Working Remote, AWS Lags, and Dax Explains the Economy
I'm just DMing right now. I don't know if we should cut this out.
Speaker 2:I just don't listen to podcasts, so I have no idea if what we're doing is Oh, I
Speaker 1:don't know if this is Dan or not. I really don't. Sponsored by 10 Tree.
Speaker 2:No, I'm not. What is what is 10 Tree?
Speaker 1:It's a brand. A clothing brand.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's like a it's like an actual hat that you buy from a place that makes hats.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That you buy from a place that makes hats. That's right. You thought it was actually like a like a swag item or something?
Speaker 2:It's usually the case. You know?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Usually. No. It's a company called Tintree. They, they plant tin trees for every item you buy.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow. It's kinda cool.
Speaker 1:Kinda like the guy who the Tom guy who gave away shoes to poor people every time he bought shoes.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:Probably for them, it's probably selfish. There's probably some corporate tax write off or something. I don't know. But you feel warm and fuzzy when you when you do it. You know?
Speaker 2:Have you seen those videos There's, like, there's a few cases of this. It's like, it'll be someone that just grew a forest in 10 years or something. And have you seen them walk around and plant trees? No. It's it's really crazy.
Speaker 2:They'll have, like, a sack full of, like, little saplings.
Speaker 1:And do they, like, throw them into the ground or something?
Speaker 2:Yeah. They'll they'll step, and in, like, one motion, they'll, like, they'll do something with some kind of tool, and then they'll, like, plant the tree. And then they're doing it, like, one every, like, couple seconds.
Speaker 1:I guess I have seen this, or I had a dream because I can I can picture someone doing that? Like, they're kinda, like, throwing a little sapling in, like, really fast.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. The other thing, though, is have you seen there's this funny thing where there's human made forests and they'll grow and they kind of look, oh, like, wow. That's pretty impressive.
Speaker 2:Like, we made this forest. Then you'll see a side by side shot with, like, an actual forest, and it's, like, way more chaotic and, like, crazy. Like, just can't it's hard to replicate that.
Speaker 1:Can't replicate nature. Does it have, like I wonder if it has downstream effects for, like, habitats for animals. Like, they can't live there.
Speaker 2:It's definitely less less robust and and stuff like that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's like we plopped a, like, a a suburb in the middle of the field, and we're like, move in. Come on, animals. We're good at this stuff. We're humans. We build things.
Speaker 1:Look at this forest.
Speaker 2:Liz showed me this video yesterday where it was one of those, oh, a day in my life type of things. But I was with this woman in South Africa. I don't know if you saw it, but, it's like her with her, like, young kids. And they live in this, like, complex. It's like, it's it's an apartment.
Speaker 2:It's like an apartment complex. Yeah. Then they, like, they leave and they walk, and they're, like, super happy. Like, oh, I love living here. Like, now this is my day.
Speaker 2:Blah blah blah. And they're walking. There's, like, this paved over area, and they walk to, like, this cafeteria where they, like, they're served dinner. And it's like this crazy, weirdly structured life. Like, the whole community seems like they take care of everything for you.
Speaker 2:Like, there's,
Speaker 1:like, a movie.
Speaker 2:It plays on designated eat area.
Speaker 1:It's like Pleasantville or something. Yeah. It's exactly. It's There's a movie like that. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Exactly. It's like one of those, like, type of weird movies. It's it's just so weird to me that going to and, like, the the dad met them after work at the cafeteria. It's like eating at the cafeteria as a family as something's just weird about that.
Speaker 2:You know, it feels like
Speaker 1:there
Speaker 2:was something this is, like, post apocalyptic, and they were able to survive
Speaker 1:in this, like,
Speaker 2:community or something.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna say something, and you're gonna make fun of me because I'm that boring white family that moves in with the white Tesla in your neighborhood in the big cube box. We looked at a neighborhood like this, like, this crazy planned community in Florida where they had, like, this whole main street with, like, all these shops, and there's, like, little, like, electric go karts that everyone can just ride around freely and leave wherever.
Speaker 2:Golf carts.
Speaker 1:Or golf carts. Yeah. Golf carts. They had, like carts
Speaker 2:would be fun.
Speaker 1:They had multiple yeah. That would be fun. They had, like, multi seat bikes where, like, families could hop on a bike and ride it, but you just, like, leave them laying wherever. It's like the whole community, the whole it has, like, a store, like, a grocery store, and, like, a whatever, town center. There's just, like, this whole thing played out, and, like, your whole life just lives in this little community or this big community.
Speaker 1:It's like a huge amount of Florida, whatever. What's that what's that called? Not the swamp. They, like, converted a bunch of
Speaker 2:Was this literally, like, Disney? Because, No. Because Orlando is famously or, like, Disney has famously these, like, planned
Speaker 1:Oh, really?
Speaker 2:Back when, like, Walt Disney was still alive, like, they were doing all this crazy stuff. There's parts of Disney World in Florida that are, like, planned
Speaker 1:Where you can live there? Like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's, like, designed by Disney.
