Go Time co-host, Johnny Boursiquot, joins Adam & Jerod to discuss not making the (first) cut, applying Founder Mode, being a cog (or not), realizing that companies are posting fake engineering jobs & the (maybe) imminent demise of the .io TLD.
Finally it's time for changelogging friends With Adam and Jared and some other rando We hope that you love it and stay until the end We're not offended if you can't go We know you're probably busy coding And your deadline is pretty foreboding Your caffeine intake is an actual problem, so why don't we walk outside? And we can listen to Change Logging Friends with Adam and Jared in Silicon Valley.
We know one day the gag will come to an end, but honestly that will probably be our finale. We bet you sling A1s and 0s. Bye. Bye. Bye.
welcome to changelog and friends a weekly talk show about the british indian ocean territory thanks to our partners at fly.io over 3 million apps have launched on fly including ours you can too in five minutes or less learn how at fly.io let's talk
What's up, friends? I'm here with Dave Rosenthal, CTO of Sentry.
So Dave, when I look at Sentry, I see you driving towards full application health, error monitoring where things began, session replay, being able to replay a view of the interface a user had going on when they experienced an issue with full tracing, full data, the advancements you're making with tracing and profiling, cron monitoring, code coverage, user feedback. and just tons of integrations.
Give me a glimpse into the inevitable future. What are you driving towards?
Yeah, one of the things that we're seeing is that in the past, people had separate systems where they had like logs on servers, written files. They were maybe sending some metrics to Datadog or something like that or some other system. They were monitoring for errors with some product, maybe it was Sentry.
But more and more what we see is people want all of these sources of telemetry logically tied together somehow. And that's really what we're pursuing at Sentry now. We have this concept of a trace ID, which is kind of a key that ties together all of the pieces of data that are associated with the user action.
So if a user loads a web page, we want to tie together all the server requests that happened, any errors that happened, any metrics that were collected. And what that allows on the back end you don't just have to look at like three different graphs and sort of line them up in time and, you know, try to draw your own conclusions.
You can actually like analyze and slice and dice the data and say, hey, what did this metric look like for people with this operating system versus this metric look like for people with this operating system and actually get into those details. So this kind of idea of
tying all of the telemetry data together using this concept of a trace ID or basically some key, I think is a big win for developers trying to diagnose and debug real world systems and something that is, we're kind of charged the path for that for everybody.
Okay. Let's see you get there. Let's see you get there tomorrow. Yeah. Perfectly. How will systems be different? How will teams be different as a result?
Yeah, I mean, I guess, again, I'll just keep saying it maybe, but I think it kind of goes back to this debuggability experience. When you are digging into an issue, you know, having a sort of a richer data model that's, you know, your logs are structured. They're sort of this hierarchical structure with spans.
And not only is it just the spans that are structured, they're tied to errors, they're tied to other things. So when you have the data model that's kind of interconnected, it opens up all different kinds of analysis that were just kind of either very manual before, kind of guessing that maybe this log happened at the same time as this other thing, or we're just impossible.
We get excited not only about the new kinds of issues that we can detect with that interconnected data model, but also just for every issue that we do detect, how easy it is to get to the bottom of it.
I love it. Okay, so they mean it when they say code breaks. Fix it faster with Sentry. More than 100,000 growing teams use Sentry to find problems fast, and you can too. Learn more at Sentry.io. That's S-E-N-T-R-Y.io. And use our code CHANGELOG. Get $100 off the team plan. That's almost four months free for you to try out Sentry. Once again, Sentry.io.
I'm afraid of bears. You know, there's not many things that I'm afraid of in life, but bears is one of them. Like, I don't want to be anywhere near a bear.
I'm afraid of just wildlife. Like, you know, like I'm afraid, like I have deer, like, you know, like parking on my lawn, like all day, all night. I'm afraid that, you know, usually they like shy away from you. Like if I'm walking on a path or whatever, they might, you know, give me a white birth. But I'm like, one day they'd be like, we outnumber you, man. Right. We could take you out.
And I got horns. There's like a dozen of us out here.
Have you seen the movie Revenant?
No, but I know. Doesn't he get eaten by a bear? Not quite. Almost. Almost eaten by a bear.
Yeah. Leonardo DiCaprio, his character, I believe his name was Howard Glass. But this guy is like famous in the, I don't know, the era before there was electricity, basically. I don't know. There may have been electricity, but it was like. The days of yore. Yeah.
Back in the day when you used to have to fill the weapon or the gun with the powder and the gunpowder and all that to fire it, you know, that kind of day. And I won't tell you because it's worth checking out, but it would make you fear bears even more.
That'd be hard because I'm pretty afraid of them already. It would solidify. How about this?
It would icing your cake. It would confirm. It would confirm your suspicions.
Yes. I'm not that afraid of deer, though, Johnny. I just don't think they can organize like we can. You're giving them too much credit. They're not going to organize against us.
I mean, in the age of AI, anything's possible, you know?
Put a chip in that deer head. Yeah, well, maybe.
That's true. Hugh Glass. To close a loop. Hugh Glass. H-U-G-H Glass. A very famous person. It's like Paul Bunyan. A tall tale. He had conquered such massive encumberments, I would say, in life. Bears. He recovered from this. I guess I'm going to kill that one plot for you.
Well, we already know that he almost died from a bear.
Obviously. But like he survived circumstances no one should survive and has been through things that not many people have been through. And so his tale is bigger than him. And so that's why Hugh Glass is a well-known name if you pay attention to those kind of stories.
I'm also noticing that there's a dad joke here somewhere, which Hugh Glass.
Yeah, no, I was going to go on to that. And I'm just like, let it go, Jared. Let it go. Tell the dad joke. No, I mean, you're a dad. I'm sure you've already gotten it.
Nope, don't get it. Oh, man, we need to work on your dad joke abilities. School me. Give me a quick schooling. I want to know what you're laughing about.
Hugh Glass. Hugh Glass. Huge ass.
Okay, gotcha. Gotcha. You want to connect these dots for you, Adam? Hugh Glass. Hugh Glass. I've been schooled. Thank you. I'm there now and I've tracked with you and I'm laughing with you now. I actually met somebody yesterday or the day before who was quite witty and he would joke a lot, right? Sarcastically.
And I'm cool with that, except for when you're laughing and I'm not because your joke is funny. But it's only funny to you because it's so insider baseball. It's only insider to you. Right. And I had to explain, I'm like, I want to laugh with you and I can't because the joke is only for you. Right. And so you make me feel foolish and I want to laugh with you. So just give me a little bit more.
I don't mind the sarcasm. I don't mind the witty jokes and stuff like that, but just bring me inside a little bit.
Do you ever just laugh anyways? Like you don't get it, but you're like, eh, I'll laugh at this person.
And I do. And I do. But like, it was so, the person had done it so much. I was like, yeah. I can only laugh a few times like that until I'm like, I'm not giving you one. Yeah. I'll give you a couple. And after like three or four, I'm like, explain that one to me. Cause I want to laugh with you. And I feel like a fool. Cause I, it sounds funny. Give it, give it to me.
So anyways, it's been a minute, Johnny, like way too many minutes. You're like one of my favorite people in the entire world. Every time I see you in person, I want to give you the biggest hug ever. You're such a cool dude. You're such an inspiration, really, too. And I think the joy you have for all you do is infectious. That's my favorite thing about you. Always the big smile.
Always welcoming to people. Always kind. And I think those are some traits we admire to have in life.
Thank you. Appreciate that. It's not always easy to be all those things, but you know, that's what makes it rewarding. Right.
Right.
Things like that. Right.
Yeah, absolutely.
No matter how hard you have it in life, I've, I've come to learn that, you know, there's always probably somebody who was having it harder than you. Right. So you never know, right. If you cross paths with somebody, maybe a smile, maybe a hello, right. Something could be that one thing that tips them over and, you know, prevents them from, you know, from them tells from tipping over. Right.
So yeah, it's just a, you know, try to keep it positive whenever you can.
I don't have my journal near me, but I do journal. And I just journal to the day, that kind of thing. And the paraphrase of what I journal was, it could always be worse. It doesn't mean you should always be like, oh, man, I can't be sad about my circumstances. It's more like, you know what? It really could be worse. I mean, because my family has been through some things. We've had loss.
