114: Carol Got Laid-Off
Amid the frenzy of industry lay-offs, we here at the Working Code podcast were devastated to hear that our very own Carol Weiler has been affected by a down-turning real estate market. A few weeks ago, while attending a virtual All Hands meeting, her Slack account was suddenly locked, momentarily followed by her computer. It turns out that she, along with a majority of her engineers, were part of an unexpected reduction in force (RIF). On today's show, Carol graciously and courageously joins us to talk about her experience, the ensuing emotional roller coaster, and some of the fascinating steps that she's taken to help improve her outcome.
We love you Carol! You continue to inspire us - and our listeners - every week!
To help lighten the mood of the episode, we close out by playing Two Truths and a Lie. If you can guess who's lying about what, Tim might just send you some free podcast merch! Submit your guesses over on Google Forms.
Also, Adam finally finds a ToDo list that he loves; and - wait for it - it comes from Microsoft!
Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @WorkingCodePod on Twitter and Instagram. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.
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With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.
Transcript
Spot an error? Send a pull request on GitHub.
[00:00:00] Carol: So what'd you guys talk about last week?
[00:00:01] Adam: uh, we talked about layoffs. There's, there's, there's a lot of layoffs going around, so we just decided to like, you know, what, what can you do to set yourself up to survive a layoff?
[00:00:10] Tim: Mm-hmm.
[00:00:10] Adam: all of that.
[00:00:12] Carol: Are you for real? Like
[00:00:13] Adam: Yeah.
[00:00:15] Carol: So last week I, uh, kinda got laid off.
[00:00:18] Tim: What?
[00:00:18] Ben: no,
[00:00:20] Tim: Oh, no,
[00:00:20] Tim: Carol.
[00:00:21] Carol: Yeah. I saw it's been a hell of a seven days. Not gonna lie. And it kind of sucks just being honest. So.
[00:00:28] Adam: Hmm. I'm sorry.
[00:00:31] Carol: I didn't listen to the episode, so we could talk about that more if you want.
[00:00:35] Adam: Yeah, let's do
[00:00:35] Tim: Yeah.
[00:00:56] Intro
[00:00:56] Adam: Okay, here we go. It is show number one 14. And on today's show, Carol got laid off apparently. So we're gonna get into it. timing, timing, timing. but first I guess we'll try to slog our way through, triumph and fails. Before we get to, the all important topic, Carol, why don't you go first? Do you have a triumph or fail for us this week?
[00:01:14] Carol's Triumph
[00:01:14] Carol: Yeah, guys, I am going with a giant triumph because, uh, whenever anything crazy goes on in my life, and it's the same can be said for most of my girlfriends, is that we do some drastic things to our hair and we start wearing a lot of makeup again, and we just kind of changed things. And I, I cut my
[00:01:35] Carol: hair.
[00:01:35] Carol: Don't you like it
[00:01:36] Adam: happens.
[00:01:37] Tim: I do like it.
[00:01:38] Carol: I
[00:01:38] Carol: mean, it is, for anyone who can't see me, I had about six inches chopped off. And this is after I went to my own bathroom and decided to chop my hair off at home and then had to call my, girl the salon and go, can you please cut my hair? Because I screwed it up. So I cut my hair and then I got it cut for real.
[00:01:56] Carol: So triumphs.
[00:01:58] Tim: that looks great.
[00:02:00] Carol: Thank
[00:02:00] Adam: Yeah. I mean, you had it like, maybe mid-back length before and now it's like shoulder length or a little shorter.
[00:02:05] Carol: Yeah, I mean, whenever I would work out it would get in my way a ton, like previously, but if, maybe this is too much detail, but like, if I had my shirt off, it covered up my sports bra. That's how long it was. So, so now it is, you can see my whole shoulder, so yeah.
[00:02:23] Tim: Used to be a little eve in the garden. Now. It's, uh, yeah.
[00:02:26] Carol: no more. Yep. So
[00:02:27] Carol: I like it though, man. You talk about like shampoo and conditioner.
[00:02:32] Carol: I've washed it twice now. It takes no shampoo, no conditioner, and it dries and like, you know, 30 minutes as opposed to 24 hours later it's still damp. I'm like, this is the best thing ever. I dunno if I'll ever grow it out again.
[00:02:46] Adam: Tell me about it. I got maybe, maybe like a half inch of length on top of my head and I just like, you know, kind of walk outta the shower and glance at my towel and my hair's dry.
[00:02:59] Carol: Oh, that's me. What about you, Tim? What you got going on?
[00:03:02] Tim: Well, before I do that, I just wanna say it's just nice to hear that even though you had a big fail, you know you got laid off, you, you're going with a triumph. So I love that
[00:03:10] Tim: love that positive
[00:03:10] Tim: attitude
[00:03:11] Carol: Gonna keep winning.
[00:03:12] Tim: onward and upward.
[00:03:13] Tim's Failure
[00:03:13] Tim: so I go with a fail. I hate Microsoft Windows server and people who run them.
[00:03:19] Adam: And they hate you too, Tim.
[00:03:21] Tim: I'm sure they do, but, you know, so I don't know if there was like a Windows update that went out early this week. I don't know if it was it Patch Tuesday. This past Tuesday. A bunch of our customers, they stopped being able to connect to our api. You know, of course it's always our fault, right? It's like, oh, what'd you guys change?
[00:03:42] Tim: Like, we haven't deployed code in three months. Like, we haven't touched, nothing's changed. Of course, you can't say that. You gotta like do your due diligence. And so I literally spent two days bugging our infrastructure team and looking at stuff myself and checking logs. And I thought it was the wf. I thought, you know, the WF was like blocking something, wasn't wf, didn't have any injuries.
[00:04:02] Tim: We did have some weird kind of connection refuse stuff that was going on. So that led us into a rabbit hole for like seven hours. and so the, the only thing I could find in common, the customers are having this problem. They were all running Windows server 2012. 12
[00:04:17] Tim: people
[00:04:19] Carol: I mean, that's like the newest one, right?
[00:04:21] Tim: 12. And so I was, I, I was like, so I just eventually, it's like after spinning our wheels, I told our customers, We can't find anything here. We think it ha you know, we have other customers with this issue. The common denominator is all of your running windows 2012. And they started, like they said, okay, we'll try to upgrade some stuff.
[00:04:43] Tim: And it didn't, our dev server didn't have the problem, but our live server did. So, or another, another opposite. The live server didn't have the problem is, or development server that the people couldn't connect to. So trying to figure out what's the difference. The only difference I could find was the ciphers.
[00:04:58] Tim: So you, in https s because of
[00:05:00] Tim: our PCI compliance, we have, everything has to be on https s there were more ciphers, oddly enough in production than there were in Dev. Definitely had like four ciphers.
[00:05:12] Carol: What does, like, what does a
[00:05:13] Carol: cipher do?
[00:05:14] Tim: So a cipher is the encrypt, it's like the encrypt encryption algorithm that TLS uses. So when you connect securely, that's what it uses.
[00:05:20] Tim: So it has, I mean, there's a bunch of them. And so I was like, all right, so let's open up our ciphers. You know, none of the insecure ones. Let's add some, some more of the common ones and stuff started working. So my only assumption is that Windows on Tuesday, you know, got rid of some ciphers that were there before and they no longer support.
[00:05:41] Tim: And you know,
[00:05:41] Tim: I don't think anyone
[00:05:42] Adam: always like this, like black magic to me. There's like the whole certificate chain and I don't know
[00:05:48] Carol: the key for it. Yeah.
[00:05:50] Tim: Yep.
[00:05:50] Adam: Well, I
[00:05:50] Adam: mean,
[00:05:51] Adam: let me just throw this in there. Server 2012 is, is going end of support in October of this
[00:05:56] Carol: I was gonna say this year. right? Yeah, that's what I thought.
[00:05:59] Carol: Mm-hmm.
[00:05:59] Adam: accelerating their.
