The Robots Aren’t Coming For Your Jobs | Venture For America, Pittsburgh Robotics Network | Jenny Sharpe
They explained it to me like the auto industry. Just like there's certain kinds of trucks and cars that are for a business versus for a person, and there's all different designs and all different types. There's huge industry behind maintaining cars and customizing them. That is what the humanoid market will look like at peak or at steady state. And I'm like, man, that's the world I'm excited to live in.
Nate:It does sound pretty rad.
Jenny:Can I just say one more thing? The robots are not coming for your job. Okay? Like, you're fine. Like, relax, chill out, and enjoy the technology as it rolls out.
Nate:You're listening to TRADEOFFS, a podcast about the trials and tribulations of designing, building, and manufacturing hardware and the people that make it. Each month, we sit down with founders, engineers, and other hardware professionals to understand the unique trade offs inherent in building a business that makes physical products. I'm Nate Padgett, hardware community guy and founder of Informal, a freelance collective that helps companies of all sizes design, build, and ship world class hardware.
Chris:And I'm Chris Rill, startup founder, engineer, and fractional CTO, where I help hardware and software companies build and scale their products. TRADEOFFS captures the best of these conversations so you can learn about the numerous skill sets needed to successfully bring physical products to market.
Nate:In this episode, we sit down with Jenny Sharpe to talk about the human side of robotics and what it takes to build teams behind the technology. Jenny spent her career at the intersection of entrepreneurship and talent. She now serves as the director of workforce development for the Pittsburgh Robotics Network, helping people find their way into the industry. We cover why hiring is a matching problem, what makes it harder for early career engineers to break in, and how to stand out in a sea of AI generated applications. Let's jump right in.
Nate:It was really cool to meet you at South by Southwest, Jenny, and hear about what you've been doing in Pittsburgh, doing a ton within robotics. I don't wanna get ahead of myself. Why don't you introduce yourself and talk a little bit about what you're doing now? And then I'd love to dig into your background. But, yeah, let's start with an intro.
Jenny:Sure. I'm Jenny Sharpe. I currently serve as the director of workforce development for the Pittsburgh Robotics Network. I've been in Pittsburgh for about ten years. Mostly my career has been at the intersection of entrepreneurship and talent.
Jenny:Really excited about what's been cooking in Pittsburgh and helping people find access to jobs to build the hardware that's changing the future.
Nate:Awesome. Where were you before Pittsburgh?
Jenny:I grew up in Wisconsin. I went to school at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Chris:What brought you to Pittsburgh other than the robots?
Jenny:Yeah. I was part of a program called Venture for America. It was founded by Andrew Yang, and I was in the 2016 class. So that's what brought me to Pittsburgh and had me working with startups, helping people start businesses at an org called Ascender.
Nate:When you were in school, were you studying engineering? What was getting you into entrepreneurship? Were you approaching from a technical angle?
Jenny:Yeah. So I actually... I was in political science and environmental studies, and I took a bunch of classes from my first year about all the problems we were facing. Everything was going to shit. Like, you know, the bees were dying and the wolf population was a problem, and we had to meet billions of people on the planet.
Jenny:And... But just all of these problems over and over again. And I just was like, man, I really wanna do something about this. And so I took an entrepreneurship course and founded a business called Serving Earth. We created reusable to go boxes in closed circuit cafeterias.
Jenny:That was my first hardware product. I had no idea how to even use CAD, so I ended up pitching to the mechanical engineering club on campus. Got connected to a gentleman who helped me design the product. We ended up going on to win a number of business competitions. We went through an accelerator program.
Jenny:And all of a sudden, I was about 20 years old being asked to sign a bank loan to do my first production run. And I was like, I don't know about this. Ended up pivoting and becoming a cofounder of another org. It was a really great journey. And actually, the product pretty much as we designed, it is now found in almost every cafeteria in the country.
Jenny:Our competitor was already in business with Cisco. We just had, like, no chance. The entry point to this was just gonna be so difficult that we ended up pulling the plug, but, you know, failure is part of success. Right?
Chris:Well, can you go back to that moment? Right? Because, obviously, you've got years of time to think about the reasons why. But if you go back to your mindset back then, what were your choices that you were going through? Right?
Chris:Either you signed this loan and you continue the business or something else. Why did you choose the path you took?
Jenny:Yeah. Look. I was in a lot of customer discovery, and what I was finding, there's an issue with the purchaser. The org behind the cafeteria is the one that actually decides what kind of plate and spoon and to go box is available. And they are only typically run by, like, large organizations like Arenmark.
Jenny:Mhmm. And Arenmark is only going to purchase something from a distributor like Cisco. So we had great conversations with Harley Davidson, American Family Insurance, University of Pittsburgh. We had a number of orgs that said, hey. This is really cool.
Jenny:We're really interested, we wanna do this. We care about... What we were calling it was traceless takeout. And where they're really interested, but in order to hit scale to be able to be distributed by someone like Cisco, there was gonna be such a huge gap in what we were trying to do and being able to actually get in. And, like, I was in the right timeline, right place, but what I wanted to do with this and make it into this huge movement and then go up against this distributor, I mean, I was 20 years old.
Jenny:Yeah. And I was like, I don't know. It was a really, really tough decision for sure. But I'm happy to say, like, these types of products are being used by almost every cafeteria now across the country. So I am happy that the product is in the hands of people whether it was founded by me or not.
Nate:Obviously, a great idea. Before we jumped on this call, Chris and I were talking about a client of ours called Loop that does reusable cups at music festivals and stuff, and they've built this really cool recycling hardware and obviously designed their own cups and things. It's all to say, like, great idea. Obviously, just the uphill battle with some of the core customers. I tried to get into building education products right out of my graduate degree, trying to sell kits into classrooms.
Nate:And just like the procurement process for schools ultimately deterred me. I was just like, that's not gonna be fun, and trying to go direct to consumer is gonna be a little too hard. So totally feel you on that. But it sounds like it was an incredible learning experience. Right?
Nate:And it also was getting you in the door with a lot of decision makers.
Jenny:Yeah. Definitely. It was a great experience. And after that, I ended up being asked to join the founding team of another startup called Metracycle.
Chris:Mhmm.
Jenny:And we were trying to create pop up e waste recycling facilities inside shipping containers that could be placed at the dumping grounds in countries like Ghana so that folks would have access to the tools and the right protection to take their e waste apart on-site versus what they were doing. And this is all part of the Halt Prize. Are you guys familiar with the Halt Prize?
Nate:No. Tell us about that.
Jenny:Very, very cool. They put it out. It's for college students. This particular one was how do you get 1,000,000 people employed in seven years? How do you create a business or a marketplace that could employ a million people in seven years?
Jenny:And so
Nate:I love that.
Jenny:Yeah. We wanna just take an illegal market and make it legal.
Nate:An informal market and make it legal.
Jenny:Yeah. Yeah. Exact... Well, right. Informal.
Jenny:Sorry. Yeah.
Nate:No. No. No.
Jenny:I mean, that was
Nate:a That was a discussion. Early on, Chris is like, do guys really wanna call yourselves informal? Isn't there, like, an association with illicit industries? I was like, you know?
Jenny:No. That's really good. Yeah. So anyway, ended up being in line to that competition, went out to San Francisco, also went through an accelerated program, got on some additional funding, and then got into Venture for America. Didn't win the prize, the whole prize, so we were semifinalists, which is great.
Nate:What accelerator program were you doing out in San Francisco while you're out here?
Jenny:Oh, not in San Francisco. We were in the competition in San Francisco. Okay. In in Madison, I went through Mad Works Okay. Which is a pretty cool accelerator program that was working with generator at the time.