We've had just various things throughout our years. And it really could always be worse. So find the joy, the glass half full versus half empty in life. And so I don't know that that's specific for you, but you just said so. But my demeanor for you has always been, or my assumption of your demeanor has always been, man, you're just so joyful to be around.
You're always happy, always smiling, always bringing something fun, never a downer, never a complainer, you know, in any way, shape or form. So I've always appreciated that about you.
Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that.
Well, for those who don't know Johnny, he's also known as Golang Johnny. Is that right? Golang Johnny? Oh, yeah. Don't you have that website, Johnny?
I do. It was like a joke we came up with during an episode, during a Go Time episode.
Right. And then it sounded, it was so funny. And I went ahead and registered it anyway, right? Because I wanted to, on the following show, I wanted to come back. Yeah, you wanted to say, I got it.
If you go to golangjohnny.com, is that what it is? Yeah. And you're going to find Johnny Borsico. Does it just redirect to your website or is it actually a website itself?
No, that's its own thing. It's its own thing. It just has a picture of me on stage at GopherCon.
Awesome. That's one way to get Google juice is just go ahead and buy that sucker. So you are Golang Johnny. One story that I would love for you to tell. from your perspective and ours, I think you hinted at it on GoTime 300, which was very much a look back and a look forward at GoTime's past and future.
And you mentioned, the reason I want to bring it up here is because the three of us were involved in that, and I don't think anybody else really was, was that while you are a staple and a regular GoTime host and have been for years, you were initially cut from the ranks, right? Yeah, yeah. He didn't make the team the first time around. Talk about some perseverance.
Adam, you were heavily involved in that decision. You guys want to drudge this out?
I remember vividly because it felt like firing, and I'm not a firing kind of person. I don't like to deliver bad news to anybody, but I'm also naturally comfortable in confrontation. Not fist fight confrontation, but more like if I've got to deliver bad news, I think you could probably tell me right here now on the podcast, Johnny, if I was gracious about it. I feel like I was. Yeah, you were.
But I really tried to be kind-hearted in delivering not always positive news. And I really can't remember what it was. I think we were early on even, I would say potentially even green. We hadn't had the network yet. Jared and I had only done this single podcast. It was our first non-Changelog show. Right.
Like not the Changelog. It was our first one. Yeah. And there were a few factors. I mean, I think very little of it was personal to Johnny. A lot of it was just the fact of like we already had three and four is a weird number of hosts. Three is a magic number. And so there was like, well, you know, there can be only three. That is a magic. It is a nice conversational magic number.
Especially if you're going to have a guest, now you already have four. Four with a guest is like, that's just like too many cooks. And a lot of it was because Eric and Brian were the original team. And yeah, we're just like, well...
I would say our invitation to go was Brian Kettleson and then Eric. And so I feel like we were in some ways like being shepherded into the go world by them, you know?
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that the two of you nailed it on the head. It was more logistics than anything else, right? I didn't take it personally at all, right? Basically, nobody owed me anything, right? So it was a conversation that we're having Still trying to put together a show. Still trying to figure out how is this going to actually operate.
And, you know, actually it was Bill Kennedy who reached out and says, hey, this thing might be happening. Would you be interested? And things like that. And he started connecting the dots. And I'm not sure, you know, how you came across, you know, my name, Adam. But to me, that was the genesis of it, right? It was Bill says, hey.
I think you'd be a good fit here, and let's see if we can make that happen, right? And then conversations went on, and I'm like, oh, this sounds great. And, you know, truth be told, I was very excited about it. You know, I was, I mean, my imposter syndrome was kicking very hard, right? Like, I'm like, oh, what am I going to do?
And, you know, I started, you know, like, trying to understand what do podcast hosts do? How do they interview? Like, I started studying, like, the process, right? So I wanted to do it as good a job as I could. But then, you know, by the time, you know, things started rolling, right, you know, We had that conversation. I was like, oh, I'm not going to lie. I was bummed.
But, you know, you delivered the message sort of very kindly. And I understood why. And I'm like, you know what? Hopefully this is not my last opportunity, right? And I think you said so yourself, right? You know, we've got a lot of things in the works. You got a lot of things coming, you know, like let's keep that door open.
And yeah, and lo and behold, eventually I made it onto the team and the rest is history, right? So I try not to, when I think about it, there's a couple ways I could have handled it. I could have been like, oh, These guys, you know, like I could have been bitter about it, resentful, or I could be like, you know what? Almost got this one. Right. Let me just keep moving forward.
And hopefully another opportunity, you know, sort of shows up. But I keep doing my thing. Right. So I can't hand like my sort of contentment. Right. And my joie de vivre. Right. You know, I am a French speaker after all. I can't hand that over to somebody else. Right. Like I am responsible for my own happiness. So I can't be bitter and resentful.
sort of you know take on things right that that i have no control over right so i kind of have to be like you know what next time and it happened right so the universe works right the universe works in interesting ways it does i'm also you know and jared i think you're this is why we make great partners is that we're i'll say we because this is how i am and i'm assuming this is how you are because i don't see you acting this way i do not like to burn bridges with anybody
I'm never like, you don't measure up, you're out of here for any reason, even if the person is owed that response. I would always be kind in my delivery of any negative news whatsoever. And I just do not, desperately do not like to burn any bridge. I like to leave opportunities open, leave doors open. Now, if there's scenarios where there clearly need to be
I will close the door and lock it, but I won't burn the door down, you know, or the bridge down to keep using the bridge metaphor. I would just be like, you know, this bridge shall not be crossed ever again, but I won't burn it down, you know? And that's just how I operate in life, really. I don't like to burn bridges.
Well, thankfully, that bridge wasn't burned. And I think the original trio, that was Brian, Carlicia, and Eric, did almost 100 bridges.
high 80s low 90s episodes and then we put it on hiatus for a while and when it came time to reboot go time which we weren't sure if we'd ever reboot go time it was out there for probably about a year maybe 18 months of no production but when we decided to get a team together and give it a second shot which we did the exact same thing with J.S.
Party by the way I'm not sure if it's like making the same mistake twice or was it even a mistake I don't even think it was necessarily a mistake just the way the history went And there's Johnny, like right there on our short list of like, well, we need some more people. And because you didn't burn the bridge and we still, you know, had fond feelings for you just didn't work out the first time.
It was like an obvious choice. Second time around. Can you believe that initial conversation was probably. very early in the year 2016. So we're talking about, you know, eight years ago. Wow. Yeah. And then you've been on the show for probably five. I don't even know how long.
Yeah. I've lost track at this point.
Yeah. It's been a minute. Yeah. One thing you said early on was like, how are we going to keep doing a show about go every week? Like, aren't we going to run out of stuff so far? No, but I mean, I know it gets hard sometimes. Like, how do you come up with new stuff all the time to talk about? Because Go is a niche inside of a niche.
And so, you know, there's only so many Go releases and functions to call. I know, right?
I think we started diversifying the kinds of things we were talking about, right? So we started talking about things that are adjacent to Go, right? Not just the language itself. And, you know, there's only so many episodes you can have on the actual syntax and the concurrency and all these things. There's been dozens and dozens of blog posts about, oh, why I like Go?
I mean, wherever you fall on the fence there, but the things that are being built will go, the productivity gains people are getting out of it, what companies are being... building the entire stack around, like these things became sort of where we spent a lot of times. And then as time went on, I think we've also sort of bringing even non-technical, but still adjacent to some degree, right?
Topics into the mix as well. Now, I don't know how much our audience appreciates that sort of diversity of topics. You know, I'm sure some people would prefer the hardcore technical stuff all the time and nothing but,
But I'm sure I've heard from other people as well say, hey, remember that episode you did on something that is not ghost specific, but it was something that maybe they were investigating or going through it. And they heard from one of the hosts about something that resonated. So I hear it on both sides, right? So I think the... For me, it's unless somebody says, hey, you can't do that.
I think a lot of topics should extend beyond ghost specific things, as long as there's some connection back, right? Because life is not one dimensional, right? So there's going to be some things that are relevant, right? That makes sense to touch on.
