197: AI, The Innovation Dilemma, Promotions and More
In this week's episode, the hosts discuss the value of focusing on a single top priority during challenging times and the implications of AI on the workplace, emphasizing the importance of maintaining human connections and individual reflection.
They explore career progression, advocating for both skill quality improvements and the need for organizations to focus on their most critical tasks. Additionally, they touch on personal habits such as the impact of constant connectivity, the value of solitude, and the challenges of balancing productivity with personal well-being.
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.
And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.
With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.
Transcript
Spot an error? Send a pull request on GitHub.
[00:00:00] Highlight
[00:00:00] Ben: but I think I am very much missing this kind of state of calm. Where I can just be alone with my thoughts. And it, and it just seems like something I need to start doing more often.
[00:00:10] Adam: I feel seen.
[00:00:12] Carol: Mm-Hmm.
[00:00:34] Intro
[00:00:34] Adam: Okay, here we go to show number 197 and on today's show, we've got the whole crew here and we are going to talk about a bunch of stuff. We just are going to sort of each do a small topic thing and sometimes we call it a potluck. Sometimes it's just, we got stuff to talk about. That's what we're going to do tonight.
[00:00:50] Adam: but first as usual, we'll start with our triumphs and fails. Ben is back. As I said, we've got everybody here. Welcome back, Ben.
[00:00:55] Ben: Sure,
[00:00:57] Adam: why don't you go first?
[00:00:58] Ben's Fails
[00:00:58] Ben: well, I'll get off some failures, the first of which being that, I was not here last week, and I thought I was getting a cold, but I think what I actually was getting was just pretty bad allergies. Historically, I don't really get allergies much, I mean, I take Flonase, I get a little, you know, scratchiness through the various seasons, but typically, I would not be one who complains of having allergies, and Like, over the last week or two, something has just sort of been kicking my ass.
[00:01:27] Ben: like, and it doesn't seem to get worse, and it doesn't seem to get better. It just leaves me feeling very drained. So, I haven't taken a COVID test or anything. I mean, I don't feel sick sick in that way. I'm just really tired. And, that's been just wearing on me physically and emotionally. And now that will parley into my second fail, which is, I've been feeling very much lately the stress of wanting to work on multiple projects.
[00:01:52] Ben: I've mentioned on the previous show that I'm currently building a little proof of concept app as a companion piece to my book to just help people maybe get an understanding of how feature flags can work in practice. but kind of what I want to do is go back to maintaining my blog. And also kind of what I want to do is go back to building my, Dig Deep Fitness application.
[00:02:10] Ben: And then kind of what I also want to do is start my Big Sexy Poems app. And then kind of what I want to do is also just learn some new stuff. And it's I can barely do one thing, let alone like five things, and I don't know how to process all that information. I don't know how to prioritize it very well, and it's, on top of these allergies, it's just making me feel very, very low key.
[00:02:33] Adam: Yep, been there. I think, there's, there's no, I mean, you can always do the classic like, okay, gun to your head. You can only pick one, which one are you going to work on today? Go, go, go, pick, pick, pick, pick, pick, go. What are you, Ben, you're too slow. What are you gonna pick? Go, go, go.
[00:02:44] Ben: it's tough too because, you know, when I was younger, and I think single, and I didn't have a dog, I was just a beast. Like, I could work all day and then do hours and hours of independent learning and all I did was basically learn and eat and, you know, had zero responsibilities other than paying my rent.
[00:03:03] Ben: And now I get to the end of the day and I'm definitely a morning person, so by the end of the day I'm pretty spent and I just want to get in bed and watch TV. And I know that there are people out there who could keep that high gear going and do a lot of independent learning at night and do reading at night.
[00:03:19] Ben: And I just, I don't know if I'm at an age or just a life place where I just don't have that in me anymore.
[00:03:26] Tim: Welcome to middle age,
[00:03:27] Ben: Yeah, exactly. The water is lukewarm.
[00:03:32] Tim: Yeah.
[00:03:33] Carol: Yeah, I'm not so much like, let me go lay in bed and watch TV, however. I will completely turn everything off at the end of the day just to go sit on the couch with my husband. Like, we don't even have to be watching anything. Nothing's going on. It's, like, for me, it's finding someone who is way more important than anything else that I've ever considered doing, and that's more motivating than learning.
[00:03:55] Carol: the honeymoon hasn't worn off
[00:03:57] Ben: Yeah,
[00:03:58] Carol: I
[00:03:58] Ben: I know. I'm like, I live with this woman 24 hours a day.
[00:04:04] Adam: sleep next to her.
[00:04:06] Ben: What more do you want from me?
[00:04:11] Tim: your interests evolve over time kind of gradually, right? So, I mean, I, I'm the same way, right? Like I, I was the type of person to come home from work and to spend another eight hours on my open source stuff or just personal Like noodling around with stuff, you know, or even just like writing, writing, writing, like prose for my blog, whatever. And it only just occurred to me, but I think that it, my interest in doing that has kind of paralleled my interest in video games, right? I would also spend a lot of my free time playing video games and my kids lament the fact that I don't really play video games that much anymore. because they want to play with you.
[00:04:46] Adam: yeah. and so now it's like a special treat when I, I make time to sit down and play video games with them.
[00:04:51] Adam: Cause like, I just feel like there's. I'd rather do with my time. Now that, that's not to be smirched video games. I think that there are some video games that I have played multiple times. Like I played Grand Theft Auto 5, the story like six times just because it's, it's like the best movie ever. It's interactive and I, you
[00:05:09] Carol: Such a terrible game, though. Heh heh heh
[00:05:12] Adam: it's, it's adult entertainment.
[00:05:14] Adam: Not that kind of adult entertainment, but, you know what I mean?
[00:05:18] Carol: Yeah.
[00:05:19] Adam: But yeah, I think
[00:05:20] Carol: no Domekeeper, Adam. Let's be clear.
[00:05:23] Ben: Dome keepers that we just said?
[00:05:25] Carol: It's the only video game I play. Other than Satisfactory sometimes. you basically just like, go mine and get the stuff back up and protect your dome. It's it's
[00:05:36] Ben: It's like a Sim kind of game.
[00:05:38] Carol: No! It's not a sim game. I don't think. What are sim games? No,
[00:05:41] Ben: Like SimCity, SimTower.
[00:05:44] Carol: no, no, no.
[00:05:44] Carol: You're a little guy. You go dig under. You have to get iron. It's like, there's three resources and you have to like, keep your dome from getting eaten by aliens while you do it. So you have to go down, manage your time, get back up with your resources.
[00:05:58] Adam: It's like Minecraft meets Tower Defense.
[00:06:00] Carol: Yeah, maybe something like that.
[00:06:02] Tim: It's, it's a resource game.
[00:06:03] Carol: Yeah, it's a resource game.
[00:06:06] Ben: Anyway, so those are my fails. Carol, what do you got going on?
[00:06:08] Carol's Fail
[00:06:08] Ben: Heh
[00:06:13] Carol: a tech one at that. You know, those are a little bit harder to swallow sometimes. So, I did all this work and, I've been, like, handling everything with processing stuff on, a message queue and everything's just been great. All of our testing has been fantastic.
[00:06:30] Carol: Nothing but rave reviews until pretty much the very last test where I, realized that I didn't handle message retries correctly and on the very first If the message, if the database has a lock on it, or there's a table lock, the user gets alerted that the process failed. However, Retry runs it and it works perfectly.
[00:06:53] Carol: So the user's thinking everything broke, but in reality, it's great. So I've had to figure out how you handle, like, erroring out to a user when we're talking about, like, a queue of, of a process. When the retry is actually what needs to handle it. So it's been a learning experience the past two days with, like trying to throw an exception so that it actually fails instead of like handling the exception so that it looks like the process failed, but doesn't actually go to an error queue.
[00:07:24] Carol: So it's just been a whole thing, but overall it was good. I'll take that as a win, but I definitely did not, did not handle, retries correctly.
[00:07:34] Adam: You learned something.
[00:07:36] Carol: I did learn the hard way.