Chris:Oh, very cool. What was the most interesting company that you remember?
Jenny:Outside that accelerator accelerator program, I'll just say the most interesting company I came across during that whole journey at Metrocycle was a company that ended up beating us out at the Holt Prize. They were students from Egypt. And in Egypt, there was this really hard thing where you'd, like, be a delivery driver or driver in any way. You had no access to a public restroom. And so they were figuring out a product.
Jenny:It was kind of like a porta potty Mhmm. That you could pop up in your front yard if you own property or house. Then you could clean it and maintain it, and then all this network of people who can have access to a bathroom could come and use that restroom. So they're the team that beat us out, and they killed it. They deserved to win.
Chris:So, like, Airbnb meets porta potties?
Jenny:Exactly. Exactly. Very cool.
Nate:Do you know where they are now?
Jenny:I don't know. I haven't I haven't Googled them in a while.
Nate:Yeah. Well, this isn't their podcast. It's yours. But but I, you know, I
Jenny:They're cool.
Nate:Yeah. But but this this whole, like, discovering, like, where do you go to the bathroom for gig workers is a problem in San Francisco. I don't think they exist now, but there were, like, three different companies where it was, like, help find bathrooms that allowed anyone to come and use them without needing to get a cup of coffee or whatever it was.
Chris:Nate, I I didn't think that was a problem in San Francisco based on Could you
Nate:just go on the street?
Chris:I mean, mean, that's what they say. Right?
Nate:Yeah. Yeah. Not everyone. Yeah. Well, enough about toilets.
Nate:Jenny, tell us about Venture for America and what brought you to Pittsburgh. And
Jenny:Correct.
Nate:Yeah. You're there during the same time where Andrew Yang's making his first run at president. So what was that like? What were you focused on? Yeah.
Nate:I guess it was also early days for robotics in Pittsburgh. Right? Because it was really dominated by Uber at the time.
Jenny:Yeah. And I had I had friends at Uber and ATG. I know tons of people that have gone through the whole autonomous vehicle journey now that the companies have changed and evolved so many times. But I'd say, yeah, Venture for America, my fellowship was two years. I did it at Ascender, as I mentioned.
Jenny:We were half economic development. I was teaching entrepreneurial literacy and the program director there. And then the other half of the time, we threw a miniature South by Southwest called Thrival, and we brought a million dollars of economic development to the region. We brought in speakers from all over. I was helping plan music, festival lineups.
Jenny:It was a really amazing job. I really loved it. But after having an entrepreneurial experience myself, I was like, look. If I could just get one company, one founder farther along than I got, just get them through the gap where I got lost, that would be enough. Mhmm.
Jenny:So I ended up being there for four years, and I approached every meeting I had that way. Like, can I just get this person a little bit farther than I ever got? And it made the whole thing really fulfilling and purposeful, and there are lots of different kinds of businesses that went through. Mhmm. Some SaaS and apps and things like that, but also some hardware.
Jenny:And I was really proud of that that we ran a boot camp for incubator, and it was a really great experience.
Nate:Unpack what entrepreneurial literacy means.
Jenny:So I think entrepreneurial literacy is all about learning how to talk the talk. People are coming up with solutions to problems all the time. Some are successful, some are not. So in entrepreneurial literacy, understanding what a problem is, understanding what solution is, what a minimum viable product is, how to set up your first QuickBooks, how to get your first customer, all those things that are like... I call that a literacy of its own.
Jenny:People talk about financial literacy all the time. Well, entrepreneurial literacy is also just as equally as important.
Chris:Mhmm.
Jenny:We're able... I think my programs that I was running hit about 8,000 people in four years. Wow.
Nate:Oh, wow. That's incredible.
Jenny:Proud of that.
Nate:Incredible reach. How many companies do you think that was?
Jenny:I couldn't tell you how many companies. I would... I've... More than 200. I don't know.
Chris:I imagine that wasn't a metric you were tracking because it wasn't important. Right? It was more about bringing the community together and up leveling the knowledge of how to fail less or fail more You
Jenny:can do anything another human being has done. All that they had was time and resources. Mhmm. That's the only thing that they have that you didn't have. So I think that's a really important part of, like, this community aspect of entrepreneurship.
Jenny:You know, there's a VC aspect, which is equally as important and necessary for capitalism to thrive. But there's a nonprofit arm to this where you can push people to think differently and change their entire structure of their lives and create really great products.
Nate:Yeah. So did you have, like, favorite companies that you worked with through that? Doesn't have to be hardware. No shade on the SaaS companies.
Jenny:No. There are lots of really cool companies. Nate, we talked about this a little bit earlier, but, yeah, you mentioned ARVR. One of the companies that went through our incubator program was EctoVR. Really interested in what the founder Brad Factor was doing, and that's what led me to joining as his first nontechnical hire after my time at Asunder.
Jenny:Asunder was going through a big transformation and new leadership, and all the original staff had left, and it was time for me to leave. So I was able to spend some time at a hardware company and really enjoyed them until the pandemic, of course.
Nate:We'll talk about that in a sec. Is Asunder still operating? Is that still a program in Pittsburgh?
Jenny:Asunder is still operating. Thrival isn't... Is no more. That ended in 2019 when I left.
Nate:Are they still doing... There's no music festivals now, though?
Jenny:No. No. No? Look. A five person nonprofit that was focused on entrepreneurship running a $1,200,000 conference and music festival was pretty out of sort for what we were trying to do.
Jenny:You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, it was wild what we were able to produce with such a small team of entrepreneurially minded, like, we're just gonna get it kind of people. Mhmm. But I'm very grateful to Dan Law and Bobby Sapala and some of the folks at that team that really taught me how to dream really big and take a huge sway.
Chris:Awesome. What was the biggest music act you brought in?
Jenny:We booked the Chainsmokers the year the Chainsmokers became a huge hyped thing. Nice. And that year, I think we had, like, 16,000 guests coming
Nate:to high
Jenny:school, which was crazy. But we also had, like, Wiz Khalifa and Logic and two door cinema clubs. So
Nate:Wow.
Jenny:But, you know, the music aside, the conference was a really, really cool part of the whole thing and place making in Pittsburgh.
Nate:I know you're really involved with South by Southwest. Do you miss that side of conference organization?
Jenny:Yeah. So in my personal life, I'm a huge music person. Really like electronic music. I go to all the festivals. I think, do I miss it is a really interesting question.
Jenny:I mean, I was, like, 22 or whatever, like, doing all this crazy stuff. But, like, I very much looked into that career path and I was just like... It just... I happened into it in a way in which I would have had to start over for the most part after Thrival. And I was just, like, not gonna go back to, like, working a merch tent in hopes that one day, they'd like, let me do user experience again, which is you have to put in the work and the effort and you have to grind.
Chris:Mhmm.
Jenny:And I was like, look. I don't know. I'd rather just rocket ship in a different direction. And I I currently produce the Robotics and AI Discovery Day, which is, like, 8,000 people, 230 exhibitors Mhmm. Workshops, something like it.
Jenny:So there's... The itch is being scratched. I've been working on large scale events. I think I've counted up in... Out of all the programs I've done, I've impacted more than 50,000 people in Pittsburgh.
Nate:Oh, man. That's gotta feel great.
Jenny:It's fun.
Nate:Well, let's come back to Discovery Day and Pittsburgh Robotics Network. I actually do wanna chat about this VR company that you were working at. I was doing a ton of work on early in in my career with Informal. I'm a gamer, so I've... I obviously am very bought into ARVR, but the industry's been having an interesting time.
