The indispensable cog (Friends)

28:34Like there's this dissonance, right, between what they're saying or have been saying in the reality, right, of you being an employee or cog in that machine, right? No matter how good a job you do, right, you are always at risk. No matter how good a job you do. Like your performance, while they might position, right, your layoff, right, or your firing as a performance thing, we all know, right, that's not always true, right? We know at the end of the day, companies, especially publicly traded companies, they don't have your best interests at heart. They have the shareholders' best interests at heart.

29:11That is priority one, the shareholder. So you as an employee, you are means to that end. So the more you understand that reality, the more you can calibrate your relationship with an employer or whatever you're involved in. So that doesn't mean, however, that you stop caring about your craft, what you do, the professionalism that you bring to your work, the passion that you bring to your work. That is a personal thing. No company is ever going to be able to take my level of interest, of passion, of wanting to do the right thing. No company holds sway over that. right? If you hire me for a job, I'm going to do that job because I'm a professional.

29:56That's what I do, right? You pay me, we exchange services, right? I give you what you're looking for and you pay me in exchange for my time, right? So that's a very professional thing. And I see clearly the nature of that relationship. The problem comes when you start adding things around it to make me feel a particular way about your company. You don't need all that flowery stuff, right? I will do the job. So I think in this day and age, I think for me, I took founder mode to mean, okay, care about what you do, right? At the deepest level. If you stop caring about maintaining a code for your company, or if you think, you know, your coworkers are annoying for whatever reason, or you stop loving going to work and stop loving that job, then maybe move on, right?

30:44Maybe your time there is over, right? But don't sort of lower yourself to the point where you're just doing a crappy job because you don't like where you are. Just move somewhere else and be your best self, right? Mm-hmm, gotcha. I did some Googling while you were talking there, just briefly. I wrote one thing into Google. I actually kind of enjoyed this about Google now where you can just sort of treat like a prompt. And so I just said, summarize founder mode. So rather than going to chat GPT or some paid product, I'm just like, okay, let me just throw this into Google. And it's for the most part on par.

31:17They summarized it by saying that founder mode is a way of running a company that involves direct involvement and oversight or, quote, micromanagement. And it says great founders have hired executives and it's not worked. This is summarized from Sam's newsletter on Substack, this part of it at least, is in summary that great founders have hired great executives and it's not worked. Instead, the thing that works is in quotes founder mode, which is direct involvement and oversight of what would typically be called micromanagement. And then the lens for this mode is towards startups and scale-ups.

31:55So likely the founders should be directly involved in raising new funds or directing the product or micromanaging to some degree this user experience or this developer experience, which has become all the rage the last several years. is like, we are DX focused. We are developer experience focused and not our friends over at getdx.com focused, a different kind of developer experience, but similar cut from similar cloth. What's up friends? I'm here in the breaks with Kyle Carberry, co-founder and CTO over at coder.com. Coder is an open source cloud development environment, a CDE. You can host this in your cloud or on premise.

32:36So Kyle, walk me through the process A CDE lets developers put their development environment in the cloud. Walk me through the process. They get an invite from their platform team to join their coder instance. They got to sign in, set up their keys, set up their code editor. How's it work? Step one for them, we try to make it remarkably easy for the dev. We never gate any features ever for the developer. They'll click that link that their platform team sends out. They'll sign in with OIDC or Google, and they'll really just press one button to create a development environment. Now that might provision like a Kubernetes pod or an AWS VM.

33:13You know, we'll show the user what's provisioned, but they don't really have to care. From that point, you'll see a couple of buttons appear to open the editors that you're used to, like VS Code Desktop or, you know, VS Code through the web. Or you can install our CLI. Through our CLI, you really just log into Coder and we take care of everything for you. When you SSH into a workspace, you don't have to worry about keys. It really just kind of like beautifully, magically works in the background for you and connects you to your workspace. We actually connect peer to peer as well. You know, if the Coder server goes down for a second because of an upgrade, you don't have to worry about disconnects.

33:44And we always get you the lowest latency possible. One of our core values is we'll never be slower than SSH, period, full stop. And so we connect you peer to peer directly to the workspace. So it feels just as native as it possibly could. Very cool. Thank you, Kyle. Well, friends, it might be time to consider a cloud development environment, a CDE. And open source is awesome. And Coder is fully open source. You can go to Coder.com right now, install Coder open source, start a premium trial, or get a demo. For me, my first step, I installed it on my Proxmox box and played with it. It was so cool.

34:17I loved it. Again, Coder.com, that's C-O-D-E-R.com.

34:26A while back, I wrote this because I felt this. This, it wasn't called Founder Mode at that time, but what I was experiencing and why I wrote this was a result of Founder Mode. Now that I have retrospect, and that's why I pulled this up. So a while back on my blog, which I do not write too often, I'll link it up in our show notes, is I wrote a post called I'm a Cog. and this is in light of reading linchpin from Seth Godin and then in light of being pressured into this founder mode world where I've got skills, abilities, growth opportunities but the organization was very, hearing this and hearing you, it was founder mode and we were a startup, we were a scale up and so it makes sense why this pressure was there and so I wrote, and I'll share more if you'd like but I'll just share what I think is probably the essence of how I felt at the time.