[00:07:39] Ben: But this sounds like the fundamental problem, or not a problem, not necessarily a problem, but like the difference between fully synchronous code and then the moment something becomes asynchronous, but you sort of still have that synchronous mindset slash workflow where the user is going to see a response right away.
[00:07:55] Carol: Yep.
[00:07:56] Ben: I haven't worked a whole lot with message queues really at all, but that always feels like the biggest mind shift that has to happen.
[00:08:03] Carol: Yeah, at first I was like, do I just turn off retries? That sounds like an easy win. We just won't retry. The user can force the retry. And I was like, no, that's so lazy. I'm going to go fix it. I'll do it the right way. So I have a solution in place. So hopefully tomorrow I can get it out to testing and validate that everything looks good.
[00:08:21] Ben: Next week's Triumph, perhaps.
[00:08:23] Carol: Yeah. But that's me. What about you, Tim?
[00:08:25] Tim's Triumph
[00:08:25] Tim: I'm going to go with Triumph. So that's good. So we secured, earlier I talked about how we don't have a sales team anywhere. but managed to secure a new customer last week. Just totally, yeah, through, I did the sales process myself and yeah, went good. They asked for a contract and turned it around. So that's always exciting, but,
[00:08:45] Carol: That's awesome.
[00:08:46] Adam: Now your boss is gonna expect you to do sales on top of your normal job.
[00:08:49] Tim: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, but, yeah, don't have to pay them commissions. Maybe I can get those commissions. I didn't think about that. I should ask.
[00:08:56] Carol: like, put that in.
[00:08:57] Tim: need to get those commissions.
[00:08:58] Carol: Mm-Hmm.
[00:08:59] Tim: So, yeah. So that, that, that's pretty cool that whenever you can get a new customer and, after going to, because that's the thing I don't like about sales.
[00:09:06] Tim: It's like, there's a lot of failures
[00:09:08] Carol: Mm-Hmm.
[00:09:09] Tim: and it's like, You know, you get that win and you feel like you're trying to make up for like a 10 you lost, right? But, but you're not, you gotta, gotta celebrate those wins. So that's just, that's part of the game. It's like, you, you're not, definitely not going to win them all.
[00:09:23] Tim: In fact, you're going to win very small number of them and you can't have a long memory. Gotta be like Ted Lasso says and be a goldfish.
[00:09:30] Carol: I love Ted Lasso.
[00:09:32] Ben: Well, that's awesome.
[00:09:33] Tim: Yeah. That's all I got. Nothing too exciting. How about you, Adam? I, you, you, you haven't put, it's a surprise apparently,
[00:09:39] Carol: We
[00:09:40] Tim: the thing you're going to say.
[00:09:41] Carol: Our notes are empty.
[00:09:42] Adam: You are, you're spoiling the magic of how we make podcasts here, letting people know that there's a document that we're sharing information in.
[00:09:50] Adam's Triumph
[00:09:50] Adam: Okay, whatever. yes. So, I have a triumph and I have not told my co host here what it is yet. It's a surprise. So, today, this is not, well, I mean, I guess, I guess in part, this is the triumph.
[00:10:01] Adam: Today is my, as we're celebrating our wedding anniversary.
[00:10:06] Ben: Ah,
[00:10:07] Carol: Happy anniversary.
[00:10:08] Tim: And you're, and you're on here with us.
[00:10:10] Carol: That's what I was about
[00:10:11] Tim: I say that's a, that's a failure.
[00:10:12] Adam: We, we've done lots of celebrating in advance and we are, have more coming up later this weekend, and, but the, the, the big part of the triumph, I mean, not to minimize 19 years of marriage, I asked her what she wanted for our anniversary, and she said she just like has a whole list of things, projects she's been wanting me to do that I've been putting off because they're not like a, oh yeah, I'll just go knock that out in 10 minutes type of project.
[00:10:37] Adam: And so at her request, I dedicated the entire weekend to like, honey do list items, and I got so much done. Okay. I'm, I'm gonna read you guys this list. I put a new roof on my shed,
[00:10:50] Carol: was her, that was on her list
[00:10:52] Adam: that was on her list. She's a, she's the, the, like, her, her interest, her hobby is like improving the house, right? She's like, oh, I gotta, I wanna plant trees and, and build a garden thing over here.
[00:11:04] Adam: I'm like that. I have no interest in that. Like I'm, if you left it up to me, I would either like put. Astroturf in the front yard so I never have to mow it or I'd be like, the, the, meadow activist, right? Like we should just let it, whatever wants to grow, grow for the wildlife. you know, I, I'm not a, a yard person.
[00:11:22] Adam: I'm, I'm glad to have a house. I love my house, but I'm, you know, it's just not my, that's not where my interest lies. Anyway, so, the, there was a, a large limb broke off of a tree and like busted a hole about the size of a baseball through the roof of our shed a little bit less than a month ago, and I, I went out and I like tarped over it so it wouldn't like, you know, pour in anytime it rained, but it had needed to be fixed and I did, you know, that was one of the things where like I, I know enough about being a handy person that I can, I could save us a lot of money on a lot of stuff and I have, but this one was just like, just far enough out of my comfort zone.
[00:11:55] Adam: I was like, let's get some estimates, right? Let's, let's call a roofer and see what they're going to charge us to do this. Cause if it's 400 bucks, then just pay them. Like it's not worth my time to spend an entire day to save 400 bucks. and the estimate was like 2, 200. I'm like, okay, I'll, I'll figure it out.
[00:12:11] Carol: Suddenly it's worth my time.
[00:12:12] Adam: Yeah. So I put a new, roof on our shed. I fixed the hole and I put a new roof on. That was just one project. That was like a third of a day. I made two fixes slash improvements on our dishwasher. Like I shortened the supply line and moved the drain hose hole to the whatever. I, installed a, like the little pump soap dispenser next to our kitchen sink.
[00:12:34] Carol: Right. So like, you just gotta drill a hole and yeah, I love it. so I had to drill a hole in the sink and install that. Or is it like just metal
[00:12:42] Adam: think the material is called Corian, which it kind of looks vaguely like, like a stone thing, but it's not, yeah, it's man made.
[00:12:49] Ben: forever. It'll last forever.
[00:12:50] Adam: Yeah. And I think. I don't know what it is about this material.
[00:12:54] Adam: I have numerous times over the last years that we've been living here been like horrified because a giant scratch. We have an island in the middle of our kitchen and you know, somebody will drag a pot and I'm like, because there's this like gigantic scratch. I'm like, Oh my God, that's never going away.
[00:13:09] Adam: And then, you know, nobody puts in any effort and all of a sudden a week later it's gone. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, you know, from dragging potholders across it or whatever, just kind of buffs out. so I love this material.yeah, yeah. So yeah, and then there was a couple of little things that, like, we put our camper away for the year, so I had to take some stuff off of it, kind of winterize it.
[00:13:28] Adam: I had to run the internet cable to my kids bedrooms for more than a year now, the, to get them on the internet in their bedrooms. It's just been cables, like, running on the floor of the hallway to their rooms.
[00:13:40] Carol: Oh yeah, I
[00:13:40] Adam: do it proper, right? Up through the attic, drop down into the wall, put in wall plates in their rooms, all that.
[00:13:46] Adam: and then the last one was, installing a deadbolt on our front door. We, it had one of those like barrel locks, but she wanted a deadbolt. So, and, and we bought, you know, when, as you're supposed to do when you move into a new house, you like, you change the locks, right? Cause you don't know who has keys.
[00:14:00] Adam: so when we did move into this house, like nine years ago, we bought a set of like new doorknobs and it has, you know, it's all, it's all the same key for like from the garage into the house and from the front door and back door, but it's all, all one set. And we replaced the doorknobs, but then just held on to the deadbolts for like nine years.
[00:14:17] Adam: and I just finally installed them last weekend.
[00:14:21] Ben: Nicely
[00:14:22] Carol: Great work. What a good husband.
[00:14:24] Adam: I sweat. I must've lost three pounds in sweat this weekend. it was brutal, but it's all done and she's happy. So happy spouse, happy house, right?
[00:14:35] Ben: Indeed.