Speaker 1:This was this was South Florida. It was, I think it's somewhere between, like, Naples and Fort, Myers. It was, it was this ex NFL player that, like, retired and built this community. I don't know.
Speaker 2:Interesting.
Speaker 1:That's interesting. I'll have to find the name of it. But it definitely had those vibes, like, like, everybody is just, like, wearing the same thing and, like, hi, neighbor. Like, creepy kind of vibes. But we considered it.
Speaker 1:And it's like everyone has to build one of these, like, 3 different types of houses, and you have to choose one of these builders.
Speaker 2:I mean, my parents' my parents' house is one of those type of situations. It's like 1 of 5 models. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:That was very interesting.
Speaker 2:It's crazy when real estate developers go beyond the house and they're like, okay. We gotta, like, make this more attractive. So we're gonna build these, like, businesses and everything. It's like kind of one cohesive thing. I definitely get the appeal.
Speaker 2:Like, there's definitely, like, like, a lot of stuff just taken care of for you. But the reason I thought of this was it's like the forest. Like, when you do a centrally planned thing, it's just going to feel off, like, no matter how hard you try. What's interesting is my neighborhood in New York, Battery Park, it's somewhat of a planned community, more so than, like, any other part of New York, because it used to be a landfill.
Speaker 1:It's like the very tip. Right? Yeah. It is like the tip of yeah. Okay.
Speaker 2:It used to be a landfill. So, basically, when they would, yeah, when they would, like, dig It used to
Speaker 1:be a landfill. Wow. New York City landfill.
Speaker 2:They would dig up, like, other parts of New York to, like, build stuff. They would just dump everything off the, like, off the coast into, like, in the Hudson. And eventually, it was so much stuff that they just that they, like, cut they, like, basically built new land
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:By doing this. They expanded the land out from digging all this stuff from the center of the island. And they cut, like, a perfect rectangle, and it, like, actually, like, codified it and made it, like, stable ground. And then whole all Battery Park is on a land lease. So, like, all the buildings, like, I think they're leasing the land from the government.
Speaker 2:And it's like the semi plan thing. But it's actually it's I would say for a plan thing, it came out pretty good. But it has the exact same problem, which all plan things have, which is, it's just brittle. There's there's not really like, the right type of businesses. Like, they're kind of in, like, weird locations.
Speaker 2:Like, the natural emergence of them didn't pop up where for what it has, like, it has really great parks, like, right on the water. Like, it's it's super nice in a lot of ways, but it's it feels totally different from the rest of New York where you can just, like, walk one foot and, like, run to, like, a great restaurant. Or, like, you can kind of get everything you need at arm's reach. It just feels like something's, like, a little off.
Speaker 1:It's also in New York. So there's that downside. I mean, you you have to live on Manhattan.
Speaker 2:Well, we're gonna get it assuming you're coming because
Speaker 1:you said we couldn't
Speaker 2:confirm. We're going to New York in November, and I'll try to show you a better time that
Speaker 1:you have before. What what are what are the dates?
Speaker 2:We're gonna get there. No. So we're gonna we're Liz will probably help us book everything
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Next week. November 15th to 20th is a plan.
Speaker 1:15th to 20th. Yeah. I think I think so. I better double check with Casey. But I think it's clear.
Speaker 1:I can't miss a terminal gathering. That's like
Speaker 2:I know.
Speaker 1:It's the ultimate FOMO. Yeah. Mhmm. What you've been doing? What's been going on?
Speaker 1:What what what what is happening on here?
Speaker 2:Why don't I ask you what have you been doing? Because you've basically fallen off the face of the earth. No one has heard from you.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I've been reflecting. I think I do this every, like, 6 months. I think I have, like, a yeah. I'm done with Twitter.
Speaker 1:I'm done with the Internet. I guess, normally, I'm a little more high touch, like, even if I drop off of Twitter, like, with you. We skipped the podcast last week. I so literally submitted the stat news app to the store this morning. Wow.
Speaker 1:Finally. It was like this, crazy crescendo to, like, I hit the button, and then it was like, I'm sorry. You can't submit because you, like, track or something, and you had to fill out this form and blah blah blah. It was like this big rejection as soon as I hit the button. It was so anticlimactic.
Speaker 1:So then I had to spend an hour, like, doing a bunch of Apple paperwork. But then I submitted it. So it submitted. Feels good.
Speaker 2:They're gonna reject it probably. Too many web views.
Speaker 1:Probably. No. Honestly, too many web views. I don't know how people do this. So Okay.
Speaker 1:Have we talked about mobile development on here much?
Speaker 2:No. You probably have. It's all probably fresh in your mind now.
Speaker 1:It's very fresh in my mind. It's such a okay. So the the dilemma for us, like, we have this giant website. Right? And it's been 10 years of building this giant website with all kinds of stuff, like visualizations and sports statistics.