35:17about being a cog. It was acceptance. I'll say this. This is quote. I'm a very sharp, highly specific, purposefully purposeful cog that's part of a much bigger, much more grand machine. I play a very specific part, highly needed part, so that others can do the same. I serve the unit, the team, and its mission, not myself. I also have a military background. That sounds like a military person. Yeah, I have this military background too. So it was always team. It was never, it was never, never I was always we. And so after reading Seth Godin's linchpin, which I think is not really founder mode, but it's founder mode ask it.

35:58It tells you to be, it tells you to be a linchpin. Don't go into an organization and just be a cog, be somebody who is a change maker, somebody who could be leaned upon. A linchpin in the true terminology is back in the day, you know, back in Hugh Glass's day, the wagon wheel had to be held on to the wagon via this thing called a what? A linchpin. And that linchpin was not there. We still use them on trailers and all kinds of things. Right. The wheel was no longer on the thing that made the wheel purposeful anymore. And so to summarize how I felt here, I really felt like I was fine with being a cog.

36:35I was cool with that. that doesn't mean I want to be truly crap or be sure you know not treated well it was that I was okay with being not a linchpin I I said later on I said I'm starting to wonder if the concept shared in Seth's book linchpin was a bit arrogant or self-centered aren't we all indispensable aren't we all replaceable like and so to like to strive for being a linchpin was almost like striving for perfection you know like perfection is just seemingly unattainable and almost the enemy of profits and the enemy of done right we've heard that several times it's like you know what i'm cool with being cog i'll just recognize my purposeful my purposefulness in being cog and what role i play so that others on my team can do the same so we all win so let's carry that thought All right, let's pull on that thread a little bit.

37:29If it meant you get laid off or fired or whatever, whatever term they want to put around it, all right, in order for the whole to keep moving forward, do you also happily accept that? man how many times i've been laid off almost maybe once i think maybe i haven't ever really been fired to answer that question i would not be happy about being let go for sure let go laid off i don't care how you term it it's never a positive thing right you know but if my experience there was positive if the founder or founders treated me with respect and i was removed from my position in a way I think was kind.

38:13And my team still had care for me. Like when I left Pure Charity, the thing I did prior to, and Jared was like, dude, you should do this full time. And in 2015, I finally listened to Jared and my wife and I left Pure Charity. And I wrote this post when I was at Pure Charity. And so the founder mode was applied to me there that was later on penned by Paul Graham. I think that if I'm treated well and I'm removed from a position in order for it to move along, I think I'd be okay with that. I would not be happy about being let go. But if I was treated with respect and let go properly, but I think if I was let go improperly or not treated with respect or kindness on the way out by my team or the founders, then yeah, I'd have a personal problem with that and not be okay with it.

39:00But I mean, if the mission continues, having been an entrepreneur and a runner or a leader I've had to share some bad news as you know Johnny we shared that early on and so I think that I have both sides of those coins in my brain when I share my sentiment back to you to respond to that question so I think no I would not be okay with it but if it was done well and with respect and kindness then I would be okay with it and I would find a way to move on to the next thing Disappointment not resentment Yeah certainly disappointed like man I really want to be on that train I was working hard to be on that train.

39:38I was purposely purposeful as a cog, as I've written here. I was on my own personal mission. I'm serving the team, not myself. And so that's my DNA as Adam when I apply myself in any organization, whether I run it or not. Whether it's a volunteer group at church or my business, I apply myself similarly. So I think, yeah, disappointment, not resentment. All right. I think some of that assumes that you are mission oriented with the organization that you're in. For sure. Yeah. Because you can be a cog and just be there for the paycheck and you're fine with like, it's not against your morals, what they do.

40:14You think it provides some value. Obviously the marketplace appreciates it. That's why it's still a business, but you're just there to do your work and to do the best your ability and to be a cog and to make some money. And in that case, I think for the mission to continue, I must be let go. Like for me, that doesn't hold weight anymore because, yeah, the mission is the mission. It's their mission, not my mission. I think in a place like Pure Charity, Adam, you are very aligned. And there are times where you are working somewhere where you're like, I totally believe in what we are doing. And so maybe there it's a bitter pill, but one that is worth swallowing because, yeah, now at least the organization isn't going to crumble.

40:50I have to go, but it will continue. you but in cases where it's more about the money or maybe the relationships or you like the work you're doing but you're not like you know it's walmart or something where it's like fine it's a grocery store slash department store yeah a much bigger mission than you can have an an impact on as a as a cashier i mean i guess you can actually do a lot as a cashier too sure i'm just saying i think in that case mission oriented matters if you're going to have that kind of i wouldn't have that outlook myself. I've never been laid off. I've never worked in a large organization.

41:22So I have a very thin worldview. Me too. Always small. Yeah, always small. But I'm not exactly happy to be a cog. I want to try my best to be indispensable. I want to be the person where they're like, we're laying off 20 % and we can't get rid of this guy because he's too useful. Jared. Sorry, 60%. But I have a quote for you. Okay. Ego is the enemy. Okay. Ego is the enemy. Ego is the enemy. You don't want to be indispensable, Johnny? No, I can understand what he's saying, though, too. I asked Johnny. I think. Oh, sorry. I can't respond. My bad. No, you can, but let Johnny respond. Sorry, Johnny.

42:02Go ahead. No, no, no. You can try. You can chime in, Adam. But what I will say is that. I'll be patient. So in my 26-year career, I've been native twice, right? Okay. I've had, and I've worked at very large companies. I've worked at very small companies. So I've, you know, I've lived enough life as a professional to have seen all matter of ways, you know, like layoffs are done well or people are treated fairly or unfairly, kindly, unkindly. So I've been exposed to enough of that. So I speak from that standpoint. I speak from a position of privilege because I've experienced all these facets, right?