[00:14:37] Ben's Meta Fail
[00:14:37] Ben: Yo, can I, can I just do like a meta fail for a second? If I can just I don't know if anyone else feels this, but I have now for like the last two years in Riverside, Wanted the very left tool on the bottom to be the mic, the mute button, and it was like two years ago, the leftmost one was the mute, and then they added this mark clip.
[00:14:59] Ben: I don't even know what mark clip does, but I swear every episode for the last two years, I have wanted that to be the mic and I almost accidentally click it every time. And I don't know if it's just the muscle memory from the few times I muted prior to the Mark clip, or if there's something like intuitive about having the mic be the leftmost one.
[00:15:22] Ben: Maybe it's not that it's the leftmost, but it's the most accessible being on the outside of the
[00:15:27] Tim: And it, and it's the one you're gonna use the most. Mark clip. Nobody uses
[00:15:29] Ben: yeah, yeah,
[00:15:30] Carol: mean, I click it all the time, you guys.
[00:15:33] Ben: Mark Clip?
[00:15:34] Carol: Yeah, I
[00:15:34] Tim: is this, is this, is this gonna be in the
[00:15:36] Ben: What does it do?
[00:15:38] Carol: I think it puts a marker on our video or, like, recording or something for the editor. Like, it gives him a point. So sometimes if something happens, I'll click it and be like, Eh, who knows? But it started as I clicked it for the same reason, Ben.
[00:15:52] Carol: I would try to hit mute, and I would think my mic's muted, and instead I've just marked a clip. And I'm like, this does not make sense.
[00:15:59] Ben: And so I think this is a really interesting use case for where you truly cannot understand the usability of a feature until you've actually sat down and used it the way it was intended to be used. Because
[00:16:13] Tim: Is watch a and watch a actual user use it
[00:16:15] Ben: And this is also, if I can just quickly harken back to something I heard in an interview a while back, where someone said something to the effect of, if I had to choose between Metrics and anecdotes.
[00:16:28] Ben: I would choose anecdotes every single time. And I think that there's something so rich and so powerful about just hearing people describe their experience that you can't get from seeing a graph go up and down that's measuring something very finite and narrow and specific. And, you know, so there's, it's possible that people on Riverside don't even know that this is a problem until someone describes it to them.
[00:16:51] Ben: Expresses discontent, but you would never see that in like a support ticket. I mean, there's no support ticket to file other than to say, this doesn't feel right.anyway, I'm not going anywhere with that thought. I just had to get it off my chest.
[00:17:05] Carol: Click
[00:17:06] Adam: this has been our Ben Needs a Minute
[00:17:08] Ben: Yeah.
[00:17:09] Carol: We gave you
[00:17:09] Ben: needs lots of minutes.
[00:17:11] Tim: a minute.
[00:17:12] Adam: Yeah.
[00:17:13] Pot Luck
[00:17:13] Adam: well then, I guess that's it. Let's move on to our topic, topics for the day. shall we spin the bottle and see who goes first? Ha ha.
[00:17:20] Tim: I ain't kissing nobody in this room.
[00:17:23] Adam: Aww.
[00:17:24] Ben: we just, should we just go in the order they are in the document?
[00:17:27] Carol: Yeah!
[00:17:27] Adam: sure, we can do that. You guys keep pulling back the curtain.
[00:17:31] Ben: Oh, sorry.
[00:17:33] Adam: We talked about Riverside. We're doing the whole like, talking about podcasting on your podcast thing. But we're doing it 200 episodes in instead of 2 episodes in. Alright, so according to the document, I'm going first.
[00:17:47] Being Promoted Into What You Already Do
[00:17:47] Adam: So, here's my thing. I want to talk about like the idea that you get promoted To into the job that you're kind of already doing. Well, you kind of have to develop the skills before you get the title. Do you guys think that that's a good thing or not a good thing? Is it fair or unfair? Like what, what's your take on that?
[00:18:06] Carol: gonna growl real hard right now. Urghhh.
[00:18:09] Ben: I have, I have feelings that have evolved over time.
[00:18:12] Carol: Same. Yeah. Go ahead, Ben.
[00:18:14] Ben: Alright, I will say that before I actually stopped and thought more deeply about what that meant, I think on the face of it, it felt very right. It, it felt like it was asking people to kind of step up and then be acknowledged for the work that they're doing.
[00:18:32] Ben: And I said, okay, that's, that's actually a pretty powerful way to think about it. It seems like it's based on something, it's not just arbitrary. But the more I have thought about it, and maybe this is also the higher you go up in an organizational chart, the larger the differences between roles and, and levels becomes.
[00:18:53] Ben: And it occurred to me that What you're asking me to do is literally not do my job. Like, my job is to do something specific at work, and if I have to do someone else's job to get promoted to that job, that feels like you're setting me up for failure.
[00:19:10] Adam: Yeah, I mean, I think that there's, obviously there's going to be some nuance available here. I think there's a difference between I want you to, as a junior developer, I want you to develop the skills of the next level up, whether that's, you know, just regular, unqualified, meaning no, no qualifier, junior, senior, whatever, developer, or, whatever, whatever the next title up is in your organization. Like, if you don't use this approach of, you need to show me the skills that entitle you to that position before I give you the position, then how, if not that, then how do you know when it's time to promote somebody out of the entry level position into the next level up,
[00:19:55] Carol: Yeah, I get that. we have this concept of like a career ladder is what it's called. And you come in like a, a seven, like a number seven is what you are out of school. I don't know if that's really the number, but I'm making it up. So you come in as a seven, you know what it takes to be a seven. And in order to be promoted to number eight, then here's what you have to accomplish, right?
[00:20:15] Carol: So this goes all the way up through like a number 12 or 13. But once you go from either a 12 or a 13. And then it turns into a competitive job where you go, Hey, I want to do better. I want to apply to take this job. I want to challenge myself, but I shouldn't be held back because I don't have the opportunity to do it.
[00:20:38] Carol: I shouldn't be, looked over because I'm spending so much time doing my current job that I can't do the next job.
[00:20:46] Adam: Yeah, I think that's the other side of the coin too, right? So like, as an individual contributor, as a coder who's a, You know, maybe a, maybe you're a senior developer or whatever, you know, every company kind of has their own career ladder, but like, just say you're kind of near the top of the stack of positions that are coders and you're kind of interested in transitioning into management.
[00:21:05] Carol: Which is not the only path. An architect, Adam.
[00:21:08] Adam: well, but, yeah, if you're, if you're interested in becoming like a team leader type of person, manager, there's really no opportunity to do the job before you have the job. You kind of have to, I, I feel like that's kind of a separate, like, entry level position.
[00:21:21] Adam: You're, you're kind of like almost shifting career path there.
[00:21:25] Ben: If I can Kind of just noodle on what you're saying there for a second, I think it's important maybe then for us to draw a difference between types of work improvements, that there's improvements in the quality of the work that you're doing, and then there is kind of improvements in the scope of the work that you're doing.
[00:21:47] Ben: And I think maybe what we're saying is that it's reasonable for us to say that over time people can proactively improve the quality path of work. You know, I'm, I'm better about thinking about problems. I'm better about debugging problems. I'm better about thinking architecturally. That's, that's kind of like a quality gradient, but In terms of scope, you know, if the next job up is spends time with customers discussing solutions architecture, like my company probably doesn't want me proactively opting into that.
[00:22:20] Adam: Right.
[00:22:20] Ben: You know, like, Oh yeah, I spent some time talking to customers. They're like, Whoa, don't do that, please.
[00:22:25] Carol: Let me be the face
[00:22:26] Ben: trained to do
[00:22:27] Adam: This is not your job.
[00:22:29] Carol: Right.
[00:22:29] Adam: Yeah.
[00:22:31] Tim: I, I, I think it's a two edged sword and I know I like to say that a lot, but, it can be actually bad for you as an employee. You know, let's say there's, so there's suddenly there's a unexpected opening in the organization, right? And they're like, Hey, you know, we know you don't currently do this.
[00:22:50] Tim: You're, you know, your individual contributor, you're a great programmer and developer, this role will kind of be a little bit more like customer facing. You'll still do some programming and, but we want you to, you know, could you do this too? And so what they're basically getting is someone to fill that role for the exact same price, right?
