A two for one this week at Peak Years – thoughts on AI and the NFL. Let’s start with AI. Like so much else in our world, AI has revolutionized the job search process in a short period of time. ChatGPT writes resumes and cover letters. It is a powerful research tool. And it’s great for interview prep.
AI can even help with the thorniest part of any job search – the salary negotiation. It’s the question candidates dread: “What are your salary expectations?”
Aim too high and you could eliminate yourself from consideration. Low ball it and you risk leaving money on the table. In corporate America, where 3% annual lifts are considered pretty good, walking into a new job with a low base salary can lead to years of anger and frustration.
I asked ChatGPT to draft a few options for handling the salary question.
“I’m flexible regarding salary and am open to discussing what you believe is a fair offer for this position. I’m more focused on finding a role and company that align with my skills and career goals. Could you share the salary range for this position?”
The old “bob and weave.” Very smooth, politely deflect in an attempt to get them to make the first move.
“Based on my research and the responsibilities of this role, I believe a salary in the range of $X to $Y is appropriate. However, I’m open to negotiation and am excited to discuss how we can find a number that reflects my experience and the value I can bring to your team.”
Smart, provide a range. Get them to react while at the same time giving yourself room to maneuver.
“I’m looking for a position that values my skills and experience and provides opportunities for growth. While compensation is important, I’m more interested in ensuring this is the right fit for both of us. I’d be happy to discuss a fair salary based on the market rates and the specifics of the role. What range do you have in mind?”
A classic. Take the high road and deftly combine the strategies from the first two answers.
These are textbook approaches; familiar to any practiced job candidate.
Of course, AI can craft all the options you want, but it can’t answer the question when the moment arrives. (At least not yet, but I suppose that’s coming too.) We must be ready to perform. No matter how much prep you do, it’s natural to feel anxious, stressed, and perhaps even vulnerable. In the end, there’s no getting around that the employer almost always has the upper hand.
The balance of power in compensation negotiations remains decidedly one-sided even in the age of ChatGPT, because for all its utility, AI is only as good as the data it can access. Information is power. And the distribution of reliable data about compensation, outside of athletes and C-level executives whose comp must be disclosed, is highly asymmetrical. By that I mean one side, the employer, has perfect data and the other, the candidate, does not.
I lived this first-hand from both sides of the desk. When you manage large groups of people you have access to a wealth of salary data. This gives managers a distinct advantage when negotiating with new candidates or current employees seeking a raise. Good managers fight to get their people paid. I like to think that I was that type of leader in my corporate days. But when you’re running a team, the pressure to control expenses never stops. Finding the right balance is hard.
The discrepancies in compensation among people at the same level can be striking. The fears of more junior people that the person sitting next to them makes more money are not unfounded. To be clear, there are often valid reasons why that’s the case. Where one lives and their tenure with the company matters a lot. Despite the juicy Slack gossip to the contrary, it’s rarely a conspiracy by management to screw someone.
When it comes to something so meaningful and personal like compensation, all of us understandably want to be treated fairly. Fairness, of course, is a relative standard. The leader armed with the salary data of a large group inevitably will have a different sense of what’s fair than the employee who has just been told their bump is only one percent. moment, but it has no bearing, or only as much as we choose to give it, on what we decide to do with today.
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Fairness is hard-wired into our psyches, which is why comp conversations cut so deep. At the same time there are emotional levers beyond fairness that work to the advantage of employers. In our society there is a general cultural revulsion to talk about how much money we make.
No sane individual asks the person sitting next to them at a dinner party what their salary is. Generally getting into specifics about one’s salary or net worth in a social setting is considered rude and repulsive. There are two sides to this coin. No one likes to hear someone brag about how much money they make, and conversely some of us fear that our friends and family may think less of us if our compensation doesn’t measure up.
One of the things I’ve always envied about athletes is that they operate in a fully transparent environment when it comes to compensation. Team owners retain many advantages as employers, but because salary data is symmetrically distributed athletes enter negotiations on a much leveler playing field than the rest of us.
It’s important to note that the situation has improved from when I first started working. Companies now publicize salary ranges for each job level. However, those ranges can be pretty broad and are self-imposed. Employers can, and often do, make exceptions.
It’s time for a shift in the balance of power. As the saying goes, “sunlight is the best disinfectant.” Data needs to be more evenly distributed. I’m not suggesting that everyone’s salary should be posted on the corporate intranet site. But salary ranges can be tighter. Also, employees, both current and prospective, deserve to know how their salary indexes compared to others at the same level inside the company.