For instance, I'm listening to the founder mode conversation right now. I'm a few weeks behind, of course, as I always am, catching up with GoTime. And founder mode conversation with you, Chris and Angelica, when you're not a founder, you're just a regular employee at an organization. Like, how does this Paul Graham essay apply to us? Yeah. I think it's fine.
I think it's totally legit for a go time conversation because like, of course, we all live in this world where we're using our skills to make a living or to create stuff or to start a business or working for a startup founder or working in a large organization. We're all in these different areas and these facets all affect us.
And so it's easy to tie back to the programming language or to the people using the programming language because we're all kind of in this similar lifestyle.
I think you hit the nail on the head with the word facet there. I think that's what it is, is like perspectives and facets within an ecosystem. It doesn't have to be, oh, what is the latest feature that's being scrutinized, which there's, you know, some in the Go world. What's the latest feature? What's the latest release? How does that work?
I think it's more about the culture of being a developer that I think shows are more interesting around. It's like, I know that you're steeped in this cloud native go world where that is very much the way things are. However, you know, I also want to know why you think the way you think or how you react to a certain piece of news that affects every developer to some degree, shape or form.
I will say, however, I am totally unschooled on founder mode. I have purposely not. I've heard of it. I know it's out there. I can assume what it means, but I have not read the essay. I have not even read Brian Cantrell's response to it and other people kind of like jumping on the bandwagon of it and how great it is. I've only been on the peripheral to know it exists.
I do not know the details of the essay, and I have not begun to listen to this episode either to hear y'all's perspective. So just put my card out there. I am non-steeped in founder mode.
Okay. Are you hoping that we steep you or are you hoping that we move on?
Steep me if you have to.
What are you trying to do here?
Close some loop if you don't mind.
What is important? What are the cliff notes of founder mode? TLDR it, Johnny. What's founder mode and what was the overall takes on go time? I know Chris was kind of meh. Angelica was excited. I'm only halfway in. You seem to be in the middle.
Yeah, so for some context, every once in a while, you'll have these sort of, let's just say, influential, in one way or another, by some definition, video or blog or whatever it is that comes from a popular figure. In this case, it was Paul Graham, which hopefully most- Famous for his essays. Right, yeah, it's famous for his essays.
They tend to be sort of impactful, short to the point, no flowery language. People love that about those essays. And Founder Mode was one such essay and sort of focused on sort of what happens when you especially start to go from a startup and you become a scale up, you know, as they use in terminology and you start to grow as a company.
And now you have multiple layers being added, you know, you know, between the top and the people on the ground, you know, writing software, you know, shipping things. So you have all these sort of levels, these managerial levels, you know, that come into the picture.
And the founder or founders with the original idea or the original vision, they start getting sort of decoupled further and further away from the people with the boots on the ground, implementing the thing, implementing the vision, pushing things forward.
And then now, because of all these sort of managerial layers, there become sort of different ways you can work in a company with these different managerial layers. You have the people that are sort of action oriented and you have the people that are So discussion-oriented, right?
And the moment you read it, you're like, oh, yeah, I've been in those situations where I have the managers who have to have a meeting, set up a meeting for a meeting. Like, yo, dog, I heard you like meetings, right? So I got you some meetings, right? That's right. And then you have the people that are sort of more action oriented, right?
So all that, basically, there's this, you know, this aspect of the founder sort of, you know, or an individual sort of going founder mode, basically saying, hey, boots to the ground, let's do this, remove the layers, remove the sort of the fluff. be actionable, like be action oriented and sort of do things. At least that's what I took away from the whole thing.
So it's like basically saying, do whatever it takes to move the mission forward, move the product forward, whatever it is that you're working on, move that forward and sort of know exactly what kind of management you're on around you, if at all, right? That kind of thing. So Again, I think he was speaking to startups and scale-ups, companies that are not huge, massive empires.
Because those companies, once you get that big, there's naturally going to be multiple layers of management. I don't know if you can even avoid that. That's just what happens the more people you have in an organization. But if you are a startup or scale up, perhaps sort of push back against that tide, right?
Of sort of that, of all those layers, because you're going to be more effective and you're going to be delivering stuff. So to me, I'm like, okay, if I'm just a cog in the machine, I'm just low in the totem pole, right? I'm not a founder, right? The founder is saying, hey, let's push, let's go. Let's get in there and deliver things. Let's work on things, right? That zeal, that passion, that energy.
If I'm just getting a paycheck every couple of weeks from you, I'm putting in my 40 hours or whatever. Like, should I care? Because it's your company, right? Unless I'm getting some equity or stock or something, right? From doing more, right? Then you're paying me for, right? Like, how should I view founder mode? If I'm a software engineer writing Go code, right?
How should I... And you come at me with founder mode, like... Should I care? Is it relevant to me? Like, so basically I'm trying to, the way I understood it is, okay, I understand the spirit of the essay, but how do I make it applicable? How do I take the good parts, so to speak, right? And make them applicable to what I do on a day-to-day basis if I'm not a founder, right?
And that's what our discussion focused on.
You think founder mode, if you're not in that founder position, you get positioned as a cog. Is that right?
I would say if you're not, so I think my attitude is, on sort of being a quote unquote cog in the machine has sort of shifted over the years. Before I used to think, and early on in my career, or perhaps not even a, not even sort of my career, but early on, or rather, let's say, let's go back 10, 20, 25 years, right? Companies, right? That's back. Hey, I've been, I've been doing this for a while.
He's been around, man.
I've been around. I've been around. People have been paying me to write code for 26 years now. I calculated it and I'm like, and I'm astounded by that fact. But anyways, if I go back to the early days, you know, a few years ago where companies had a, I think, had a softer edge, at least one that appeared that way. You know, companies used to talk about, oh, we are family here, right?
You know, we care about our people, like all of that sort of language. I think underneath everybody sort of knew You pay me to do the job, and I know if I stop doing the job or if I don't do it well by some definition, I'm out of here, right? People knew that, but companies were more willing, at least in the tech sector, were more sort of softer on the edges, so to speak.
But nowadays, I don't think anybody who works in tech, especially in light of the recent rounds and rounds and rounds of layoffs and everything else, and you got... People are recording and putting their layoffs on TikTok and things.
The attitude towards companies with those languages that say, oh, we care about our people, whatever it is, yet executives are raking in millions in bonuses while they're laying off people. That's dissonance between what they're saying or have been saying and the reality of you being an employee or cog in that machine. No matter how good a job you do,
You are always at risk, no matter how good a job you do. While they might position your layoff or your firing as a performance thing, we all know that's not always true. Right. We know at the end of the day, companies, especially publicly traded companies, they don't have your best interests at heart. They have the shareholders and best interests at heart. That is priority one, the shareholder.
Right. So you as an employee, you are means to that end. Right. So the more you understand sort of that reality. Right. The more you can calibrate your relationship with an employer or whatever you're involved in. Right. So that doesn't mean, however, that you stop caring about your craft, what you do, right? The professionalism that you bring to your work, right?
The passion that you bring to your work. That is a personal thing. No company is ever going to be able to take my level of interest, of passion, of wanting to do the right thing, right? No company holds sway over that, right? If you hire me for a job, I'm going to do that job because I'm a professional. That's what I do, right? You pay me, we exchange services, right?
I give you what you're looking for and you pay me in exchange for my time, right? So that's a very professional thing. And I see clearly the nature of that relationship. The problem comes when you start adding things around it to make me feel a particular way about your company. You don't need all that flowery stuff, right? I will do the job.
So I think in this day and age, I think for me, I took founding mode to mean, okay, care about what you do, right? At the deepest level. If you stop caring about maintaining a code for your company, or if you think, you know, your coworkers are annoying for whatever reason, or you stop loving going to work and stop loving that job, then maybe move on, right? Maybe your time there is over, right?
But don't sort of lower yourself to the point where you're just doing a crappy job because you don't like where you are. Just move somewhere else and be your best self, right?