Nate:You were in it early. So what was that like? What was... Tell us about that company and what they were doing.
Jenny:Yeah. So it was founded by Brad Factor, who's a PhD at CMU, and he was trying to tackle the locumation problem. Just the fact that people just get... They put the headset on. They get dizzy.
Jenny:It breaks the immersion to be sitting. The next level of immersion was always going to be things that were tactile and movements and all that. Right? I think the world has calmed down a bit about what AR and VR has to be. But back then, it was all about, like, how do we give it that, like, ready player...
Jenny:What is it? Player player one?
Chris:Ready player one.
Jenny:Thanks. How do we give them that experience? Right? Like, hey. You know, we didn't think the products on the market at the time, like the Omni Sangria sand.
Jenny:Yeah. And you're, like, standing
Chris:It's in a platform with, a harness and, like, it had, like, an infinite track. You know, you're wearing Yeah. Like, skates.
Jenny:Yeah. We just didn't think those were, like, realistic, and also that's never gonna make it into your living room. Right? Brad was really trying to invent something new with these shoes. And so what they did is they moved against your walking to keep you in place.
Jenny:And, you know, just like everybody else in the hardware space, we ran into tons of technical issues, particularly in weight. I could not get the weight down. It was really, really hard for us for a long time. I was the, you know, director of business development. We were applying to things like South by Southwest pitch competitions and Unreal Engine competitions and anything to kinda bring in some more capital.
Jenny:You're pitching to investors, but this was I was on that org from the end of twenty nineteen into the pandemic.
Chris:Oh, boy.
Jenny:So, basically, we just bottomed out.
Chris:That's a tough time to be in hardware.
Jenny:Yeah. You know, we've already mentioned it multiple times. Like, the timing of your solution for the problem is so important and what you're able to get in a short period of time. And this was so much about inventing new technology, and it was such a small team that like... I mean, obviously, is so much harder.
Jenny:Right? But the money and the time we needed to invent this, it just wasn't lining up. Right? At the end of the day, there was like really nothing I could do in like March 2020 to raise money for a VR hardware company. Like...
Jenny:Yeah. And I gotta say, as far as my time and effort and energy goes, thinking about startups to join or be part of in the future, no shade on ActiveVR. But, man, like, I don't know if I wanna ever be a problem looking for a solution again. It's just such a hard space when there's not a natural fit.
Nate:Because you gotta convince customers that this is the right product. Yeah. What are your thoughts about the industry in general? Do you think it's gonna be relegated to gaming and kinda niche applications, or do you see an enterprise value? Because I think that's probably the only opportunity for saving it.
Jenny:I mean, if there was an enterprise value, like, why did the metaverse just shut down? Like, why are we pulling the plug on that? Right? Like, I just think the writing's on the wall right now. Until the hardware gets better...
Jenny:Like, I'm not talking, like, incremental better. I'm talking, like, hockey stick, life changing, Neuralink better. I don't see any huge value outside of absolutely entertainment. Mhmm. And I think there's something to be said about entertainment not only from gaming, but also from movie perspectives and cinema.
Jenny:But otherwise, I just think that the enterprise value there, it's limited. The cost is astronomical, and the success and ROI is just... I just haven't seen a success. Yeah. And and if you find a success and you see one, send it to me.
Jenny:Shoot me an email. Tell me I'm wrong.
Chris:I think this goes back to the meme, which is we do this not because it's easy, but because we thought it would be easy. Right? So you've gone through it. You recognized that it wasn't easy. I feel like it's the fresh eyes from that new entrepreneur that has this yearning, this desire to change VR or bring it to the masses.
Chris:Those are the folks that are gonna... Like, if the timing is right, they'll find that unlock for that hockey stick growth. But that's where luck and timing all come into play.
Jenny:Yeah. And I just wanna wanna add here. So, like, we've seen this a lot in the hardware space when it comes to industrial robotics. So many companies come to me on LinkedIn all the time. Like, we wanna do AR, AI training for industrial robotics, because industrial robots are gonna be so big, and they need to be trained faster.
Jenny:And I'm like, look. Every roboticist that I know is trying to make their robot work out of the box.
Nate:Mhmm.
Jenny:Like, I'm gonna take it out of the box, and I'm gonna just connect it to the Internet, and then it's gonna work. Right?
Chris:Yep.
Jenny:That is the level of expectation that the customer has. And it varies a little bit depending on what the industry vertical is, but the days of you needed to go through a four year apprenticeship program to work a CNC machine, I mean, no one is designing hardware for that level of workforce development training. Yeah. And so there's a huge disconnect there, and I think it's really important. Like, nobody's talking about it, and I'm seeing it from so many different angles right now.
Nate:100% agree with you. And that's why there's so much investment in world model development. Right? So you can kinda just preload these robots with that, and then you don't have to, like, censor them up as much as you could in the past. I do just worry, though, that it's kinda like the VR conversation.
Nate:It's almost too early for that, and the expectations are gonna be misaligned. Like, yeah, the expectation is that it just works. So it's almost like IoT, right, in the assumption that you take it out of the box, easy to connect to the Internet, and suddenly you got a smart home. And, like, it did not work that way.
Chris:No. No. It still It
Nate:doesn't work. Still doesn't work that way.
Jenny:That's all pretty true. I wanna mention a company here. Shout out to Aison. Are y'all familiar with Aison?
Nate:No.
Jenny:They do automation in the hospital space, and they've got a robot that'll move carts and things around. She gives nurses and other staff more patient time. Right? Been in business over twenty years. They have the coolest help desk in the robotics space that I've ever seen.
Jenny:So they have thumbed down the maintenance on their program so much so that their help desk will see what's going on with the robot, and then they can call just a local mechanic or local freelancer to stop by the hospital and take panel one off, unplug b, plug it into a, and they don't need that person to have any more knowledge than following instructions. And so they use, like, a gig economy type website. They say, hey. These are the one that need maintenance. Go out.
Jenny:Fix these two things. If it doesn't work, send the robot back. But, like, that's how they've handled it, and it's so advanced in that space is to figure out how to do maintenance on our distributed robot. I think it's a model for success.
Nate:I love that. That sounds fantastic. Where are they based?
Chris:Are they in Pittsburgh?
Jenny:They're based here in Pittsburgh. Yeah. Of course.
Chris:You had to ask.
Nate:Sorry. I'm sorry.
Jenny:Is this a shame that they talk to other companies? No. They're in Pittsburgh. Wonderful wonderful team. Super innovative.
Jenny:And I think a lot of... Because they've been commercialized for so long, some of these newer startups need to look to these guys Mhmm. To say, hey. This is how we actually get to the customer, and this is how we actually maintain a sensible product.
Nate:Do you know if they rolled a external gig matching platform or if they built their own?
Jenny:I don't wanna speak on their behalf. Sure. Sure. Tell you, but they might be a great person to have on this podcast.
Nate:Yep. I think I think I would love to do that. That sounds amazing. So I'm very curious.
Jenny:Because the future of robotics is in everyday life, and the commercialization process is gonna need actual customer service. And so many companies are, like, barely scratching the surface on how that's gonna work. And so this is a direction that has been successful that I've seen.
Nate:Well, since we've now talked about three instances where timing was a key piece of the startup story, And, obviously, you've built a whole career around helping entrepreneurs self actualize and build teams and create successful businesses. How has this shaped the way you you work with entrepreneurs?
Jenny:Yeah. For sure. I've I've drifted a bit away from that. You know, the thing that I loved about helping an entrepreneur was, like, the human aspect of it. Right?
