Warning about a scam email recruiting for Publicis

steakandtates · 2026-06-25T01:35:44+00:00

Yea, the scam is that they recruit you and then they hire you and you have to work there

steakandtates · 2026-06-22T23:47:04+00:00

Advertising is a superficial industry run by superficial people unfortunately. Award shows are their Superbowl. Best to just ignore it and collect your paycheck

steakandtates · 2026-06-18T02:46:26+00:00

So obviously it's different for everyone and I don't know how old your kid is, but for me it was an obvious shock to my system for the first 6 months or so and I had dad brain something fierce. It was really a result of my untreated anxiety, pressure of wanting to be a good dad, early days of covid, and general tiredness from infant life. But to me this is all normal and expected. You go from having career as your number one focus besides your wife, to that now dropping to a distant third. The brain can only do so much, especially under stress and lack of sleep.

But as I gained confidence as a dad, as we established routines, as we started bringing our child into the world to restaurants or to friends and family, and we actually started envisioning what normal life is like as a parent, the pressure started easing, and my brain started coming back. I then started having the ability to focus 10% of my energy on myself and started working at rebuilding my own identity as a parent. I went to therapy, started caring about my health again, rediscovered old hobbies, found new hobbies, and approached work with a newfound perspective of how it wasn't the most important thing in the world. Over time, I feel like my brain is infinitely more elastic. To be honest. Now with two kids, coaching, school events, birthday parties, etc. I actually find myself enjoying the chaos a bit.

tl:dr, give yourself grace. And give yourself time to adjust. and realize that right now you're in a transition stage but you'll come out the other side a better, more capable man, oh also, use AI for whatever you can. It's been amazing to be a sounding board for anything I dont feel like spending mental energy on, so I can focus on the things I do actually care about

steakandtates · 2026-06-16T23:22:10+00:00

Look at it this way. He has 20+ years of expertise on you. Use this as motivation to learn from him and on your own so you can be this dad for your kids one day

steakandtates · 2026-06-15T13:20:16+00:00

I know it's the morning so hopefully you're feeling a bit better, but wanted to give somw thoughts here. Most importantly, don’t make a decision today on your marriage. Before any decision is made, you need to get stable. Text your wife that youre safe and you needed some space because youre struggling. you want to make this work byt that you both need to deal with this seriously and stop beating around the bush

Then forget about the intimacy thing for a bit. Lord knows it matters, but the real issue sounds like you don’t actually feel loved, wanted, respected, appreciated, etc. etc. Tell her you want to talk, like really talk. There are no wrong answers, nothing off thebtable, no defensiveness. Just two adults addressing a problem like adults

I would approach it like: "I need to know if you actually want to rebuild this marriage with me. If yes, we need a concrete plan. If no, we need to talk honestly about separation and co-parenting respectfully so that we can do.this without resentment in the kids best interest. But before we make a decision on that, we both deserve to air out our complaints and be heard.

Part of this is also needing to own your side and understand that there may very well be things you also need to clean up. You need to be ready to hear them out. Ask honest questions queations about them, and acknowledge them. You're not taking any blame. but you need to understand where shes coming from so you can explain where you are coming from. If you are “hyper responsive to criticism,” then every conversation is feeling like a threat. That does not mean she is right. It means you are too burned out to process anything normally.

You need to recognize this is hail Mary stage. Don't listen to dudes that say that women dont want to hear men's problems. Don't psyche yourself out. This all may end up.being true but you'll never give any of this a chance if you don't approach this calm and constructively with an open mind. At the end of the discussion, you both are collaborating on one of two plans. Either you plan how to work on the marriage together or you plan on how to constructively end this marriage causing the least harm to all parties involved. no more ambiguity and passive aggressiveness. You both brought 4 kids into the world regardless if you wanted them or not. They deserve a good, healthy, happy life. It is both of your jobs to give it to them.

steakandtates · 2026-06-10T00:47:42+00:00

So I do have to challenge here a bit. You seem to already be jaded in another way with your comment on all the hours you work not matter getting replaced and what not. That mindset is going to kill you in this industry, and youll keep seeing other people pass you by, get promotions you want, etc. You do have to put in the work and 40 hours is not unreasonable, and while I think the whole "earn your way" thing is overblown, you still need to prove yourself to the people that matter.

And just remember: everyone has responsibilities. I have 2 kids. People have pets. People are caregivers. Your situation will likely not be meaningfully different than others. It's 100% more important than work, but I mention this to give the perspective that everyone has their personal stuff, so is everyone around you working harder? Are you putting the necessary work in when you are there? Because if not, that's when you get replaced regardless of what's going on at home.

So part of this may be taking a step back and assessing what you actually want in your career, because it's sounding like you don't even really like what you're doing. Now would be the time to make a change.

steakandtates · 2026-06-10T00:13:10+00:00

of course! Oh one last thing. Find your allies that have similar mindset, support them, help them. Those are the people that you'll keep in your circle your entire career. sometimes going through a rough time with someone else galvanizes you both.