Mm-hmm. Gotcha. I did some Googling while you were talking there, just briefly. I wrote one thing into, I actually kind of enjoyed this about Google now where you can just sort of treat like a prompt. And so I just said, summarize founder mode. So rather than going to chat GPT or some paid product, I'm just like, okay, let me just throw this into Google. And it's for the most part on, on par.
They summarized it by saying that founder mode is a way of running a company that involves direct involvement and oversight or, quote, micromanagement. And it says great founders have hired executives and it's not worked. This is summarized from Sam's newsletter on Substack, this part of it at least. is in summary that great founders have hired great executives and it's not worked.
Instead, the thing that works is in quotes founder mode, which is direct involvement and oversight of what would typically be called micromanagement. And then the lens for this mode is towards startups and scale-ups.
So likely the founders should be directly involved in raising new funds or directing the product or micromanaging to some degree this user experience or this developer experience, which has become all the rage the last several years. It's like, we are DX-focused.
We're developer experience-focused and not our friends over at getdx.com-focused, a different kind of developer experience, but cut from similar cloth. What's up, friends? I'm here in the breaks with Kyle Carberry, co-founder and CTO over at Coder.com. Coder is an open source cloud development environment, a CDE. You can host this in your cloud or on premise. So, Kyle, walk me through the process.
A CDE lets developers put their development environment in the cloud. Walk me through the process. They get an invite from their platform team to join their Coder instance. They got to sign in, set up their keys, set up their code editor.
Step one for them, we try to make it remarkably easy for the dev. We never gate any features ever for the developer. They'll click that link that their platform team sends out. They'll sign in with OIDC or Google, and they'll really just press one button to create a development environment. Now that might provision like a Kubernetes pod or an AWS VM.
You know, we'll show the user what's provisioned, but they don't really have to care. From that point, you'll see a couple of buttons appear to open the editors that you're used to, like VS Code Desktop or, you know, VS Code through the web. Or you can install our CLI. Through our CLI, you really just log into Coder and we take care of everything for you.
When you SSH into a workspace, you don't have to worry about keys. It really just kind of like.
beautifully magically works in the background for you and connects you to your workspace we actually connect peer-to-peer as well you know if the coder server goes down for a second because of an upgrade you don't have to worry about disconnects and we always get you the lowest latency possible one of our core values is we'll never be slower than ssh period full stop and so we connect you peer-to-peer directly to the workspace so it feels just as native as it possibly could
Very cool. Thank you, Kyle. Well, friends, it might be time to consider a cloud development environment, a CDE. And open source is awesome. And Coder is fully open source. You can go to Coder.com right now, install Coder open source, start a premium trial, or get a demo. For me, my first step, I installed it on my Proxmox box and played with it. It was so cool. I loved it. Again, Coder.com.
That's C-O-D-E-R.com. A while back I wrote this because I felt this, it wasn't called Founder Mode at that time, but what I was experiencing and why I wrote this was a result of Founder Mode now that I have retrospect and that's why I pulled this up. So a while back on my blog, which I do not write too often, I'll link it up in our show notes, is I wrote a post called I'm a Cog.
And this is in light of reading Linchpin from Seth Godin. And then in light of being pressured into this founder mode world where I've got skills, abilities, growth opportunities, but the organization was very hearing this and hearing you, it was founder mode. And we were a startup. We were a scale up. And so it makes sense why this pressure was there.
And so I wrote, and I'll share more if you'd like, but I'll just share what I think is probably the essence of how I felt at the time.
about being a cog it was acceptance as i'll say this is this quote i'm a very sharp highly specific purposefully purposeful cog as part of a much bigger much more grand machine i play a very specific part highly needed part so that others can do the same i serve the unit the team and its mission not myself I also have a military background.
So I came from... That sounds like a military person speaking. Yeah, I have this military background too. So it was always team. It was never I, it was always we. And so after reading Seth Godin's Linchpin, which I think is not really founder mode, but it's founder mode-esque. It tells you to be a linchpin. Don't go into an organization...
and just be a cog, be somebody who is a change maker, somebody who could be leaned upon. A linchpin in the true terminology is back in the day, you know, back in Hugh Glass's day, the wagon wheel had to be held on to the wagon via this thing called a what? A linchpin. That linchpin was not there. They still use them on trailers and all kinds of things. Right.
The wheel was no longer on the thing that made the wheel purposeful anymore. And so to summarize how I felt here, I really felt like I was fine with being a cog. I was, I was cool with that. That doesn't mean I want to be truly crap or be sure, you know, not treated well. It was that I was okay with being not a linchpin.
I said later, I said, I'm starting to wonder if the concept shared in Seth's book, linchpin was a bit arrogant or self-centered. Aren't we all indispensable? Aren't we all replaceable? Like, and so to like, To strive for being a linchpin was almost like striving for perfection. Perfection is just seemingly unattainable and almost the enemy of profits and the enemy of done.
We've heard that several times. It's like, you know what? I'm cool with being a cog. I'll just recognize my purposefulness in being a cog and what role I play so that others on my team can do the same.
So we all win. So let's carry that thought. Let's pull that thread a little bit. If it meant you get laid off or fired or whatever, whatever term they want to put around it, right? In order for the whole to keep moving forward, do you also happily accept that?
How many times have I been laid off? Almost maybe once, I think maybe. I haven't ever really been fired. To answer that question, I would not be happy about being let go, for sure. Let go, laid off, I don't care how you term it. It's never a positive thing.
But if my experience there was positive, if the founder or founders treated me with respect and I was removed from my position in a way I think was kind, And my team still had care for me. Like when I left pure charity, the thing I did prior to in, you know, Jared was like, dude, we should, you should do this full time. And in 2015, I finally listened to Jared and my wife and I left pure charity.
And I wrote this post when I was at pure charity. And so the founder was applied to me there. That was later on penned by Paul Graham. I think that if, if I'm treated well and I'm removed from a position in order for it to move along, um, I think I'd be okay with that. I would not be happy about being let go.
But if I was treated with respect and let go properly, but I think if I was let go improperly or not treated with respect or kindness on the way out by my team or the founders, then yeah, I'd have a personal problem with that and not be okay with it. But I mean, like... If the mission continues, having been an entrepreneur and a runner or a leader, I've had to share some bad news.
As you know, Johnny, we shared that early on. And so I think that I have both sides of those coins in my brain when I share my sentiment back to you to respond to that question. So I think, no, I would not be okay with it. But if it was done well and with respect and kindness, then I would be okay with it. And I would find a way to move on to the next thing.
disappointment, not resentment.
Certainly disappointed, like, man, I really want to be on that train. I was working hard to be on that train. I was purposely purposeful as a cog, as I've written here. I was on my own personal mission. I'm serving the team, not myself.
And so that's my DNA as Adam, when I apply myself in any organization, whether I run it or not, whether it's a volunteer group at church or my business, you know, I apply myself similarly. So I think, yeah, disappointment, not resentment.
All right. I think some of that assumes that you are mission oriented with the organization that you're in. For sure. Yeah. Because you can be a cog and just be there for the paycheck and you're fine with like, it's not against your morals, what they do. You think it provides some value. Obviously the marketplace appreciates it.
That's why it's still a business, but you're just there to do your work and to do the best your ability and to be a cog and to make some money. And in that case, I think for the mission to continue, I must be let go. Like for me, that doesn't hold weight anymore because the mission is the mission. It's their mission, not my mission.
I think in a place like Pure Charity, Adam, you were very aligned. And there are times where you are working somewhere where you're like, I totally believe in what we are doing. And so maybe there it's a bitter pill, but one that is worth swallowing because, yeah, now at least the organization isn't going to crumble. I have to go, but it will continue.
But in cases where it's more about the money or maybe the relationships or you like the work you're doing, but you're not like, you know, it's Walmart or something where it's like, fine, it's a grocery store slash department store.
Yeah, a much bigger mission than you can have an office. an impact on as a, as a cashier. I mean, I guess you can actually do a lot as a cashier too. Sure.
I'm just saying, I think in that case, mission oriented matters. If you're going to have that kind of, I wouldn't have that outlook myself. I've never been laid off. I've never worked in a large organization. So I have a very, Me too.
Always small.
Yeah, always small. But I'm not exactly happy to be a cog, you know? I want to try my best to be indispensable. I want to be the person where they're like, we're laying off 20% and we can't get rid of this guy because he's too useful.