42:33The one thing I think is like consistently that it wasn't always like this when I was younger and more foolish and more sort of hot blooded. I mean, if somebody said, hey, you're not doing a good job or, you know, we have to lay you off or we have to fire you because of recent X, Y, and Z, and I have been fired once, the initial reaction is always visceral, right? No matter how, you know, stoic you are or try to be, right? Because it's disappointing, right? It's like a stat, you know, especially if you know you've been doing a good job, right? Like to be told, it's like a rejection. Nobody loves rejection, right?

43:07To be told, hey, we're going to have to let you go because, like you say, Jared, you thought you were indispensable, but at the end of the day, really, you're not. So at the end of the day, again, you, the business, a company doesn't exist to serve your needs or to cater to your feelings. It exists to make other people wealthy. right now if you happen to also get some level of wealth by some definition right you know relatively speaking from where you were and when you and what you've been able to earn at an organization that's great right it just keeps you happy keeps you chugging along but ultimately businesses are designed to make a certain group of people at the top wealthy there's nothing wrong with it that's i mean you start a business for that reason you you want to be well off you want to take care of your family you want to have money in the bank you profit you know you want yeah exactly.

43:58There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Right. So you, you, you get hired as a tool as, you know, for that purpose. Now, if you, when you get that, okay, I've been let go, I thought I was indispensable and I'm not right. I've been, I've experienced enough of that to now, basically, if I'm going into an engagement with an employer or doing consulting, whatever it is, I have to go in, right. I have to check my ego at the door. I have to say, you know what, I'm going to go in here and I'm going to do as best a job as I can based on what I know, the customer or the employer or whatever it is wants.

44:30And I know that at any point I could be removed from this position. This could be taken away, right? It's like that, you know, I believe there's an ancient Chinese proverb or something basically that says, maybe it's not Chinese, but I'm misremembering. But it basically, it's the idea that a wise person gets given this beautiful ornate teapot, right? Very elegant, you know, very beautiful to look at, custom made and gifted to them. And then, you know, they have, you know, a child or a sibling or something like that keeps coming to them and say, Hey, don't you love the teapot? Don't you, don't you, don't you admire it?

45:03Like he's like, yes, I do, but it's already broken. And the child is like, what do you mean? It's already broken. Yeah, it's already broken. You know, it is what it is, but it's already, it's already broken. I can't, I can't continue to have this forever. It's already broken. And, you know, through conversation, you come to learn that the way that this person is able to sort of stabilize themselves, right? So that eventually when the teapot does indeed get broken, right? Maybe it's the child that knocks it over accidentally or whatever it is. The teapot is now broken. This beautiful, very enjoyable thing, right?

45:39Is now no more, right? That person is now, huh, okay. Because it was already broken in their mind, right? So they didn't lose, right? Their world wasn't shattered along with that teapot because they didn't invest so much of themselves into it. So I have to go into these things saying, hey, it's already broken, right? I'm here to do as best that I can do for as long as I can do. But if this thing were to be taken away from me, right, tomorrow, next week, next year, right, that's okay too. That's all fair and good. I didn't say I am indispensable. I said I want to be that. And so I don't think it's egotistical to desire to be that and to be more than a cog.

46:20Fully knowing that at the end of the day, maybe I'm still just a cog and it's already broken. So you're delusion. You lied to yourself. No, not delusion. Desire. Desire. Yeah. Drive. I really feel like I should just read this whole blog post to you guys. Nah, don't do that. Like everything Johnny just said, there's like echoes of what I wrote down here. I'll read two lines for you I say this, I'm going to read this to you Jared appreciating what I think is your you're not desiring to be perfect but you're striving to be an indispensable member of the team, if not owner of the organization kind of thing so this is what I wrote to think that you can truly be indispensable is a farce it's not possible It's a trap of the prideful.

47:12What are you going to say about that, Jared? Maybe I won't show up to work tomorrow. I say that, though, while appreciating the work that goes into strive for being indispensable. Not literally to be indispensable, but to strive to be indispensable-like. That's a great trait, too. See, but being indispensable implies that others must see you as such. Now you're putting that level of self-worth in the hands of others. To me, I now understand where you're coming from, Jared. To me, the way I, and I used to approach it like this, right? I used to, because I like for people to like me, right? We all do.

47:58Like, it's like, you know, it's ingrained in us as human beings, right? We want to be like, we're a tribal sort of, you know, kind of entity, right? So we don't want rejection, right, from the tribe. We want to be welcomed and liked and say, oh, Johnny, hey, how you doing? Because by being that sort of likable, by being the one that always delivers, always comes through, right? You're the one teammate. Everybody can just call in and boom, you just solve all the problems, right? By being that, right, you get that sort of that little hit of dopamine, right? It's like, ah, I love when people love me, right?

48:36But you're putting that sort of self-worth in the hands of others. And nobody will tell you, like a stoic, right? Nobody will tell you how dangerous that is than those who know how it feels when all that adoration and admiration gets pulled back for one reason or another, because it's not in your control, right? What is in your control, right, is how good a job you do, how well you deliver on the mission, the work, whatever you've been assigned to do, however small it might be, right? If you can deliver and objectively say, hey, I did a good job there, what people think of me as a result is not in your control.