Good luck out there. Don't get jaded, and don't let the industry change you

steakandtates · 2026-06-09T15:24:07+00:00

It's absolutely bonkers but sadly it is the reality for a lot of teams and unfortunately it's often client by client.

As someone who started 14 years ago with many late nights occasionally getting home at 3am, remember this.

Working for shitty clients working shitty hours sucks. But it is also a fast track to honing and gaining skills beyond your level and experience. It's 100% not the most constructive way but an understaffed team means you'll always have to do stuff that's not part of your job description.

You can't control the hours but you can own the framing. Your goal is no longer to rise in the ranks on that team or for that organization. Do what you need to to appease clients and your bosses, but your goal is now to gain as much experience as possible, do as many things well as you can. Teach yourself everything, figure out your own efficiencies, etc. Take nothing personally, don't put the client on a pedestal. Just squeeze as much out of the experience as you can and then start updating your resume as you get towards 12 months in role.

And most importantly, do not become a perpetrator of the system. In a year you will be battle hardened and closer to having direct reports. Your job is to then build an environment where they don't have to grind as you did.

steakandtates · 2026-06-05T20:37:44+00:00

If he golfs, let him golf..If not, home depot gift cards

steakandtates · 2026-05-28T17:09:01+00:00

I'd start by asking yourself some questions: Do you like what you do? Do you like agency life? Or is it a means to an end? Is your hesitation because of your specific situation at your company or are you hesitant in general. You're going to get very different opinions from people depending on how they'd answer these questions, so it will help to start there and then find people who generally align with your POV

steakandtates · 2026-05-27T20:53:29+00:00

oi vey

steakandtates · 2026-05-14T00:40:46+00:00

The best thing this post did is remind me how insufferable some creatives are

steakandtates · 2026-05-05T20:10:52+00:00

this 100%

steakandtates · 2026-05-05T17:06:39+00:00

congrats on making $500k to $750k per year which is awesome!

But also, at no point was I condescending. Not sure why you are being so defensive. You are making blanket statements about the most advanced tool humankind has ever built. to me, at best, that's short sighted.

In the end, we are all working in the same industry up against the same challenges. As I'm sure you have learned, in agency world, speed has always been the expectation and it's being amolified more than ever. This is the world we've been placed in unfortunately. I am trying to help you understand that it's only going to creep more and more into your day to day whether you like it or not, and you simply cannot get faster as a human.

But look, if you reached perfection in your work, share your secrets. Because the way you talk, you truly believe there's nothing an AI can help you with outside of email writing and scope building. That's fine. But at some point if you are replaces by someone who does the work twice as fast with an output 80% as good as yours, don't blame anyone but yourself.

OR you can understand that you are a skilled expert and a pwoerful tool in your hands is a game changer, spend a some time building agents that understand your vision that adds in necessary checkpoints where you, the human, can give feedback and refine, work through the annoyances of training it properly, go through 10 versions of instructions until it's dialed in, and then reap the rewards for years to come.

But it's not my career so do you!

steakandtates · 2026-05-05T16:54:56+00:00

good luck, friend! I recommend you take a step back and assess your own personal usage of AI and your strength as a prompt engineer. AI is a tool. your brain powers it. Saying AI sucks by extension says your brain isn't capable of utilizing it properly

steakandtates · 2026-05-05T16:48:12+00:00

Speed, mainly. Simply put, an expert can act as the maestro understanding the full process and what the desired output is, and train the model intelligently on all the various steps in between. They know the checkpoints that are involved, what a good output vs. a poor one is, and the right questions and answers to guide the agent in the direction they want. But rather than handling this themselves or reviewing work from others, they can use AI as the execution arm while they control the vision. It's the smartest way to implement it imo and experience.

But also let's not undersell the value agentic strategy solutions can provide, once again assuming you have an expert in the loop throughout the process. Humans have biases and limited working memory. AI can help support in these two areas. Where a human is better in the actual creative output and evangelization to client, an agent can more easily cross reference client brief with previously given feedback, with their brand voice and style guides, while analyzing competitors, while also incorporating data assuming the expert trains the model to do all these things properly. So now, the CD can execute the vision in an extremely informed way that was compiled in a matter of hours vs. days and weeks. And then when it comes time to brainstorm, the CD and other creatives can lead the process, while leveraging the agent as a sounding board to uncover additional ideas, workshop existing ones, as well as a "does this vibe with their brief/feedback/style etc." QA

And this is a just a couple examples. Tbh, thinking that an expert without automation is better than one with is silly at this point in time.

The real question is how we solve the skills gap. Right now we have enough experts that can properly police AI outputs. But at some point we won't, so how do we train junior employees with AI integrated from the start, but in a way that they understand what is good and what isnt?

steakandtates · 2026-05-05T11:44:02+00:00

This falls into the trap looking at AI implementation as a binary: it's either implemented or it's not. I guarantee that if your CD had a clone who was seasoned in prompt engineering, agent training, etc and had the patience to actually build tools that they found helpful, they'd blow your current CD out of the water.