Jared.
Sorry, 60%.
I have a quote for you. Okay. Ego is the enemy.
Okay. Ego is the enemy.
Ego is the enemy. You don't want to be indispensable, Johnny?
No, I can understand what he's saying. I think. Oh, sorry. I can't respond to my bad. You can, but let Johnny respond. Sorry, Johnny. Go ahead.
You can try. You can chime in. I don't, but what I will say is that I'll be patient. So in my, in my 26 year career, I've been laid off twice. Right. I've had, and I've worked at very large companies. I've worked at very small companies. Right. So I've, I've, you know, I've, I've,
lived enough life as a professional to have seen all matter of ways, you know, like layoffs are done well, or people are treated fairly or unfairly, kindly, unkindly. So I've been exposed to enough of that. So I speak from that standpoint, I speak from a position of privilege because I've experienced all these facets, right?
The one thing I think is like consistently that it wasn't always like this when I was younger. and more foolish and more sort of hot-blooded, if somebody said, hey, you're not doing a good job, or we have to lay you off, or we have to fire you because of reason X, Y, and Z, and I have been fired once, the initial reaction is always visceral, right? No matter how...
you know, stoic you are or try to be, right. Cause it's, it's disappointing, right. It's like a, it's like a stat, you know, especially if you, you know, you've been doing a good job, right. Like to be told it's like a rejection. Nobody loves rejection, right.
To be told that, Hey, we're going to have to let you go because like you say, Jared, like you thought you were, you know, indispensable, but at the end of the day, really you're not right. So at the end of the day, again, You, the business, a company doesn't exist to serve your needs, you know, or to cater to your feelings, right? It exists to make other people wealthy, right?
Now, if you happen to also get some level of wealth by some definition, right? You know, relatively speaking from where you were and what you've been able to earn at an organization, that's great, right? It just keeps you happy, keeps you chugging along. But ultimately, businesses are designed to make a certain group of people at the top wealthy. There's nothing wrong with it.
I mean, you start a business for that reason. You want to be well off. You want to take care of your family. You want to have money in the bank. Profit. Yeah, exactly. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. So you get hired as a tool for that purpose. Now, if... When you get that, okay, I've been let go. I thought I was indispensable and I'm not.
I've experienced enough of that to now, basically, if I'm going into an engagement with an employer or doing consulting, whatever it is, I have to go in. I have to check my ego at the door. I have to say, you know what? I'm going to go in here and I'm going to do as best a job as I can based on what I know the customer or the employer or whatever it is wants. And I know that at any point,
I could be removed from this position. This could be taken away, right? It's like that, you know, I believe there's an ancient Chinese proverb or something basically that says, maybe it's not Chinese, but I'm misremembering, but it basically, it's the idea that a wise person gets given this beautiful ornate teapot. Very elegant, very beautiful to look at, custom-made and gifted to them.
And then they have a child or a sibling or something like that that keeps coming to them and say, hey, don't you love the teapot? Don't you admire it? He's like, yes, I do, but it's already broken. And the child is like, what do you mean it's already broken? Yeah, it's already broken. It is what it is, but it's already broken. I can't continue to have this forever. It's already broken.
And through conversation, you come to learn that the way that this person is able to sort of stabilize themselves so that eventually when the teapot does indeed get broken, Maybe it's a child that knocks it over accidentally or whatever it is. The teapot is now broken. This beautiful, very enjoyable thing is now no more. That person is now, huh, okay. Because it was already broken in their mind.
So they didn't lose. Their world wasn't shattered along with that teapot because they didn't invest so much of themselves into it. So I have to go into these things saying, hey, It's already broken, right? I'm here to do as best that I can do for as long as I can do. But if this thing were to be taken away from me, right, tomorrow, next week, next year, right, that's okay too.
That's all fair and good. I didn't say I am indispensable. I said I want to be that. And so I don't think it's egotistical to desire to be that and to be more than a cog. Fully knowing that at the end of the day, maybe I'm still just a cog and it's already broken. So you delusion. No, not delusion. Desire. Desire. Yeah. Drive.
I really feel like I should just read this whole blog post to you guys. Nah, don't do that. Like everything Johnny just said, there's like echoes of what I wrote down here. I'll read two lines for you. Okay. I say this, I'm going to read this to you, Jared, appreciating what I think is your, you're not desiring to be perfect, but you're striving to be an indispensable member of the team.
If not, you know, owner of the organization kind of thing. Yeah. So this is what I wrote. To think that you can truly be indispensable is a farce. It's not possible. It's a trap of the prideful.
What do you got to say about that, Jared?
Maybe I won't show up to work tomorrow.
I say that though, while appreciating, while appreciating the work that goes into strive for being indispensable. Not literally to be indispensable, but to strive to be indispensable-like. That's a great trait, too.
See, but being indispensable implies that others must see you as such. Now, you're putting that level of self-worth in the hands of others, right?
what to me i don't understand where you're coming from jared to me the way i i and i used to approach it like this right i used to because i like for people to like me right we all do like it's like you know it's ingrained in us as human beings right we we want to be like we we we're a tribal sort of you know kind of entity right so the the we don't want rejection right from the tribe right we want to be welcomed and and liked and say oh it
Johnny, hey, how you doing? Because, you know, by being that sort of likable, by being the one that always delivers, always comes through, right? You're the one teammate, everybody can just call in and boom, you just solve all the problems, right? By being that, right, you get that sort of that little hit of dopamine, right? It's like, ah, I love when people love me, right?
But you're putting that sort of self-worth in the hands of others. And nobody will tell you, like a stoic, right? Nobody will tell you how dangerous that is than those who know how it feels when all that adoration and admiration gets pulled back for one reason or another. Because it's not in your control, right? What is in your control, right, is how good a job you do.
how well you deliver on the mission, the work, whatever you've been assigned to do, however small it might be, right? If you can deliver and objectively say, hey, I did a good job there, what people think of me as a result is not in your control. So I'm like, hey, whether that praise comes or goes, it doesn't matter to me, right?
Because at the end of the day, I know if I get laid off, it's not going to matter how much praise I got or didn't get because that too is outside of my control. The only thing I have control over is the work that I'm doing right now. And how good do I feel when I've delivered it and get up and walk away from this keyboard, right? How do I feel about myself?
Yeah, I don't need, I guess I don't need the other people noticing it aspect of what you're talking about. I don't derive my self-worth from that. And so I think if I was laid off in that circumstance, if I was indispensable and they didn't know I was, then I would be like, this is a huge mistake they're making. And I would like for that to be true. Like then they go ahead and lay me off.
I'm sure, Johnny, you've left huge holes in whatever organizations you got laid off from. And they probably didn't realize what a big mistake that was. And I think maybe even though you are a cog, in some sense, you are an indispensable cog and that organization will never be the same without you. That's what I strive for is like. Yeah, they're going to really regret this one.
Not that they have to recognize me as the guy who fixes all the things and all that. That's not where I derive myself worth. But my desire is to be as great a teammate as I can be.
Can I speak for you for a second, Jared? For me? Yeah. Am I not doing a good job? No, I think you are. I want to layer it on, I guess, one more layer for you. Having worked with Jared for many, many years, Jared is not the kind of person that requires praise to show up and be effective.
And to be on mission, to be driven, none of his, to my knowledge, my experience with working with him for many years, he doesn't require praise to have his ambition. And I think Jared has a high standard set by himself. And it doesn't matter if you agree with the standard or not, he's going to strive for it.
And he doesn't need you to recognize he's striving for it or reaching it to continue to show up and be effective. Gotta do a good job, Jared.
You can keep your job, Jared.
Yeah, thank you. Well, I mean, I guess, you know, at a certain point, it's probably why I've done the things that I've done, which is I've stayed in small businesses.
