Episode 6. Abundance and scarcity

In the age of the pandemic, how do we move from scarcity to an abundance mindset?

Erika from H6 is in the hot seat this episode, as she and Brad discuss whether we're still stuck in the age of scarcity: as people, as corporations and in the tech industry.  Are we in the age of 'The Great Resignation' or is this The Great Empowerment for employees?

Transcript

Episode 6. Abundance and Scarcity with Erika Hamilton

Intro: [00:00:00] But people are resigning because their work doesn't suit them anymore. Highly recommend outtakes. Nothing is unachievable. The super that I have can create a difference in people's lives. You are listening to the invisible skyscrapers podcast. 

Let's get cracking. 

welcome to the hut six podcast.

It's the invisible skyscrapers podcasts that we've been going on with the last lot of interviews, were with Ryan, which I've had some good feedback about. Today, I'm with Erica who works at hut six and today we're going to talk about scarcity in the age of the pandemic, 

How do we move from scarcity? to an abundance mindset in this environment? And it comes down to people. 

It Comes down to process.

and it comes down to things like housing. All of these things are all affected us and I think we're all pretty stuck in the idea of scarcity. So Erika welcome. 

Thanks for having me. 

 That's all right. I know it's your first time here. So I will be gentle. Being in the podcast arena. [00:01:00] Now, what do you think we're still in the age of scarcity 

Like 

as an industry or as a company, 

Well as an industry, as people, as humans, do you think we're still in a pandemic? 

I think we're coming through the other side of it.

In that there's less of like we're in the red alert kinda zone on staffing and travel and everything else.

And as restrictions have eased and, things have changed. I think definitely things like the election and the war in Ukraine is probably something that's more

 Front of mind than COVID and I think we've come through the last two years and 

all of those bigger decisions and the shift in mindset has definitely happened.

Very quickly and as is shown in, especially a lot of the startup world. I think in corporate it's still quite a slow moving beast and the corporations who still want people on those fixed kind of work in the office and fixed like, you will be paid this for this outcome and all that sort of stuff is still 

Something that I have seen from the outside is [00:02:00] Prevalent in corporate world, but everyone else has moved on. So I think some sectors still feel that kind of scarcity and that need to control by a power. 

Instead of the empowerment of people and the ability to think laterally that's been shown in other sectors 

do you think in that scarcity mindset, that the fact that we do have three, 400,000 less people in Australia right now,

do you think we've seen the shift in people or what they call the great resignation? Do you think we've seen that yet? 

I don't really like the term, the great resignation. I think it's 

Well me either as a boss, really, to be honest. 

I think that is just called. The great empowerment, because people have just gone, it's now my turn to say what I want and get what I want and if you don't want to do that, I can go somewhere else. And I felt that when back in March, I went to South Start in Adelaide with Kirsty, our senior business analyst and we were in a seminar talking

about hiring in the startup and tech space and there are about two, 300 of us and one of the [00:03:00] speakers on the stage

asked who's hiring and half the room put their hand up and the guy who was speaking, he works for a startup and he's paying like, six figures a year,

30 

hours a week, paying people five grand to refer people to me.

and paying per resume not even if I pick them. 

And so I was sitting there with Kirsty and I was like we're a firm with 12 people. How do we compete with someone like that? 

And he's got 200 people and he's trying to expand. 

So I think the competition, like the market is very hot as an employee, but I do think that we're still in that phase of people being able to hop and leverage and go I can get more if I work At Netflix or whatever, but I think the penny will drop very soon. 

because the expectations are going to be very high.

They are very high.

and for people to come in and if you're being paid that, and you've got the conditions, you've got everything else the dust will start to settle and it's expected that you will actually do your job. 

I wonder if it will settle that. 

I don't know. 

I think it's [00:04:00] a good shift to feel that employees to be able to feel comfortable making these decisions and asking for more.

Especially as women and people, minorities, who haven't always had the upper hand. I think it's a really nice shift. 

Who do you think ultimately pays? Like I've seen it, as you say, in the industry and seeing that the wages have grown significantly, 

and the demand has grown significantly, but do you think the pricing back to the consumer has grown? If we're talking about the scarcity mindset,

Do you think that the scarcity of the product or whatever we're developing at Hut six and other startups? Is will prices be able to rise to match that. 

I don't...

I think they can only rise. 

