Welcome to FullStack HR, and an extra welcome to the 72 people who have signed up since last week.
If you haven’t yet subscribed, join the 11 800+ smart, curious HR folks by subscribing here:
Happy Tuesday,
This week’s piece is a bit of a mixed bag!
1. Iceland and a stop at 50skills
Let’s start with last week. The kids had their autumn break (höstlov, for my fellow Swedes), so we went to Iceland. If you’ve never been to Iceland, it’s an unbelievable experience. Fantastic views, fantastic everything, in every direction and from every perspective.
While I was there, I also took the chance to swing by my favorite Icelanders at 50skills. I’ve worked with 50skills for a long time. Part of the reason is that they’re very, very nice people with their hearts in the right place, which I think matters a lot these days, when everyone seems to be rushing toward everything at once.
But the second, or rather the main, reason is that they have a fantastic platform where you can easily build agentic HR workflows in a safe and secure way.
I often get asked, “Can’t I just build that myself with Claude Code, ChatGPT, or Codex?”
Yes, you absolutely can. If you’re willing to put in the time to build a compliant version of whatever you want, no problem.
But the problem is time. Most of us don’t have the time or the patience. That’s the whole thing with 50skills. You need to know next to nothing, and there’s a history you can go back and look at afterward.
And just so you know, nobody paid me to write this. It was fun to say hi, and when you’re in Iceland anyway, you might as well swing by.
2. Ethan Mollick has a new book out
I have publicly admitted that I’m an Ethan Mollick fan boy and I’ve read his first wrote Co-Intelligence maybe 9 times? Now his second book, Co-Existence, is out, and I’ve listened through it one and a half times so far.
And of course, I think it’s great. But it’s also tricky, because he preaches what I preach to an extent where I’m no longer sure where Ethan ends and Johannes begins. Of course I’m influenced by him, I’ve followed his work since early 2023 and I think I was one of the first to sign up to his newsletter here at substack. But still, the book IS great.
He’s one of the few people from academia who practices what he preaches. Why so few? I don’t think anyone has a good answer. If I may say so myself, I try to be the same.
It’s hard, though. Testing and practicing with these models takes a lot of time, energy, will, and drive. I’ll admit it goes up and down for me too. But I always try to push, both myself and my clients.
That’s what Ethan does so well. He talks about this from an academic perspective, but also from a practical and relatable one.
A must read if you are even remotely interested in the future of work.
Third time lucky?
Books like that make me want to write my own. I’ve blown two book contracts along the way (don’t ask me how pls), one Swedish and one English. I didn’t have the time. Or, probably, the interest.
But if someone out there is up for a third attempt, I’d gladly write a book about AI and HR. I already have a draft of the HR part, so it mostly needs updating. And I’d love to write it in English. That first English-language book deal came via this newsletter so, maybe there is someone out there who would want to give me a third chance…?
3. Four models, four HR tasks
Speaking of testing things, I’ve been picking up the pace on YouTube again!
One of the most common questions I get is which model I like best right now. So I ran a head-to-head test. Four models, four HR tasks. You’ll find it on the YouTube channel.
I’ll try to keep the channel going, because recording for YouTube is a lot of fun!
Looking for podcast guests
I’ll also keep recording the podcast. I’ve asked before who wants to come on, and I have a list to work through.
What I’m looking for is practitioners inside companies. I’m most curious about what people are doing internally. Maybe you’re building something in-house, maybe you’re using AI inside your company in some other way. If you’re up for sharing, get in touch.
Coming up
I’m also working on a longer series about designing HR from the ground up. More on that soon.
That’s it for this week!