I've found, I've started or, you know, had ownership in companies that I work for because at the end of the day, that is where I thrive, I guess, in circumstances more, not as an employee for somebody else in founder mode, but I actually in, I guess, founder mode, you know, which I don't really, I try not to, I hate micromanaging people, so not that, but...
not like that tactical founder mode but like basically i've been at the head of businesses small bits very small businesses most of my career i have worked you know for other people as well but usually with some autonomy because uh that's where i thrive i guess probably because i have that self-driven thing going on so maybe i couldn't make it in a large org you know it's quite possible i haven't i don't have the breadth of experience you have johnny i have the same time duration but
i've been doing the same thing like i've done three i had the the advantage of being a contractor and so while i was my own boss i had a lot of a broad experience of like working with teams and different code bases and different businesses you get a lot of experience that way but not in like a typical nine to five engineering team i've never had a product manager right i've had kind
So those were like proxies for that relationship. So I don't have those kind of relationships just because I haven't had that experience that you have in so many different roles.
Interesting enough, something you said earlier brought back a fond memory. One of the positions in the past that I got laid off from was, Actually, no, that one was, I can call it a firing, right? Because, you know, it wasn't, oh, we're making cuts because, you know, finances or whatever that you typically hear these days.
It was like, we didn't think, we were expecting something else, but we got something different. And which I'm like completely fine with, right? What happened though, I think maybe six months later or less than a year later, like to piggyback on what Adam was saying about, you know, never burning bridges, right? Like we parted ways like very amicably. Right. That was not resentful.
You know, we did the thing. We sat down from across from each other, looked each other in the eye, say, hey, I was expecting this. I didn't get that. And I was like, OK, like completely understand. We remain friends. Right. And this was back in Boston. So we remain friends and everything. And six months later. Right. Or however long we actually go and have lunch together. Right.
We sit down, you know, I'm going to say, Hey, how's the business? You know, how's, how are things going? Whatever it is. And, and literally again, the same experience sitting from across the table. It was like, yeah, we made a mistake in letting you go. Right. So when I heard that, bam, when I heard that, I was like, Holy smoke. Internally, I'm like jumping for joy. I'm like, I knew it. I knew it.
I knew it.
So you were indispensable, man.
Come on.
Yeah. Yeah.
I guess I was, I just, I just didn't, you know, hang a lot on it, but I understand what you're saying. Like feeling like when you leave, you leave a hole that is noticeable. Right. Right. Like, yeah, I love that. I mean, I'm not going to lie.
It's, it's, it's feeling that you have that kind of impact, but the thing is the higher ups are probably never going to feel it as much as your team or as much as people you work with closely day to day.
And maybe the word indispensable is saying too much. I like what you just said there. Like I want to be impactful. Yeah. I want to make an impact. And when that person leaves, that impact is now a hole. And to me, that's meaningful. That means I'm bringing value in big ways. I'm a hole maker. I make some holes. Yeah, I can dig a hole, man. That's cool, though, that you got that. Yeah, man.
That was great. Yeah. Oh, it felt amazing. It felt amazing. I was in cloud nine. I was like, oh, man, I knew it.
You know, I think that people should do that more frequently, too. Like if they know they especially the person kept thriving in the community like you have.
circle back and be like hey you know i don't know how this all panned out for you i can kind of see what you've done since then but by the way when you left it really hurt the organization it was a mistake right i almost feel like that could be like a good just a good feeling to give people you know something to say to people I don't know. It's certainly a good reconnection moment, too.
Like, hey, by the way. No, I think if that happened and you meet up with that person like Johnny did, like absolutely be the person that tells him that as long as it's true. Right. Because it does feel good to know that. And it is validating. I think there was a Google engineer recently who I don't remember that I'm fuzzy on the details, but like they either left or was laid off.
Went and started, and they're like a machine learning guru, went and started a thing. And Google had to pay something like $2.5 billion to get them back onto the employee payroll, basically, to rehire this person. So there's some validation of like, well, that was a big mistake, right? You should have just kept me around in the first place. The details are fuzzy, so that could be.
Or they need to hang their hat on somebody, a patsy. Something went wrong. Come back here and run this thing so we can fire you nine months later.
It's a setup. Yeah, that's even a better story. What happened to Silicon Valley? I hear that's a good show. It is a good show.
What's up, friends? I'm here with a new friend of ours over at Assembly AI, founder and CEO Dylan Fox. Dylan, tell me about Universal One. This is the newest, most powerful speech AI model to date. You released this recently. Tell me more.
So Universal One is our flagship industry leading model for speech to text and various other speech understanding tasks. So it's about a year long effort that really is the culmination of like the years that we've spent building infrastructure and tooling at assembly to even train large scale speech AI models.
It was trained on about 12 and a half million hours of voice data, multilingual, super wide range of domains and sources of audio data. So it's super robust model.
We're seeing developers use it for extremely high accuracy, low cost, super fast speech to text and speech understanding tasks within their products, within automations, within workflows that they're building at their companies or within their products.
Very cool. So Dylan, one thing I love is this playground you have. You can go there, assemblyai.com slash playground, and you can just play around with all the things that is assembly. Is this the recommended path? Is this the try? before you buy experience, what can people do?
Yeah, so our Playground is a GUI experience over the API that's free. You can just go to it on our website, assemblyai.com slash Playground. You drop in an audio file, you can talk to the Playground. And it's a way to, in a no-code environment, interact with our models, interact with our API to see what our models and what our API can do without having to write any code.
Then once you see what the models can do and you're ready to start building with the API, you can quickly transition to the API docs. Start writing code, start integrating our SDKs into your code to start leveraging our models and all our tech via our SDKs instead.
Okay. Constantly updated speech AI models at your fingertips. Well, at your API fingertips, that is. A good next step is to go to their playground. You can test out their models for free right there in the browser. Or you can get started with a $50 credit at assemblyai.com slash practical AI. Again, that's assemblyai.com slash practical AI.
And I'm also here with Dennis Pilarinos, founder and CEO of Unblocked. Check them out at getunblocked.com. Unblocked helps developers to find the answers they need to get their jobs done. So Dennis, you know we speak to developers. Who is Unblocked best for? Who needs to use it?
I think if you are a team that works with a lot of coworkers, if you have like 40, 50, 60, 100, 200, 500 coworkers, engineers, and you're working on a code base that's old and large, I think Unblocked is going to be a tool that you're going to love.
Typically, the way that works is you can try it with one of your side projects, but the best outcomes are when you get comfortable with the security requirements that we have. You connect your source code, you connect a form of documentation, be that Slack or Notion or Confluence. And when you get those two systems together, it will blow your mind.
Actually, every single person that I've seen on board with the product does the same thing. They always ask a question that they're an expert in. They want to get a sense for how good is this thing? So I'm going to ask a question that I know the answer to and people are generally blown away by the caliber of the response.
And that starts to build a relationship of trust where they're like, no, this thing actually can give me the answer that I'm looking for. And instead of interrupting a coworker or spending 30 minutes in a meeting, I can just ask a question, get the response in a few seconds and reclaim that time.
The next step to get unblocked for you and your team is to go to getunblocked.com. Yourself, your team can now find the answer they need to get their jobs done and not have to bother anyone else on the team, take a meeting or waste any time whatsoever. Again, getunblocked.com. That's G-E-T-U-N-B-L-O-C-K-E-D.com. And get unblocked.
Speaking of Silicon Valley, Johnny, what's going on in Silicon Valley with these fake job postings? I mean, you've been onto this for a little while because I've heard you talking about it on GoTime, and then I covered it in news this week because there was an Ask Hacker, speaking of Paul Graham, there was an Ask HN. which was posted seven days ago, who is pretending to be hiring.
And it turns out there's people out there with jobs that are not real jobs. I mean, what's going on, man?
It's just a hunch that I got. So one of the things that I do and have always done as a professional is I'm always looking at job postings, right? So while, you know, you have, you know, YouTube, you know, influencers saying, hey, this framework is the best thing or whatever.
Like people are, you know, geeks get excited, you know, nerds get excited about, you know, technologies and programming and everything else. I'm like, okay, that's one lens. The other lens is what are companies actually hiring for? What list of technologies do you see on those job descriptions? So I'm always looking at those job descriptions. Hey, what do SREs need to know these days?
Hey, what does a full-stack developer need to know these days? So I'm always keeping an eye out to see where the trend is going. Regardless of what the hype is doing, I'm looking at what people are actually getting paid for. So I started noticing, right, the same job. I would literally bookmark it, right? I would take a screenshot of it, right?