[00:06:01] Tim: They, they should be off it. Right? I, I get that. But I, I get, there's reasons why companies don't do that. Particularly some of the companies we deal with, they don't really have a big it, team or whatever. It's, it is usually some person who's really not even qualified to have the job.
[00:06:14] Tim: so I'm spending a lot of time trying to educate them on what needs to be done and then explaining what I just said. but that it worked for like 90% of our customers and then a few of them, they're like, this still isn't working. I'm like, all right. But fortunately they had multiple environments and one environment worked and one didn't, and someone had a batch process and the, it was kinda like a realtime process.
[00:06:35] Tim: And I'm like, so look, your real-time process is working. Why don't you just move your code? And they're on like asp, like really old ASP version as well. Like, why don't you just move your code from your old server, from the, that server to the server that's working? And they did and it worked. So yeah. Hate Windows server.
[00:06:55] Tim: Hate it. Hate it, hate It.
[00:06:57] Carol: It. That it works in one place but not the other.
[00:07:00] Tim: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:07:02] Ben: I get very frustrated too sometimes when a customer says, Hey, your system isn't working, and you go and say the problem's definitely on your end, and they're like, A hundred percent convinced there's no way that the, that the, the, there's no way that their firewall rules or their security rules or anything that couldn't possibly cause the problem.
[00:07:21] Ben: So then you gotta spend, you know, hours or days trying to debug and look through logs and look through business logic and compare other client requests. And then finally, like you beg and plead with them, like, please like, just double check your firewall rules cuz we really can't find, and then they look and they're like, oh yeah, that's on our end.
[00:07:39] Ben: You're like,
[00:07:40] Carol: We did that.
[00:07:41] Adam: It took you
[00:07:42] Adam: 30 seconds.
[00:07:43] Tim: it took you talk about firewall. That's the other thing. We had just recently up upgraded all of our firewalls at work.
[00:07:49] Carol: How recent? Like enough that
[00:07:50] Tim: Like that weekend prior. That
[00:07:52] Carol: Oh.
[00:07:54] Tim: So, you know, if you're looking for any change, right. So it's, it was just coincidental. The firewall was fine.
[00:07:59] Tim: Absolutely fine.
[00:08:00] Tim: yeah, it's so, and then I feel bad for our infrastructure guys, our ops guys, cuz it's like, you know, I'm beating on them and it's like, you know, something's different, something's different. Like, man, I'm trying to, and they were right. I mean, you know, a lot of times they're wrong, but this time they were right.
[00:08:17] Carol: I will say my gut reaction when that happens would've been like, roll back the firewall changes, roll 'em back, fix it. Undo what you did. Let's see if it works cuz I am a undo what you did cuz it should undo pretty easily if you have a backup plan in place and then we can reapply whatever you did again sim like pretty smoothly.
[00:08:34] Tim: Yeah. And the, one of the clients is like, we haven't, we haven't changed codes since 2016. So it's, we, it's not us , I'm like,
[00:08:43] Carol: that's why they still have Microsoft 2012.
[00:08:46] Tim: Yeah, exactly. So I'm going with that, that fail even though it's not my fail, it's just that waste of time. Cuz I was like really looking forward to building some prototypes and I just, I didn't get to it this week cuz of, cuz of that crap.
[00:08:58] Tim: So
[00:08:58] Carol: well, hold on. I feel like the last time I was on, which was, you know, forever ago,
[00:09:02] Carol: you were having the same type of issues, but because they cut a cable with your internet provider, like in Atlanta, which is just a stupid thing, again, outside of your control, but you have to remedy communication to the customer on why it's not working.
[00:09:17] Adam: That was like cash DNS or
[00:09:18] Carol: Yeah.
[00:09:19] Tim: Yep. He goes cash, that's for sure. Anyway. Yeah, that's me. How about you, Ben?
[00:09:24] Ben's Triumph
[00:09:24] Ben: I am gonna go with a tri. , which was that, I think I mentioned this on a previous episode that I've recently started to look at, Hotwire, which is a framework from Basecamp and the, Rubian Rails community. And, I had intended to build an application with Hotwire, like a, like a little fun side application and got completely overwhelmed and had no idea what I was doing.
[00:09:45] Ben: And, I think that was a failure in a previous episode. So today I'm going triumph, which is that I have rolled back my efforts and, I've created a new project that is just gonna be little standalone exploration slash demos of Hot Wire. So instead of trying to just build an application from. I want to get familiar with the feature set of Hot Wire.
[00:10:08] Ben: So I look at I'll, I'm, I'm, I'm intending to build little demos of individual pieces of functionality, get a sense of how those work, start to slowly build up a better mental model of the various pieces of Hot wire, turbo drive, turbo streams, stimulus, et cetera. And then once I feel like I have a good foundational understanding, then I'm gonna go back and be okay.
[00:10:30] Ben: Now can I take the application that I couldn't build previously and can I actually start to, sprinkle in hot wire on top of it? So I, I feel like I, going back to a better, a better approach to learning something new,
[00:10:44] Carol: And please tell me you're gonna be blogging about this while you do
[00:10:47] Ben: uh,for show.
[00:10:49] Carol: Thank you because I looked up hot wire and their developer documents don't help me at all. I got very confused and gave up like, and then when I search more, I just get more confused and I was like, okay, I'm just gonna have to like admit that I have no idea what Ben's talking about when we talk about hot wire because the internet isn't helping me figure it out any better.
[00:11:08] Carol: So,
[00:11:10] Ben: It's, it's interesting cuz it comes out of the Rubian Rails community and, I don't know, Rubian rails. So when I look at Rubian rails code, it's so terse and I, and I don't know if it's, if it's more terse than other languages or I'm just so not familiar with the syntax that it looks very unfamiliar, but it, it looks like there is a lot of convention in the Ruby Rails that allows the code to be very short.
[00:11:34] Ben: Whereas my code would likely be more verbose and, dare I say sexy, but that's very personal. But, I, I don't know. It's a, it's an interesting world. Yeah.
[00:11:44] Ben: Oh, so that's me. Adam, how about you?
[00:11:46] Adam's Triumph
[00:11:46] Adam: I am also gonna go with the triumph this week, and I don't think I've talked about this on the podcast, but I actually found a to-do app that I actually, so far, I've been using it for about a week, and I really like it and it surprised me that I like it because of who made it. So I've, I've tried 'em all right.
[00:12:01] Adam: I've done, Todoist and Notion and Wonder List back in the day. And, well also the one I haven't tried is because it's way too expensive. things for Mac and, and for iOS, it's like, I think you have to pay $50 for the, the desktop app and, and $10. No, granted, it's a one time purchase, not a subscription.
[00:12:20] Adam: So amortized over time. Okay. I I kind of get it, but yeah, for a to-do
[00:12:25] Carol: better love it. Yeah.
[00:12:26] Adam: app,
[00:12:27] Ben: That's
[00:12:28] Adam: 50 bucks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, but it's supposed to be great. So that's like why I, I still kind of had it on my radar, but, so I was looking around and I found this app from this company. You might have heard of them.
[00:12:39] Adam: I, I believe it's pronounced me, Mero Soft, and, and so, yeah. Oh, maybe that's it. And, and so they have, it's called
[00:12:47] Tim: their server product sucks.
[00:12:51] Adam: It's called Well, but they're to-do list works. So it's called Microsoft to-do. I know that's tough to, to wrap your head around. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but,
[00:12:58] Carol: A link to that.
[00:13:00] Adam: yeah, it's on, so I got it. They have a, a Native Mac app.
[00:13:04] Tim: I
[00:13:04] Tim: think it's part of
[00:13:05] Adam: iOS app.
[00:13:06] Tim: isn.
[00:13:07] Adam: It, I, if it is integrated with Microsoft Teams, I don't see it.
[00:13:10] Adam: Like, I think that there's a way that it can, like, pull in, like if you flag an email in your Outlook or whatever, then it can automatically pull it in through its connection over your Microsoft account. But, otherwise I don't see any visible integration with Microsoft Teams in the app. And it, you know, it, it's visually nice.
