“It's not a super sexy problem, but it's the foundation of everything.” | Ian Bailie, Synopsys' VP of People Strategy, on a best-of-breed skills stack

Most companies chase a skills strategy and end up with a portal nobody opens. Ian Bailie has built this twice, once at Cisco a decade ago, the hard way, and now at Synopsys, a 40-year-old company that just doubled in size and absorbed a $35 billion acquisition. His take is blunt: stop turning skills into an HR project. Lead with what AI is doing to the actual work, fix your job architecture first, and give people a reason to care before you ever ask them to touch a profile.

Timestamps

• 00:45 — The Kyle Forrest question: how to actually get HR, IT and finance in one room

• 02:30 — Why “we're HR, and we have the solution” is the wrong way in

• 06:00 — Doing this at Cisco 10 years ago, before the tech existed

• 07:50 — The Synopsys stakes: doubled size, a $35B acquisition, 40 years of legacy

• 11:30 — 3,000 people, one job title: when job architecture is too simple

• 15:00 — Why he refused to buy another skills portal

• 22:00 — One taxonomy, three platforms: Degreed, Avature, BetterWorks

• 27:40 — Automate, augment, human-only: reading the task data

• 31:00 — Giving people the agency over how AI changes their job

• 38:30 — HR's moment, and the risk of missing it