[00:23:08] Tim: For free, pretty much, right? so my recommendation, if some people do that to you, you're like, well, you know, I'm kind of happy where I'm at. Let me ask if you were to hire someone from the outside to, you know, fill this position, what would you, you know, what would the salary range be? And if they, you know, they, it's well above yours, you're like, well, how come you're not willing to, well, if you prove yourself, we'll give you the raise.
[00:23:34] Tim: And I've seen it over and over again. You prove yourself. You've done the job for four years. And you don't get the raise. You don't, you know, they're like, Oh, sorry. We can only give you a,
[00:23:43] Carol: Your co your cost of
[00:23:44] Tim: yeah, the cost of living raise. You know, you're 3 percent every year. And so because you agreed to it, you've kind of shot yourself in the foot.
[00:23:51] Tim: because. You know, and then they're like, Oh, well, you didn't change titles. Well, I did three years ago. Yeah. But you didn't, you know, so it can be a two edged sword. You gotta be very careful about that. But I agree the things you're talking about, Ben, if you're just, if you're a programmer one and you're getting the adding skills, cause you've been longer in the job and longer writing that type of code, you know, you're doing a programmer's work, a programmer to work by time they say, Hey, we recognize you.
[00:24:17] Tim: You're doing programmer to work. We're going to start, we're going to, we're going to change your title, give you a pay raise. And recognize because you're already doing it. That makes total sense. But when you're maybe crossing kind of disciplines and doing different things and they're just trying you out to see if you'll do it, that one you got to be careful on.
[00:24:35] Ben: one thing that, that makes me think about though is that when you're expanding your scope of work or you're expanding your scope of responsibilities, I think maybe that's an area where you can proactively ask to be included in those activities. You know, like, just going back to the idea of spending time on a call with a customer, and maybe that's a certain level of responsibility.
[00:24:57] Ben: You know, day one, you're not ready for that, and they probably don't want you to be ready for that, but you could say, hey, I'm interested in having more contact with the customer. Is there a way that I could sit in on calls or participate in feedback calls or are there video recordings that I can watch of calls with customers?
[00:25:16] Ben: And so you can, you know, in your current role, maybe start to put your toe into the pond of more scoped responsibilities before you actually get recognition for that.
[00:25:29] Tim: and I forgot the other part of the two edged sword. So let's say that you start doing this thing and you find out you're really not good at it. You don't like it. You don't enjoy it. Therefore, you avoid it. And you just kind of keep going back to your old responsibilities. And now they say you're failing your job,
[00:25:42] Carol: Yeah.
[00:25:43] Tim: right?
[00:25:43] Tim: So. If, if that happens to you, you need to, as soon as possible, where you feel like, yeah, this ain't for me, let them know. I'm like, Hey, you asked, you asked if you could try this out and it's not working out for me. let me just go back to what I was doing. Hire somebody else.
[00:25:57] Carol: Yeah. Mm
[00:25:58] Adam: And don't be afraid to, to make that request either.yeah, I mean, so I think that we've put a pretty nice bow on it. I mean, obviously the answer is it depends. This has been freshly on my mind because our co op, this is his last week with us, so I've been preparing for his final review and, you know, trying to like come up with advice for like, okay, this is how you, this is what you need to focus on, what skills you need to develop to move up that career ladder, right?
[00:26:22] Adam: Trying to give him advice that he can, put into action. and so it's just been sort of fresh on my mind, like what is the, where is the line between junior developer and next level up and like, what are the expectations and how, you know, You know, like, when would I give him that promotion, right? so that, that's why it's been on my mind.
[00:26:41] Adam: Thank you for the discussion. And I agree, to, to be clear, let's circle back. I think that when it's qualitative, right? Like when it's, you need to be better at debugging, you need to. You know, be able to handle less spec and more, you know, agile, free floating. Like here's the problem, go solve it yourself, right?
[00:27:00] Adam: If that's the type of improvement that you're looking for, then, I think you do need to earn that promotion. And I think that when you are talking about these other things where we're expanded scope of responsibility, that's totally foreign, to what you've already done, already been doing, then it is almost like a new entry level position.
[00:27:17] Adam: You got to just kind of be thrown in and see if you can swim.
[00:27:20] Tim: Yeah.
[00:27:21] Ben: The one, this is going to be work specific, so I don't know how, you know, every, every company has different descriptions of what different levels and positions mean. But the one that I'm never quite sure how I feel about in terms of this conversation is the, like, how much cross team communication takes place.
[00:27:41] Ben: And, you know, it's something, you know, alumni queue, it's like, you guys are all one team. It's not, yeah. Okay. I mean, we have different goals, but like, if you're working in a company where you have a dozen engineering teams and part of your role description is like cross team coordination on projects, collaboration, I'm like, I, I don't want to opt into that.
[00:28:05] Ben: Like someone has to tell me that that's now my position. Like.
[00:28:09] Carol: I opted into it then. I took it Yeah. Yeah I mean one
[00:28:14] Ben: of those
[00:28:14] Carol: challenges, right? And I guess this goes back to like me personally. I got hired to be a team architect. Actually, I got hired to be a developer, to just write code. And I was very happy to do that. And then on day three, they said, you're going to be this team's architect because they knew me and they said, you're going to do the role.
[00:28:33] Carol: So I was like, all right, title, no money. That sounds wonderful. That's what usually happens in this world, right? Here's your title. You get the same pay. So then about a year later, they were like, we're going to make you the enterprise solutions architect. I was never expected to do both roles. It was a, here is what we're thinking this role can do.
[00:28:55] Carol: Does this motivate you? Does this seem like something that you would be challenged by and that you would enjoy doing every day? If so, let's apply for it. Let's compete it. Let's see how it goes. Right. and ultimately I was like, you know what? These all sound like challenges I want to take on. And these are things that I would love to do.
[00:29:11] Carol: So the promotion was never something that I had to go do the job. To get the title. It was, do you want to go learn this? Do you think you can be successful at it? If so, let's try.
[00:29:22] Ben: And if I could just, so what you were saying there made me think of something I want to say. Tim said, maybe Adam, I can't quite remember,
[00:29:29] Carol: They all sound alike. It's okay.
[00:29:31] Tim: It was, it was on the podcast.
[00:29:32] Ben: It's, there's always a challenge when you're in a position where you're doing some things that you feel very comfortable and successful at, and some things that you feel very new and nervous about, because I think human nature is often that we're going to regress back to the things that make us feel safest and most comfortable.
[00:29:52] Ben: So if you're ever in a position where there's some really hard stuff to do and some really safe stuff to do, I think you're setting yourself up for failure because eventually you're going to want to just do the safe stuff. So you really have to, I think, be put into this little quarantine box where really all you can do is the stuff that makes you feel uncomfortable so that you can't go back and start doing the stuff that makes you feel more comfortable and is maybe not the, you know, the largest value add for the role.
[00:30:20] Carol: Yep, that's where I'll be at the end of this upcoming sprint. I have no more, I can't help you guys, I'm working on my team things. So at the end of this next sprint, I'm off my team and I'm fully dedicated to the role. And it, you're right, it is a little nerve
[00:30:34] Carol: wracking. So,
[00:30:36] Ben: you're gonna be awesome though. We all
[00:30:38] Carol: thank you, thank you.
[00:30:39] Adam: Well then, since we're going according to the list in the doc,
[00:30:44] Carol: That means I'm next!
[00:30:45] Adam: Carol, you're next
[00:30:46] Tim: a surprise.
[00:30:47] Carol: What a surprise. so I think, I'm just going to add something to what you said, Adam.
[00:30:52] GitHub Copilot
[00:30:52] Carol: You said that you were looking at some information to give your intern on like what they should do better, or like how they could, not better, like how they could improve, or what would make them more successful, like opportunities.
[00:31:04] Carol: Tell them to just learn GitHub, like Copilot, and they'll be totally fine. Just, you know, that's what I'm going to talk about for a minute. we finally got the approval to get CoPilot. I don't have my license yet. That's a whole nother process. I
[00:31:19] Ben: months in the making, by the
[00:31:20] Carol: This is months in the making if you haven't listened backwards yet.