[00:13:28] Adam: It's not like, oh my God, I have to tell everybody I know about how beautiful this to-do app is. But it's ob it's also not ugly, right? It, it's very fine. , it's a little bit better than fine. and it's got all the features that I'm looking for, you know, like differentiation of lists and, starring and due dates and like notes and, and links and all the stuff works great.
[00:13:49] Adam: syncs across desktop and phone. And so far, like I said, I've been using it for a week or two, really liking it. which surprised me because I don't like many Microsoft products with the exception of, I guess, vs code.
[00:14:02] Tim: Yeah. I don't see the, I think it's called tasks they have, but they don't have to do
[00:14:07] Adam: Hmm.
[00:14:07] Tim: of teams.
[00:14:08] Carol: So back when I had a job and things to do during the day and needed my to-do list, I really liked the, integration with Drive and like my Gmail. So on the right side of my Gmail, I always had my to-do list open. And when I would be in drive, like I would open a Google doc and I would add a comment to something we were working on, and then I could create myself like a task for it or a to do for it.
[00:14:31] Carol: So it would show in my Gmail, like that view. So whenever I'm like, oh, check my email on the right head side, I'm like, oh yeah, I still need to work on that comment. Like I need to go find what's happening with it. So I like the ability to just keep things in one view. Like that's my big, big problem is once it's out of the view, I hate going back to find it somewhere else.
[00:14:50] Carol: Like I don't wanna go look in the document to remember what I was working on. I like that when I'm in Gmail, it's like, Hey, there's all my to-do lists.
[00:14:56] Adam: Yeah, I tend to have a ton of stuff in my to-do list, which is one thing that I like about this. You can kind of like, at the beginning of the day, you can go through and say, okay, these are the things that I want you to have in the my day today. Like, if it's due today, then it'll automatically show up there.
[00:15:09] Adam: But then otherwise you could just say, okay, like, put this on for today. Put this on for today. And it has like a my day view. The problem
[00:15:16] Adam: I, I used to kind of treat my inbox as a to-do list, and like if I, if it was done, I would archive it and then like, if it was important, I would leave it unread. And if it was unimportant but still needed to be there for visibility reasons, I would leave it in my inbox.
[00:15:30] Adam: And that just started to get under my skin. So I try now to do like inbox zero and move everything into a to-do list.
[00:15:39] Carol: I right click on the email and I say snooze if it's important or if I feel like I need to follow up on it. And it's like until this afternoon or until tomorrow, and usually it was until next week. , if it's still important next week, I'll do it then. Maybe that's why I got laid off you guys.
[00:15:55] Adam: No, that would be fired for.
[00:15:58] Tim: Yeah,
[00:16:00] Carol: So, yeah, we wanna, wanna jump into this conversation?
[00:16:03] Tim: totally up to you.
[00:16:04] Carol Gets Laid Off
[00:16:04] Carol: Yeah, I'm ready to go. So, you guys know I mentioned in October that we had some layoffs, right? We ended up laying off like 20% of the company, or not we anymore. The company I worked for, clerk Capital at the time, laid off 25% of its workforce. the market was just not where it needed to be, and the hope was that we would be in a better spot after doing what they called, right-sizing.
[00:16:28] Carol: So rather than downsizing it, the term was called right-sizing. So we needed to make our company the right size to fit the market.
[00:16:34] Tim: Oh, that makes it so much better.
[00:16:38] Carol: Yeah, it didn't really for the people who got laid off that time, nor will it this time for the people who got laid off. the market didn't get any better. there's no loan originations happening right now, which means if there's no properties being bought new, then there's no appraisals being done to properties.
[00:16:52] Carol: And actually the other side of it is because properties were purchased so high that we're about to see foreclosure start happening from people who bought outside their price range just to get a house. And now they can't afford said house cuz more layoffs are happening in the market. So then the other side of the product's gonna be more utilized than what was.
[00:17:11] Carol: So a lot, a lot is going on, but ultimately, it had to go through another round of layoffs. And during the second round of layoffs, I did not survive and my position was one of the ones that was eliminated.
[00:17:23] Carol: So not only was my position eliminated, two thirds of engineering was eliminated. That was a number I heard after the fact.
[00:17:31] Carol: So that's not a confirmed, I don't. I don't know what was disclosed because I was in a call and all of a sudden my slack went purple and not soon after my laptop locked.
[00:17:41] Carol: So I didn't really know who all like got laid off other than from LinkedIn and from other people telling me. But I heard from one of the product people that two thirds of engineering was laid off, which makes sense because half over half of my team was laid off.
[00:17:56] Carol: So the only two people that directly reported to me retained retained their job.
[00:18:02] Ben: man,
[00:18:03] Carol: So it was a big old giant hit.
[00:18:05] Ben: I, I do have a question. After the previous round of right sizing, did they indicate that there might be another round, or, or did they say like, or this is, there's like, we did what we needed to do and now we're good.
[00:18:19] Carol: Yeah. So what had been communicated to the company was that we had done what had needed to be done and now we're good. And we
[00:18:26] Carol: had had some meetings that were like, Hey, we're looking good. Here's some graph. , you see these bars, they look like they're flowing correctly even though it's a privately held company.
[00:18:36] Carol: So there's no numbers to go to it. So you don't know what it looks like. It just says we're doing good. Everyone should remain calm. But just so you know, we're not gonna be doing like holiday gifts this year. But you know, what was being told was that we were looking good and hiring free should be lifted and we should expect, you know, good news coming up.
[00:18:55] Carol: And then I guess there was no good news and we'd all, I think also the market not improving through November, December and declining in January still wasn't expected.
[00:19:08] Carol: They didn't forecast that and didn't see it coming.
[00:19:10] Tim: Yeah, because the Fed kept raising.
[00:19:12] Carol: Yeah, yeah. Another raise, just another interest rate raise hit and that was too much for us.
[00:19:19] Carol: Yep.
[00:19:19] Tim: Hmm.
[00:19:20] Ben: Yeah.
[00:19:21] Carol: So, yeah, it's been, It's been a struggle. the biggest challenge I hit immediately was I've been a single mom since I was, you know, as long as I can remember since I've known 10, 10, like I've been a single mom and I've been able to provide for my kids no question to ask easily. So even though I had started, you know, putting money away and saving money, and I've been doing really well, I immediately freaked out and I broke down and I was like, we are going to eat Ramen for a week.
[00:19:51] Carol: And I logged into YouTube TV and canceled our subscriptions. I canceled every streaming service. I called the housekeeper, and this is gonna sound so
[00:19:59] Carol: first world problem, right?
[00:20:01] Carol: In that, you know, I had to like fire my lawn guy. I had to fire the housekeeper, but I was like, there's no need to have any of this stuff, and even in reality, we should be able to live without any of this stuff. Anyways, so the following morning, my husband was leaving for work and as he's leaving, I'm just listening.
[00:20:18] Carol: Everything that, from the time I woke up to when he got outta the shower that I had already logged in and canceled
[00:20:23] Carol: and he's being so supportive and he was like, okay, honey, okay, you can act like we're poor, but do not cancel YouTube premium. He goes, I can't do ads. I can't do ads on YouTube. Do not cancel that.
[00:20:35] Carol: He's like, you promise you won't cancel it, right? I was like, it's $30. He goes, I, I was like, I won't cancel it. He goes, don't cancel that He goes, you can act poor all you want, but we're not canceling it. But in reality, . I mean that's, there's something to be said about knowing that the market is where it is and seeing the writing on the wall.
[00:20:56] Carol: I mean, Spotify had major layoffs. You know, Microsoft, Facebook, all the tech companies that you've looked at for years that are like growing and growing and growing. They're doing these layoffs. So for me personally, I took that as a sign that no matter what market I go into, I need to have enough set aside to cover for my family.
[00:21:15] Carol: So as of right now, if I change nothing in my life, if I keep going to Starbucks, and if I wouldn't have. Canceled all my streaming services, like just in my checking account without touching savings. Like we're good for three months, three months, no issue. And if I need to go into savings, there's substantially more.
