305 - HR Alone Can't Create High Performance: Amy Schwartz, Head of Global HR at Wiz
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
And then money started becoming more expensive. The talent market flipped on his head. And there was this massive pendulum swing from creating great employee experience to creating a high performing culture. Not that we've left employee experience behind, but the new remit for HR leaders became high performance. Everyone is talking about AI right now, but like this hasn't gone away. Creating a high performance culture is now just like another bullet on the mile long list of expectations of every HR leader. I've been thinking about it a lot because I've been hiring a lot. And I think there's nothing like hiring to make you get really clear about your goals. Like having to articulate to a stranger your company culture and your goals in an interview is a really great forcing function.
Everyone should do it periodically. And as I've been going through that, I've been reflecting on Wiz and I realized that Wiz by every objective metric is the highest performing company that I've ever worked for. But I have never heard anyone at Wiz. talk about creating a high-performing culture. And when I share my vision for my people function with candidates, I don't tell them that we're creating a high-performing culture. I tell them that we have
one. You're listening to the Modern People Leader podcast, where we go behind the scenes with today's top HR leaders and work experts. We talk to them about how they've gotten to where they're at, what they do every day, and what they see coming next for the future of work. Hope you enjoy. Amy, welcome to the podcast. How you doing?
Hi, I'm great. Thank you for the welcome. Happy to be here.
If I think back to some of my favorite episodes from the last couple of years, it's whenever we have somebody on that actually listens to the podcast. And we have an NPL listener here with us today. And so I'm really excited for this one. I feel like I feel like the vibes are always good. You kind of understand like the inside jokes, you know, like our personal backgrounds, you know, about the kiddos. And so welcome to the pod and we're happy to have you.
I'm an NPL super fan. I share your episodes with my team all the time for like inspiration or discussion. So honored, thrilled to be here. And yeah, we also are all in club having babies. Like I was going to say club kids under one, but Daniel, you're
not in
that club. Exactly. So having babies sounds weirder, but we all have young kids and maybe aren't sleeping through the night. So it's going to be a good time.
Yeah. Agreed. Well, we start every episode with good news stories, as you know, and we like for our guests to go first. So if you have something, please go. If you need to think, then I'm sure me and Stephen could think of something.
Speaking of Club Baby, my good news story is that my daughter, Margo, who's eight months, just started crawling this week.
What early experiences shaped Amy Schwartz’s career path before joining Wiz?
And not only did she start crawling, but she started doing it in the most Amy way of all time, which is that she crawled across her room to her cactus bookshelf and started pulling out books. I love to read. So I was like, she's her mother's daughter. Give me a big
reader.
Yes, exactly. Already is. Already is. Grumpy monkey, get out of here. It's a daily driver for us.
Steven, you want to go next?
Yeah, I can go next. I'm going to go, well, I'll go work and personal. So work, good news. I'm out of terminal. I've literally been working in the terminal for like two days now. And this is, I have done a bunch of vibe coding, like not NPL. And this was the first like major vibe coding sprint I had all back in. like yucky back end work. And as Daniel knows, because we had the success messages and slack, I always do a crying emoji whenever it like I get my first successful test, it works. And so I will take that as a win to close out the week because today we're recording on a Friday. My personal good news, we were talking about this before we hit record. So today is the first official day of summer for Austin, Texas middle and high schoolers.
And my daughters are super excited. It doesn't always happen on a Thursday, which is the day that I have my daughters.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–2:39
2
What early experiences shaped Amy Schwartz’s career path before joining Wiz?
2:39–4:35
3
How did Amy transition from casino leadership development to senior HR roles in tech?
4:35–6:19
4
Why does Amy say HR alone can’t build a high‑performance culture?
6:19–8:02
5
What does ‘influence is the work, not HR systems’ mean for leaders?
8:02–11:49
6
How does the ‘Pick Up the Trash’ philosophy translate into everyday leadership at Wiz?
11:49–16:16
7
What are the core HRBP operating principles and expectations Amy set for her team?
16:16–24:38
8
How can people‑ops be treated as a product using MVP thinking and design thinking?
24:38–51:44
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from The Modern People Leader: Forward-Thinking HR
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