Jenny:It was, taking someone who had a dream and helping them to actualize that dream. That's a big part of entrepreneurship from a community lens. Right?
Nate:Mhmm.
Jenny:So when I left Active VR, I actually became the director of Pittsburgh for Venture for America and was able to spend two years helping other people have the same experience and impact that I had, get them settled here in Pittsburgh, especially during a pandemic, which was wild, help them get started a company, help them start businesses. And then I sort of fell in love with the talent part because helping an entrepreneur get that next best hire that's gonna revolutionize their team was seemingly just as rewarding to me at the time. So I pivoted a little bit into talent and and kinda kept it at that intersection. So then I went from Budget for America, did a short stint at a consultancy group that was doing QA testing for hardware. Really loved that, but it wasn't big enough of a role for me.
Chris:So what was the company? There's not enough testing in hardware, so perhaps this is an ad for them so people can build less shitty products.
Jenny:If you need testing in hardware, Rivers Agile is your organization. Ben Wilson is one of my favorite people in the planet. Amazing to work for, amazing to work with. They are doing some really cool things to get hardware companies ready for commercialization and growth. Yeah.
Jenny:But I was helping, like, had their... I was helping, like, fire more folks to their team and realized that was just... I don't know. It wasn't, like, wasn't hard enough. Mhmm.
Jenny:If that makes sense. Yeah. So, anyway, so that led me here to the Pittsburgh Robotics Network where I think I've really been thriving for the last three years.
Nate:When you joined Pittsburgh Robotics Network, was that right into hiring and team development, or did you enter through, like, another focus?
Jenny:So we were part of the Build Back Better grants Mhmm. Which was $62,700,000 for the Pittsburgh region to build a ecosystem for robotics and autonomous and AI sectors. As part of the SOW for the Pittsburgh Robotics Network, we were to be the industry liaison for the third project, which is expanded pathways to new economy careers. So how do we figure out what does industry really need? Do we make sure that training organizations understand that, job seekers understand that?
Jenny:How do we serve the companies to make sure we're doing matchmaking and really to give them a collective voice? They employ about 7,500 people in the region, but our largest employer is, like, 14,000. So individually, they weren't getting a seat at the table. But together as a collective, they could. So that's really a big part of my work at the Pittsburgh Robotics Network is making sure that they're represented, that they're benefiting, that folks have an access point to robotics.
Jenny:And so I was able to build up a number of programs all about, like, hey. How do we take this really complex thing and break it down into pieces and actually effort towards making it better?
Chris:Can you unpack that, like, in terms of is it businesses access to robotics, or is it the company's internal innovation team's access to robotics?
Jenny:Yeah. So we represent a 125 robotics companies in Southwestern Pennsylvania, what we call net new robotics and autonomous solutions. So it's not the adoptive community, like businesses that buy robots and then use them for something. Right? That's mostly in manufacturing.
Jenny:We're focused on the ones that are inventing. Right? So new autonomous vehicles, the new solutions like I was talking about with ASON, you know? And so they have very specific means depending on, like, where they're at in their journey all the way down to, you know, finding their first employee all the way up to finding their four hundredth. Right?
Jenny:And so we aggregate all of their roles into one place, into a job board where we then pull data off of that so we can start telling the story of what's happening, what their real needs are. There was a big disconnect between... Let me break this down. Okay? So the federal government does workforce development is focused on an O Net code, which is an occupational code that says, as a company, hire this individual to do this type of job.
Jenny:Those codes are then used for all types of funding and workforce development and talent. But also when you create an educational program, you have to say what ONAT code your educational program is for. An apprenticeship is for an ONAT code. Right? So ONAT is like the language of jobs from a government perspective.
Jenny:Now when you invent brand new technology, you also create jobs that don't fall into a clear cut O net code. You wanted to pull all the software engineers in Pittsburgh. Do we need more programs? Are there too many software engineers? Are there not enough?
Jenny:Right? Which is data that you then use to make strategic programmatic investments. You can't separate that by what's happening in deep tech. Because, sure, it's a software engineer, but it's a software engineer for perception for a physical AI product that they're doing something different, and it's not captured in ONAT.
Chris:You're operating on the fringe of reality, which is that system is looking at the past, and you guys are developing for the future. And so it's not represented in the dataset.
Jenny:Right. So where I lose my mind is on the technician side. A technician is an occupational code. There's multiple technicians within that, but there was this whole idea before the grant started of a robot technician. Right?
Jenny:That's the job of the future. But it's like, that's not the job title that I'm seeing in the deep tech community. That's maybe the technician level on the manufacturing floor. Even now, I'm seeing things like robot supervisor or an integration software engineer. These jobs, you couldn't see them.
Jenny:You couldn't understand how they're growing and evolving and changing, and therefore, state and federal programming could not impact them. And so we... You know, in our region, we had an issue where we created a robotic technician apprenticeship four years ago, and not a single soul has ever gone through the program. Because there's a complete mismatch Oh, boy. In what a robotic technician is for a deep tech company and what they thought it was going to be.
Jenny:And it's no shade on these organizations. I work with all these organizations like all have the best intentions. The problem is visibility. And so, you know, my hope is that in the next five or ten years, we create a whole new set of ONET codes specific to Robotics and Physical AI so that these things can start getting tracked and so the right investments go back to the companies to focus on talent development for what is the jobs of the future. But that is a complex system.
Jenny:This is kinda how I I explain it to folks sometimes. It's like, if you're an education or training organization and you've trained on certain skills, then they're tried and true. Like like, you've been playing checkers for a really long time. You're like, I understand the certification. I understand the skills.
Jenny:I get the instructor. We go. Right? But, like, deep tech is settlers of Catan. Like, you can figure out how
Nate:to play
Jenny:it, but if you've only been playing checkers, it's gonna take you a couple of years. Like, you don't even necessarily have access unless you have someone at the table who's played it before to even tell you, well, you need to be buying bricks or you need to be buying, you know, sheep or whatever it is in the game. So Yeah. Yeah. We had a lot of really well intentioned people that didn't understand the gap of knowledge.
Jenny:And the gap of knowledge is also made 10 times worse by things like O Net codes where we're not even tracking the right skills that these companies even need. So it's just a fascinating problem to start looking at, and all of it is to help the entrepreneur. Right? All of it is to realize these technologies and get them out into the hands of people.
Nate:Well, and at the end of the day, it's a problem of scale. Right? Because when you're deploying things at this scale and you're trying to reach this many people or this many companies, you ultimately have to, like, standardize things, like standard operating criteria and standard classifications. But then you have to update those, and you need to have some kind of regime for keeping those things abreast with reality and with the future. And, yeah, that's a really hard problem.
Jenny:Yeah. It is. It's all very complex. I mean, I think one of the first things I did when I started was created the Southwestern Pennsylvania Robotics Talent Advisory Committee, otherwise called RTAC. And then we allowed the education sector to come in to each one of our meetings to present curriculum that they're thinking about and let real people that actually hire say, look.
Jenny:I'm so sorry, but I would just never hire someone. But that's not enough for me to hire them. Right? Mhmm. And so that feedback loop and establishing that really early on has really helped to to make sure that there's, like, a bounce back because you can't...
Jenny:If you have 10 universities, each one of them can't have their own industry group. Right? This is what we do at the PRN. We also protect our companies from million apps and let them just kind of really funnel their answers through one place.
Nate:Pittsburgh is one of the crown jewel cities for robotics. Why is there a hiring challenge? Is it just a growth to people working in it misalignment? Or Yeah.