[00:31:24] Carol: So I took the two and a half hour course, which was just two and a half hours of Do you understand how to prompt AI? Like, do you understand that if you're going to ask a question, you need to ask it in the context of what you want to know. Like, I can't just be, Hey, explain mass transit auth. You know what?
[00:31:44] Carol: I probably should ask it like, Hey, can you explain how we auth whenever we're using mass transit to consume a context? Like, it needs to be more direct than very broad, because the more direct the question, the better your response is going to be. And then there was a tiny little part about how they store our data.
[00:32:03] Carol: So, ultimately, two and a half hours of training and finally going to get GitHub Copilot at work, and I'm really excited about it. But I will say, I have a couple engineers who are Like, toes down in the sand, I refuse to get it, I want nothing to do with it, do I have to have this? And of course the answer is no, you don't have to have it.
[00:32:25] Carol: Like, it's not, I don't think it's going to make anyone lazy. Like, I don't think this is going to make you a lazy developer. If you're a lazy developer, you're going to be a lazy developer. Whether you have this tool or not, that's not going to change anything. For me, like when I've used it in the past, It just allowed me to think slightly different and I love the auto completion of simple things.
[00:32:45] Carol: Like I don't have to type out like, if else, like that just kind of auto populates for me and it kind of guesses at what I'm going to be trying to do and then go, yeah, you're right. You know, you just saved me like 50 clicks and I can just go with it. Those are the things that I enjoy.
[00:33:00] Adam: you, you talked about. You have to give it a very specific prompt to get a good answer out of it. I feel like I've been getting more and more lazy in my AI prompts and still getting, you know, enough, like, I'm not asking it to write the code for me so much when I'm, when I'm thinking about my prompt, like, as I'm, as I'm coding, I'm getting suggestions from Copilot or I'm, I'm using a different one, but it's the same idea, right?
[00:33:24] Adam: It's just reading what I'm typing and it's, it's making suggestions. That's fine. You know, that in itself is fine. But what I'm more thinking about in this discussion is like when I pull up the chat interface and I like sit down and I ask a question by writing some prose, I I've gotten way, way more lazy in the way that I do that.
[00:33:44] Adam: I'm just like JavaScript array thingy. And it, it figures out what I'm asking and it gives me the right answer. I'm like, okay, cool.
[00:33:51] Carol: well, maybe, maybe your model's learned. You know, like for us, if I could be wrong on this, I kind of clicked through a little bit of the training because it was very, very slow for me. I wouldn't believe that because we are on a private cloud and the way everything's run, our model isn't learning from everything.
[00:34:11] Carol: It's learning from only what it has access to within our. With an hour code. I don't know how far outside our code it goes or what it's able to use, but I don't know if some of that trying to force us to understand, like it's literally called prompt engineering, if you didn't know that, like for us to understand prompt engineering is because of the limited data that it's going to have fed to it for so long, because it's, it's not accessing public cloud information.
[00:34:40] Ben: I'm finding that, I'm treating, I only use,what's the chat GPT? I only use chat GPT. And I'm finding it. Most effective as sort of a rubber duck development kind of a thing where I sort of speak at it and I kind of To assume the information that gives me back to form additional thoughts. I find, I still go to Google for things that I want to find technical solutions for.
[00:35:07] Ben: Even if I'm going to ask ChatGPT, hey, in Docker Compose, is there a way to do such and such? It'll say, yeah, you can use the named volumes. And then I'll actually go to Docker and I'll look up name volumes and how does that work? Because it's certainly getting better. It's certainly getting much better.
[00:35:25] Ben: But it still will give me lines and I, and I'll say, Hey, I don't understand this line. Can you explain it? And they'd be like, you're right. That line doesn't actually work. Or like, it doesn't mean anything in a Docker Compose context. so it's, it's more like, it's, it's, just someone else to talk to almost more than anything else, but it is pretty impressive.
[00:35:42] Carol: Yeah, I think the chat functionality is the one thing that I haven't played with yet, so I'm excited to try that out once I actually get it and get a license, you know?
[00:35:52] Ben: And is there a chat version of Copilot like in Visual Studio or something? Oh, very cool.
[00:35:58] Carol: Yeah.
[00:36:00] Adam: So just to give you one example, like, earlier today, I was, I realized that like, there's this feature that has been, I guess, enabled in my laptop for as long as I can remember, that I never liked, and I, I don't know. Kind of wanted to turn off, but it would never rose to the level of like, I need to research how to turn this off.
[00:36:19] Adam: So if you moved your mouse all the way to the bottom right corner of the screen, like a little teeny tiny white box would pop up with like some numbers in it. And then if you clicked on it, it opens. And it's like a, in the Apple notes application. Right, and it's like create a quick note and it's got today's date in it or something like that.
[00:36:34] Adam: And that I was, it always just bugged me because I'm like, I never ever want to do that. So when the mouse goes down there, a little thing pops up and I'm just like, it steals my focus for a second. And so I popped open the chat thing today and I was like, OSX, disable quick note in bottom right corner of screen.
[00:36:49] Adam: And I submitted it and I knew exactly what I wanted and it gave me the perfect steps to, to remove it.
[00:36:54] Ben: yeah.
[00:36:55] Carol: I love it.
[00:36:56] Ben: Can I, as a quick aside, say, I've never enjoyed any desktop, optimization workflows that a computer has. Like, I've never used multiple desktops, you know, where you can slide things around. I don't like maximizing my screen to get rid of the Chrome. And when the OS version came out that had the little Quick Notes thing in the bottom right.
[00:37:15] Ben: I thought to myself, Oh, finally, something I will actually use. And I installed the OS and I used it for like two hours. I'm like, No, this is so irritating. I turned it off.
[00:37:30] Carol: I was so waiting for it to be like, it's still the thing you use. Yeah.
[00:37:35] AI and UBI
[00:37:35] Tim: You, this is kind of tangential, but you had posted something in the, our Discord. I totally agreed with, it was a quote from Church of Jeff
[00:37:46] Adam: Yeah.
[00:37:47] Tim: about AI. It says, the underlying purpose of AI is to allow wealth to access skill, or removing from the skilled, the ability to access wealth. totally agree with that.
[00:37:58] Tim: I mean,
[00:37:59] Ben: Brutal.
[00:38:01] Tim: I think about the future a lot. I'm not saying like I'm a visionary or anything, but I just try to think, what's the logical progression of this? I mean, if AI and robotics gets so good, we're going to reach a point where Most of humanity is not going to have anything to do. You're going to have, or at least a certain class.
[00:38:17] Tim: I don't, I don't, that's not the right word, but anyway, you know, you're going to have people who are going to have to, the really big brains are gonna have to be working on the AI and keeping that running and the very skilled people who can work on the robots. But it's like all the jobs, like driving and manufacturing and things that, anything that can be done in AI and robotics will just be done by AI and robotics, and you're going to have this huge class of people that It's going to get the point like in the expanse where people are going to have to get a basic income because I mean, you, all this money will accumulate to these few people and companies.
[00:38:52] Tim: You're going to have to do something for everybody else.
[00:38:54]
[00:38:54] Adam: I agree. This has also been on my mind a little bit lately. The, I saw in the news that Chipotle is, yes,
[00:39:01] Tim: Yes, Chipotle.
[00:39:02] Adam: uh,experimenting with like some robots that can peel avocados and like, and,
[00:39:08] Carol: so messy. Yeah.
[00:39:10] Adam: Make their like bowls, right? So it's not a, it doesn't have to wrap a tortilla around anything, but it's just like slide a bowl under, okay, put this agree.
[00:39:17] Adam: Yeah. Yeah. Put this ingredient in, put this ingredient and put this in ingredient and slide it down, whatever. And it said, it's like, you know, 60 percent of their online orders is, is the bowl. So like, it can just kind of automate that whole thing. And all you have to do is like drive up and pick it up.
[00:39:30] Carol: Right.Yeah. My,
[00:39:32] Adam: So, I mean, I think every, at that point, everybody's just going to have to be stuck making TV shows like ow, my
[00:39:37] Tim: Idiocracy.