[00:21:33] Carol: So I do feel very grateful that people have told me for so long to put my money away and to live within my means and never live beyond. Or like in the case where I got this job, I kept living on my old salary. So
[00:21:49] Carol: then I never acted like I had the new money. So
[00:21:52] Carol: it helped a lot to just put money away as much as we could.
[00:21:56] Adam: Good job.
[00:21:57] Carol: Thanks. I tried and that made the, the next day I was able to breathe. Then
[00:22:02] Carol: that that was a huge thing. If I could give anyone one piece of advice, it's put money away because you don't know what tomorrow looks like. And while it's okay to freak out in that moment, it felt really good to wake up that next morning and look at my checking account and go.
[00:22:17] Carol: Okay, the power will stay on .
[00:22:19] Carol: We don't actually have to live off ramen. Like you can get chicken once a week if you want it. Like, you know, it's, you'll get, you'll get your splurges, right. But no, like, just to realize that my kids are still taken care of. And oddly enough, the week before the, the motor blew up in my kid's car, like
[00:22:35] Carol: huge, huge financial hit and I was like old me would've been like, you don't get a car.
[00:22:41] Carol: I'm so sorry you're getting a bicycle and we're going to like Goodwill to find you a bicycle cuz you don't get these things in life. You're gonna have to get two jobs and figure it out. And instead we're just able to kind of take care of things and it's because, you know, we've done a really good job of just kind of keeping things on the side and living below what we are able to live off of.
[00:23:00] Carol: So,
[00:23:01] Ben: That's great.
[00:23:03] Carol: yeah,
[00:23:03] Adam: good.
[00:23:04] What Did It Feel Like At First?
[00:23:04] Carol: I got, I, so I gotta ask, you know, I've never been laid off or fired from a job. first for me too.
[00:23:11] Tim: Yeah, yeah, go ahead. For sure. just talk about like the emotional, like that initial emotion. I, if, if
[00:23:18] Tim: you can, I, I,
[00:23:19] Tim: I mean, I, I know you talked to us about it on
[00:23:21] Tim: Disor, but if you, if you're willing to talk publicly, cuz I think, I imagine people who haven't been through it. Don't know what to expect and those who have kind of like, you know, maybe need some confirmation that they're not crazy
[00:23:33] Carol: yeah. He, here's something to relate to. I get that. And, if you are about to go through this or you think it's coming, a little bit of advice, right? So I got the information and I just sat on my office floor and cried. I cried and cried and cried. And I called my husband and was like, I need you to come home, because I just got laid off.
[00:23:50] Carol: And I'm just tears because I feel like a complete failure. Everything I've worked for, I have lost all validation in myself. And in that moment I felt like people walk up to you, people come up to you, and they're like, oh, like, nice to meet you. What do you do? And I'm like, I don't do anything. I don't do anything anymore.
[00:24:09] Carol: I'm nothing like people are gonna look at me and go, you have no value in life because you don't have a thing you do. And in that moment, I lost all, all confidence I had built. I lost all validation and I immediately just went, I don't know what I'm gonna do. I don't know. I feel lost. I feel like useless.
[00:24:28] Carol: I feel like nothing. I felt like a company I had poured my heart and soul into just saw me as a number on a piece of paper and they had no, no care about me. And that hurt so bad because when you put your heart into what you do it, it sucks to have it not, you know, reciprocated to you reciprocated. I suck at that word, but yeah, have it not shown back to you in that moment.
[00:24:53] Carol: But I'll also know, like the last number I saw in a post, like from housing wire was 250 people were laid off. So that was a huge hit. I mean, when you're talking to two-thirds of engineering, that's a lot of people laid off.
[00:25:07] Ben: It, it's interesting. So one of the other podcasts that I really enjoy listening to is soft skills engineering. And, it's a, it's a question and answer show and people will oftentimes write in and talk about how conflicted they feel sometimes about leaving their company or looking for new jobs. And the hosts are always like, your company doesn't care about you.
[00:25:26] Ben: Like if the tables were turned and they had to fire you, like it would not, there'd be no hesitation, they would fire you. And it's, it is, there is that moment of, of shock when it happens and you realize that it's not, it's not the human, you know, it's not, we're not all a family. It, it's very much a business transactional context.
[00:25:46] Tim: It's not personal, it's business.
[00:25:48] Carol: Yeah,
[00:25:48] Tim: I think we talked about that last week though. Like so if you get fired, right, that's for cause.
[00:25:53] Tim: So you did something bad or you weren't performing well enough and they had to let you go. When you get laid off with a bunch of other people, it's, even though it feels like I, I totally.
[00:26:03] Tim: You know, get what you're, what you're saying, but it's not your fault. Even though it's gonna feel it, no matter what you
[00:26:08] Tim: say, it's gonna feel like your fault. But it's like, it's not that you weren't performing, it's just that company was not performing
[00:26:14] Tim: due to circumstances
[00:26:16] Tim: completely outside your control.
[00:26:19] Tim: But that's the, I mean, initially the emotional part of your first, your emotions kick
[00:26:24] Tim: in, right? And then you gotta like wind down and let the rational part go over and say, you know what, this wasn't my fault.
[00:26:30] Tim: This, this was their fault. They didn't foresee the market to. And so I was laid off, not because I'm a bad person, not because I didn't do my job, I was doing what they told me I was performing well.
[00:26:40] Tim: But that it takes a while to get there. It takes a while to get that. And even after you're past it, I imagine there's gonna be flashbacks of like,
[00:26:48] Tim: you feel something
[00:26:50] Tim: and you're like that, that is fight or flight response, right?
[00:26:53] Carol: Yeah, it kicks in. Yeah. That's where I hit, like on day two of it, the day after. It was like, okay. I didn't do a bad job. I worked very hard. I put my heart into it. And the fact that I'm sitting here feeling like a company losing money and their lack of planning and their lack of forecasting is making me feel like I need validation from someone else because now they've like killed my confidence.
[00:27:17] Carol: I was like, I'm not giving that to someone. Like I have to realize that I'm still good at what I do. And I will say our network of people have been amazing in making me feel loved and making me feel like I have a home outside of where I was. Cuz I immediately had so many people reaching out within 90 minutes of being laid off.
[00:27:38] Carol: My old company had reached out and said, Hey, you have a home. You're safe. Everything's okay. Come back if you want, come talk to us. You're not alone. Right.
[00:27:48] Carol: And even if I don't go to them for like a full-time job, they're like, just come consult with us. Like, We have opportunities for you to help us and we can help you.
[00:27:56] Carol: And so many engineers and friends of the podcast have sent me links to their companies, to friends companies and have been like, Hey, we are hiring, so just apply. And you know, we'll bump you up the list. And it's great to have that network of people who immediately are just there to reach out. Like, I didn't have to ask anyone.
[00:28:12] Carol: They all just came to me. And it was very humbling and it made my heart so happy, and it helped me feel like I was doing a good job because people wouldn't just reach out if you weren't capable of doing a good job. So then it helped feel like, okay, it wasn't me. It's not on me, even though it feels like it's me, it's not on me.
[00:28:30] Tim: Yeah.
[00:28:31] Carol: But I'll also say, when you're in a spot of leadership, it sucks
[00:28:35] Carol: even more. Even more because I had my team of people texting me immediately going, what just happened? and I had to go, I don't know, like it hit me.
[00:28:46] Carol: They didn't even know I was one of the ones let go. And they were shocked when they found out I was let go because they were certain that I would've remained on staffed.
[00:28:54] Carol: And then I'm having to like comfort them and be like, okay,
[00:28:58] Tim: while you're
[00:28:58] Carol: yeah. And I'm trying to like stay calm and just remind them that they're gonna be okay and they're gonna get through this. And I've worked so hard to build them up and get them to safe spots and then to feel like I wasn't actually able to help them get anywhere.