Speaker 1:So there's all kinds of different custom visualizations for different sports and, like, tons of just UI that we would never wanna rebuild on native app using native stuff. Right? Mhmm. Like, we are the perfect case for using web views to have a native mobile app because people constantly ask us for a native mobile app. We wanna say, like, oh, the web the the mobile web experience is really good.
Speaker 1:Just use it on your phone. It's fine. Like, for the kind of site we have, it's like it's fine. It's it's like a Wikipedia style, like, lots of links, click into pages, whatever. But people constantly badger us about having an app.
Speaker 1:Like, every announcement we make, there's, like, 5 replies to the tweet that are like, we just want an app, bro. Like, everybody wants
Speaker 2:a
Speaker 1:mobile app. So we're like, okay. Fine. We'll build a mobile app, but it's mostly gonna be the web experience. You're just gonna have a little bit of native, like, navigation at the bottom, and that's basically it.
Speaker 1:So it's all these web views. And I've talked to a few different, like, native development experts, if you will, and they've given me the green light that this is a case where, yeah, it probably makes sense. We're a small team. Like, we're not gonna have a mobile developer that just does mobile development. Probably makes sense to just use web views.
Speaker 1:Like, I've gotten the sign off. I'm not just, like, spitting in the face of every mobile developer. So we have this case where it makes sense, but it's just terrible. It's such a terrible experience to build a native app using these web views. All the things you're used to doing in the web and sharing state and local storage and cookies and sessions, it all of it is just like ass backwards and broken, and you can't do anything you wanna do.
Speaker 1:The amount of, like, effort to build one little thing on the mobile app compared to the web, it's just insane. And I don't know if it's just because of our use case we're trying to, like, shoehorn a web experience into a native app. That's why we're having such a hard time. Maybe if you're building, like, a purely native app and it's a totally different use case and it's not an existing property on the web, maybe it's not this bad, but it's bad. And, like, the the web view is like a community project.
Speaker 1:It's not, like, built in to React Native. Used to be, I think, but then they spun it off and it's this community thing. The number of, like, quirky bugs for this being like, oh, it's cross platform. It works on Android and iOS. The number of things that just don't work on Android or don't work on iOS, you can't use this flag on this, but you can on this, it's a mess.
Speaker 1:Okay. Soapbox. Soapbox over. I'm done.
Speaker 2:Well, my question is, does it makes, like you guys use React Native for this? What about those frameworks that are really more oriented around this web stuff?
Speaker 1:What what are those frameworks? Are you going to say, like, Flutter and all these other words I've heard people say and I've ignored for 5
Speaker 2:years? No, not not Flutter. Like before React Native came out, there were all these, like, app development frameworks that were just around the idea of, like, shipping web views. But there's a bunch of them, right? Like, I'm trying to remember.
Speaker 2:Am I blanking out any of the names? But they so React Native is more oriented around, oh, we're going to help you build a native app just in a different way. So I can see why maybe doing web view stuff in there, they just don't care that much about. Because the whole point of doing React Native is to not do web stuff, I guess. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:But I'm I'm blanking on, like, was it, like, capacitor? Capacitor I have heard
Speaker 1:of that.
Speaker 2:There was there was, like, a oh, Ionic. Ionic is the one that works.
Speaker 1:Okay. Yeah. Why why didn't you say this to me, like, 2 months ago, Dax? 3 months ago? Why why are we just now talking about this?
Speaker 1:This is not good. But then I'm realizing, like, well, I asked some experts, Dax, and they said I could just use the web view in React Native. And then I realized, I asked React Native experts. Should I use a web view in React Native? Yes.
Speaker 1:And maybe if I would've asked, should I use React Native? They would've said no. Oh, man.
Speaker 2:I honestly a yes anyway.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Probably. A new way to build and ship for mobile. Oh my word. If this is better and easier and I just could've saved a lot of hair gray
Speaker 2:Again, I don't know anything about this. I've never used it. But positioning wise, it seems more related to, like, just straight up using a web view. Yeah. I don't know how that relates to literally just pointing to an existing web app, which is probably what you're doing.
Speaker 2:Right? You're not even like
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. We're not building from scratch. It's, like, literally hitting custom pages on our website that are kinda catered to this mobile experience. Or in some cases, the same pages.
Speaker 1:But
Speaker 2:I think that actually would still work because this just injects certain APIs and you can just access them. Yeah. I'm because I feel like if anyone has spent time figuring out the problem that you had, it's it's these people, which is because they're helping you build chip a hybrid app or whatever.
Speaker 1:So I'm gonna look into it. I do see on their website, like, how you can also ship it's shipped to or build apps across iOS, Android, and the web. React Native does that too. Why would you build why in the world would you build a web app using React Native?
Speaker 2:I saw the craziest demo recently.
Speaker 1:Oh, there's reasons to do it? It was cool?
Speaker 2:Okay. I mean, I can't share too much because I'm just gonna blow up their, you know, time being able to tell everyone.