Chris:Is it
Nate:the classification piece?
Jenny:Yeah. So let me help you, like, kinda reframe this. We do not have a talent problem in Pittsburgh. We have an opportunity to talent map at a level that most cities couldn't fathom because of the number of jobs and people working in this space. And because we have access to mapping what the talent needs are of these companies, we have a responsibility to improve the ecosystem and the talent flow.
Jenny:So when a company I work with opens up a job description, right, they post online. I mean, they're getting two, three hundred applicants. Right? It's just not a volume problem. Right?
Jenny:It's a who are the real movers and shakers that are gonna be perfect for that job? That's what we're thinking about a little bit. And then also when it comes from a job seeker perspective, all the time, it's like someone from outside of region being like, hey. Like, I know robotics is like big in Pittsburgh. Like, what's going on?
Jenny:So we look through all the companies and what industry vertical they're in. We talk about what skill set they have. We match make into like, hey. This is a team that's a little bit more like hustle culture. This one's gonna be a little bit more like...
Jenny:And so I'm I'm like a concierge switchboard operator in this space. I'm not a recruiter, not a job placement specialist because a job placement specialist is like a kumbaya. Everyone wins. I send this... I just send this
Nate:For a matchmaker. Yeah. You're like me. You're a matchmaker.
Jenny:I push... I work to push people in the right direction, and I think our job board aggregating the open world to all these companies into one place. Don't have to search robot job Pittsburgh on LinkedIn and hope that robot is in the name of the job title or in the description of the company, and thus you then recognize it. You go to our job board, you see more than 300 open position right now today. And you click on a job, you go straight to their career page, and you apply to their system.
Chris:What's the link?
Jenny:Sure. It is robopgh.orgbackslashjobs. And it's one of the biggest accomplishments of my career, I think, because it just... Man, it just made everything so much easier for the job seeker.
Nate:When did you build that?
Jenny:I pitched the idea of a second week. It hasn't been organization. And then we had, you know, we had to go down a number of pathways to get the grant funding in order to do it. And it's in its MVP right now, and it will be rolling out on a larger scale this summer. I'm really proud of that.
Nate:Cool. Congrats. That sounds amazing.
Jenny:Thanks.
Nate:So, really, it's not about a talent problem. It's more about filtering and selection for the right people and the right companies. It's a matching problem.
Jenny:It's all about field gaps as well. So I run this thing called closing the skill gap workshops where I bring in industry and education faculty. We talk about, okay. If it's a machine learning engineer for deep tech, how is that different from a machine learning engineer at a bank? What skills do they need to be actually applicable into this space?
Jenny:And then how can you go back and then incorporate that into your classroom or into your programs? So we've got just a little bit more of people with that edge coming out of school. And so the hope is that we continue to create these pathways and a knowledge base and skill understanding and lists of the actual job title, which is something the state and federal government doesn't even understand, and be able to create a road map for other ecosystems to mimic what we've been doing from what we've been able to learn and build back better. So it's very different from this idea of, like, Sally, AI needs one more software engineer, and, like, can Jenny help that? Yeah.
Jenny:No. Like, I'm doing something I think that's different than that.
Nate:There's more context. It's not just a role to a resume. It's like a person to a team.
Jenny:Yeah. Look. If you go to the family barbecue on Memorial Day and you talk to your cousin and they're like, man, we just got this automation product. I'm so worried about my job. And you're, like, 25.
Jenny:Like, shit. I don't want that to happen to me. You should be able to Google how to get into this space. You should be able to figure out what the actual skills you need. You should be able to figure out what's actually unique or interesting about you or company, then you should be able to go in a direction.
Jenny:And right now, I don't think that that's true. And I think if we're gonna keep people from freaking out about robotics and automation, we're right on math panic. Like, you have to have access points. And that's what I think the state and federal government should absolutely be investing in, make sure that people don't get left behind or at least can find the information. Right?
Jenny:ChatGPT only gets you so far.
Chris:We were talking about this right before we jumped on, which was I wonder if the students that are graduating from CMU are booing the commencement speakers when they talk about AI. I don't think that happened at CMU this year,
Nate:did it?
Jenny:Well, I mean, it was the CEO of NVIDIA spoke. So that was, like, commencement speech. I wasn't there. So I couldn't tell you for sure that they didn't do him, but I don't think they do him. Carnegie Mellon plays such an important role in robotics and AI right now, and it's important to be investing in in young people because no one is.
Jenny:Right? Entry level positions were down 7% last year. They're trending to be down even more this year. The most unemployed group of software engineers are between the ages of 22 and 25 that just came out last week. Only 10% of the jobs I represent are entry level.
Jenny:So we got an entry level problem for sure. When you talk about fixing things or focusing on talent and helping talent, it's entry level folks that I think, man, I'm glad I'm tenured into my career. It's not what want.
Chris:So so the information that you're putting together, is that available online for folks, or is that something that you only get access to through the university system in Pittsburgh?
Jenny:Yeah. No. We just put out our most recent ecosystem study for 2026. You can find it at robopgh.org. It's under the about section called ecosystem profile, and it has a bunch of jobs data about the top skills, what folks are hiring for, really good information there about what's happening here in Pittsburgh.
Jenny:Absolutely recommend checking it out, getting a sense of how the companies have raised money and things too. It's all part of that.
Chris:That's great. We'll link to that in the description. Why do you think that there's only 10% of entry level jobs being posted or at least represented by your organization?
Jenny:So let's say you take a team and you give them all codex, more like AI tools. Right? And each first time a team becomes 20% faster, better, more productive, why would you need a sixth person? There's just a a change in investment, and, like, we're gonna go way on a tangent, but it would... You know, the tokens and the cost of tokens right now too in the development of this technology.
Jenny:You couldn't give your team a $100,000 more of tokens or you could hire a kid that's gonna, like, be useless for six weeks or six months. Like, you're you're just choosing to give the tokens to your team right now. So, hopefully, it counterbalances, but it's it's it's not for the weak. I meet with so many young people that can't get in.
Nate:Does that apply to hardware roles, though? You were just talking about copilot coding, and I've been using Claude for presentations and for web development stuff. But, like, firmware development, for example, not a good copilot for firmware development. Definitely not gonna be a good copilot for serious vision and perception work. You know?
Jenny:Right.
Nate:So, yeah, can you unpack that a little bit and how you're seeing that bleed into hardware teams? Because all I was hearing was software.
Jenny:Yeah. For sure. Well, I think that's important to understand the role of software on teams where the product is a robot. Like, if the product is a robot and you actually break down the teams, the number of people that are mechanical engineers on that team is actually way lower than you would think in comparison to the folks that are working on the perception, what they do with the data that they collect and things like that. And so Mhmm.
Jenny:I'm still seeing this play true right now is that people are just becoming 10% more effective, and they just... They don't need the last person. And I think one of the roles that I was the most surprised with being underrepresented on our job board was a straight up mechanical mechanical engineer. Engineer. And those jobs, especially in entry level, are harder to come by now than before.
Jenny:I think
Nate:Oh, yeah.
Jenny:People are really more focused on, like, not mechanical engineers, but something else that's like
Nate:Design engineering. That's a lot of what I was saying. And to your point, actually, yeah, you're right. If you're working on a perception stack, a lot of times you're building on some of these VLA models that have been produced by OpenAI. Like, I was talking to a very senior ML engineer from Zoox.
Nate:He works on their perception team, And he was like, yeah. We build on OpenAI stuff, open source OpenAI stuff. I was like, that's wild.
Jenny:Yeah. I mean, it's just... There's just a... It's a pendulum. It's swinging.