[00:29:11] Carol: That put me on my butt again. I'm like, Ugh, I'll get through this. I will get through this. You all will get through this. So,
[00:29:18] Ben: Oh man, what a, so it, it sounds like there was no warning at all. People were just locked out of their computers or locked out of their accounts. Is that That's what
[00:29:29] Carol: Yeah. And that's the worst feeling ever. The, you know, if I put in my notice, I have two weeks, right? I work out my two weeks. I get to clear things, I get to end things, I get to kinda wash my hands, have my little piece. yeah, I get my closure. That's right, Tim. But, this was the night before, late after hours, they put an all hands meeting on everyone's calendar for the next day, which was noon my time.
[00:29:53] Carol: Which would've been what, nine East west coast?
[00:29:57] Carol: Yeah. Nine. So basically when it started, their day started and it said, Hey, we have some important information we'd like to share. Feel free to work from home if you want. you do need to take this meeting in a personal place. And it is mandatory for all employee.
[00:30:14] Carol: So then during the meeting, you know, they have this QR code up. It's like, you know, scan it for information to, to contact and stuff. Please save this image. And over on my left side window, my slack logs out as they're talking about people being laid off. And it says, like, they're saying like, oh, your company email will get an email it if you are remaining on staff.
[00:30:37] Carol: Otherwise your personal email on, on file will be sent the notification that you were let go. So I get a text from one of my coworkers that says, please tell me you just got that email at work. Please tell me you just got that email at work. And I said, actually, my Slack just kicked me out and now my email's locked.
[00:30:55] Carol: And then before I could even like respond back, my computer had the lockout screen on it that says like, enter the pen to get back into it. And it's like, you know, they're pens. So I don't know. So I'm not even gonna. yeah, it was, for, for security reasons and for the safety of the customers, it's an immediate termination.
[00:31:13] Carol: So the next day was when the termination was actually effective.
[00:31:17] Tim: Wow.
[00:31:18] Carol: Yeah.
[00:31:19] Carol: And
[00:31:19] Carol: they are, I mean, they did offer severance and stuff, which I can't talk about yet, but
[00:31:22] Carol: I mean, they're trying.
[00:31:24] Adam: So, yeah, I guess, I think we've all said that we've not been fired or laid off from a job before. So I guess
[00:31:34] Carol: Rub it in Adam. Oh my God.
[00:31:38] Tim: Yeah, buddy. Wow.
[00:31:40] Carol: way to
[00:31:40] What Unexpected Things Did You Have To Do?
[00:31:40] Adam: Well, I, what I wanna do is try to benefit not only ourselves, but also the listeners from your experience. So what. , what are the things that you had to do because of this that you weren't expecting?
[00:31:54] Adam: Like I think, for example, one of the things you mentioned to us probably offline, was that you had been in contact with a lawyer. Like that just wouldn't be the first thing I would think of. So like what else is going on that maybe we're not that that's not obvious.
[00:32:08] Carol: Yeah. So I'll give you a couple things actually. So the first is a lawyer. the way the conversation came across to me and that they may not have meant for it to go this way, but the way the conversation came across for me in that call was that you have 24 hours to sign your severance package.
[00:32:22] Carol: To me, that felt like quack quack. You know, like, that's not okay. I can't review this in 24 hours. This is not something I could get legal to review. So I immediately threw a red flag with how, like, I felt like it was being pushed to get this back to us immediately. So I said, okay, I'm getting a lawyer, said I'm not signing anything.
[00:32:44] Carol: the second thing was whenever I logged into the site, I couldn't print the documents. I had to like, take screenshots of it. I was like, okay, big red flag there that there's no print option
[00:32:54] Carol: for me to actually save this document. Right. So I was like, red flag. And it may not be, it may have just been me in the moment not doing something right.
[00:33:01] Carol: I'm not faulting them. So I was like, okay. Like Adam said, I did retain legal counsel and I do have, employment lawyers looking into it. And the one thing I didn't know is that law is very specialized. So when you need a lawyer to review severance, when you need help with unemployment, cuz that's the other thing, unemployment is a beast.
[00:33:23] Carol: And I do not suggest anyone try tackling that by themselves. like the legal fee is $350, like in Georgia to get counsel, just to have them help you with the unemployment, do it because otherwise you're not gonna get what you need. I had no idea that I needed to help get help with that. So getting a lawyer to help with unemployment, to help with reviewing the severance, and then of course renegotiating the severance package.
[00:33:47] Carol: So the, the other thing is insurance. You lose your health insurance, your children lose their health insurance, you're offered Cobra, but you have to pay for that out of pocket. And it is very, very expensive as well. And it's like this huge deductible that we would never meet unless we pretty much are dying in the ER for days.
[00:34:09] Carol: Like there's no way I would wanna pay to have to then pay that much in a deductible. So you would need to then do some research because you have to elect it, I think within 60 days and it is back effective. So that's a good thing. So if you end up getting employed within two months or so, then you probably wouldn't need it unless some emergency happens.
[00:34:27] Carol: So then you could elect it to be backwards effective. So that's the one of the good things about Cobra. and then the other thing was I had to go through and cancel like auto subscriptions on like our medications and stuff
[00:34:37] Carol: because we had our auto, our medication set to just auto refill at the pharmacies.
[00:34:42] Carol: Nothing went. Yeah, nothing went through. And Publix was like, What, $700. I was like, we're not picking up that medicine today,
[00:34:50] Tim: you can put that back on the shelf. Yo
[00:34:52] Carol: like, you can hold my a d d meds and I will be okay for a day. Right. I have some extras. We're fine. So then I had to deal with, the whole what prescription do d like that type of stuff that I didn't even think about until it hit my text.
[00:35:07] Carol: Like, oh, your copay is this. So I think the biggest thing is
[00:35:11] Carol: I would not sign a severance package without getting it reviewed and then get help with unemployment. Like it's okay to ask for help post on Reddit. Even I read a lot of information on Reddit that was helpful with just pointing me to you know, who to ask and what questions to ask that I didn't even know about.
[00:35:27] Carol: And then the whole insurance thing, the you're gonna lose coverage, so you need to get a plan in place if your family has any type of medical necessity.
[00:35:36] Ben: It never would've even occurred to me that I could negotiate a severance package.
[00:35:41] Carol: Yeah, you absolutely can. And. I was told today from the director of another company who was trying to, to come work for them, he said at their company that if the employee even mentions that they are having it reviewed by a, employment lawyer, they automatically increase the severance just to try to get it to go away.
[00:36:02] Adam: Wow,
[00:36:03] Carol: You don't even have to get it reviewed
[00:36:05] Carol: yet. Just saying that you know enough to know that the lawyer you need to get is an employment lawyer, tells them that you know enough that they don't want them to go much further because the legal side of it for them is more expensive.
[00:36:19] Carol: Yeah. So, I think that's just the key things. The lawyer stuff, insurance, realizing what your family needs gonna be, and then I think, you know, Like I said earlier, save money right
[00:36:29] Carol: now. If you have a job, it may sound silly, but just put some money to the side. Have enough to, you know, cover you for, you know, a month's worst of all your bills, if nothing else.
[00:36:40] Carol: Like make sure you can pay your mortgage, your house payment, your power, those key things so that you're not sitting there freaking out day one going, I need a job tomorrow. So you can take a breath and know that the two week waiting period between jobs isn't going to impact your family, that you're not gonna rack up several thousand dollars in credit cards.
[00:36:59] Carol: So little money to the,
[00:37:02] Ben: Yeah. Great
[00:37:02] Tim: sure it's. Interesting that, I mean, you're ticking except the lawyer. Definitely the lawyer thing. And the insurance we're, we didn't talk about that last week, but a lot of the things you're saying, you are kind of confirming what we talked about last week.
[00:37:17] Carol: I'll listen and let you know
[00:37:18] Tim: Yeah, let us, let us know how
[00:37:20] Tim: on the mark or off the mark we were.
[00:37:22] Tim: I know, I know we made some statements about companies that, you know, were executives weren't taking a cut, who then later took a cut.
[00:37:28] Adam: Well, yeah, we later found out, so, you know, pricking news, , Tim, Tim Cook listened to our podcast in the future and, and went back in time and, and retroactively took a, a pay cut? No. So Tim Cook did at Apple. And then, of course, so I recorded a correction that got dropped in the beginning of that episode.