And I started noticing the same job, right, with almost the same description, maybe a word change here and there, often from the same recruiter, other times from a different recruiter, but the same job, again, with a word change here and there, right, asking for the same exact thing. And I'm like seeing the same thing come up over again week after week after week after week after week, right?
Before, I didn't pay any attention because we didn't have, you know, back in the heyday, everybody had a job. So less of that, right? And basically companies were just tripping over themselves to hire people, right? Like, you know, at the start of the pandemic and everything else, when all the overhiring was happening, so they say. So you didn't notice it as much, but not, you know.
So many people on the job market, right? You're seeing the influx of these job postings and you're like, okay, how come there are so many job postings, especially in places like LinkedIn or Indeed or Dice or whatever it is, so many job postings and so many people are saying they can't find jobs.
going from six months, you know, like, you know, from, from three to six months before they find a job, like getting an interview is harder than it's ever been. Like, I'm like, something is not making sense here. What are all these job postings? And I started seeing the pattern repeating over and over and over again. Then I'm like, um, something doesn't add up here.
Is somebody just training a model or something? It is when people just keep on sending their resume. resumes into this void? Like, like what is going on here? So I have no evidence, right? No, no empirical evidence to say, Hey, this is like what's happening. Cause I don't know, you know, if anybody's going to, you know, sort of step up and says, yep, we do that. Right.
I don't, I don't think it would be a bit in their best interest, but I mean, something smells odd.
Something smells fishy here. Did you see the comment thread on that hacker news post? Because there's a lot of people validating, validating your intuition. Yeah. The top comment, now this is also anecdotal, so none of this is like journalism or anything like that. However, these are people who are working in these places. This is a person consulting with a startup in the Bay Area.
They say, we have nine job openings listed on the website, but in reality, one position is really open and the bar is sky high. By that, I mean that the founders would hire the right person, but the other eight positions are just there for signaling, and nobody looks at the applications we get. Yikes. Yeah.
For when I'm asked, the CEO told me to say that we are prioritizing finding the senior dev first, and that position has been open for six months. So that's the situation. I mean, that's about as clear as validation. At least one company is explicitly doing exactly what you think they're doing.
Yikes.
Yeah, it's smoke and mirrors. Right. And it seems to be the reason is because it makes them look better. Right. That's what most of the people are saying on this thread is that because VCs are using, I mean, this goes back to Goodhart's Law, right? When a measure becomes known, it's no longer a good measure. Is that VCs are now looking at company health, it sounds like,
And they're saying, well, if the company is hiring, then that's a healthy company. And so it's an indicator of company health. And so then the company is like, oh, that's an indicator of company health. Let's act like we're hiring. Bam. Just no good candidates out there. Yeah, exactly. For the right one.
We're holding out for the right one.
We can't find any.
Apparently no one's out looking for jobs. I saw this video. I think it was on YouTube of that kind of thing. And it was one of those things where the person plays both roles. They're like the recruiter and then they're like the person. And it was like a company. It was like an HR person at a company was one role.
And the other person was somebody who would go out and find the talent, like a talent scout. Yeah. And they would say, probably kind of like nodding to what you're saying here, Johnny, is they would go out and find people, and they would say, those are all great candidates and all, but we're holding out for that one, that one. Now, those are 10 great candidates. Keep them on ice for us.
Keep them on ice. Keep them interested. Let them know we're interested. All right. I need you to go out and find me five more that are better than those folks there. But keep those 10 on ice. And then they come back with the five more like – You know what? Those are good too. But I really feel like there's a winner out there. Keep all 15 on ice. Let them all know we're still interested.
And that might even play into the whole multiple interviews, these song and dances that people, you know. And here you are on the other side in between siphoning through savings or ranking up credit card debt or whatever it might be to make ends meet and somebody's playing you. Not cool. No. Not cool at all. Not cool at all.
Yeah. This goes back to understanding the relationship between you and a for-profit entity.
Fine. I want to be a cog then. Okay. I'm fine with being a cog. Sorry. I don't have any positions for cogs. I interrupted real quick. I wanted to throw that joke out there. Go ahead. We have nine cogs available, but they're all, I can't find any good cogs.
I'm a cog now.
You are not a priority, my friend. You are a cog in the machine. And that's okay too. That's the thing. Like we all, I think in this market, we've all accepted that it is what it is. But you know what? You know what though? You know what? As they say, the pendulum will swing the other way. Mark my words. The pendulum will swing the other way, right? When it does, right?
As a cog, don't be a douche. Don't go in, you know, walking in. You know what I mean? This was a huge mistake. This was a huge mistake. I told you, mofos, not to do what you did, but you did it. Now you're going to pay the price. I was indispensable. Don't be that guy. Don't be that guy or gal. Again, this is not... This is not about them, right? Ultimately, I think it's about you as a person.
And I keep throwing that term around, and it's one that takes your heart greatly, like being a professional, right? There's a way a professional carries themselves. There's a way a professional does things, right? You're a professional, you get paid for money. Hopefully, you love what you do to get paid that money, right? But as a professional, you are always a professional.
Good times, bad times, happy times, sad times, you are a professional.
See, let people go with respect, hire with respect, show up as an employee with respect, right? Some care in the process. Not everybody's going to do that, though. They're not. Fake jobs, man.
Fake jobs. Fake jobs. I mean, seriously. So to your pendulum comment, Johnny, does the current crop of... language models stop the pendulum for the developer? Is it swinging away from us and will it continue to stay that way or is it going to swing back anyhow?
There's a natural thinning of the herd happening. or that has happened with any innovation, something that changes the way things have always been done. Whether it's in tech or in farming or you name an industry, there's innovation that comes and disrupts the way of things. And that should be expected.
I think tech, for so long, we were so comfortable with the fact that basically we were untouchables. right? We, you know, no, no one could do what we did was, you know, magical, right? It was, it was absolute God. Yeah. Literally like, you know, we have, we have memes and, and movies and, and, and things like, like we were, we, we, we were, you know,
hailed as these powerful beings who they only were the ones who understood how to make the computer do things, right? That mere mortals couldn't even aspire to, right? And we went through that, you know, and that whole notion was sort of, you know, amplified back when in the Obama era, when we had all these learn to code, everybody should learn to code, like that whole thing, right?
Remember that whole push towards everybody Left and right organizations were spinning up to run workshops. Heck, I ran GoBridge workshops. I would go in my local community in Baltimore. I would find people who wanted to learn how to code. I would get them in a room on a Saturday or Sunday and work with local businesses to get people into the room to learn how to code.
Because I truly believe, and I still do, that A career in tech, right, is a life-changing generational, you know, sort of impact kind of skill to develop, right? So we went through that phase. Now you barely hear about these workshops happening anymore. You know, dev boot camps, you barely hear about those things anymore, right? Because the market is not...
you know, suitable for these things, right? So all that to say is that now getting into tech is gonna be a little harder, or rather you can get into tech, but getting a job in tech is gonna be a little harder because there are different skills that are not expected that you need to bring to the table, right? understanding what an LLM is and how to work with them.
I'm not saying you need to go get into the math, the machine learning math of it all. You need to become a data scientist. But you need to know how to understand what an LLM is and how to use it, how to build a RAG system, which is basically the hello world of AI development. You need to understand how to build a RAG system. So these things need to not be foreign to you.
So the skill sets you need is just changing because there's new innovation. So I think there's always going to be room for software engineers. It's just the skill sets are changing. Will there be fewer jobs? Fewer jobs because those jobs now, the skill sets required for them, the bar is a bit higher.
So some of those things that you used to hire a junior for, you can now outsource to an LLM or a Gen AI, some Gen AI technology. So people are becoming more productive. So it just changes the bar a little bit, but I don't think... I don't know, people are generating a lot of AI slop that people like me are going to have to come in and fix anyway. So I'm like, hey. I'm okay with that.
I said it probably a year ago now, but I'll say it again. There's never been a better time to go buy that domain. AIrescue.io. Don't get the .io. Get the .com. Maybe that leads us into our final topic. If you want to start an AI, I remember when there was Rails Rescue companies. They were going to rescue you from your heaping pile of Rails app that your team created in a hurry and then left.