Speaker 1:But Stealthy. You got an inside tip kind of things.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's it's it's it was a really cool bringing together several technologies. One of them being React Native for web. The reason being is, like, you just want a single code base and you want to deploy the 2, 3 platforms. I think in theory, that's like I can I actually really considered it at one point for something I really
Speaker 1:Doesn't just hamstring the web development so much?
Speaker 2:Yeah. But it depends on what you're building if what you're building so for you guys, it's like statmuse is like the golden property, and then this is like
Speaker 1:it's like a companion. Okay. If you're building a thing like like what what was the famous app? Was it Snapchat or Instagram that didn't even have, like, a web experience? It was just mobile for the longest time?
Speaker 1:They're like a huge billions of user mobile app?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Probably Snapchat. Right? I don't remember them doing web support. So maybe that
Speaker 1:case where the web is just kind an afterthought?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Or, like, they're all equal. I don't know. I can see some productivity stuff being in this case where you're equally expecting people to use it on the go as Mhmm.
Speaker 1:At home. Like,
Speaker 2:I mean, this the simplest example is like a shopping list app. Oh, I see.
Speaker 1:That's
Speaker 2:like you could see how, like, all 3 are kinda equal, and it's not like you're gonna be doing crazy web stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Okay. I just can't imagine leaving behind things like Next JS when I could build a website with Next JS. That's just insane. But
Speaker 2:Man, I can't wait for you guys to see this this new thing.
Speaker 1:Next. Js killer confirmed? Is that
Speaker 2:No. It's just I think we're finally just rotating back to stuff that's actually useful.
Speaker 1:Like, stuff?
Speaker 2:Spending 4 years on. Yeah. I mean, it it's it's just like a great example of, again, using this React Native for web thing and just having a single code base that works across all 3, plus a few other things that make it all nice.
Speaker 1:Can you give me a hint about who it's who's doing this? Is it someone we've heard of, I've heard of? I don't get that much. Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I'll tell you after. Okay.
Speaker 1:You'll tell me.
Speaker 2:I don't wanna say it publicly. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's for the the Patreon subscribers. No. I'm just kidding. It's funny.
Speaker 2:Okay. So you've been working on this app, and it sounds like it's been hell. Are you done? Do you feel like you're I'm sure there's gonna be a bunch of other issues that come up.
Speaker 1:I mean, the first release, we already have, like, fast follow releases 23 planned. So such is life. Do you feel like you'll ever just, like, be cool? Just like, I'm cool with the pace things are going. I mean, not cool, but, like
Speaker 2:I know.
Speaker 1:My wife is like, why why do you get so, like, into each why do you push so hard to get this thing out the door when you just have more stuff to do after that? It's not like I'm just done. So, like, why can't I just take a nice easy pace and just be like, I get done what I get done every day. Life is good. I enjoy where I'm at in life.
Speaker 1:Why can't I just be that way?
Speaker 2:I think I have I think I flip between those two modes. Really? I think Yeah. Because if you look at I mean, if I think about SSD right now, we're definitely in the so we we call it, like, dummy mode. It's like it's, because, like, we the the phase we're in right now, we don't have to use our brains too much.
Speaker 2:We spent, like, 6 months building Ion, And that was, like, a lot of, like, kind of what you're talking about. Like, you know, focused effort and, like, you know, pushing. But now we've, like, done all the thinking. And now every day we wake up, there's a bunch of issues. We just fix them 1 by 1, and they're all, like, pretty straightforward, bugs, new features, whatever.
Speaker 2:And, like, we don't have to like, the order we do them doesn't matter. Like, we're just totally reactive, and we just have to do everything. And if we do this for 6 months, we'll look back, and it'll be, like, a very polished product with a lot with a lot of stuff. So Yeah. It feels more relaxed in that I'm not, like, having all these existential questions of, like, who are we?
Speaker 1:What are we?
Speaker 2:What do we wanna do? You know? Yeah. Yeah. Do I feel that shift?
Speaker 2:I don't I feel like I'm always in
Speaker 1:Yeah. I'm not always. I guess, I go through it's all about the, like, release calendar. Like, if we have a target date, like, we're trying to get something out for a certain time frame, then the closer it gets to that time frame, the more stress, the more I push. And then after that, I'll go through a few weeks where I'm like, it's the beginning of every new phase.
Speaker 1:It's, like, pretty chill. Like, I'm still getting stuff done, but it's just, like, I'm not freaking out every day, like, I'm I gotta get this done. That's probably normal, I guess.
Speaker 2:I think the other thing is is, like, we don't really have releases like that. Like, we're just
Speaker 1:You're just always continuously releasing.
Speaker 2:CICD. CICD. Yeah. You shipped a
Speaker 1:production like 15 times a day. You don't even think about it anymore. Twice on Friday.