49:11So I'm like, Hey, whether that praise comes or goes, it doesn't matter to me. Right. Because at the end of the day, I know if I get laid off, it's not going to matter how much praise I got or didn't get, because that too is outside of my control. The only thing I have control over is the work that I'm doing right now. And how good, how, how good do I feel when I've delivered it and get up and walk away from that, from this key, from this keyboard, right? How do I feel about myself? Yeah. I don't need, I guess I don't need the other people noticing it. aspect of what you're talking about. I don't, I don't derive myself worth from that.

49:44And so I think if I was laid off in that circumstance, if I was indispensable and they didn't know I was, then I would be like, this is a huge mistake they're making. And I would like for that to be true. Like then they, they, they go ahead and lay me off. I'm sure Johnny, you've left huge holes in whatever organizations you got laid off from. And they probably didn't realize what a big mistake that was. And I think maybe even though you are a cog, in some sense, you are an indispensable cog and that organization will never be the same without you. That's what I strive for is like, yeah, they're going to really regret this one.

50:16Not that they have to recognize me as the guy who fixes all the things and all that. That's not where I drive, drive myself worth. But my desire is to be as great a teammate as I can be. Can I speak for you for a second, Jared, having been Am I not doing a good job? No, I think you are. I want to layer it on, I guess, one more layer for you. Having worked with Jared for many, many years, Jared is not the kind of person that requires praise to show up and be effective and to be on mission, to be driven. None of his, to my knowledge, and my experience with working with him for many years, he doesn't require praise to have his ambition.

50:57and I think Jared has a high standard set by himself and it doesn't matter if you agree with the standard or not he's going to strive for it and he doesn't need you to recognize he's striving for it or reaching it to continue to show up and be effective that'd do a good job Jared? You can keep your job Jared Yeah thank you Well I mean I guess you know at a certain point it's probably why I've done the things that I've done which is I've stayed in small businesses I've started or you know had ownership in companies that I work for because at the end of the day, that is where I thrive, I guess, in circumstances more, not as an employee for somebody else in founder mode, but I actually in, I guess, founder mode, you know, which I don't really, I try not to, I hate micromanaging people.

51:42So not that, but not like that tactical founder mode, but like, basically I've been at the head of businesses, small business, very small businesses, most of my career, I have worked, you know, for other people as well, but usually with some autonomy because that's where I thrive, I guess, probably because I have that self-driven thing going on. So maybe I couldn't make it in a large org, you know, it's quite possible. I haven't, I don't have the breadth of experience you have, Johnny. I had the same time duration, but I've been doing the same thing. Like I've done three, I had the, the advantage of being a contractor.

52:20And so while I was my own boss, I had a lot of a broad experience of like working with teams and different code bases and different businesses. You get a lot of experience that way, but not in like a typical nine to five engineering team. I've never had a product manager, right? I've had customers. So those were like proxies for that relationship. So I don't have those kinds of relationships just because I haven't had that experience that you have in so many different roles. Interestingly enough, something you said earlier brought back a fond memory. One of the positions in the past that I got laid off from, actually, no, that one was, I can call it a firing, right?

53:00Because, you know, it wasn't, oh, we're making cuts because, you know, finances or whatever, I mean, you typically hear these days. It was like, we didn't think, we were expecting something else, but we got something different. And which I'm like completely fine with, right? What happened though, I think maybe six months later or less than a year later, like to piggyback on what Adam was saying about, you know, never burning bridges, like we parted ways like very amicably, right? That was not resentful. You know, we did the thing. We sat down from across from each other, looked each other in the eye, say, Hey, I was expecting this.

53:34I didn't get that. And I was like, okay, like completely understand. We remain friends, right? And this was back in Boston. So we remained friends and everything. And six months later, or however long, we actually go and have lunch together. We sit down. I'm going to say, hey, how's the business? How are things going? Whatever it is. And literally, again, the same experience, sitting from across the table. It's like, yeah, we made a mistake in letting you go. So when I heard that, I was like, holy sweet. Internally, I'm like jumping for joy. I'm like, I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. See, you were indispensable, man.

54:09Come on. Yeah, yeah. I guess I was. I just didn't hang a lot on it, but I understand what you're saying. Like feeling like when you leave, you leave a hole that is noticeable, right? Right. Like, yeah, I love that. I mean, I'm not going to lie. It's feeling that you have that kind of impact. But the thing is, the higher ups are probably never going to feel it as much as your team or as much as people you work with closely day to day. And maybe the word indispensable is saying too much. I like what you just said there. like I want to be impactful like I want to make an impact and when that person leaves that impact is is now a hole and to me that's meaningful that means I'm bringing value in big ways I'm a hole maker I make some holes yeah I can dig a hole man that's cool though that you got that that yeah man that had a great yeah oh it felt amazing it felt amazing I was in cloud nine I was like oh man I knew it you know i think that people should do that more frequently too like if they know they especially if the person kept thriving in the community like you have circle back and be like hey you know i don't know how this all panned out for you i can kind of see what you've done since then but by the way when you left it really hurt the organization it was a mistake right i almost feel like that could be like a good just a good feeling to give people you know i'm gonna say to people i don't know it's certainly a good reconnection moment too like hey by the way no I think if that happened and you meet up with that person, like Johnny did, like absolutely be the person that tells him that as long as it's true.

55:40Right. Because it does feel good to know that. And it is validating. I think there was a Google engineer recently who I don't remember that I'm fuzzy on the details, but like they either left or was laid off, went and started. And they're like a machine learning, you know, guru went and started a thing and Google had to pay something like two and a half billion dollars to get them back onto the employee payroll, basically to rehire this person. So there's some validation of like, well, that was a big mistake, right? You should have just kept me around in the first place. The details are fuzzy, so that could be.