Scaffolding. Yeah, exactly. And now they'll be like, hey, I got this unwieldy thing that was written by an LLM and I need someone to save me from this. And so, you know, get the domain now. That way the Google juice will be there when people are searching for you.
Yeah, yeah. By all means, everybody, if you're out there, you want to let AI generate your initial domain. app, you know, thing for you, please go right ahead. Go right ahead. Like make more of those things, please. No code it all day long. Get to it. No, no code it all day long. It's fine.
Just go right ahead because the only thing you're doing is making sure that I and my, and people like me are going to have, are going to have jobs. So that pendulum will swing.
Yeah, for sure. 100%. Well, I mentioned the .io. Let's call this chapter .io no more because due to geopolitics, I mean, this is a crazy story. It's speculation, though. It's not guaranteed. It's possible. Here's what happened. We got all these fancy TLDs. Some of them are country code TLDs that we've just co-opted to be domain hacks for our websites. One of those is called .io.
You probably have heard of it. And that one might be going away because it was given to, it was used for the Chagos Islands. .io stands for Indian Ocean, I believe.
Mm-hmm.
And according to a piece by Gareth Edwards called The Disappearance of an Internet Domain, the British government on October 3rd announced that it was going to give sovereignty up, give it up. It has ownership, I suppose. It's giving it up to a small tropical atoll, which I'd never even heard that word before, this article.
Apparently it's like a small island or something, a ring-shaped reef in the Indian Ocean known as the Chagos Islands. The islands would be handed over to the neighboring islands country of Mauritius. Mauritius, thank you. Apparently more well-versed in these geographies than I am. About 1,100 miles off the southeastern coast of Africa. Long story short is that IO is for Indian Ocean.
Now it's going to be Mauritius, and .io may be going away due to some people getting some sovereignty, which is always a nice thing to have.
Who would have thought that your tech startup with a .io domain name as its identity would now be impacted by a 99-year lease coming up?
Yes, exactly. What would make it go away? It can't exist anymore because the relationship doesn't exist. And so the .io, I mean, I get how it's applied, but what makes it go away? That they can repurpose it?
So the .io domain is... Right. It's technically going to be within the, if you want to call it, the jurisdiction of basically the Mauritius, right? Now, I would imagine that if they decided to get into the TLD business, right, they could become the administrators, right, for such a thing. More than likely, I think they will probably...
outsource the thing and right yeah bring it to one of those registrars right who would be more than happy to take that over and manage it and you know having the cost because that's going to be business for them and people register that io domains us developers and startups love the io domain so that's good business right there so and then yeah they can just have a partnership with some sort of registrar and and sort of outsource the whole thing or get into the business themselves but
It's too much of an opportunity. There's too much money there to just let that go away. I don't think it's going to go away. And there's precedence for this, right? There's the .su for the Soviet Union, right? Which is still around. The .yu for Yugoslavia, right? These things are still around, right? So there's precedent for this. I don't think it's going to go away, honestly. .es, España.
Is that at risk? I think that's still around.
Well, I think it's out there. I'm just like, I'm just joining the club. You're just naming them now. Just throwing some stuff in the bucket with you. .co.uk.
So here's one that I have familiarity with because I thought it'd be really cool, speaking of domain hacks, to have san.to. So I went out and tried to find the .to, T-L-D, stands for Tonga. And maybe that's an eight hall. I don't know. It's a small island or a series of islands. I believe somewhere in the South Pacific. And somebody has taken san.to. They have this like small little website.
They run it themselves, it seems. Tonga's running this website. And every year for a long time, I finally give up on it. I had a reminder to email Tonga people again and see if I could get that domain because they're not using it. They're just camping on san.to. And I really wanted it because that was back when URL shorteners were like all the rage. That would be cool.
And having your own personalized shortener is just too cool. Yeah. So yeah, I'm well aware of countries that are running their own little registrars on their own little TLD. And so I agree with you, Johnny. I think this is a fun fact of history and an exchanging of opportunity to these people. And that's awesome for them.
I think that they're going to have an opportunity to make a decent amount of cash just by proxying this thing to somebody else who can run it or something like that.
Yeah, yeah. And the British legacy, I guess, gets smaller a little bit.
Gets smaller and smaller.
Gets smaller and smaller.
It's no longer the British Indian Ocean. It's kind of an oxymoron, isn't it?
The British Indian Ocean. I know, right? But hey.
Yeah.
It is what it is.
I couldn't help but look up nomo.io. Because I was thinking if that's available. That's a pretty good joke, isn't it? It'd be kind of cool to use that as a drum to beat on to petition to not let I.O. go no more.
Right. Right, right. Maybe you list out all of the companies that use .io and say, hey. Sign the no more petition. Sign the no more petition.
Or it could be one of those websites that just says like yes or no. And like the question is like, is there still a .io domain? It just says yes. Like as long as nomoda.io responds, there's still a domain.
See?
We are indispensable. Oh man, that's indispensable right there.
Yes. I mean, an LLM could never be that witty and fun. You know? Maybe. Eventually. Maybe.
Good stuff. All right. Well, that is all we have for today, Johnny. This was so much fun, man.
We got to have you on more. I miss you, Johnny. I can't wait to see you again in person, man. It's been too long. We need to make it happen. We need to make it happen.
You coming to All Things Open, man? It's nearby. When is that? When is that?
How near is it?
It's in Raleigh. You're in Baltimore.
Yeah, that's not too far.
While we're at it, let's give away 20% off. If you're thinking about going to All Things Open, you can go to the registration site and use the code MediaChangeLog20. And then we have some free passes, Jared. Yep. Are they gone? Have we given them away yet? I think we have a few left. Okay.
We've got one reserved for Johnny if he's going to come.
You've got to join Zulup, which is our new place.
It's the new Slack. Zulup's the new Slack. Sign up today for free. Changelog.com slash community. Hop into Zulup. Say, hey, I want a free ticket. We'll hook you up as long as we have some left. It's probably less than a single hand's worth, but we'll be there.
Let's get rid of them. We need hugs, high fives, and handshakes, and we can't do that unless you acquire the free pass and come to the conference.
And come to the conference.
There you go. That's the two requirements is you got to acquire the free pass or pay your own way if you're that kind of person, except a 20% off, and then show up. That's right. And we're booth 66, y'all. Oh, it's official. 66 is our booth. Nobody knows what 66 is. All right.
So this is like a big deal, like boosting everything. It's going down, man.
We don't mess around. Have you been to All Things Open before, Johnny? No, never. Oh, it's a great one. Oh, yeah, you should be there, Johnny. It's kind of took over the OSCON. It's like the biggest open source conference. If you come, we'll buy you some steak at Sullivan's.
Oh. Just for you, Johnny. Not everybody listening. Is that to all of our listeners as well? This is just to Johnny. Just to Johnny. As in I'm sorry. As in I'm sorry and welcome back officially. Six, seven years later. As in I'm sorry from a decade ago.
Man, man. Wow. I don't know. If you throw a scotch in there.
Oh, there's scotch too. There's scotch involved.
Smoked scotch. Ooh.
All right, Johnny's booking this.
Would it be a flight, or would you drive?
How would you get there?
Oh, I'd probably fly. I'd probably fly through that nearest thing.
Yeah, yeah.
Cool.
Oh, man, you're making it hard to say no. Why say no when it feels so good to say yes?
Absolutely, absolutely. Audience, if you're feeling the same way Johnny's feeling, you know what to do. Media, change log 20, get 20% off, or come into Zulip and get a free pass from Jared. While supplies last. While supplies last. Very limited supply. We love all things open. Todd and team run an amazing conference. It's worth going to. And yeah, all that good stuff. All right.
That's all for today. Bye, friends. Bye, friends.
We've heard from quite a few people who are heading to all things open at the end of the month. Most of those free tickets are gone. So if you want one act now, head to changelog.com slash community and join. It's totally free. Then send yourself a Zulip invite from your changelog homepage and holla at your boy. Thanks again to Johnny for hanging out with us. Go listen to Go Time already.
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