Speaker 2:Easy for us because the thing we release is a CLI, which is version. So, like, if it's broken, it's fine. Just go back to the previous version.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Web apps, not so much. When you release the web app, everyone gets the web app.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So that's kind of nice. I just finish and I just run one command and it's out. And I don't have to really think about anything. And if it breaks, I'll just do another one.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, it's just different. But I do think that we we do have moments where we're, like, doing a more, like, release oriented thing. And it is good because it kinda forces us to go faster than we normally would or, like like, there's a good impact to that. I just don't think we can be in like that all the time.
Speaker 1:No. Can't be like that. It always but it feels like, to me and to my family, when we're in the thick of it, it feels like this is how it always is. Like, I gotta chill out because this is always we're always pushing. But then we're not.
Speaker 1:We forget when we come off of it. There are periods of relative chill.
Speaker 2:Speaking of relative chill, did you see relative chill at home, did you see the Amazon return to office thing?
Speaker 1:Oh, I did. And a bunch of I saw people leave, like big names. Chris Munns left. I saw, other big names people announce they were leaving AWS. Is that all over the RTO?
Speaker 1:I actually saw all the people say they were leaving before I saw the return of office.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I don't know how related it is. I mean, they've been bleeding people for a while.
Speaker 1:So Yeah. Much much be
Speaker 2:a continuation of that. But, yeah, I think they said officially back to 5 days in the office, and everyone's really angry. And there's a lot of discussion
Speaker 1:going about it. Do you know what it was before that?
Speaker 2:3. But, like
Speaker 1:So you had to live in Seattle. You had to be or near an office.
Speaker 2:3 days in your hub. And now it's you have to be where your team is Oh. Which is likely not or it's possible. It's not where you live, and you'd have to move.
Speaker 1:Oh, so lots of people are having to go back to Seattle potentially, like, where their team's existing
Speaker 2:And they gotta commute?
Speaker 1:That sucks. I mean, for them, I would never work at a place where I had to live somewhere specific. 15 years now, nobody's telling me where to live at this point.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I'm I'm totally on the evil side of this. Like, everyone's gonna hate my my thoughts
Speaker 1:on this. Think it's good. I saw your I saw your contrarian take. When I see takes like that, when you say stuff like that, I just think, like, do you really believe that, or you just wanna be the opposite of what everyone else is saying? Is it both?
Speaker 2:No. I've been annoyed by this forever, and a lot of it is, like, personal and irrational. But I do think I also have a rational case. Like you, I've worked mostly remote my whole career. A lot of time was as a consultant.
Speaker 2:I've seen a lot of companies. Almost none of them do remote well. Almost none of them do remote well.
Speaker 1:That makes sense.
Speaker 2:I will only ever work for remote companies, so I'm willing to, you know, sacrifice the ability to work at
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:A lot of these places that, you know, pay a lot because they require to be in the office. And that that's been my position for a long time. Yep. I don't think a company like Amazon that never intended to be remote, that attracted that kind of offered this very stable, straightforward path of, like, making a lot of money. I can see why them just flipping to remote overnight doesn't work out.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Right.
Speaker 2:Like, if I'm being totally honest, like, a lot of these companies, like, the motivation isn't very high, then the relationship is
Speaker 1:how do
Speaker 2:I do the least amount of work while still getting what I need? And there's, like, attention, and that's like at these big companies, that's kinda how it is. Mhmm. I think when you go to remote overnight, it just swings really hard in one way. And they
Speaker 1:probably did they do it in 2020? Did they do the COVID? Is that why? Yeah.
Speaker 2:It was because of COVID. Uh-huh. And then there's, like, there's different people that fall for that. Like, some of it's a company. Some of it's the people that that are working there, but or, like, just like my employees.
Speaker 2:But the arguments that people make of of why Amazon is doing this, they're not very good. They're, like, weird conspiracy theories. I'm sure some of it is because they get to, like it's a good free layoff.
Speaker 1:Oh, like, it's a way to pare back your workforce, Like, makes some cuts with that.
Speaker 2:Again, I don't like, that I I'm not gonna say that's not a case, but it's like a random layoff. And, like Yeah. Being willing to just, like, randomly lose people is, like it's kind of a stretch, I think. Mhmm. But I acknowledge, okay, maybe that that is there somewhat.
Speaker 1:I've definitely seen the extreme, conspiracy theories, like commercial real estate. Like, somehow, they're in cahoots. Like, what would that look like? It's like
Speaker 2:it's it's not that. It's like if that yeah. So when people start talking like that, I know, like, you just want you just, like, got remote for free and you, like, don't really wanna fight for it and you wanna have some, like, thing to complain for.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:If you really wanna work remote and you care about that, quit and go find a place like, be good enough to go find a place that is like, hell, yeah. We'll hire you.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And this just reverts back to how it used to be, which is I work for a bunch of companies that were not remote. I went and I interviewed, and I got them really excited about me. Then I had to negotiate letting me work remote. Mhmm. And that was hard and annoying, and oftentimes, it was a no.