56:11Or they need to hang their hat on somebody, a patsy. Something went wrong. Come back here and run this thing so we can fire you nine months later. It's a setup. Yeah, that's even a better story. What happened in Silicon Valley? I hear that's a good show. This is a good show.

56:41What's up, friends? I'm here with a new friend of ours over at Assembly AI, founder and CEO Dylan Fox. Dylan, tell me about Universal One. This is the newest, most powerful speech AI model to date. He released this recently. Tell me more. So Universal One is our flagship industry leading model for speech to text and various other speech understanding tasks. So it's about a year long effort that really is the culmination of like the years that we've spent building infrastructure and tooling at Assembly to even train large scale speech AI models. It was trained on about 12 and a half million hours of voice data, multilingual, super wide range of domains and sources of audio data.

57:25So it's a super robust model. We're seeing developers use it for extremely high accuracy, low cost, super fast speech to text and speech understanding tasks within their products, within automations, within workflows that they're building at their companies or within their products. Very cool. So Dylan, one thing I love is this playground you have. You can go there, assemblyai.com slash playground, and you can just play around with all the things that is assembly. Is this the recommended path? Is this the try before you buy experience? What can people do? Yeah, so our Playground is a GUI experience over the API that's free.

58:02You can just go to it on our website, assemblyai.com slash playground. You drop in an audio file, you can talk to the Playground. And it's a way to, in a no-code environment, interact with our models, interact with our API to see what our models and what our API can do without having to write any code. Then once you see what the models can do and you're ready to start building with the API, you can quickly transition to the API docs, start writing code, start integrating our SDKs into your code to start leveraging our models and all our tech via our SDKs instead. Okay, constantly updated speech AI models at your fingertips, well, at your API fingertips, that is.

58:40A good next step is to go to their playground. You can test out their models for free right there in the browser, or you can get started with a$50 credit at assemblyai.com slash practical AI. Again, that's assemblyai.com slash practical AI. And I'm also here with Dennis Pilarinos, founder and CEO of Unblocked. Check him out at getunblocked.com. Unblocked helps developers to find the answers they need to get their jobs done. So Dennis, you know we speak to developers. Who is Unblocked best for? Who needs to use it? I think if you are a team that works with a lot of coworkers, If you have like 40, 50, 60, 100, 200, 500 co-workers, engineers, and you're working on a code base that's old and large, I think Unblocked is going to be a tool that you're going to love.

59:29Typically, the way that works is you can try it with one of your side projects, but the best outcomes are when you get comfortable with the security requirements that we have. You connect your source code, you connect a form of documentation, be that Slack or Notion or Confluence. And when you get those two systems together, it will blow your mind. Actually, every single person that I've seen on board with the product does the same thing. They always ask a question that they're an expert in. They want to get a sense for how good is this thing? So I'm going to ask a question that I know the answer to.

1:00:04And people are generally blown away by the caliber of the response. And that starts to build a relationship of trust where they're like, no, this thing actually can give me the answer that I'm looking for. And instead of interrupting a coworker or spending 30 minutes in a meeting, I can just ask a question, get the response in a few seconds and reclaim that time. The next step to get unblocked for you and your team is to go to get unblocked dot com. Yourself, your team can now find the answer they need to get their jobs done and not have to bother anyone else on the team. Take a meeting or waste any time whatsoever.

1:00:39However, again, get unblocked dot com. That's G.E.T. U.N. B.L. O.C.K.E.D. dot com and get unblocked.

1:00:53Speaking of Silicon Valley, Johnny, what's going on in Silicon Valley with these fake job postings? I mean, you've been on to this for a little while because I've heard you talking about it on go time. And then I covered it in news this week because there was a ask hacker speaking of Paul Graham. There was an Ask HN, which was posted seven days ago. Who is pretending to be hiring? And it turns out there's people out there with jobs that are not real jobs. I mean, what's going on, man? It's just a hunch that I got. So one of the things that I do and have always done as a professional is I'm always looking at job postings, right?

1:01:27So while you have YouTube influencers saying, hey, this framework is the best thing or whatever. Like people are, you know, geeks get excited, you know, nerds get excited about, you know, technologies and programming and everything else. I'm like, okay, that's one lens. The other lens is what are companies actually hiring for, right? What list of technologies do you see on those job descriptions, right? So I'm always sort of looking at those job descriptions. Hey, what do SREs need to know these days? Hey, what does a full stack developer need to know these days, right? So I'm always keeping an eye out to see, you know, where the trend is going.

1:02:01regardless of what the hype is doing. I'm looking at what people are actually getting paid for. So I started noticing, right? The same job. I'll literally bookmark it, right? I'll take a screenshot of it, right? And I started noticing the same job, right? With almost the same description, maybe a word change here and there, often from the same recruiter. Other times from different recruiter, but the same job, again, with a word change here and there, right? Asking for the same exact thing. And I'm like seeing the same thing come up over again, week after week, after week, after week after week right before i didn't pay any attention because we didn't have you know back in the heyday everybody had a job yeah you saw less of that right everyone in basically companies were just tripping over themselves to hire people right like you know uh you know we know at the at the start of the pandemic and everything else when the overall the overhiring was happening so they say so you didn't notice it as much but now that you know so many people on the job market right you're seeing the influx of these job postings and you're like okay how come there are so many job postings, especially in, you know, on places like LinkedIn or Indeed or Dice, whatever it is, so many job postings.