[00:39:40] Adam: Yeah.
[00:39:41] Carol: Well, I have this like big, huge dream, right? That who knows if it'll ever really happen, but like in my brain, the way that this works is that the companies who are all AI pay a larger tax for not employing humans, right? And then that money goes more into a, we create like another level of almost not really welfare at that point.
[00:40:01] Carol: It's just survival, you know? It's. Jobs don't exist, but money's being made. The government's like this. You spend money, so the money should go back to the people. And like in my dream of dreams, right? You see more art, you see more music,
[00:40:16] Tim: the AI is doing the art.
[00:40:18] Carol: Yeah. I
[00:40:19] Adam: Well, somebody's gotta prompt the A.
[00:40:20] Tim: Yeah.
[00:40:21] Carol: Yeah. So I, I think that it could go good in that way and that you could see more creativity from people if they're not forced to work all day long.
[00:40:31] Adam: Could be.
[00:40:31] Tim: that'd be wonderful. Yeah, maybe a two day work instead of,
[00:40:35] Carol: I'm all rainbows and sunshine. You guys.
[00:40:38] Ben: Ew, if I can harp on the burrito context for a second, though. Because I am not a person who likes a lot of ingredients in my food. I'm pretty, I'm pretty, calm and cool and collective when it
[00:40:49] Tim: You mean boring and eat like a five year old?
[00:40:52] Ben: Or that. so when I make a burrito, it's, it's literally chicken, cheese, and rice. Or, or, carnitas, cheese, and rice.
[00:40:59] Ben: That's it. Maybe if I'm feeling a little spicy. I'll put some lettuce in it, but
[00:41:03] Ben: probably
[00:41:03] Tim: Ben, green
[00:41:04] Ben: uh,I go a little crazy. so there are two types of Chipotle workers. There's the person who is kind of the robot, who is assembling just what I've asked for them, and they give me this tiny little pile of food, and they wrap it up, and then they charge me 15 for it. Then there is the human worker, who will see the little pile of food, ask me what else I like in the burrito, and I say nothing. You know, like, I don't want anything else. And they say, oh, alright, do you want some more rice or can I give you some more pork? It's not a lot of food. And I say, oh, that'd be great if I could get some more of that stuff.
[00:41:38] Ben: And they put that in, they wrap it up, and then they charge me $15 for it. And it's, it's that human element that I think is always gonna be so important because just
[00:41:47] Tim: no. Cause, cause AI will, the robot will have a scale in its hand and it will weigh it and say, you know, there's not a whole lot in here. There'll be a, there'll be a prompt that basically says it should weigh between this amount and this amount. And if it doesn't ask him, you know, if there's anything extra they'd like to add.
[00:42:03] Tim: That's so easy. It's already, that's already
[00:42:05] Ben: All right, there we go. Okay, now we're living in the utopia and I feel better.
[00:42:09] Adam: Well, Officer Hopps, it's your turn to go next.
[00:42:11] Ben: Alright, that's me, I suppose. I don't know who
[00:42:14] Tim: Officer Hopps.
[00:42:14] Ben: though.
[00:42:15] Adam: He's in, he's in Utopia. Zootopia.
[00:42:18] Ben: Oh, Zootopia. I've seen that. That's a good, that's a Jason Bateman, I think, right?
[00:42:24] Adam: he's in, yeah, yeah.
[00:42:25] Carol: Oh, wait, no.
[00:42:27] Adam: That's Ben, Ben, Ben
[00:42:28] Ben: Ben Stiller.
[00:42:29] Carol: Oh
[00:42:29] Adam: Uh,yeah, Jason Bateman was, like, the fox, right?
[00:42:32] Ben: I think so. I gotta go back and watch that. I think I've only seen it once. I remember it being pretty good.
[00:42:36] Being Present
[00:42:36] Ben: Alright, my turn. I think I need to spend more time practicing being alone. And what I mean by that is that I'm, I feel two pressures. One is the general pressure of being connected. I have this phone in my pocket all the time.
[00:42:55] Ben: It's, it's a wealth of information. It's a wealth of entertainment. I do feel this desire to constantly be consuming it in some way. then, then there's also the pressure of I think, you know, there's so much information out there, both technical, as well as other types of topics. And I feel like there's a limited time in the day, and even at 2x speed, there's only so much that I can consume.
[00:43:21] Ben: And what that means is that Basically every moment that I'm not at my desk and I'm not engaged in a conversation with the missus, I'm listening to a podcast or I'm listening to an audiobook. And what that means is when I'm walking down the street, I'm not letting my mind wander. I'm not looking up and noticing the trees and the birds and the other people.
[00:43:44] Ben: And I'm not letting the wonder of life Wash over me. And I do get a lot of value out of everything that I listen to. And I think there is a lot of kind of marinating in the brain that happens and a lot of cross pollination of ideas. Someone will say something on this podcast that spins my brain off in one direction, and then someone says something on a different podcast, my brain goes a different direction.
[00:44:06] Ben: And I think there is actually a lot of value and a lot of synergy that happens there, but I think I am very much missing this kind of state of calm. Where I can just be alone with my thoughts. And it, and it just seems like something I need to start doing more often.
[00:44:25] Adam: I feel seen.
[00:44:26] Carol: Mm-Hmm.
[00:44:28] Adam: I, I, I feel like I have lost the ability to sit down and watch a TV show without picking up my phone,
[00:44:34] Carol: Yeah.
[00:44:35] Carol: I can't focus. Mm-Hmm?
[00:44:38] Adam: even when it's something I really, really, really want to see.
[00:44:40] Tim: It's funny though, Ben, you said you felt you need to be alone more. And I think of you sort of already as a very solitary person, right? You do spend a lot of time by yourself
[00:44:50] Ben: Yes.
[00:44:50] Tim: the, all those things like podcast and phone. Those are all very solitary activities. What I, what, what I, hold on,
[00:44:58] Ben: I think.
[00:44:59] Tim: what I think you really are longing for is more of a sense of connection to both yourself and to the limited number of people that you feel close to.
[00:45:12] Ben: Yes,
[00:45:12] Tim: I think that would, I honestly think that would be more rewarding. What we're, what we have today is we have these Facebook friends and all these followers and, but they're not, it's not really connections, right? It's, it's, it's quantitized, it's data analytic friendships. Of the, you know, I got this number of followers.
[00:45:31] Tim: So many people liked my pictures, you know, they liked my costume and the con I went to that makes you feel good for a second, but there's not any connection there, so it doesn't last and that's why you just need more and more of it's like junk food, a really good, long conversation with someone who you connect with and really, really trust.
[00:45:50] Tim: It just doesn't happen that much anymore. But when you have that, that kind of fills you up and just makes, Your spirit, your, your mindfulness, just better.
[00:46:00] Ben: Yeah, 100%. I mean, even as someone who is very introverted, and I completely expect to come back from my conference feeling just devastated and exhausted, it's still going to be amazing in the moment and then emotionally very rewarding thereafter. You know, even as someone who feels like it's an exercise to be with people, I do get a tremendous amount of satisfaction from connecting.
[00:46:29] Tim: Yeah. And that's so like the very, for my very first exposure to you, what, gosh, 15 years ago was, your blog with the thing I loved about your blog was your masthead has a picture of you at a conference or somewhere. And you're like, you know, that, you know, it's, it's you in a. Another person, you're like, that's me and that's Simon Free, you know, and you're both pointy.
[00:46:50] Tim: And, and I know you got, you went through a bunch of these and it was hard. I imagine that exercise kind of helped you meet people, connect with people, get the photos. That's why you, you did that, right? Because normally you'd go and just kind of hide in a corner, drink your Monster Energy drinks and, and hope you don't embarrass yourself.
[00:47:07] Tim: But that was so brilliant of you because you were making connections. And then that person had a connection with you. It's like to this day when I, I will get messages from people that are like, Oh, they'll send me. A screenshot of their browser and they'll say, Hey, it's you and Ben. I'm like, yeah, there was a, that was a 2012.