Speaker 2:But Yeah. You can still pull it off if, like, you really care about it. So Yeah.
Speaker 1:So that
Speaker 2:that's one side. I'm I'm that's, like, the personal side where I'm just, like, I just find the complaints around as annoying. Like, you care about it. Like, you can make it happen. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Then the other side is I think Amazon is just needs a reset. Like, I think any kind of big change is probably gonna be good for them, like, especially AWS. If we look back over the last 4 or 5 years, like, I feel like things have been kind of different.
Speaker 2:Like, they haven't really shipped as much. Like, they really seem to be lagging. There's, like, this there's just, like, a lack of cohesion, and they're, like, falling behind a bunch of places. So any kind of reset for them, I think, would be good. Yes.
Speaker 2:That means losing a bunch of good people, and there's going to be pain in the short term. Mhmm. But I think that will be I just think that's probably good for them. They probably way overhired during COVID. That was definitely a thing.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Yeah. Because, like, the Internet usage kinda soared during COVID. Right? So Internet companies may be overhired or no?
Speaker 2:Yeah. But, like, it was also just money was cheap too and free flowing. So, like, I'm sure, like, any decision that, you know, there's a 20% chance to make the decision, it probably turns like an 80% chance, and it just
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It bloated everything and yeah. That's why you have this nice, cushy job. It's because of that overhiring. So at some point, there's gonna be a correction.
Speaker 2:Do you
Speaker 1:do you have any opinions on whether the you said the last few years, the AWS has kind of been flying behind, just, like, kind of a mess adrift. Do you think it lines up with Jassy leaving? Like, they had Celebski in there and then now this new guy. Like, do you think it's a leadership problem or it just random and who cares?
Speaker 2:I have no idea. I because I don't I just don't know any of the details. I Yeah. I
Speaker 1:do wonder if Jesse was really good at everything. I mean, he's now this the Amazon CEO. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So
Speaker 1:he must be really good at everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Again, I don't know if it if it's like I just don't know. Like, there there might be the certain maybe they just started making money too easily. Like, that's also, like, a weird dynamic that messes the stuff up. Right?
Speaker 1:You don't have to fight for it anymore. Just kinda like getting fat and happy. And
Speaker 2:Yeah. They're making a $100,000,000,000 revenue a year. It's still growing. Like, that's pretty outrageous numbers.
Speaker 1:When when you say they've fallen behind, you you think are you talking, like like, the Cloudflares of the world, like, in the serverless kind of ways? Like, the new edge or new era app development ways? Or what what kind of things come to your mind when you say AWS AWS has fallen behind? Because I would say they think they've fallen behind on a AI, and so they've hard pivoted to everything about AI they can possibly do.
Speaker 2:Yeah. No. But that is that actually is true. Like, why like, they should be leading AI, really. I don't think they need to reorient their whole business around it.
Speaker 2:But, like, yeah, it is weird. They just were completely caught flat footed on that. I just don't see them It's the same
Speaker 1:way that Apple, too.
Speaker 2:Yeah. A lot of the big companies. Yeah. I mean, I just don't see them leading in a in a lot of places in terms of, like, pushing how we do things, like, you know, push the bar on that.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:They're not, like, lowering prices as much as they used to. They're not, like Didn't
Speaker 1:they have didn't they actually raise prices on something? Like, the first time?
Speaker 2:The first time ever they raised prices on something. I can't remember what it was. Inflation. I'm just, like, I'm getting the best thing. I'm just not feeling that thing I'm looking for where I'm like, oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:There there's a lot of energy here, and they're, like, pushing, and they're thinking about, you know, disrupting their own products and all that. There are, like, exceptions. I do think there's some stuff coming out that, is gonna be interesting. But
Speaker 1:But it's been a couple of reinvents that were kind of underwhelming. Like, a couple years of, like I don't know. I didn't leave reinvent being, like, man, life is just gonna keep getting better.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Exactly. So I just think they need a reset. Whatever big disruption they need to do is is probably good.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. On the remote thing, I guess I always thought well, I started my career remote as well. And I always thought, like, especially leading up when the COVID stuff happened and everybody, it was like, oh, it's accelerating the the transfer to all of us being remote. I had this assumption that it was, like, better and that over time, more and more people would work from home.
Speaker 1:And I think what you're saying is is reminding me that's not true. Like, it's not for everybody. It's not for every company. And it seemed like all the articles came out when COVID hit that, like, this is just gonna accelerate the work from home movement, and everyone's gonna be remote in 5 years. And turns out everyone's being sent back to the office 5 years later.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's going back to where it used to be, which is if you can get a company really, really excited about you, they'll still let you work remote.
Speaker 1:And if it's the right kind of company, like, to your point. On Amazon, probably doesn't make sense to be a largely remote workforce. It's like is it just big companies? Is it just like when you're a company at Amazon scale, is it just harder to be remote? If you I guess, like you said, if you didn't start remote.
Speaker 2:Okay. So I'll give you, like, the dynamics because our team is remote.