1:03:06And so many people are saying they can't find jobs going from six months, you know, like, you know, from three to six months before they find a job, like getting an interview is harder than it's ever been. Like, I'm like, something is not making sense here. What are all these job postings? And I started seeing the pattern repeating over and over and over again, then I'm like, something doesn't add up here. Is somebody just training a model or something? Do you just want people to just keep on sending their resumes into this void? Like, what is going on here? So I have no evidence, right? No empirical evidence to say, hey, this is exactly what's happening.

1:03:41Because I don't know if anybody's going to sort of step up and say, yep, we do that, right? I don't think it would be in their best interest. But I mean, something smells odd. Something smells fishy here. Did you see the comment thread on that Hacker News post? Because there's a lot of people validating your intuition. The top comment, now this is also anecdotal, so none of this is like journalism or anything like that. However, these are people who are working in these places. This is a person consulting with a startup in the Bay Area. They say, we have nine job openings listed on the website, but in reality, one position is really open and the bar is sky high.

1:04:22By that, I mean that the founders would hire the right person, but the other eight positions are just there for signaling and nobody looks at the applications we get. Yikes. Yeah. Yeah. For when I'm asked, the CEO told me to say that we are prioritizing finding the senior dev first. And that position has been open for six months. So that's a situation. I mean, that's about as clear as validation. At least one company is explicitly doing exactly what you think they're doing. Yikes. Yeah, it's smoke and mirrors. Right. And it seems to be the reason is because it makes them look better. Right. That's what most of the people are saying on this thread is that because VCs are using, I mean, this goes back to Goodhart's law, right?

1:05:06When a measure becomes known is no longer a good measure. Is that VCs are now looking at company health, it sounds like. And they're saying, well, if the company is hiring, then that's a healthy company. And so it's an indicator of company health. And so then the company is like, oh, that's an indicator of company health. Let's act like we're hiring. Bam. Just no good candidates out there. Yeah, exactly. We don't mess with you up for the right one. We're holding out for the right one. We can't find any. Apparently no one's out looking for jobs. I saw this video, I think it was on YouTube, of that kind of thing.

1:05:38And it was one of those things where the person plays both roles. They're like the recruiter and then they're like the person. And it was like a company. It was like an HR person at a company was one role. and the other person was somebody who would go out and find the talent, like a talent scout, and they would say, probably kind of like nodding to what you're saying here, Johnny, is they would go out and find people, and they would say, those are all great candidates and all, but we're holding out for that one. Now, those are 10 great candidates. Keep them on ice for us. Keep them on ice. Keep them interested.

1:06:13Let them know we're interested. All right. I need you to go out and find me five more that are better than those folks there. But keep those 10 on ice. and then they come back with the five and we're like you know what those are good too but i really feel like there's like one like there's there's a winner out there there's truly keep all 15 on ice let them all know we're still interested right and that that might even like play into the whole multiple interviews these song and dances that people you know and here you are on the other side in between siphoning through savings or ranking up credit card debt or whatever it might be to make ends meet and somebody's playing you yeah not cool no not cool at all not cool at all yeah this goes back to understanding the relationship between you and a full-profit entity fine i'm i want to be a cog then okay i'm fine i'm fine with being a cog sorry i don't have any positions for cogs i interrupt real quick i wanted to throw that joke out there go ahead nine cogs available but they're all, I can't find any good cogs.

1:07:14I'm a cog now. You are not a priority, my friend. You are a cog in the machine. And that's okay too. That's the thing. Like we all, I think in this market, we've all accepted that it is what it is. But you know what? You know what though? You know what? As they say, the pendulum will swing the other way. Mark my words. The pendulum will swing the other way, right? When it does, right? As a cog, don't be a douche. Don't go and, you know, walking in. This was a huge mistake. This was a huge mistake. I told you, mofos, you know, not to do what you did, but you did it. And now you're going to pay the price.

1:07:51I was indispensable. Don't be that guy. Don't be that guy. But, you know, or gal. But the, you know, always, you know, again, this is not, this is not about them, right? Ultimately, I think it's about you as a person. You, and I keep throwing that term around and it's one that takes you hard greatly, like being a professional, right? There's a way a professional carries themselves. There's a way a professional does things, right? You're professional, you get paid for money. Hopefully you love what you do to get paid that money, right? But as a professional, you are always a professional. Good times, bad times, happy times, sad times, you are a professional.

1:08:30See, let people go with respect, hire with respect, show up as an employee with respect, right? some care in the process. Not everybody's going to do that, though. They're not. Fake jobs, man. Fake jobs. Fake jobs. I mean, seriously. So to your pendulum comment, Johnny, does the current crop of language models stop the pendulum for the developer? Is it swinging away from us, and will it continue to stay that way, or is it going to swing back anyhow? now? There's a natural thinning of the herd happening or that has happened with any innovation, right? Something that changes the way things that have always been done.

1:09:17You know, whether it's in tech or in farming or, you know, you name an industry, right? There's innovation that comes and disrupts the way of things. And that should be expected. I think tech for so long, we were so comfortable with the fact that basically we were untouchables, right we you know no one could do what we did was you know magical right it was it was absolute god yeah literally like you know we have we have memes and movies and and things like like we were we we were you know hailed as as these powerful beings who own who they only were the ones who understood how to make the computer do things right that mere mortals couldn't even aspire to right and and we went through that, you know, and that, that whole notion was sort of, you know, amplified back when in the Obama era, when we had all these learn to code, everybody should learn to code, like that whole thing, right?

