{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"The WorkOps Podcast","title":"What got you here won't get you there: the murky middle in the age of AI","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":2359,"description":"Summary\nIn this episode of The WorkOps Podcast, host Jeet sits down with Colleen McCreary, Chief People Officer and Head of Internal Systems at Confluent, for a candid conversation about people, productivity, and what AI is really doing to the workforce. Colleen makes the contrarian case that early-career talent is a company's edge in the AI era, while the \"murky middle\" faces the hardest reinvention. She explains why she's torn out the performance review everywhere she's worked, how she compressed a five-month review cycle to three and a half weeks, and how a company-wide \"find the bullshit\" campaign cut hundreds of meeting hours. Along the way she shares her first-principles approach to choosing tools, her \"tasty, not wastey\" philosophy on spending, and her definition of the people officer as the product manager of how a company actually runs. It's a sharp, practical listen for HR and people leaders, founders, and anyone rethinking how work gets done.\n\nChapters\n00:45 Welcome and Colleen's path into HR\n02:45 Leaving venture capital to operate again\n05:30 Keeping humans at the heart of AI\n07:15 The murky middle and betting on early career talent\n12:15 Why HR and internal systems belong together\n17:30 Swim teams versus soccer teams\n22:15 The bureaucratic misery index\n28:25 Why performance reviews are broken\n34:35 Tasty, not wastey, and hiring for taste\n37:15 First principles and the people officer as product manager\n\nTakeaways\n- The people most at risk from AI aren't juniors, they're the \"murky middle\" six to twelve years in, whose old playbook is being flipped on its head.\n- Performance ratings don't predict performance: 90% of the people managed out at Confluent had been rated successful or exceptional.\n- You can cut a five-month review cycle to a few weeks by subtracting, fewer rating tiers, fewer questions, and a real deadline as a forcing function.\n- Solve for the problem first, then pick the tool. Choosing the tool first is how good teams get stuck.\n- In an...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/Eh8J8csrLvAf-gfZx2fx-hND9gquazmC6b15qkZyyGA/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9lMWNj/OTM3ZjEzMWFkMzQw/NjcwMzQyYTI4MTY3/MGRhMC5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}