So if you're...

they can only rise to the client, if the value is being added to them. There has to be a proven ROI and the expectation being, if you've got a team and you've expanded the engineering team, then you're expanding The product team .... the team who manage them. 

Ideally, basic economics, you should then be able to ship features faster and that you should be able to get better feedback from your client 

[00:05:00] and they should be happier, on paper that, should be the way it goes.

But the actual execution of that and especially people are job hopping around, you don't have that Time to foster that. 

No. you really don't and you don't have time to bed people in. 

Just swinging it back around to the pandemic. 

What do you think some of the other triggers, that led to the whole idea of cause you and I have felt this quite keenly where this feeling of scarcity. 

In what we do in people, all those things. 

What do you think apart from the pandemic, do you think there was any other things that led to that? Triggering that sort of mental space. 

I think definitely. 

Feeling like the ability for like risk is one of them.

And I think before 

the pandemic, a lot of the stuff that we're doing now, 

we wouldn't have done.

Cause we do it 

that's Actually true 

but because it just, it's everything's already on fire. 

So you may as well, just like you've got nothing else to lose. 

I feel like that's been, like for me, what's happened through the pandemic. Like for me personally, what things I've done in my life and what we've done here at Hut Six. 

And I think that's seen in other places, people like, The world is burning. Like [00:06:00] literally why not just do this? Because if it all fails, we're probably going to go bankrupt if we don't do it anyway 

Yeah and I would even add to that, that maybe the scarcity of people has triggered some of the stuff that we do. 

That people have to think a bit differently and the age of zoom.

The age of virtual meetings and all of those things is also triggered that idea of.

One of the things that you've pointed out to me a few times, Don't get upset if there's no one in the office. But everybody's still doing their job really well and that's the idea of that zoom culture. 

For me, the scarcity mindset is I was very much welded to that Victorian idea of Telephones ringing, cranes in the sky, people at desks. That made me happy. But now, I suppose the world to me looks quite different. 

I'm not so worried about that idea of scarcity.

Now because it's just something we're dealing with every single day. 

How do you think it'll affect future decisions all of this and actions. You've touched on it 

I think it's definitely helped to... it's changed like the mentality of, the move fast break things, of the 2000 Silicon valley, which [00:07:00] launched Facebook and Twitter and everything else. 

Which has got a lot of criticism and a lot of praise. 

I think it's definitely reshaped that in the fact that it has reshaped the way we think about risk. 

And the way we look at risk ventures and it's you're forming your resilience. Like your resilience is a muscle and you do have to work it and it's If we've been through that, then we can get through this. 

And, and I think coming back to the agile way of working is what I really like to say instead of the move fast and break things, because it's all about that iteration and the reflection.

 I think that having all of this kind of happen, it makes it much easier to..., because all the chips are down... so you can comfortably go....

 I feel like I, constantly go to our team and say, I really don't know what I'm doing with this I'm going to need some help. 

And it's helped to reinforce that because there is literally no one else, so I can say that, 

But you can't sack me and get someone else cause there wasn't anyone else to do it. 

right. 

And it's interesting you talk about this because I look at the recent deal at Elon Musk, your favorite person, in the whole wide world is [00:08:00] doing with Twitter.

And it's very old fashioned in his approach to this, so that move fast and break things.

He's doing exactly that and that Twitter deal. 

He's not reflecting and iterating in this process.

So in a sense, I see people like him almost become a irrelevant in the new age of scarcity and the 

yeah, and I 

think as we see more people who aren't Elon Musk in positions of power 

and you have more women and minorities and people who feel comfortable sharing and talking and your intuition is then trusted at work.

I think because that's definitely where I feel very comfortable, I'm in a Predominantly male team. 

 That's how I work through things I need to talk about it and say, I feel really uncomfortable with this I don't know what to do.

I think this would work best and that kind of cultivating that trust from, that support and moving at still a relatively quick pace.

If we're iterating things, every day we have stand up, every fortnight we have our sprint planning.

And it is that process with intention and that then is the bedrock for the strategic growth.

[00:09:00] And that's how your strategic plan gets activated, Cause a strategic plan, which we've done, it shouldn't just be a Google doc in Google.

So if you were to say anything out of the scarcity idea, that process with intention would be it. 

Yeah, 

Yeah absolutely. 

Okay. So what do you think. What do you think of London? 

 What would you say in your head? Like we flipped the coin, all right, I do have another question here and I'll ask you pre- pandemic, but we'll talk abundance first. 