Jenny:Right? We saw the great resignation, then we thought, well, no one can get it. I don't know. It just... It bounces back and forth, and I think you have to be more nimble than ever before as a job seeker.
Jenny:You have to be more interesting than ever before. The bare minimum is not enough. Having a degree as a mechanical engineer is just not enough to get a job even anymore. Like, arguably, in that space, k, in deep tech, which is what I represent, right, where things are just so much... I don't know.
Jenny:It's just not enough. Like, you gotta keep doing other things. You do projects. You gotta get into the industry as early as possible, all that.
Nate:On that actionable tips for someone who's, like, early in their career or maybe at the entry level. But how are you thinking about approaching junior talents, entry level talent? I know there's not as much demand coming from the companies, but, obviously, there's supply because there's kids coming out of university. So how are you guys thinking about approaching that?
Jenny:Well, we we recently launched a program called the Deep Tech Institute that was trying to address these issues in two different ways, both on the senior level and on the entry level side. So we have an emerging leaders program and cohort that we now run where we take some of the brightest students from Carnegie Mellon, the University of Pittsburgh, Penn State, some schools in our area, and we put them through learning project management skills, learning to talk about yourself, to pitch yourself, to understand why you'd be a good fit for a role, why you wouldn't be a good fit. Leadership skill, communication skills, these other things that you need to be excellent. We have the top 5% of candidates. Right?
Jenny:And so we are in our first full cohort of that, and we're hoping that will then generate an extra, you know, 20 or 30 students that are more in that guaranteed pathway to having an entry level role in our region because we are adding those extra skills that the companies can feel more confident that they pull from our pool of applicants that they're gonna get somebody that really understands the business as well. And it's not just like, hey. Here's my little widget, and I'm gonna overengineer it because I don't understand where we're going at. Don't understand what the customer wants. Right?
Nate:Yeah. I was just saying to your point about pendulums, it's just so interesting how... Because everything you just described was probably described as soft skills in the past. Right? It's like how are you interacting with a team?
Nate:How do you work with people? How do you manage yourself and others when ten years ago, it's like, oh, you gotta become a software engineer. You gotta get technical. I went to grad school specifically to chase that, and now it's really about management. It's like a form of management.
Jenny:Yeah. I think it's commoditization of knowledge if the entry point and difficulty of attaining the knowledge bottoms out, which we're seeing a lot with AI just teaching you how to do something in five minutes that you would have taken a whole class on. Right? Now are you actually good at that thing? It's a whole different conversation.
Jenny:Right?
Nate:And is the AI actually good at it? Yeah.
Jenny:Wow. That's a different podcast for someone else to call it on. But if that becomes just easier user to attain, it's gonna be more about, like, do I want to work with this person? Is this person awesome? Can I give them anything?
Jenny:And they can knock it down? Right? Do they have this x factor of, like, I feel comfortable around them the first time we meet, I'm just excited for them to join the team? Like, can they critically think poor Gen z and Jen Alpha gets such a bad name for this? But then can you get past step one even if step one doesn't make sense and go on to step two?
Jenny:I call it the x factor. I think Venture for America was all about trying to find the x factor and then give you the skills, and I think we need to teach the x factor to more people in hardware and try to give them that that leg up.
Nate:I describe it as, like, a t shaped person. Like, you've got your really deep skill set, right, be it technical, be it communications, or whatever it is, but you gotta be able to go broad. Right? You gotta be able to wear a bunch of hats. It's kinda like the startup mindset, but really every job is that now.
Jenny:Yeah. It really is. I mean, you're gonna have to learn how to advocate for yourself more so than ever before, especially if we go into a gay economy or we're getting more and more people that are selling themselves into different roles. Like, your standardized tech resume is just not going as far as it used to when you open up a job and there's 300 people with the exact same five skills. Like, okay.
Jenny:What about you then? Right?
Chris:So what would your recommendation be then to, you know, the Cardi Mellon graduate on landing their first role?
Jenny:Yeah. A couple of different things. I think networking is really important. Just freaking go to the city that you wanna go to and go to a couple of events. Knock on doors.
Jenny:Tell people that you're gonna be there before you even book the trip to see if someone will have coffee with you. You know? Like, all those networking strategies, I think, are important. I think figuring out, hey. Why am I great?
Jenny:Why am I unique? And then having not only a hardware version of your resume to come try to work at OpenAI, just submit that. Right? But also having a storytelling version of your resume that says, like, I am this person doing this thing for this reason. Right?
Jenny:I think that's really important. I always tell them to, like, treat it kinda like dating. So, you know, the company has a checklist. And what do you fulfill on that checklist? What do you not fulfill on that checklist?
Jenny:And how are gonna pitch yourself to them? Like, let's say you're at a cafe and you're like, hey, Jenny. Like, will you go on a date with me? I think you're cute. Like, the person would be like, what?
Jenny:So when you walk up to someone in a networking event and you go, hi. I need a job. I'm a student. They're like, I don't wanna talk to you. Like, what do you mean?
Jenny:Like, versus if you're, like, at the cafe and you're like, hey. I saw you were reading. Like, I love books. Do you like books? Like, we've got a really awesome bookstore on the street.
Jenny:I'd love to take you some time. Right? You suddenly, like, start to have a relationship with that person. And then if you're at a networking event, should never open up the conversation with, hi. I am a student or hi.
Jenny:I'm a job seeker. It should be, hey. I'm in hardware. What are you doing? Oh, cool.
Jenny:You're in hardware too. That's often what product you're working on. Have a conversation. Be a normal person because these young people get desperate and they become untouchable. Like, you watch them at a never even event, you're like, god damn.
Jenny:Don't go over here. You know? It's a bummer, but you've gotta learn to get past that.
Nate:I think
Jenny:I don't know.
Chris:Distill down, it's don't be a job seeker. Like, be an interesting person and interesting things will come to you.
Jenny:Yeah. And you have to figure out what is interesting about yourself. I mean, go through your preferences. I worked with a guy, Aaron. His degree was close, but not perfect for a company.
Jenny:But, man, he loved to bike, and this is a company doing bike technology. And he was just like, I love it. Can I test your product? This is so cool. I'm really interested.
Jenny:I think this is the future of biking. And then I got to talking to him, and they found something for Evan to do. And it's just like that the future of jobs in a world where everyone's AI resume slot can get not keyword searched the other resume. And, you know, the job descriptions are slopped. Be a person and they see a AI slop.
Chris:So the job board that you run, would you not suggest submitting your resume to the job board because it's just gonna be in there with all the AI slop?
Jenny:Well, no. I mean, you have plenty of jobs. Just don't do the spray and pray approach where you just see how many hundreds of resumes you can send out. You're not changing your resume in any way. You're not even looking to see if you actually are matched to the job.
Jenny:You're just doing it based on titles. Like, that's what I wouldn't do. I would figure out like, hey. Okay. I'm really interested in this type of product.
Jenny:Right? So I'm gonna Google. I'm gonna AI search all the companies that I think are doing that in the city that I'm most excited about. Then I go on LinkedIn. I'll follow all those companies.
Jenny:K? Then as people are posting another company, I'm gonna comment. And maybe someone from the company will comment back, and then I'm gonna send them a request. And so, like, you do more of, like, a human element, and then you also need to be applying as well. But don't apply to more than one role on the same day at the same company.
Jenny:You get rejected. You... Unless it's from different... Completely different teams, man. That's the biggest mistake people are seeing.
Jenny:And I talked to Artack about this, the committee I run. And they're like, yeah. You'll get blocked, and they'll never look at your resume ever again.
