to the office.
How sad is it that this
critical messaging has to be delivered today in the awful context of rampant
antisemitism and abundant hate that is infecting college campuses across the
country. Once again, we're seeing the residual slime and the ongoing cancer of
Trump, which has permitted and encouraged every troll, bigot and MAGA fan to
emerge from under the rocks and slither about the schools. And, never ones to
waste an opportunity to squawk and scream, the crazies of the far Left have
also had a field day of phony concerns and foaming at the mouth.
The overall critical
message for business and budding business builders--"get real if you want
to get a real job"--is so much broader than the narrow and obvious
perspective of pain, prejudice, and politics that we're dealing with at the
moment. If we don't get the messaging and delivery right, we risk losing an
entire generation of new workers to the fog of false hopes and excessive
expectations that are being spewed by parents and promoted by professors who've
never worked a day at a real job in their lives. It's ever more the case that
those who can't do, teach.
In all honesty, we owe
it to these kids to set them straight as much for their own sakes as for ours
and our businesses. I've been at this for decades, but it's never seemed to be
as confusing a time because so many of the upcoming prospects really seem to
have goals and objectives that are dramatically different from ours. And it's
those drivers (not grades and honors) that will ultimately determine whether a
given individual fits well with your needs, culture, and philosophy.
Once you get beyond the
obvious quantitative metrics, and the standard, constantly inflated
credentials, you come to the questions of mindset and attitude, which are the
real determinants of success. Each firm and every entrepreneur will have their
own criteria and culture and decide the best way to test for fit. But I think
it's especially important to keep in mind a couple of other "new
normal" considerations.
The single most crucial
idea is that you shouldn't think for a moment that you're going to be able to
convince a significant number of these folks to buy into your ideas
and program. As much as you might like to onboard a given individual,
if they're not picking up quickly and readily on what you're pitching, forget
it and move on to the next best candidate. The primary goal of your HR team is
to find and put in front of you the few that are already leaning in your
direction and drinking the company Kool-Aid instead of having you waste your
time and energy trying to convert some kid or show him the path to
entrepreneurial enlightenment. You can explain a lot of things to people, but you
can't understand for them.
The second hurdle is
basic hunger. Building a new business is hard, painful work, and everyone on
the team needs to really want to come in every day and work their butts off.
They need to be proud of what they're doing and understand clearly why they're doing
it and why it's important. There's no room for "whatever," there's no
space for someone who wants to just do a decent job, and there's no time for
someone who's embarrassed about being committed, competitive and willing to do
whatever it takes to win. There are no office hours for winners. Here again, I
realize that this is an old and old-fashioned philosophy that's fallen out of
favor with the "feel good about yourself" crowd. Fine with me. They
can all eat our dust.
The final test is to
weed out the ones who are too quick and too smart for their own good. Having a
little patience and a heap of humility in today's insanely complicated and
constantly changing world is a very good thing. The people who tell you that they
have all the answers are most likely to be the ones who don't understand the
questions. Worse than that is the likelihood that, in their ignorance and
arrogance, they're much more likely to guess at an answer rather than to ask
for help in resolving a problem. This is a defective and dangerous variation of
the "ask forgiveness rather than permission" doctrine which has
killed plenty of companies.
As we anticipate a time
of accelerating and constant change, the key players will always be the ones
asking the hard questions rather than those who think they have all the
answers. Those are the ones you want to hire and have by your side.