Speaker 1:You're 3 people. What's that? And Amazon's about, what, 3,000,000 people. I
Speaker 2:don't know. Yeah. Well, I'll I'll I think if I explain the dynamics, I could actually clearly explain why, like
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's gonna be extra hard for a company like Amazon. When we work remote, what that looks like is work infiltrates way more
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:Of our of our life because we don't have clock in, clock out. We message each other all kinds of day, like time. Like, we're working out. Like, it just it we really let it take over way more of our life than we normally would. So weirdly for us, working remote means we're, like, working a lot more and we're more engaged.
Speaker 2:But that's built on the idea of all of us being extremely motivated because we're this is, like, our company.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Right?
Speaker 2:Like, we're all innately
Speaker 1:You got steak.
Speaker 2:A 100 x more motivated than I
Speaker 1:tried to explain this to Casey the other day. I still am having this conversation with Casey about how I don't just have a normal job. Like, I have skin in the game. I have a stake in everything I work on. You know what I mean?
Speaker 2:And it's beyond just, like, a financial stake. It's like it's like it's like a part of identity. Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah. This is a code we wanna do, and
Speaker 2:we have, you know, hopes and dreams for it outside of financial success. So So we're extremely motivated. So when we work remote, it just, like, it's, like, supercharges how much, you know, it, like, infiltrates our lives. Now if you remove the motivation, I think you have the opposite problem, which is now it's very easy to, like, not do that, like, not really do as much work,
Speaker 1:you know? Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So at these I mean, a side effect of being large is it's really hard to motivate your workforce. Yeah. So, yeah, I can see why they they struggle with that.
Speaker 1:Do they just know like, in leadership at big companies, they just know that, like, ultimately, we get, like, 10% of an employee's effort that they would be giving at a start up. But if we have a million of them, that's enough.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Everyone, like, lies to themselves. And it like, you know, that thing that, like, work always inflates the time you have. So it always feels like everyone's doing as much as they possibly can.
Speaker 1:So this is what, like, when they talk about corporate culture and, like, principles and all this stuff. It's to, like basically, it's religion. You're trying to, like, brainwash everyone under you to, like just to get that 10% out of them so that everyone's not just completely checked out doing nothing. Is that the idea? Or the money is the motivator.
Speaker 1:Sorry. I'm answering my own question.
Speaker 2:Even though I was young, I remember my dad saying that, yeah, if you have someone in the office and they spend 40% of their time working, that's, like, very good. That's, like, you should be really happy with that. And so, yeah, I think it's just accepted. There's just, like there's always gonna be again, this tension of one party trying to get as much out of it, the other party trying to get as little trying to put as little work out there as possible, and, like, you arrive at some middle ground.
Speaker 1:It's so foreign being a startup founder and, like, you we've just only worked for ourselves on things for ourselves. We work 100% of the time. And then, like, cut into our life sometimes to work more because the thing needs more attention. Like, there's no moment of my or is it, like, comms and stuff? Are they just saying, like, the 40% doesn't include, like, all the wasted time, like, breaks and communication and meetings?
Speaker 2:I mean, what whatever it is, like, it's just there's, like, room for or there's, like, wiggle room for you to, like, do more or less, and I think that's that's kind of what I'm asking.
Speaker 1:Do you feel like you spend 100% of your time working? Like, I feel like Well,
Speaker 2:no. But I think the difference is there's no one for me to scam. You know? Back I mean, back when I was more in consulting, yeah, I was playing that game of, like, how can I build the most hours with the least amount of work? Of course, it's a natural incentive.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But It's like eating
Speaker 2:sugar. Scamming the customer. You're trying
Speaker 1:to be the most efficient. Your body's just trying to get the most dense thing for the least effort.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And that that's just the natural state of things. But now, when you're when you're doing your own thing, there's no one to, like, there's no one to pull that off. You know? You're just gonna you're scamming yourself.
Speaker 1:Scamming yourself. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Dude, just all that stuff just goes away.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I just I can't imagine, like, only spending 40% of my day, like, moving things forward, whatever work is. Like, that must be nice, I guess, is what I would say. Working for other people and just clocking in, clocking out. Or parts that
Speaker 2:are nice. That's a trade off. Like, you get to do that, and then you lose a bunch of other stuff. But, but that that's kinda why I don't like this whole it feels entitled for people to be like, no. We should let us work remote.
Speaker 2:It's like you're trying to have everything. Like, you can't
Speaker 1:you can't be in a
Speaker 2:body and have, like, the exact type of life you want and, like, just have everything.
Speaker 1:So true.
Speaker 2:And it it like, especially, like, I especially don't care because, like, these are engineers at Amazon. Like, you're not you're making a crazy amount of money Yeah. For this stuff. And to be like Right. To have, like, this, like, weird, like, pedal like, moral pedestal you were standing on about, like, working remote.