Nate:I love how fired up about this you get.
Jenny:I could talk about this stuff all day long. Like, yeah. The networking thing is just so big for me. Like, just don't be that person at a networking event. It's like, hi.
Jenny:I'm a job seeker. Do you have a job? It's so abrasive, and it's so boring to be around.
Chris:It sounds like that's happened a lot to you. Like, how often are folks coming up to you and introducing themselves and looking for a job?
Jenny:Oh, I mean, run happy hours. So, like, mostly constantly. It's okay for me. I don't mind in a
Nate:day throughout the day?
Jenny:Yeah. Yeah. On LinkedIn and via email and all that, which is fine. I am, at some level, a public servant in that I want people to be happy and get where they wanna go. But I just think people don't understand how to anchor their story.
Jenny:Like, it is so important to decide what is someone gonna learn about me in the first five minutes of meeting me. They do not need to learn everything about you, and they don't even need to learn things about your past. Like, if you are transitioning into a new career path, stop describing yourself as whatever the heck you were before the transition. If you were a SaaS salesperson and you wanna now sell cars, like, you know, I... I'm in the automotive space.
Jenny:I'm really excited to be, like, doing car sales. Reanchor yourself. Right? The same as if you go on a date with someone and they're like, oh, I was in a ten year relationship and my parents are divorced. And, like, why are you anchoring yourself to that?
Jenny:And then never gonna be when you have two minutes to make an impact on someone and you anchor yourself to bullshit. They only remember you for what you said and not who you are or where you wanna be. And man, oh, man, is that a lesson I've been just feeding into the heads of as many people as possible.
Nate:Well, especially when you spend so much time investing in others and trying to help them create a future for themselves and then to see them, like, shoot themselves in the foot.
Jenny:Yeah. But am not a miracle worker. I cannot get you a job because you want one. I can show you a path, and then you have to do all the rest of the work. Right?
Jenny:I'll tell you who I think is most likely respond to you on LinkedIn if you reach out. Right? But I provide zero warm interest to job seekers. You guys gotta figure it out on your own. There's only so much I can do.
Chris:Damn. That's cold. You should sell a course.
Jenny:We are. So... Okay. Chain of plug. We are rolling out a short curriculum this summer called the Robotics Career Compass.
Jenny:And it will be five videos filled with my hot takes on what you should and shouldn't do when you want a job in this space.
Chris:So But how do you make money from that? I'm trying to think of selling a course to students.
Jenny:Chris, I work for a nonprofit. I don't make money doing anything.
Chris:No. But, like, the the advice that you're giving, like, you have the persona, especially in robotics. Right? This industry is growing. You could be the face of that.
Chris:Be like, hey. If you wanna get a job in robotics, here's a course for a $100. And you start dropping all this content.
Jenny:I thought about creating a fellowship in Pittsburgh. People coming in to do deep tech where I help get them placed. Cool. And then for a year, I work with them to make sure that they have an awesome life once they're here. But senior focused.
Jenny:Like, elder millennial, she wish they could relive their dorm days.
Nate:Elder millennials. Oh my god.
Jenny:They, like, want the experience.
Nate:So old. Chris, are you an elder millennial or are you Gen X?
Chris:I'm a xennial. So
Nate:He's a xennial.
Chris:I'm technically on on a calendar. I'm a millennial, but I don't associate with their shenanigans. So... Yeah.
Jenny:I'm a little closer to Gen Z, but I just think, like, man, if everything bottoms out, what's gonna matter? Like, being near people that you like, having great experiences, working somewhere where, like, you think it's cool to be there every day where they want you to be there every day. Like, the world needs more drivers. The passengers are pretty screwed right now. How do we keep those people really happy and bring them to our city and get them to move the needle for the companies that I care so much about?
Jenny:Right? So that's not something I'm playing around with. I just don't know if there's a business model for that. Anyway
Nate:What's the advice that you're giving to these teams when they're hiring?
Jenny:Yeah. I mean, I I try to nudge them in the right directions, but my job is to serve them and to serve their needs well. I try to connect them as much as possible to the other resources. So, like, you know, I've worked with companies that are like, aren't even using an applicant tracking system. So I'm like, okay.
Jenny:Let's get you to stop submitting resumes via email. Let's get you, like, actually thinking about what you're looking for. So get some really good questions, you know, like, on the application so you can learn a couple of things about somebody really fast. You know, different strategies like that. Sometimes that's for just like, hey, man.
Jenny:Like, you are acting this way and everyone else in the ecosystem is acting that way. And like, that's why the last three great candidates all turned on your offer because, like, you're doing these three things and they're not... They're never gonna go for that because they could get a job here or here. So I pull them in to, like, meet the deep tech students as well. I don't know.
Jenny:I have to think about their needs and serving their needs before I think about what's best for the ecosystem. That's secondary. But I wanna make their job easier. That's my whole thing is how do I make their job easier? How do get them to the right candidate faster?
Jenny:How do they get access to workforce development dollars to offset the cost of the next team that they need to have? Right? I mean, I think it is a very scary world out there for recruiters too. People don't get that, like, how hard it is. Sometimes they don't even get paid unless you are the absolute best fit.
Jenny:So when you're pitching yourselves at like two thirds or one third good for the role, and you're like, the recruiter hates me. It's like, no, man. The recruiter has a job to do and you're not making it easier. You're wasting their time. Yes.
Jenny:It's like, stop applying to jobs because you have absolutely zero qualifications for it. It's such a waste. Everyone's so bored of it. And so they're using more AI tools because they're sick of looking at you. You're making it worse.
Nate:Exactly. And it just all rolls downhill from there.
Chris:I love the honest energy.
Jenny:Really doesn't give me in that any trouble. But... No. I mean, this is what I like to do. I'm one of the two that I'm the same at a bar as I am at a conference room.
Jenny:I care deeply about this stuff. I think there should be more visibility into it. I think it should be easier. I think a job changes someone's life completely. I believe in creating opportunities for myself and others, and I'm very lucky to love what I do.
Chris:What's your pitch for Pittsburgh? We have a lot of folks that are in deep tech or deep tech adjacent. Right? What's the pitch for Pittsburgh?
Jenny:Pittsburgh is the robotics capital of the world. And if you wanna be where it's happening, you have to be in Pittsburgh. I think we've proven that out. We have the first robotics education program in the world. We have the number one robotics master program in the world, and that shows in the number of companies and the number of people working in the space in Pittsburgh.
Jenny:I think it's a great place to live. I love it here. I've got a little basset hound named Mildred, and we utilize all the parks. And I've got a great group of friends here. I think it's a very friendly and open place.
Jenny:You get an East Coast hustle, but even Midwestern nice. It's a place where a parking spot can be saved by a folding chair. It's like famous in Pittsburgh. Like, you you put out a chair and your neighbors are like, alright. We won't park there till you come back.
Jenny:Right? It's a nice place. And having community, having people that are... Like, my committees and things, we openly share. We are all technically fighting them for the same talent.
Jenny:We're chatting. Oh, hey. I couldn't hire that guy. You should check him out. Right?
Jenny:People care. And if you wanna be in an environment where people care and you wanna be in a place where it's happening, I think Pittsburgh is the right spot.
Nate:I hear the food is really good too. Very international.
Chris:Yeah. Peace, love, and donuts started in Pittsburgh.
Jenny:That is true.
Nate:Did not know that. Yeah. That was a great pitch for Pittsburgh.
Jenny:Come on over. We'd love to have you.