If we were to flip that on somebody's head, what is abundance look like to you In the future. 

I think abundance looks like to me, it's removing if statements and moving [00:10:00] to when. 

So instead of saying if we get this or if this person resigns, or if, this client leaves us, 

it's more like 

when we get this contract signed, when we work on our culture to keep our staff for longer. When we attract staff without having to do any active recruitment, like when we get to keep our clients longer, because they're happier with us because our systems are better. 

Like it's moving to that and it's all of Isn't 

do you think across the world? That's, we're not in that stage yet where we're in the abundance stage just yet because of all the turmoil in the world at the moment. 

Do you think we will get? Cause I've seen pre pandemic. We had an abundance, but I think we had a laissez-faire sort of attitude to that sort of idea. 

I think once we move into the abundance stage again. People's minds will change. 

Do you think it will stick? or will we go back to the way we felt. 

I don't think, we'll ever Get out of the turmoil that we're in because there is always pain and suffering. 

true, yeah. 

So, whether it's, like currently we've got an [00:11:00] election in Australia, we've got the war in Ukraine and COVID, is the main three things that are affecting us as a business in Australia. 

Everywhere, there's always... there's always something going on. 

So I think it just depends on what group and what that abundance looks like. 

I think we will get to a point where people feel comfortable with vulnerability and comfortable sharing and being on the journey together to reach abundance. 

 I think from the pandemic, we will leave this kind of siloed and high walls attitude and this just "oh, we'll just give it a crack and just see what happens",. 

I think now more than ever, like relationship management is super important and people want to feel Trusted and supported and safe. I think that's the biggest learning over the last two years. Because we haven't felt that, everyone's been touched by those events and others in different ways. 

And developing systems that can guide people on that journey. It's a really important part of our needs. 

And do you think corporates, you touched on corporate earlier on about that whole idea of working from home and all those things. 

All the big corporates I've [00:12:00] noticed are all pushing very hard for people to go back to an office. I can't see it happening. I can't see that those things will change. I think that the abundance aspect of this is the abundance of free time as well. 

That's what people want and the abundance of choice. So in, in one sense, we've got scarcity. 

And 

everybody's worried Certain things, but they're not worried about their jobs because everybody needs that. And then you've got abundance on the other side of that sort of balancing each other out. 

Do you think, this will change? Do you think that people will long for those times in an office or you think people are used to it? 

No, I don't think so and I think there for a couple of reasons.

My housemate Serena, she moved here from Melbourne the side of this year because she was sick of the lockdowns And she loves living in Alice because she's a teacher. 

And so when she finishes work at four she's home by four oh five, and then she can go to the gym and then go to netball training and then get her eyelashes done and then it's 7:30 pM. 

and she can go. 

It sounds like an abundant life to 

and then she's gone to bed by nine, like that's [00:13:00] And she's living the life that she wants to do.

And because she's got all that time. 

What's that term you use? Living your best 

life? 

Living your best Because she's got that she can be abundant in other areas of her life, which is really good and I've spoken to friends.

Who are in the recruiting and HR space and they said pretty much all 

of the out candidates, they requesting remote first, or flexible first.

and a lot of corporates are ejecting candidates. based on that. 

And they've said but we get them work other places, but a lot of these corporates are missing out on really good talent because they're not willing to be flexible. 

But candidates are willing to put themselves out there and go, no, I'm not going to take a job with I don't know, PWC. 

I'm going to take it with the riskiest startup 

because And even for less money and, we know money's like the seventh reason someone will leave a job It's 

always that like work-life balance culture, everything else that keeps people there. 

It's an interesting question. In the sense or two with everybody working from home, will that actually affect climate change? This is a big one. What do you think? 

 Do you think there'll [00:14:00] be a? There'll be a shift in the way people 

I don't think it will affect climate change because 70% of our emissions come from corporations, not from the individual. 

But I think it will change the way we purchase goods so it will change people will downsize to having one car and electric car is easy because the mileage, you don't need to go as far. 

I think we will still see emissions because people will still travel and people will and we see it like with the two. Like I do it. like you fly and you go away for work and then you stay, or you stay on for your own personal holiday, or then you then go from there to fly someone else for a holiday.

or people have got their partners who are and then they follow along with them. So I think it, I don't think it changes, travel emissions much. I think it increases on we're back to pre pandemic travel levels now. Cause people more cash and, they can make the four weeks of annual 

So do you, Where do you think you sit right now? Because I know that I'm very much on the scarcity side still. But that's just my mindset, I think just in [00:15:00] general. Anybody And again, I dip into the abundance thing, A bit like today. 