Such moves will force managers to have more transparent conversations with their teams. Often there are valid reasons why someone makes more money. Rather than duck the conversation or hide behind an impenetrable wall of data, managers would be more effective and earn greater respect among their teams by being honest.
I realize this idea will strike terror in some quarters of corporate America. The potential for short term disruption is high. I lived this years ago when the company I worked for published salary ranges during a massive reorganization. Suddenly a bunch of people woke up one day and found out that not only did they have a new boss but that their comp was at the bottom of the range. I was a newly minted VP charged with explaining the company’s comp policies to people I hardly knew and who had no reason to trust me. Talk about trial by fire.
Hoarding or hiding salary data, to me, infantilizes employees. Our colleagues are not kids who need to be sent outside while mom and dad have a “grown up” talk about money. Everyone is an adult, act accordingly. More than anything, what all of us want is to be treated with respect and dignity. An employee may not agree with the rationale behind their comp, but they will take it a whole lot better if they don’t think management is hiding something.
Again, I’m not suggesting that corporate America mimic pro sports and reveal everyone’s precise salary. But the balance of power in compensation discussions needs to be leveled. Given the pace of technology, it’s likely AI will figure out how to do this eventually. It would be better if we humans did it ourselves first.
Have We Reached Peak NFL?
Next season NFL games will be available on CBS, Fox, ABC, NBC, ESPN, ESPN+, Paramount+, Peacock, YouTubeTV, Amazon Prime, and now, on Christmas Day, on Netflix.
Phew, that’s a long list. Did I leave anyone out? I might have. Regardless, you get the point. The NFL is everywhere.
Following the announcement of the Netflix deal a couple of weeks ago, the general narrative was that the NFL once again reaffirmed its standing as the savviest and most dominant media property in the country.
It’s hard to argue otherwise. Further expanding into streaming not only drives incremental revenue now but also is a smart hedge against the future. Likely one or more of the broadcast networks either won’t be around or unable to afford the rights fee the next time one of the major packages of games hits the market. Giving the streamers a taste of the action will make them hungry for more when the opportunity arises, or so goes the conventional wisdom.
Also, in the case of Netflix, the NFL is getting a distributor with major international presence. For all its mastery of the US media market, American football is a relatively provincial phenomenon. It’s not nearly as popular outside the US as basketball or soccer. Airing two games on Christmas Day gives Netflix the type of “special live event” it prefers and the NFL a relatively low risk way to test the international viewing appetite for its product.
If I were in Roger Goodell’s shoes I probably would have made the same decisions. But at the same time, I can’t help but wonder if we will look back twenty or thirty years from now and point to this period as the league’s zenith.
From a consumer standpoint, watching games next year will be a pain in the ass. We are well past the simple times of AFC games on one network and NFC on another. Even if one subscribes to a traditional MVPD or YouTubeTV, you will miss many meaningful games if you don’t have Amazon Prime, Peacock and Netflix. Finding the game you want to watch next season will take more effort than ever.
Not to mention the cost, you can bank on the major streamers with NFL games raising their monthly subscription fees again. There’s no way around it, watching the NFL next season will be more expensive for the average fan.
A more complex user experience and higher prices aren’t the tentpoles of a fan friendly strategy. Having said that, I don’t think any of this will impact ratings one iota next season. People will make the effort and watch. The NFL has pricing power and is unafraid to use it. Short term this is unquestionably a win for the league.
Yet the NFL is not the first brand to command such seemingly insurmountable marketplace dominance. History is littered with companies that achieved a size and scale that dwarfed the competition and allowed them to exert massive leverage over their respective industries: IBM, the railroads, Sears, Kodak, just to name a few.
There are a host of books and business school case studies analyzing why those once dominant companies, and others like them, faded or failed. However, they shared one thing in common: they lost sight of what mattered most – staying relentlessly focused on the needs of their customers. In the end these companies fell from the mountaintop because they allowed themselves to become deluded into believing that what was good for them was also good for everybody else.
Have we reached that point with the NFL? Maybe, maybe not. In the short term, the next five to ten years, I expect we will see more of the same – NFL football dominating ratings, players signing bigger and bigger contracts, and team valuations increasing.
But what about twenty or thirty years from now? Will the NFL’s relentless focus on maximizing rights fees, even at the expense of the fan experience, come back to bite it? It’s hard to say for sure, but one can make the case that raising prices and making games harder to find are potential early warning signs of the same “termites in the basement” that undid so many other great companies from the past.
Consumers have shown that they will turn their backs on brands they once considered essential. What would keep me up at night if I was Roger Goodell is the leaders of those fallen corporate giants firmly believed that they understood their consumers. But by the time they figured out they were wrong, it was too late.
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