Nate:Yeah. I I actually wanna make it out there as soon as possible. I'm gonna try to go out for the Robotics Discovery Week. I think that sounds like an amazing time to be out there.
Chris:When is that?
Jenny:It is September 16. It is at the Convention Center in Downtown Pittsburgh. Attending the event is free. It's a full one day event. So come on in for the event and then stay and be able to have some good meetings and things the rest of the week.
Jenny:There's a lot of other events happening at Carnegie Mellon and some other things. So the best place to find out more is just to join our newsletter. But, yeah, we have the robotics, AI, technology, manufacturing focus.
Nate:I always like to ask, what are you reading these days? Like, are there books or it could be, like, article series that you're really into that you'd like to share with the audience?
Jenny:Twenty four seven Robotics. Have the great number of blogs and posts and things that they put out, so I'm a huge fan. Really just an avid LinkedIn scroller. So I believe that everyone should spend twenty minutes on LinkedIn every single day. Replace some of your other scrolling time, follow the orgs, follow people.
Chris:What's in your feed? Because everyone's feed is different. It drives me crazy. My father-in-law is like, did you see that thing on LinkedIn? And I'm like, every day, I'm like, your feed and my feed are not the same.
Jenny:I follow as many companies and people and influencers in this space. I like to hear about the tech that's coming out as early as it becomes available. I like to follow as many small startups as possible. I'll go into an exhibitor list from an event I've been at, and I'll follow every single company to hear directly what their news is, and I think it keeps me really informed. It also really helps me to see what jobs are being posted from outside of our region, what other companies are hustling towards or struggling to fill.
Jenny:Like you're saying, I think, really in the know from a very organic perspective. I'm not waiting for that to hit news. Right? And then I guess the last thing I'd say is just shameless plug for Andrew Yang's book about how smart people should build things. It would revolutionize my life and most of my career I owed, Venture for America, and to Andrew Yang for giving me a lens to see this work through.
Jenny:So that's my plug. Read all of Andrew's books. The war on normal people are also fantastic.
Nate:If he runs again, are you gonna volunteer or canvas?
Jenny:Yeah. I think Andrew is such a fun person. Have you have you guys met him? No. You met him before?
Jenny:No. Oh, you have to meet him sometime. I mean, we could we could talk for hours about what's happening on particular lens, but I'm gonna I'm gonna put a pin in that and just do that. I drink the Kool Aid. So
Nate:Hey. Double tap on LinkedIn. Why LinkedIn over other platforms?
Jenny:Oh, LinkedIn is just so much more focused on professional content or gaining knowledge with every scroll on LinkedIn, I think. If you curate it right in comparison to being on, like, TikTok or Instagram, there's also a sensationalization of robotics on Instagram and TikTok that's like, let's watch a humanoid do a cartwheel. It's like Mhmm. Okay. That wasn't useful for any industry vertical.
Jenny:Thanks. Versus on LinkedIn, you're actually gonna get what's happening. You hear from people on how they're changing jobs, where they're going. Nice. I'm a huge advocate for LinkedIn.
Nate:Job postings? Yeah.
Chris:What do you think about, like, the AI slop that's in all of the LinkedIn feeds where it's like, I had a shower thought. Let me throw together 500 words for my
Nate:LinkedIn followers. Feed. You just haven't curated it well.
Jenny:If you post it directly like that, I will not read it. So I just skip it. I don't care about, like, why walking your dog this morning was comparable to B2B SaaS.
Chris:How many emojis are tolerable for your LinkedIn posts?
Jenny:Three or less. You should be posting so infrequently that when you post something, people like, oh, man. What do they have to say? And it should just be like a a bam. And it should always have a photo in conjunction to what you're trying to say.
Jenny:And, you know, the best way to do it is to say something in three sentences and lead them somewhere else. Else. Right? But, yeah, following the companies gets you a lot less AI slap. Because, I mean, man, a small startup will post four times a year and only when they...
Jenny:Something really big happened for them. So best way to know things that other people don't. Silicon Valley also has a fantastic newsletter. It's through LinkedIn. It's very, like, hyper focused on, like, the trends right now.
Jenny:So Silicon Valley Robotics Network, I'd recommend following on LinkedIn and joining their newsletter for the latest and greatest of things happening in The Bay.
Nate:Specifically pertaining to robotics. And they're also very active at Circuit Launch, which is a great robotics focused coworking space out here as well.
Jenny:Very cool there.
Nate:Awesome. Anything else where people could go to meet you, to meet other members of the Pittsburgh Robotics community, or just to be plugged into robotics.
Jenny:If you're in the robotics space, consider joining ARM. ARM is a really cool organization, ARM Institute. They put on a members only event that's in November that I think is excellent. I had some really good workforce data as well about what's happening on the intersection of robotics and manufacturing. I think there's some really good women robotics event.
Jenny:There's a chapter on most cities these days. So take a look at that too or start your own chapter. Takes like twenty minutes and maybe a phone call and you can have your own. And the people that run it are great.
Chris:What's your biggest contrarian view about robotics and AI?
Jenny:I absolutely think the humanoids are gonna happen. So all the PCs, they're like, it doesn't have to look like human. I just think it's I'm Thara. I've been in this space for a while. I've seen where the investments are at.
Jenny:I'm watching it right now. I'm watching the tech that's gonna be getting now. It's not gonna happen for a while yet, but there'll be a bubble that burst before it's real life. But the humanoid, they're absolutely coming. And we will see them in our lifetimes, and we will own them like we own cars.
Jenny:And we can circle back on that in the podcast in ten years when my predictions crack or wrong. I guess... You can call me out, but but... Yeah. And and the the coolest thing that I ever heard from someone else is they explain it to me like the auto industry.
Jenny:Just like there's certain kinds of trucks and cars that are for business versus for a person, and there's all different designs and all different types. There's huge industry behind maintaining cars and customizing them. That is what the humanoid market will look like at peak or at steady state. And I'm like, man, that's the world I'm excited to live in.
Nate:It does sound pretty rad.
Jenny:Can I say one more thing? The robots are not coming for your job. Okay? You're fine. Like, relax and chill out and enjoy the technology as it rolls out.
Nate:Learn how to work with the technology. That's gonna be the unlock for you just like with these AI tools. Yeah. And how could people stay in touch with you and follow along with what you got going on?
Jenny:Well, we already know that LinkedIn is kinda my favorite thing. So, yeah, come connect with me there for sure. I'm very friendly. Our newsletter so you can see what's happening with the org. Check out our job board as well.
Jenny:Kinda stay up to date with that if you're a job seeker for the most part. If you just message me on LinkedIn and say, like, we have a relevant conversation about, hey. I'm a job seeker. I'm thinking about Pittsburgh. I will give you my Calendly, and we will have a thirty minute meeting, and I will discuss what's going on here where you might be a good fit.
Jenny:I really do that for, like, just about everyone that reaches out to me. You can thank the federal government for the funding for that.
Nate:Thank you for Jenny's time.
Jenny:Well, thank you, Biden. You. But
Nate:Thank you, Biden. This was fun. Thank you for taking the time to do this with us.
Jenny:Thank you both so much for letting me just come on and ramble about the things I care about for the last two hours. I really appreciate you both listening.
Chris:It's been fun. Thank you for the time. TRADEOFFS is hosted and produced by Chris Rill and Nate Padgett. Editing done by the illustrious Alex Michael. Our logo is designed by the talented pixel alchemist, Tanya Sheikha.
Chris:If you'd like to be a guest on the show, reach out to us on our website at tradeoffs.fm. If you made it this far, please rate and subscribe to the pod. Nate and I appreciate your support.