[00:47:25] Tim: That, yeah, that was awesome. That was, yeah, I met him there. Yeah. And it's that sense of connection. That's what really brings people happiness.
[00:47:32] Ben: Yeah, it's true. So yeah, so I think the two things you touched on are a connection with other people, and a connection with one's self. And I think it is especially true, you know, connecting with other people, there's only so much that I can do. I live up here in horse country, there's not meetups around me, like, There's only, there's a limited amount that I can just go out and do people, but I can do myself all the time.
[00:47:54] Tim: Yeah, baby. Nice.
[00:47:56] Adam: when you're working from home.
[00:47:58] Ben: and I feel like I'm just not there enough. That I'm passively, passively is not the right word. When I'm listening, I'm engaging with the content that I'm listening to, in so much so that I'm aware that it's making me feel things. I'm aware that it's making me think things. But I just don't get to sit alone with my thoughts very often, and I think that there's a lot of juice that could come out of that squeeze if I were able to,
[00:48:24] Tim: back to last
[00:48:24] Ben: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:48:26] Ben: If I, if I could apply myself more often in those situations.
[00:48:30] Carol: Ben, I'll go back to something I think I've said to you before that I learned years and years ago in therapy, and that, we're human beings, not humans doing, and it's okay to just sit and be, and like, be in your thoughts.
[00:48:43] Carol: That's not a bad thing, and it's actually a pretty safe and rewarding thing when you can't do that. So just be a human being. Just be, and it's okay.
[00:48:52] Adam: Counterpoint. I am halfway through the 27th book that I'm reading this year.
[00:49:00] Ben: I don't want to say anything that'll be quacked, but that's, that's amazing. I, I,
[00:49:04] Adam: My yeah, yeah,
[00:49:05] Ben: understand how that's possible.
[00:49:06] Adam: as recently as in college, like, I, I, I had lost all interest in reading for fun. And it was like my sophomore year of college, something like that, that one of my roommates reignited my interest in reading for pleasure, and rather than just like, I have to read this particular thing for class or whatever.
[00:49:26] Adam: And, and slowly over the years, my, you know, I was like, okay, cool. I read a book this year. That's awesome. And it's like, I've tried to challenge myself, myself to read more and more and more. And I started out this year with a goal of 24 thinking that would be amazing. You know, that's like a book every other week, I think, roughly.
[00:49:44] Adam: That's amazing.
[00:49:45] Adam: And, and, like, it's just, and here it is in the middle of September, and I've already demolished my goal for the year, so, I'm very happy about that, and, and, you know, at the same time, it's like, okay, well, what am I not doing? Because I know I've spent a lot of time reading books,
[00:49:59] Tim: But you listen to books, you're doing other stuff while you're doing it.
[00:50:02] Adam: Very true.
[00:50:03] Adam: Yeah, I'm, I'm mowing the lawn or woodworking or, or whatever. Yeah.
[00:50:07] Tim: You're doing tasks that don't require a huge amount of attention, other than using that saw blade so you don't cut your finger off.
[00:50:13] Adam: Yeah. And you know, in those moments I will like pause it or whatever, or if I like, yeah, there's, there's a huge difference between like driving down the highway on a section of highway I've driven 500 times before. And this is my first time driving in Washington DC and I'm like downtown and I'm worried about getting lost or whatever.
[00:50:30] Adam: And so like, yeah, yeah. In those moments you pause it and you're like, okay, well I need to focus on
[00:50:34] Ben: Yeah. Has anyone else seen that meme on Facebook or wherever, where it's something like, I'm at the age now where I have to turn the radio down so I can see better at night?
[00:50:43] Tim: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, a hundred percent,
[00:50:44] Tim: a hundred percent.
[00:50:46] Carol: Oh, man.
[00:50:47] Tim: I was going to ask you, Ben, have, have you ever given meditation a shot?
[00:50:51] Ben: I, there's something about meditation that just doesn't work with me. And I think maybe it's because I've never been trained in it in any way. You know, I meditation, I think I've built up this idea of what it is in my head and I don't think that's accurate. So I think probably the thing that I don't think I'm good at is actually not the thing that it is.
[00:51:12] Tim: Yeah, I think your expectations are killing it. It's really more just kind of about breathing and just doing the breathing. Once you get the breathing right, and then you eventually, it's, it's weird. You think this isn't working, this isn't working, this isn't working. And then you just keep focusing on the breathing and just any thought that comes along.
[00:51:30] Tim: You just say, not now. It's kind of. Snooze that thought, I'll get to you later. And then all of a sudden it's like, all right, now I'm kind of like open and it's, it's very peaceful.
[00:51:42] Carol: Yeah, I'm not great at it either, Ben. I turn on the app and I just fall asleep. I don't think it works very well for me.
[00:51:50] Ben: There's a, talking about the, the thing you learned in therapy, there's another phrase that I heard one time that I connected with very much, and it, I think it is, if we don't teach people to be alone, then they'll only ever know how to be lonely. And I think that's, that's like, I'm afraid that I'm losing the ability to just be alone.
[00:52:10] Tim: Yeah. Or, or. Not constantly being entertained.
[00:52:14] Ben: Yeah,
[00:52:14] Tim: think that's the thing. And so maybe, I mean, is there any place you can go for like long walks, you
[00:52:20] Ben: Yeah. Oh, totally.
[00:52:21] Tim: cause you're in horse country. So yeah.
[00:52:23] Ben: The opportunity is not small. It is, it is that I step outside the house and I think to myself, I have 174 hours of podcasts queued up. Like I got to get going.
[00:52:37] Adam: better start listening at 4x.
[00:52:39] Ben: yeah, mean, there's just that fear that, and there's not a general fear necessarily.
[00:52:43] Ben: This is a fear that I have is that I could be somehow using this time more. And it is compounded by the fact that again, I'm at an age where I get to the end of the day and I don't have anything left in the tank. So I feel like it's not like, oh, I'll go for a nice walk now and then I'll do something productive later.
[00:53:02] Ben: Like I don't have a productive later. I have a productive now and I don't want to waste it. And I'm not saying that connecting with my thoughts and being alone and exploring my mental space, I don't think that's wasted time. I'm just saying
[00:53:16] Tim: it is, it is productive.
[00:53:18] Ben: And it is productive, but I, I have this, I'm trying to think of the right word, the, like, just an arbitrary, it's like an arbitrary fear that I'm falling behind if I'm not consuming content. It's gross. Alright, I'm good. I'm done.
[00:53:31] Carol: Can I, can I throw one thing in real quick? It's about mine. So while you were talking, I got an email from work that said, since I took the GitHub copilot training, I should sign up Monday to take the security and enterprise version.
[00:53:45] Adam: no.
[00:53:46] Tim: Oh Lord. Bureaucracy.
[00:53:47] Carol: I think I'm good. I think this is enough training. Just give me my license.
[00:53:52] Tim: funny.
[00:53:53] Ben: Amazing.
[00:53:55] Tim: Well, I guess I'm last according to the document that apparently we follow.
[00:53:59] Carol: But not least. Yeah,
[00:54:02] Leading a Team in Tough Times
[00:54:02] Tim: So, mine is, I saw on, TLDR newsletter, it talked, it was an article about how to lead your team when the house is on fire. And I don't really want to review the whole article, but there were some things in there that I thought were really good.
[00:54:16] Tim: The main thing I took away from it is that when, A company is facing tough times, like, so, interest rates are low, you know, you basically got a blank check and you're working on AI and no one really expects it to be productive, right? It's just like, let's do AI and get a whole lot of excitement about it, make a lot of money.
[00:54:35] Tim: Actually, let's make no money, but make a lot of money on, let's make a lot of money on our stock because everyone thinks one day we're going to make money. and then that party's over and then it's like, all right, we really need to focus, we need to create. So, so, and the main point I took away from it is that when you're going through tough times or you're going through the war time, let's say, you know, economy took a downturn, you lost your, biggest customers to arrival.
[00:54:58] Tim: The most important thing you can do is to have a single focus priority. That everyone works toward and you don't do anything else until you do that. That single focus has to be the most important thing that affects your company survival. And that's hard. I mean, that's seriously hard because it's so easy to try to please everybody.