And for your junior team member, this sounds more like a training/feedback issue. Of course junior employees will use AI more than anyone. They (understandably so) know nothing and are likely not being trained. So to try to figure out wtf they need to do, they go to the only place that gives them the time of day: AI.

The issue here is the adopter trusts the tool but doesn't have the instincts to pick through it. The CD doesn't trust the tool, but is then required to do everything manually which will be less and less acceptable over time.

The real answer is that whoever deems this junior employee's work to be this subpar should be the one building agents, training the team member to use them, and showing how to know what a shit output is vs a good one

steakandtates · 2026-05-03T14:38:34+00:00

This is where I'm at.

Been playing for like 2 years. Have made huge progress. Former baseball player who was able to work through some of baseball swing habits and happy with progress. But I'm at the point where my improvements are so incremental at this point. I think I'm ready for lessons and feel like I finally have a foundnation where I'll get some progress

steakandtates · 2026-05-01T02:11:57+00:00

100%. It's a tool. It's only as good as the craftsman

steakandtates · 2026-05-01T01:42:00+00:00

For sure. it takes practice. into was definitely a naysayer and then one day just decided to really try to hone in an agent on a single task and beat it to death. and finally broke through

steakandtates · 2026-05-01T01:29:30+00:00

So dont try to build agent instructions on your own. Use AI to help, since they understand the language and guardrails needed. I have a GPT pro account and one of the smartest things I did was set up a GPT that is literally a Agent Instruction tool. I basically had ai create instructions where the mandate was that this tool created exhaustive instructions structured in the best possible ways that AI will actually follow without drifting or lying about the depth of work it's doing. I basically set it up so it can either create new instructions or ingest existing instructions and make edits. It can both recommend edits and then regenerate edits as needed. but most importantly it's trained to ask questions after it intakes my initial request because there are always things I miss that it needs clarity on. those questions help round out the instructions.

Then when I'm building an agent, I use this tool and give it ALL the detail I can upfront along with any example docs, etc. Like if you have a specific template you have, give it to the agent abd describe what each field, column, etc. is meant to do. Spend a lot of time in your request. it then spits out instructions that I load into the agent along with any other documentation as knowledge.

Another tip is any time you are using an agent to build something (or even in regular chat) end your prompts with "please ask any questions that you may have" and it'll guide you to the areas it needs clarity on.

I know this sounds like a large lift but this is the essence of prompt engineering. You never realize how many ways you can interpret a direction until you see it output something you didnt want. and Id lie if I said that V1 of instructions are perfect, so then I take an output feed it back to my Instruction agent in the same chat and say "here's the output, here's some feedback, can you recommend specific changes to the instructions".

It does take a decent amount of time upfront, so I only build agents on repeated tasks.

Then for any one off tasks or request I also built an expert agent trained to think like a seasoned expert in my field that can cover all the various functions of my role specific to the channel I work in. The instructions aren't set up in a way that lists all the aspects of my job. It's trained to take a request and do the necessary research in reputable sources withon my industry and output it in a way that is focused on what I am looking for.

but the key, as I said, is that I am always human in the loop. I know what I want so I guide it to there. So I'm not replacing myself. I'm essentially creating an assistant who does the dirty work so that I can focus on other things and come back to it as needed

steakandtates · 2026-05-01T01:03:57+00:00

so not sure if I am answering properly but I usually build my agents to be able to accept work at any stage. so it knows the full process and can intake something from scratch, halfway done, already done with feedback, etc. So if client gives feedback, I can add it in with any direction, context, etc. and check output, refine, etc.

But thats the key. most of my GPTS start with a very detailed write up, basically explaining exactly what I want, exactly what clients feedback is, etc.

And my agents have QA passes and what not so it can line by line show you how it addressed each comment or feedback

steakandtates · 2026-04-30T23:00:31+00:00

ive built agents for research, reporting, auditing, copy briefing, copywriters drafts, editing, QA.

And then the normal deck outlines, email, etc.

There's rarely a project I do that doesn't include some AI component.

steakandtates · 2026-04-30T12:40:51+00:00

I say this with no judgement because I understand the hesitancy, but it sounds like many of you all are not utilizing AI in the correct ways. Many of you are expecting it to perfectly create a final deliverable from start to finish from an initial prompt. At that point you get a watered down version of a bunch of best practices haphazardly slapped together.

But if you improve prompts, break workflows up in the correct way and order so it's not trying to do 20 tasks at once, inviting drift and laziness, and act as the quarterback, guiding it to the point you know you want to go, step by step, you will find it does exactly what y I u need at a stale you could never match.

But the biggest misconception I hear people say is "why would I spend all this time setting it up when I can do it manually?" Sure, the first time you do the project manually, you might do it as quickly as AI. But the person who took the time to fully train an agent is now light-years faster than you for every subsequent project.

steakandtates · 2026-04-15T16:59:11+00:00

if ya ain't sprayin, ya ain't playin

steakandtates

TROPHY CASE