Where do you sit right now? And one of the things you've done, if you do sit on one side or the other, if you sit on the abundance side, what things have you done to feel that way? 

I think that I was definitely the scarcity side probably up until I was since I started working for you. 

Cause I had a bit of a tumultuous adolescents. But 

As we all do, except for possibly amy who's sitting in here. Maybe she had a really good one. 

adolescence is pretty horrific, but that's a different conversation. 

But yeah, I think I'm definitely In the abundance mindset now, because I very much what I say to myself. Every day or when I think of doing something, I always say, why not me?

why not me do this? Why not me? get this opportunity, like why not me? 

Oh, do you feel the same way about projects? With clients. 

Do you feel I'll explain that a bit better. Like when we start talking to a client, do you go into that? Environment, talking about solutions and budgets and all the rest of it. Just with that in the mind. 

Not the bare minimum. Do you go into there with that sort of 

Yeah Yeah of course, because I truly believe what we do changes [00:16:00] people's 

lives. 

And has the ability to pull people out of poverty and to close the gap. 

Yeah I fully believe in that.

I've seen it happen with the systems we do. I've seen it happen to me. 

With programs that I had, got to be part of as a young person and how that's changed my life. I truly believe the Kool-Aid that we do sell. 

So I would think, Yeah.

I always think, why not us?

And if It's not, we always tried our best.

Funny. I had a, almost a two hour chat with next client of mine who had a business. And I was explaining to him all about what we do and he literally had his mouth open the whole time. 

And he said to me, how did you come up with this idea? And I said fell into it. And then we saw it happen in front of us and we saw an organization completely change in somebody's life and that organization completely change. 

And we had to look at it 

What did we do? We didn't just build something. 

We actually changed an organization and somebody's life.

Yeah and I always think now that we, have an actual vision and mission and values [00:17:00] and expectations and stuff laid out for us internally. 

I think now if we actually have, we're running our projects with intention and purpose and foresight that's just going to hit the next level. 

Yeah, Yeah. There's the same I was having a conversation with a potential well with a new client yesterday about a five-year project. 

Which will literally change. Culture. 

Aboriginal culture.

in terms of recording that culture and having a repository of information and all those things, and on the surface, it seems like a simple thing. 

But you extrapolate that over the whole of Australia and over five years.

It is a massive project. 

I don't mean in terms of budget? I just mean change. 

Plugging that gap, essentially what we do that process gap and making it easier for people to access stuff can exist on all levels. 

Even in that space 

And I think, coming back to the question, I think to stay in the abundancy mindset with, projects is really defining what that kind of those pillars of success look like, because you can't go and try and do everything.

You have to actually just pick [00:18:00] some stuff and we've got our Alice team who do that. And those, those become your key goals that you are working towards. 

I had a question here before that said we're talking about the pre pandemic and the decisions and actions. So I'll swing around back to that. All the things that you thought. Pre pandemic. And plans that you had in your head. Are they now aligning With what we're doing now. 

because that did change things quite a lot, in our, like all of a sudden we were all a bit about what the world was going to look 

like

Yeah. I was only going to work for a year. So 

so my life personally is Completely gone down a different path. I didn't even see happening. 

But work-wise, 

I think it's changed completely because we didn't really have any intention. 

with Hut Six. It was just Brian, Luke, and Johan, just chilling doing some 

But what's 

Also was going to say, I think the acceptance of what we do has jelled because. of COVID. 

Oh that's what you mean. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Cause I think more people are comfortable with working remotely and I think working remotely has [00:19:00] helped that a lot. 

I also think that because of, the economic turmoil 

that we're in people have been sacked because they don't actually contribute anything. 

So I think you have a lot of seat warmers Being moved on and I think you also don't have a lot of ability to even get them here. 

Especially in the NT and other remote areas, we get a lot of people who fly in from the city for a deuce they're six months -12 months and then move on. 

You no longer have those people who can fill those spaces. 

So you've got to get creative and again, like the world is burning, 

What can go wrong now? 

Elon Musk buys Twitter. That's what can go wrong. 

So we're going to start to wrap it up a bit here. 

So swinging right back to the last question, getting back to The abundance and scarcity in pandemic and or links 

can you See a difference as we come out the other side or can you feel it.