[00:37:44] Adam: I don't know if you guys knew that,
[00:37:45] Tim: Yeah, I saw
[00:37:46] Adam: for, for Tim Cook. And then, you know, I, so I provided that over to Matt to edit in. And then of course somebody else chimes in as like, oh yeah, sunk, from Google is doing the same thing too. and I'm like, well, fine. I'm not . That's it. I'll
[00:37:59] Tim: But they're, but they're, still, they still laid off a bunch of people,
[00:38:02] Tim: right? It's not like it was not, it's not like in lieu of
[00:38:06] Adam: No, no, no, you're right. And, and that would certainly be, I think, the ideal situation. The, the, yeah. So Tim Cook is down to, I think, if I remember correctly, sorry if I get the numbers wrong, I, I know I'll get it corrected, but, went from a, like a 50 million to 25 million total comp package.
[00:38:23] Adam: Yeah. Poor guy.
[00:38:24] Ben: we have a moment of silence?
[00:38:27] Carol: you should be putting money away.
[00:38:29] Adam: well, so based on the article, I read about 3 million of that is cash and the rest is like Apple stock or whatever. which again, you know, world's tiniest violin here, crying, uh, whatever. But yeah, like the real point, I guess it's, it, it's at least something, right? They are starting to acknowledge that they have a real, responsibility to. I guess at least shows solidarity that, that the, you know, the company is down so they need to take some responsibility for that, even if, even if they can't save the employees. But at the same time, like if he took a 25 million pay cut, how many jobs could that have saved if he took another, if he took another 10 million pay cut, which he can't afford cuz he's getting 25 million a year.
[00:39:14] Adam: mostly stock or, yeah, mostly stock. But still, if he took a 25 million pay cut or if he took a 10 million pay cut, how many jobs would that save? Right?
[00:39:22] Adam: Like that's gotta be what, even if they're all a hundred thousand dollars a year
[00:39:28] Adam: salaries, that's
[00:39:29] Tim: engineers.
[00:39:30] Carol: I was gonna make a joke like that.
[00:39:32] Tim: Sorry, you could say it.
[00:39:35] Adam: so anyway, yes. I'm glad to have been wrong or, or at least partially wrong about that, that, you know, some of these guys, of, of the mega corpse that are laying off people and claiming responsibility are actually getting some, Consequences. Now, whether or not that actually they actually feel the squeeze, I don't know, but,
[00:39:52] Tim: Yeah. And they're not gonna be able to buy that second yacht. I feel so bad for them,
[00:39:57] Adam: so, or they're not
[00:39:59] Adam: gonna be able to buy their own social network.
[00:40:01] Future Plans
[00:40:01] Tim: yeah, I do feel bad to you, Carol, but I, I know you're gonna be fine. Hey, and if you wanna do some contracting for me, I, I definitely, definitely bring you on.
[00:40:11] Carol: I appreciate that. I will add, it has been a little kick in the butt as far as I've said for a long time. I don't wanna always work for people. I wanna be my own boss and I wanna be able to look at the people I work for and legitimately say, I did everything I can to protect you and know that that's the truth.
[00:40:32] Carol: Because right now I'm just, you know, giving lip service to something. I don't actually know that, yeah, they're doing everything they can to make this work. I wanna know that I did everything I could and I can't do that if I'm working for someone else. So it is motivating me a little more to, to get plans in place for down the road.
[00:40:51] Carol: Like after we're at our next two moves, we've got two moves under us. Before I probably could do anything, but I do want to be in a position where I could run my own company and actually make people be as important as I think they should be.
[00:41:04] Ben: Very.
[00:41:05] Tim: Actually, I think, you know, in a weird way, I would, I'm tr I was gameplay the scenario in my head, if you would, if you were the only person in your team who was not cut, I think you would probably feel worse.
[00:41:16] Carol: Yeah, that's what one of the managers has been texting me and he's dealing with, the survivor's guilt, right? The feeling like why wasn't he let go? And the when is his turn coming, because now he feels it's constantly like a knife at the throat. At any point it's just gone. And the people that were there are, you know, there's fear, they're just gonna leave.
[00:41:38] Carol: Like why would they stay when benefits for them were cut and now they're having to. Triple what they were to cover what was coming in, because they still need that revenue stream to cover what was, and those engineers still have to do the work. So it's, it's a hard, hard pill to swallow when you're the one there trying to carry the, the loads for everyone.
[00:42:00] Carol: So I don't, I don't feel bad for them. I mean, I, I, I feel bad for them. I don't, I don't envy what they're having to deal with.
[00:42:08] Tim: Yeah. Yeah. Survivor's guilt a hundred
[00:42:11] Carol: Yeah.
[00:42:11] Ben: Thank you so much for talking so candidly about all this
[00:42:15] Carol: Yeah. Lots of tears, lots of panics, lots of calling my husband and saying, tell me we're okay. Right. We're still okay. I know I've looked at the checking account. It looks okay. Just, it feels like at any moment it's all gonna fall off underneath me, so just tell me it's okay. And he's like, it's. It's
[00:42:33] Carol: okay. I'm like, yeah, there's been a few very, very vodka heavy nights. The first night was totally that my messages to people made no sense, cuz I was trashed and I was like, I'll not fill this, I'll not fill this tonight.
[00:42:49] Tim: Go away.
[00:42:50] Carol: Yeah, Yeah,
[00:42:53] Tim: Oh yeah, appre, definitely appreciate it, Carol,
[00:42:56] Tim: for being open about it. And
[00:42:58] Carol: always honest with you guys. I give you it all.
[00:43:01] Adam: Do we want to do the, thing or, or
[00:43:04] Tim: Let's have a little fun. Let's have
[00:43:05] Carol: Yeah,
[00:43:06] Tim: little, little taste.
[00:43:07] Carol: I would love to lighten the, lighten the mood a
[00:43:09] Adam: That's kind of what I was thinking too, but I didn't wanna like force it on anybody. So
[00:43:12] Adam: we talked about, we talked about, so a way to, again, lighten the mood at the end of the episode, we would play a game, and we're gonna involve the listeners. So we are gonna play two truths and a lie switch if you,
[00:43:23] Carol: Wait, wait. you,
[00:43:24] Carol: were supposed to tell them. You were supposed to tell them we're playing rock, paper, scissors, and they had to guess what? Who won
[00:43:29] Adam: Ready? 1, 2, 3. Shoot.
[00:43:31] Tim: Yeah. Yeah. Great game for a podcast.
[00:43:33] Adam: yeah.
[00:43:33] Two Truths And A Lie
[00:43:33] Adam: So we're gonna play two truths and a lie. If you're not familiar with the game. Each of us will give you three statements, two of which are true, one of which is a lie. We won't tell you which one is which, and it's, you have to try and guess which one is the lie. to make it fun for the listeners, I'm going to put up a Google form where you can, submit your guesses.
[00:43:51] Adam: And so we won't, through the entirety of this episode, we will not share what the lie was and we will come. so we record typically approximately two weeks ahead of public airing. So we will come back in two weeks, after everybody has had time to get your answers in, and we will, I guess explain what the lies were.
[00:44:09] Adam: And, and if there's any further discussion to have, we will do that. And so I guess based on those answers, we will crown a champion of the truth, or, or a couple, whoever. If, if you get all four correct, then we will champ, we'll, we'll put your name on our website as a champion of the truth, for getting the, getting 'em all right.
[00:44:29] Adam: And, and you're, you'll stay there until you get dethroned by, by getting something wrong and other people getting them right. Next time we do this. So
[00:44:36] Tim: And I'll re-up. I'll love that. We will,
[00:44:39] Adam: Tim will mail you
[00:44:39] Adam: testicles
[00:44:41] Tim: no, I'll, I'll send you some merch from our store.
[00:44:47] Adam: Oh, nice. a guy.
[00:44:50] Tim: I'll send you some mer so if you, if you
[00:44:52] Tim: get all, all of 'em right, I'll send you a merch. Yep. Free merch.