[00:55:20] Tim: Everyone's like, Oh, you know, well, it's great. We're working on this, but we also need this. Like, no. And it's hard to be the person that says, here's what we're focusing on. Here's what we're working on. Don't even talk to me about Priorities, you know, B, C, and E. We're not, we're not talking about those till this is done.
[00:55:37] Tim: And when this is done, then we'll move on to another thing.
[00:55:40] Adam: Yeah, so it's not no, it's not yet.
[00:55:42] Tim: Exactly. It's not, yeah, you got to post, you got, but you do have to say a lot of no. People are like, well, you know, do you mind if I spend my time working on this? Because once we're done with this, then that's, this will be like, no, we got to get this top priority done.
[00:55:55] Tim: That is the most important thing. You got to think about it as if, you know,if you don't, you die.
[00:56:01] Carol: Yeah, like if you want another paycheck, we have to keep this thing going. Mmhmm. Mmhmm.
[00:56:07] Ben: It's tough though, too, because I think in order for that to be effective, you have to be working on the right number one priority and there's no, you know, if that was the obvious thing all the time, I think more companies would be successful, but there's oftentimes such a disconnect, I think, between. The feet on the ground, and the people up in the tower, and what they think is the highest priority doesn't necessarily align, and then it feels like you're all being counterproductive.
[00:56:37] Ben: It's, I don't have any deeper thoughts on that other than to say like, like, that's actually quite challenging to know what the right thing to be working on is.
[00:56:45] Tim: Yeah. It's like you look at the case history of how Blockbuster got killed by Netflix, right? They thought their problem was that, they just, they just didn't have enough of like the latest top movies on release. And that really wasn't the problem. The reason Netflix was winning is because there were these movies, the audience was completely, you have these college students who didn't care for like the latest kids movie or whatever it was, you know, they wanted to see some art film that came out and they wanted like.
[00:57:12] Tim: You know, four to five weeks to watch it and not worry about late fees. And a lot of, appealed to a lot of people. And so they thought their problem was we just need more. I mean, I remember, you know, when Blockbuster was in its heyday, it's like you'd go and there'd be like 500 copies of Paul, Paul Blart, yeah, Mall Cop.
[00:57:31] Tim: Mall Cop. It's like, you're like, Oh my God, why are there so many here? I don't want to see that movie. And you're looking for something that you, someone recommended that was like some, you know, kind of cool movie from England that, You know, my cousins told me about, and you'd like, Oh, sorry, do we don't have it?
[00:57:45] Tim: It's an order. We can get it for you. I can go on Netflix and click it now. Although they'll, Hey kids, back in the day, Netflix actually mailed you a DVD. It wasn't streaming service back then. They mailed you a DVD and you could hold onto that DVD as long as you wanted. And sometimes you would copy that DVD with your DVD burner that costs like 700.
[00:58:04] Tim: Not me, not me, but some people would do that. Ah, a
[00:58:08] Ben: I, you said something that just connected with a podcast, coincidentally, that I was listening to over the weekend. so one of the podcasts I love is Freaknomics, and they were replaying an episode from like 2016 over the weekend. And it was all about the cost of maintenance and how much time and effort we put into maintaining things versus building new things.
[00:58:30] Ben: And they had this one segment where they were interviewing a guy from Andreessen Horowitz, which is a huge venture capital firm. And he said something, or he put something in the light that I had never thought about before. We often talk about the I think it's called the innovator's dilemma, which is where these huge successful companies, they become less innovative over time because they become much more risk averse.
[00:58:51] Ben: And I've always thought of that as a negative thing. Like, oh, they're no longer agile. They're no longer scrappy. They're no longer being able to move You know, into the future. And this guy from Andreessen Horowitz, and I'm probably misunderstanding what he was saying, but I, let me try to explain it. He was saying that these huge, successful companies, we don't necessarily want them to be the innovators, that they've built these massive infrastructures and these huge customer bases and these huge product bases and what we want and what the market wants, especially from their stock price is for them to to maintain that they shouldn't be the ones innovating.
[00:59:28] Ben: The people that should be innovating are the small scrappy companies that we can invest a buttload of money into, supercharge them, have them try a whole bunch of things, have a thousand companies fail so that three of them can become these unicorns, and that the way that big companies quote unquote innovate is through acquisition, not through research.
[00:59:48] Ben: So big companies should acquire The small, scrappy, innovative companies. And that brings me back to Blockbuster, because I think we've talked about this before on the show, that at one point, Netflix actually tried to be acquired by Blockbuster, and Blockbuster turned them down. But that's exactly the thing that they should have done.
[01:00:06] Ben: That they, they had this massive infrastructure, and they could have acquired the innovation, but they didn't. And that was the failure. I mean, you know, the one of.
[01:00:14] Tim: they started their own like, you know, DVD mailing service. Cause I remember at one point we actually wound up using Blockbuster, to get our, get our DVDs, but yeah, you know, so yeah, you're, you're a hundred percent. I mean, that is the a hundred percent of what the company that ultimately owns our company does, they're Constellation Software.
[01:00:32] Tim: They don't innovate anything. They're, they're not really a software company. They are, they are deployers of capital. They. Buy, they buy companies that are constantly bringing in a revenue. They take that revenue from that profit from those companies and they buy other companies with it to make their stock price continue to go up.
[01:00:50] Tim: And so that's their sole purpose in life. It's not to innovate at all
[01:00:55] Ben: Right. It's like the, it's like the people in the, I don't know what the phrase is, but it's like in the gold rush, you don't get rich
[01:01:02] Ben: digging for gold, yeah, you get rich selling shovels. It's like, yeah, let a thousand companies die and then buy the one that breaks through.
[01:01:13] Tim: So anyway, that was, that was my thought. It's not a huge thing. I just, I just was kind of meditating on that today about just got to be, when things are going rough and you're going through a lot of changes, focus on the most important priority for your company. And stay monofocused on it.
[01:01:31] Ben: Absolutely. I thought Carol was about to have a diarrhea problem there.
[01:01:36] Tim: Not Carol, the dog, the dog, her dog.
[01:01:39] Carol: No, did you guys hear the whimpering? Did you hear? You didn't hear it? She, is laying on her bed by my desk and all of a sudden you hear the little whimper and she's sleeping and her feet are just starting to go and she's like
[01:01:51] Ben: that's the best.
[01:01:53] Carol: So I reached out and touched her. I was like, hey, you're okay.
[01:01:55] Carol: You're okay.
[01:01:56] Ben: Oh my God, dog dreaming is so good.
[01:02:00] Carol: Yeah.
[01:02:02] Adam: The problem would be hers. The diarrhea wouldn't have been hers.
[01:02:04] Ben: Right, exactly. It would have become her problem.
[01:02:07] Carol: it would have been, yes. Tim's
[01:02:10] Patreon
[01:02:10] Adam: Alright well this episode of Working Code was brought to you by Blockbuster Video, because that's still a thing that exists, right?
[01:02:15] Tim: I'm one of them.
[01:02:17] Adam: and listeners like you, if you're enjoying the show and you want to make sure that we can keep putting more of whatever this is out into the universe, then you should consider supporting us on Patreon.
[01:02:24] Adam: Our patrons cover our recording, editing, and transcription costs, and we couldn't do this every week without them. Special thanks to our top patrons, Monte and Giancarlo. You guys rock.
[01:02:33] Thanks For Listening!
[01:02:33] Adam: we are gonna go record the aftershow. There's nothing for me to tease in the document, so I'm not going to tease anything about the aftershow. But, it's a thing that we do, and if you want the thing, then you gotta pay the money to the place. And the place is, Patreon.com/WorkingCodePod. So if you go to the place and you do the thing, then you get the other thing. Okay? Is that clear?
[01:02:54] Ben: It's just
[01:02:54] Tim: Clear as mud.
[01:02:56] Adam: Alright, that's gonna do it for us this week. We'll catch you next week, and until then, good
[01:03:00] Tim: to have a gun to our head to know that your heart matters. Thank you.
prev episode: 196: Building Better, Developer Experience