What can you feel In this space now, Do you feel as though possibilities, are there again, do you feel as though That people are used to the idea of having COVID with us, 

Do you think. that, cause you mentioned, before a couple of times the world is burning, which always [00:20:00] generally use but now. 

we've got, I dunno to me Personally, I feel like there's a steady sort of

hum now I feel like things are saying to return to normal, whatever that normal 

happens to be, the new normal as they say. 

How do you feel about the next say two years? 

I disagree with the fact that we've gone back to some kind of new normal, because we haven't gone back. 

We've gone forwards so I don't think that, 

Yes, you're so contrary but I keep going keep going.

I love it. 

what I mean is 

nothing, Like, 

what would what's happening now in 

the economy and Like workplace trends and everything else is so different 

from two years ago. 

It can't be considered the new normal, 

it just is normal. 

It just 

So I disagree and I'm just like, you can't just say, because you work two days a week from home it's the new normal.

It's just it's the whole world. 

And Do you think working from home is actually going to allow women to break that ceiling? 

No. Because women are working from home, but childcare is still like $5 million a year for a kid. 

How do you work from home when you have a toddler? [00:21:00] 

in your same home? 

Which we've had here 

and we've also seen the studies I've read about people being promoted and noticed when they work from home is much less.

So if you work from home, you're less likely to, 

Get pay rise or promoted or noticed especially if you're a woman that becomes even harder because you're not having 

Yeah. 

of conversation. 

I would say I'm probably guilty of that because I'm getting used to that idea. Thinking that you've actually spoken to someone a couple of weeks ago and you look back and you might not have spoken all for three months.

And that's cropped that recently with a couple of team members where I haven't had a lot of contact for. 

And it's been brought to my attention and I didn't feel good about it, but I had to reflect on it and go, actually I have to try a bit harder. 

So I don't think It 

makes things 

more 

accessible because you may be considered, but I don't like without the funding for childcare and also the shift in domestic work, because over the last two years, women have increased their domestic and unpaid labour massively.

Even if both the parents are working from home. [00:22:00] And so I think, unless there's seismic and systemic shifts on that front, it's not going to make much of a difference for women. 

So. We just touched on women in the workplace and promotion, all those things. So our next podcast, Erica is going to be all about women in stem. So there'll be a fun one to talk about and We'll dive deep into that. 

You can drag out whatever armoury that you need weapons. We'll dive deep into that one, but I think getting back to the abundance and scarcity idea in the world as Amy was just pointing out before. 

Whatever mindset you have this. It's the mindset you probably will stick with and that would have been a pre-pandemic thing. 

I think the other thing I would say is we get into the outro is that I think COVID has levelled the playing field. Would you agree with that? 

Yeah, absolutely.

I think so. Yeah, it's just completely levelled it, and I think to Maintain

an abundance mindset and to Make sure you not on that.

I'm just reflecting on me working so closely with you that it's not just I hate [00:23:00] everything let's burn it all down 

or this is great let's just jump fully into it, to keep yourself from going from one extreme to the other with your Scarcity. And then your abundance. 

Is to have someone who can then push you. either way. As you need. 

Like I'm often correcting. You and you're just like, oh, I don't know. I don't know. And I'm like, no, you do know because it's going to happen because we've done X, Y, and Z. 

And for everyone listening, Erika is referring to me who's either let's burn the house to the ground and shoot everybody, or let's just jump off the bridge without a parachute with no whatever's at the bottom because it looks like fun.

Yeah. So I'm not the best boss and I will admit that, but we can't talk about me being a bad boss forever. 

So we're going to wrap this one up. I think 

No, but you are a great, you are a great boss and I think but yeah, I think definitely having that shift to your abundance mindset, which is what people want is definitely about having a good group of people around you to help guide you on that journey.

And we do, and one thing I'd say the last bit of this tiny little [00:24:00] bit, of, because before I do the outro is I did a video with Bradley from Tangier recently and the one person I forgot to mention was Luke and I feel bad about that. 

So I'll mention right now, Luke, Amazing work on Tang and Dera couldn't have done it without you so if you ever happened to be listening to this and Luke works at Hut six thanks because it was actually your vision and your help with that project that made it 

work and also having a client like Bradley at Tangentyere 

So we'll wrap it up for this podcast. I don't know what podcast it is. 

It's number 565 I think a bit like Tim Ferris, and that's it signing out from Brad and Erika from hut six for invisible skyscrapers.