[00:44:55] Adam: Are we talking stickers? Desk mats. Wall clocks?
[00:44:58] Tim: my choice depends on how
[00:45:00] Tim: much I'm, I'm feeling generous that day.
[00:45:02] Adam: You, you
[00:45:03] Carol: And how far the shipping is
[00:45:05] Tim: Exactly.
[00:45:07] Adam: Okay, cool. So, who wants to go first?
[00:45:10] Carol: Oh, let me go first. Come on. I've already talked really bad, so I want some fun time.
[00:45:14] Adam: Okay, go ahead.
[00:45:16] Carol: All right, so my three, my three things are before I could legally drive, I craft my Mustang. And it rolled several times.
[00:45:26] Adam: Wow.
[00:45:27] Tim: Hmm.
[00:45:27] Carol: Yeah.
[00:45:28] Tim: So you had, you're saying you had a car before you could legally drive.
[00:45:32] Carol: Oh yeah. I grew up on the farm. If you didn't have a car, you didn't drive to school. I mean, you didn't get to go to school cuz you had to work past when the bus ran. So you, you weren't, you just didn't go to school and they knew that. So you parked off, on a tennis court?
[00:45:45] Carol: Yep.
[00:45:47] Adam: This is like on, uh, Jimmy Fallon, where they like try to, not only do they tell the lie, but they also like try to convince you it's real. I don't, I don't know. That might, that might be true. It might be a lie. We'll see. Go ahead,
[00:45:57] Carol: We'll see. All right, so, one night I gained entry into a bar by telling the bouncer that the guys behind me had a knife and he just kind of assured me into the bar and never questioned anything. So if you don't have your id, that might be a way to get in if you're slightly
[00:46:15] Tim: Or, or if you're underage. Oh,
[00:46:17] Carol: yeah,
[00:46:18] Adam: I feel like we have to say disclaimer. Don't do that
[00:46:21] Carol: Don't do it.
[00:46:23] Adam: This is not legal advice.
[00:46:25] Tim: So the bouncer's like, yeah, so someone's attacking you, he's bringing you into a safe
[00:46:28] Tim: space, but you're actually, you know, you're actually just sneaking into a bar
[00:46:31] Carol: Yeah. I'm like, all right, who's got shots? and then there might have been a time in the past couple years where I was no trespass from Six Flags for doing something very illegal on the premises.
[00:46:48] Tim: So no trespass is.
[00:46:49] Carol: You're not
[00:46:50] Carol: allowed to come back on. Yeah, you can't come back on the property for an entire year. If so, we will call the cops and have an actual legal no trespass put
[00:46:59] Carol: against you.
[00:47:00] Carol: And I had season passes then, so
[00:47:02] Adam: Oh no. So when, when, man, when we get that, when we find out what the lie is, I want the back stories on these things.
[00:47:10] Adam: that's there's,
[00:47:11] Carol: I'll give them to you,
[00:47:12] Tim: Cut. I mean, I, I, can't, I can't decide which one. I mean, you're, you're a very good liar, cuz all of those are really good
[00:47:18] Adam: Yeah.
[00:47:20] Carol: Alright. That's mine you
[00:47:21] Carol: guys.
[00:47:22] Adam: Okay. Uh, Tim, why don't you go next?
[00:47:24] Tim: Okay.so in 1998, my girlfriend was in a Super Bowl commercial as the oil vallee, commercial spokesperson.
[00:47:33] Ben: Hmm.
[00:47:33] Carol: Huh?
[00:47:34] Adam: you that could be believable
[00:47:36] Carol: I just believe that from you, like
[00:47:39] Tim: she was beautiful.
[00:47:39] Carol: that's, that's you. yeah.
[00:47:42] Adam: anyway. I built a robot that competed in Robot Wars in the amateur circuit in 2013.
[00:47:48] Adam: So is this like, little league for BattleBots or something?
[00:47:51] Tim: Right? Yeah. So it's the Battle Bots, the robot, yeah. The Robot Wars TV show in the Battle Bots show. yeah, they have an amateur circuit and that's where they pulled their, their TV show people. So I had a robot and it had, it did pretty well. Had a, almost winning record.
[00:48:05] Ben: nice
[00:48:05] Tim: yeah.
[00:48:06] Adam: Okay.
[00:48:07] Carol: believable with you. Gosh,
[00:48:09] Tim: And then so far, hmm.
[00:48:11] Adam: I was just gonna say, I, I know a few things about you that have to do with that. So like, I, I'm wondering if you twisted that one so that it's not true, or if that, like, it could also be true. So that's, that's a tough one.
[00:48:22] Tim: And then, and then finally, I lived in Scotland for two years, in my mid twenties.
[00:48:27] Adam: Hmm.
[00:48:28] Carol: your wife from?
[00:48:30] Tim: My wife is from, well she's born in England,
[00:48:32] Carol: England. England. Okay. Okay.
[00:48:35] Tim: But when she was, when, when I married her, she, I met her,
[00:48:37] Adam: Don't, Don't, ask her for recipes.
[00:48:40] Adam: The Swedish.
[00:48:45] Adam: Yeah.
[00:48:47] Carol: Oh man.
[00:48:48] Tim: So, so yeah, those, my two of those are true. And one is why,
[00:48:53] Adam: Okay, Ben, you wanna go
[00:48:54] Adam: next
[00:48:55] Ben: Sure. I've never played this before, so mine are less interesting. But, here it goes. I was born two months prematurely
[00:49:03] Carol: So
[00:49:04] Carol: does that make you
[00:49:04] Carol: like
[00:49:05] Tim: muscles, with just big old muscles. You came out, you're like, I'm punching outta here,
[00:49:11] Adam: Ben came out at 6% body fat and bench pressing. He bench pressed his mom on the way out.
[00:49:17] Tim: He, he was like the Kool-Aid man. He came out and said, oh yeah.
[00:49:22] Carol: Had to get that mic kid in
[00:49:23] Tim: Yep.
[00:49:24] Carol: So I always wonder when babies are born premature, like do you start counting like, oh, my kid's doing things, they should be at nine months old. But really they're, you know,
[00:49:34] Carol: 12 months old. Like, how does that work? Like, is it normal for them to develop at the later speed or do they start developing kind of normal still?
[00:49:42] Ben: No, pre, when you're premature, you're pretty messed up. Like you're, everything is underdeveloped.
[00:49:48] Carol: you
[00:49:51] Tim: Yeah. I can't tell. Yeah, I mean, both my kids are B, were were born a C-section. You can't really tell, except when they leave a room, they go out the window.
[00:50:05] Carol: a good one. I'm stealing that.
[00:50:07] Ben: All right.
[00:50:07] Ben: I,
[00:50:08] Tim: from me, stole twice.
[00:50:10] Ben: I have no cavities and I'll, and I'll caveat to say, not that I've never had cavities, but my adult teeth have no cavities,
[00:50:18] Carol: Oh.
[00:50:19] Tim: don't buy that. No one in the world has no cavities.
[00:50:22] Ben: and.
[00:50:23] Carol: eats nothing but beef jerky might binge a protein buff guy.
[00:50:28] Tim: Hey, he's a soda guy too, though. He drinks those energy drinks.
[00:50:32] Ben: I
[00:50:32] Ben: don't, I I don't drink anything with sugar.
[00:50:35] Carol: yeah. I thought all you drink was
[00:50:36] Carol: like the sparkling water things or something.
[00:50:39] Ben: Yeah, I drink, I drink a lot of, bule is my bubbly, is my new, thing. But I drink a lot of, like, here's my, my mio, my mio, water flavor izer, which
[00:50:50] Adam: you used to, you used to be a bit of a monster fiend too,
[00:50:53] Ben: Yes. But I only drink the white monster, which is the
[00:50:55] Carol: Sugar Free, my favorite. Yeah.
[00:50:58] Tim: Hmm.
[00:50:59] Ben: can't stand the taste of flavory drinks or
[00:51:01] Ben: sugary drinks rather.