1:10:14Remember that whole push towards everybody, like left and right organizations, you know, were, were, were spinning up to run workshops. Heck, I ran GoBridge workshops, right? I would go in my local community in Baltimore. I would, I would find people who wanted to learn how to code. I would get them in a room on a Saturday or Sunday, you know, work with local businesses to get people into the room to learn how to code. Because I truly believe, and I still do, that a career in tech is a life-changing generational impact kind of skill to develop. So we went through that phase. Now you barely hear about these workshops happening anymore, dev boot camps, and you barely hear about those things anymore because the market is not suitable for these things, right?

1:10:59So all that to say is that now getting into tech is going to be a little harder, right? You can get into tech, but getting a job in tech is going to be a little harder because there are different skills that are not expected that you need to bring to the table, right? Understanding what an LLM is and how to work with them. I'm not saying you need to go, you know, get into the math, you know, the machine learning math of it all, right? I'm not need to become a data scientist, but you need to work, you need to know how to understand what an LLM is and how to use it, how to build a RAG system, which is basically the hello world of AI development.

1:11:35You need to understand how to build a RAG system. So these things need to not be foreign to you. So the skill sets you need is just changing because there's new innovation. So I think there's always going to be room for software engineers. It's just the skill sets are changing, right? Will there be fewer jobs? Fewer jobs because those jobs now, the skill sets required for them, like the bar is a bit higher, right? So some of those things that you used to hire a junior for, you can then now outsource to an LLM or a Gen AI, some Gen AI technology. So people are becoming more productive. So it just changes the bar a little bit, but I don't think, I don't know, like people are generating a lot of AI slop that people like me are going to have to come in fixed anyway.

1:12:19So I'm like, Hey, I'm okay with that. Yeah. I said it probably a year ago now, but I said, I'll say it again. There's never been a better time to go buy that domain, you know, AI rescue.io. Oh, don't get the diet.io get the.com. Maybe that leads us into our final topic, but you know, if you want to start an AI, I remember when there was rails rescue companies, like they were going to rescue you from your heaping pile of rails app that your team created in a hurry and then left. Scaffolding. Yeah, exactly. And now they'll be like, hey, I got this unwieldy thing that was written by an LLM and I need someone to save me from this.

1:12:56And so, you know, get the domain now. That way the Google just will be there when people are searching for you. Yeah, yeah. By all means, everybody, if you're out there, you want to let AI generate your initial app, you know, thing for you, please go right ahead. Go right ahead. Like make more of those things, please. No code it all day long. Get to it. No cut it all day long. It's fine. Just go right ahead. Because the only thing you're doing is making sure that I and people like me are going to have jobs. So that pendulum will swing. Yeah, for sure. 100%. Well, I mentioned the.io. Let's call this chapter.io no mo.

1:13:35Because due to geopolitics, I mean, this is a crazy story. Speculation, though. It's not guaranteed. That's possible. Here's what happened. We got all these fancy TLDs. Some of them are country code TLDs that we've just co-opted to be domain hacks for our websites. One of those is called.io. You probably have heard of it. And that one might be going away because it was used for the Chagos Islands. I.O. stands for Indian Ocean, I believe. And according to a piece by Gareth Edwards called The Disappearance of an Internet Domain, the British government on October 3rd announced that it was going to give sovereignty up, give it up.

1:14:22It has ownership, I suppose. It's giving it up to a small tropical atoll, which I'd never even heard that word before, this article. Apparently it's like a small island or something. A ring-shaped reef. in the Indian Ocean known as the Chagos Islands. The islands would be handed over to the neighboring island country of Mauritius. Mauritius, thank you. Apparently more well-versed in these geographies than I am. About 1 ,100 miles off the southeastern coast of Africa. Long story short is that IO is for Indian Ocean. Now it's going to be Mauritius. and.io may be going away due to some people getting some sovereignty, which is always a nice thing to have.

1:15:05Who would have thought your tech startup with a.io domain name as its identity would now be impacted by a 99-year lease coming up? Yes, that's what, exactly. What would make it go away? It can't exist anymore because the relationship doesn't exist. And so the IO, I mean, I get how it's applied, but like what makes it go away that they can repurpose it? So the IO domain is technically going to be within the, you want to call it the jurisdiction of basically the Mauritius, right? Now, I would imagine that if they decided to get into the TLD business, right, they could become the administrators, right, for such a thing.

1:15:49More than likely, I think they will probably outsource the thing and bring it to one of those registrars who would be more than happy to take that over and manage it and having the cost because that's going to be business for them. And people register that I.O. domains. Us developers and startups love the I.O. domains. So that's good business right there. So and then, yeah, they can just have a partnership with some sort of registrar and sort of outsource the whole thing or get into the business themselves. But it's too much of an opportunity. there's too much money there to just let that go away.

1:16:20I don't think it's going to go away. And there's precedence for this, right? There's the.su for the Soviet Union, right? Which is still around. The.yu for Yugoslavia, right? These things are still around, right? So there's precedent for this. I don't think it's going to go away, honestly. .es, Espana. Is that at risk? I think that's still around. Well, I think it's out there. I'm just like, I'm just joining the company. You're naming them now. I'm just throwing some stuff in the bucket with you. .co.uk. So here's one that I have familiarity with because I thought it'd be really cool, speaking of domain hacks, to have san.to.