[00:51:03] Carol: Flavory drinks
[00:51:05] Ben: And third, I am, allergic to penicillin
[00:51:09] Carol: Okay.
[00:51:09] Carol: I got this guys. I know the allergy things. Tell me what your reaction is when you have this reaction to penicillin.
[00:51:15] Tim: Hopefully you Googled it.
[00:51:17] Ben: I had a, a terrible, full body rash.
[00:51:21] Carol: Yeah. Like hives, itchy all over.
[00:51:23] Ben: not itchy, just discolored
[00:51:26] Carol: Okay. Okay. He's probably telling the
[00:51:28] Tim: Discover,
[00:51:28] Carol: guys. That sounds, that sounds
[00:51:30] Carol: legit.
[00:51:30] Tim: know.
[00:51:31] Tim: Dunno,
[00:51:32] Tim: that's a pretty easy one to lie about. Yeah.
[00:51:36] Adam: Well, I guess that
[00:51:36] Adam: leaves me, so, my first one is I was invited to apply for a job at the cia. They requested that I put in an application
[00:51:45] Carol: huh?
[00:51:46] Tim: re
[00:51:46] Carol: Recently.
[00:51:47] Adam: no,
[00:51:48] Adam: when I was, around
[00:51:50] Adam: the
[00:51:50] Adam: time, yeah. Back when I was, it was a, a big fish in a small pond situation. No. around the time that I was like, 18.
[00:51:59] Carol: Okay.
[00:52:00] Tim: They do recruit early. They like to
[00:52:01] Tim: groom 'em.
[00:52:02] Adam: Yeah.
[00:52:02] Adam: Get you before
[00:52:03] Adam: you,
[00:52:03] Adam: understand ethics
[00:52:05] Tim: I, I know because I am a c I agent, so
[00:52:07] Carol: you know? Yeah. Mm-hmm.
[00:52:09] Adam: so number two, while golfing, I hit a goose in one. I didn't get a
[00:52:13] Carol: what is a goose?
[00:52:15] Adam: A goose in one is with my drive. I hit a goose and killed it.
[00:52:21] Tim: you killed it.
[00:52:22] Carol: Oh, fudge.
[00:52:23] Tim: Well, you know, I mean, there are goose, like all, every golf course I've
[00:52:26] Tim: been in, there's tons of goose, and down here we actually have goose and alligators.
[00:52:30] Tim: So yeah, sometimes you gotta just avoid, it's like you skip the whole, there's an alligator
[00:52:36] Adam: I'm gonna mark that one.
[00:52:37] Adam: Is par
[00:52:38] Carol: This sounds like Happy Gilmore.
[00:52:41] Ben: I love that movie.
[00:52:42] Adam: Yeah.
[00:52:43] Tim: It's a good movie.
[00:52:44] Adam: Okay.
[00:52:44] Tim: your.
[00:52:46] Adam: Are you too good for your home? so my third one is I don't know my own blood type. I know what blood types are. I even know, uh, I have a, a, a general understanding of the RH factor, the, the positive or negative on the end and like what that's important for, but I don't know my own.
[00:53:04] Ben: I think I'm b positive, but I also could be confusing that with a Simpsons episode,
[00:53:10] Adam: Or you could just be confusing it with your demeanor.
[00:53:13] Carol: Just be
[00:53:15] Carol: positive,
[00:53:15] Tim: positive.
[00:53:16] Ben: And I think that's how I remember it. I'm like, oh yeah, be positive. That's me. but again, I could be, there was a Simpsons episode where they were the B Sharps. I could just be, you know, mixing that up in my head.
[00:53:28] Adam: Hmm. Yeah. I mean, as somebody who has had, like IV infusions every six weeks for 10 years, and like now I give myself at home injections for some of my medication, you would think that, like, I would know my, my blood type, but not a clue.
[00:53:42] Tim: I know my mom is type O negative, which is like The
[00:53:45] Ben: Yo, my mom is also, oh, I don't know if it's positive or negative.
[00:53:50] Tim: Yeah. And I know my sister and I have different blood type which caused, like she had a third child, which got miscarriage because of that.
[00:53:59] Tim: There's problems, you know,
[00:54:00] Carol: That RH
[00:54:01] Tim: but I have no,
[00:54:02] Carol: yeah, Mm-hmm. ,
[00:54:03] Tim: mine is.
[00:54:05] Ben: Here's something that I just learned recently. So part of why blood types are important is, is for giving blood to someone else, you have to have either the, the universal blood or same blood type on Dr. Jeff Rocky Mountain Vet. Excellent show, by the way. they, he was saying that a dog can receive blood from any other dog.
[00:54:25] Ben: Once that, the first blood transfusion that any dog ever has, it doesn't matter what the blood type is. And then after the first transfusion, the blood type becomes important.
[00:54:36] Adam: That's
[00:54:36] Carol: humans.
[00:54:37] Ben: I have no idea. but it's crazy.
[00:54:39] Tim: That's crazy.
[00:54:40] Carol: someone needs to grow us to do that.
[00:54:43] Tim: Mm-hmm.
[00:54:44] Carol: Modify. Modify.
[00:54:46] Tim: All right, so that's the choices,
[00:54:48] Adam: So look in the show notes, there will be a link for the Google form where you can put in your votes and potentially become a champion of the truth. Get your name on our website. And, uh, get some free swag. That's right. I forgot about that. Good job. Cool. All right, well, anybody have anything particular you wanna bring up on the after show tonight?
[00:55:06] Carol: I have nothing to do with my life anymore, so it's pretty boring around here. I'm working out more.
[00:55:13] Tim: Yeah. Hey, you talk about things to do while you're unemployed.
[00:55:16] Carol: you go. I got checklist of nothing actually. Yeah, we could talk about it a little bit. We got that. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:55:22] Adam: No. All right. So apparently Carol has something she wants to talk about on the after show. We'll figure out what that is in about five minutes. if you want to figure out what that is with us, you can join up and become a patron of the show. Yep.
[00:55:35] Tim: Oh, and I have a new item for our, my, not r but my, exotic game
[00:55:40] Tim: party. So if you wanna hear the, a really weird, another weird thing that I'll be cooking in a, in a couple weeks, check it out.
[00:55:46] Carol: I predict Gizzards
[00:55:48] Tim: I'll,
[00:55:49] Adam: Uh, okay.
[00:55:50] Patreon
[00:55:50] Adam: Well this episode of Working Code is brought to you by Windows Server 2012. Enjoy it while you can,
[00:55:55] Tim: stole mine.
[00:55:57] Adam: and listeners like you, if you're enjoying the show and you wanna make sure that we can keep putting more content like this out into the universe than you should consider supporting us on Patreon patrons cover our recording and editing costs.
[00:56:09] Adam: And we've got a goal this year that we want to get enough Patreon money coming in that we can start to afford to have transcriptions done for every episode for our hearing impaired friends, that would be lovely and we would really appreciate your support. To do so, you can help us out by going to patreon.com/WorkingCodePod.
[00:56:27] Adam: Special thanks of course to our, top patrons, Monte and Giancarlo. You guys rock
[00:56:31] Thanks For Listening!
[00:56:31] Adam: your homework this week. you know, I was gonna do, do the Discord plug that is appropriate like we did last week for, you know, building your network. Networking is, is super important to help yourself survive a layoff, but, I'm gonna do this one.
[00:56:45] Adam: We haven't done it in a while. leave us a review, go to workingcode.dev/review. We know we have a pretty significant international audience, which is awesome. And building up our list of reviews around the world would really help. workingcode.dev/review. We'll take you to the Apple Podcasts Review, page four, your local, area.
[00:57:05] Adam: Yeah, geography's hard, sorry, . And, yeah, we would really appreciate it. that's gonna do it for us this week. We'll catch you next week. And until then,
[00:57:12] Tim: two truths and a lie. Your heart matters. Your heart is shrunk. Your heart is
[00:57:17] Tim: squish.
[00:57:18] Ben: What did you just say? Str
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