1:16:53So I went out and tried to find the.to, T-L-D, stands for Tonga. And maybe that's an A-T-Hall. I don't know. It's a small island or a series of islands, I believe, somewhere in the South Pacific. And somebody has taken san.to. They have this small little website. They run it themselves, it seems. Tonga's running this website. And every year for a long time, I finally give up on it. I had a reminder to email Tonga people again and see if I could get that domain because they're not using it. They're just camping on san.to, and I really wanted it because that was back when URL shorteners were like all the rage.

1:17:31That would be cool. And having your own personalized shorteners was just too cool. So yeah, I'm well aware of countries that are running their own little registrars on their own little TLD. And so I agree with you, Johnny. I think this is a fun fact of history and an exchanging of opportunity to these people. And that's awesome for them. I think that they're going to have an opportunity to make a decent amount of cash just by proxying this thing to somebody else who can run it or something like that. Yeah, yeah. And the British legacy, I guess, gets smaller a little bit. Gets smaller and smaller.

1:18:09Gets smaller and smaller. It's no longer the British Indian Ocean.

1:18:14It's kind of an oxymoron, isn't it? The British Indian Ocean. I know, right? But hey. Yeah. It is what it is. I couldn't help but look up nomo.io.

1:18:28Because I was thinking if that's available. That's a pretty good joke, isn't it? It'd be kind of cool to use that as a drum to beat on to petition to not let IO go nomo. Right. Right, right. Maybe you list out all of the companies that use.io and say, hey. Sign the Nomo petition. Sign the Nomo petition. Or it could be one of those websites that just says yes or no. And the question is like, is there still a.io domain? It just says yes. As long as Nomo.io responds, there's still a domain. See? We are indispensable. Oh, man. That's indispensable right there. Yes. I mean, an LLM could never be that witty and fun.

1:19:07You know? No. Maybe. Eventually. Maybe. Ah, good stuff. Oh, man. All right. Well, that is all we have for today, Johnny. This was fun. Too much fun, man. It was fun. We've got to have you on more. I miss you, Johnny. I can't wait to see you again in person, man. It's been too long. We need to make it happen. We need to make it happen. You coming to All Things Open, man? It's nearby. When is that? When is that? How near is it? It's in Raleigh. You're in Baltimore. Yeah, that's not too far. It's not too bad, right? Too far. No. While we're at it, let's give away 20 % off. If you're thinking about going to All Things Open, you can go to the registration site and use the code MEDIACHANGELOG20.

1:19:48And then we have some free passes, Jared. Yep. Are they gone? Have we given them away yet? I think we have a few left. Okay. We've got one reserved for Johnny if he's going to come. You've got to join Zulip, which is our new place. It's the new Slack. Zulip's the new Slack. Sign up today for free. changelog.com slash community. Hop into Zulip. Say, hey, I want a free ticket. We'll hook you up. as long as we have some left. It's probably less than a less than a single hand's worth, but we'll be there. Let's get rid of them. We need hugs, high fives, and handshakes and we can't do that unless you acquire the free pass and come to the conference.

1:20:20Come to the conference. There you go. That's the two requirements is you got to acquire the free pass or pay your own way if you're that kind of person, except the 20 % off and then show up. And we're booth 66. Oh, it's official. 66 is our booth. Nobody knows what 66 is. So this is like a big deal. Like booze and everything? It's going down, man. We don't mess around. Have you been to All Things Open before, Johnny? No, never. Oh, it's a great one. Oh, yeah, you should be there, Johnny. It's kind of took over the OSCON. You know, it's like the biggest open source conference. If you come, we'll buy you some steak at Sullivan's.

1:20:51Oh. Just you, Johnny. Not everybody listening. Is that to all of our listeners as well? This is just Johnny. Just Johnny. As an I'm sorry. As an I'm sorry and welcome back officially. Six, seven years later. I'm sorry from a decade ago. Man, man. Wow. I don't know. If you throw a scotch in there. Oh, there's scotch too. Oh, there's scotch involved. Smoked scotch. Oh. All right. Johnny's booking his, would be a flight or would you drive? How would you get there? Oh, I'd probably, I'd probably fly. I'd probably fly through the nearest thing. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Oh man, you're making it hard to say no.

1:21:25Why say no when it feels so good to say yes? Absolutely. Absolutely. Audience, if you're feeling the same way Johnny's feeling, you know what to do. Media, change log 20, get 20 % off. or come into Zulip and get a free pass from Jared. While supplies last. While supplies last. Very limited supply. We love all things open. Todd and team run an amazing conference. It's worth going to. And yeah, all that good stuff. All right, that's all for today. Bye, friends. Bye, friends.

1:21:57We've heard from quite a few people who are heading to all things open at the end of the month. Most of those free tickets are gone. So if you want one, act now. Head to changelog.com slash community and join. It's totally free. Then send yourself a Zulip invite from your Changelog homepage and holla at your boy. Thanks again to Johnny for hanging out with us. Go listen to GoTime already. Even non-GoDevs like me love that show. The latest episode is a roundup and ranking of a bunch of unpopular opinions. that'd be a good starter for you thanks once again to our partners at fly.io the home of changelog.com and to our beat freak in residence breakmaster cylinder is the goat finally thanks again to our longtime sponsors at sentry we love sentry you might too use code changelog save 100 bucks why not give it a shot have a great weekend leave us a five-star review if you like our shows and let's talk again real soon.