Speaker 2:Like
Speaker 1:Yeah. It does get kinda moral, doesn't it? Like, people start, like, attacking the company. Like, they just committed a hate crime. I mean, it's like, how dare they?
Speaker 2:Also, the company is just made of employees like you that are making these decisions. Like, it's Right.
Speaker 1:It's your peers, ultimately. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like, it
Speaker 1:made the decision. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, you know, it just I I have little it, like, just draws a little empathy from me because, like, these are, like this is, like, a very privileged category of people. Like, I don't really care about this struggle, you know.
Speaker 1:So this podcast is long enough now, like, 2, 2 years. No. How long have I been doing this? 2 years, almost? 2 years?
Speaker 1:That's crazy. I'm getting distracted by my my, qualifier at the beginning of this statement. It's long enough now, but I feel like we should check-in every once in a while on the cycle. Where are we at? I I've asked you this probably in the last 3 months.
Speaker 1:But, like, have things come off of the the quantitative easing interest 0 interest rate era? Like, has the collapse from all that come yet, or is it still waiting? Are we still pending?
Speaker 2:Man, I have no idea. Well, they they just cut rates yesterday, officially. Oh, they did? Point 5. Point
Speaker 1:5. Something.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So
Speaker 1:Was it priced then, or did the market Just free rate
Speaker 2:mortgage will finally go down a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah. No kidding. Did the did the market, like, blow up and
Speaker 2:go up without reports? Price then. Yeah. Probably. It's so, like to me, it's a lot like, you know, how, like, comedy used to be straightforward.
Speaker 2:Then, like, we even invented sarcasm. Then we invented, like, double sarcasm and then triple sarcasm. You know, everything is, like, so so layered now. It feels that way with the market also. It's like bad news is good news, but then, no, we go back to good news is good news, and now we're back to bad you know, it just keeps slipping because it's like Yeah.
Speaker 2:The the possibility of a rate cut causes prices to go up because we're excited that money would be cut down.
Speaker 1:As big as they thought it'd be. It crashes. Or when
Speaker 2:it just happens, now the possibility is gone. So everyone's cashing in, so the prices go down. It's just like but, like, that can circle wrap around again. So, yeah, the market's just so untethered from events.
Speaker 1:Forgetting forgetting about the market then, how do you feel about, like, the economy? Capital e, you know, the economy. Mostly in the tech world. I don't care about everybody else. I mean, I do, but I don't.
Speaker 2:All this stuff is just so funny because the technical problem we've had is that our economy is too good. Like, that's the problem we've had over the last couple of years. And
Speaker 1:it's
Speaker 2:it's easy for people to, like, forget that because because we always talk about it in a negative way.
Speaker 1:I never knew that. Could you please explain?
Speaker 2:It's too good.
Speaker 1:Well,
Speaker 2:like, why is inflation high? It's because there's a lot of money. It's because unemployment is low. It's because people are making a lot of money and spending a lot of it, and it's outpacing our supply.
Speaker 1:Oh, so what's wrong with inflation?
Speaker 2:Well, if you have an overheated economy, I mean, the problem is, like, you can exhaust like, okay. The root problem is we don't have enough stuff. That's either root problem.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:We don't have enough stuff for the amount of people that can, on paper, afford it. So what the Fed has been trying to do for the past couple of years is actually make our economy worse on purpose by making money less available by, like, targeting an increase. This is what's so funny. Like, the president will always, like, tout unemployment numbers. They'll be like, oh, unemployment is, like, every month in the report.
Speaker 2:President is, like, record low unemployment. But on the flip side, the Fed is like, fuck. It's too low. They're trying to, like, increase it. Oh, it's
Speaker 1:so big.
Speaker 2:They're trying to increase unemployment. So Yeah. So the Fed is trying to lower the amount of consumption that's happening so we can have a smoother transition while, like, these supply gaps are fixed.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And that's the state we've been in. And it's been exaggerated in tech because, you know, that's where all, like, the future facing investment goes in. So when the Fed slows down, tries to, like, make the economy less overheated, the most overheated places have a drastic, you know, reaction.
Speaker 1:And why okay. We can't just let it I feel so dumb. This is so hard for me to track. We can't just let it keep overheating to infinity because we don't have enough stuff to consume.
Speaker 2:Yep. And it's kinda like climate change. There's, like, a run there's, like, runaway effects and feedback loops, and you start to get into hyperinflation which is, like, not recoverable.
Speaker 1:Okay. Oh, I've heard of this. That's happened in some countries. Right?
Speaker 2:They want, like, a smoother transition. That's what their goal has been.
Speaker 1:A smoother transition to just normalflation. Not inflated, not deflated, justflation. Is that a We just want plain old garden varietyflation.
Speaker 2:Yes. Regular or unwind. Okay. Yeah. So the it's it's weird.
Speaker 2:So the past couple years were all like, like, you know, jobs with, like, the tech like, people are making less money and, like, there's less jobs, and it's all this, like, negative economic sentiment. The actual problem is that it's, it was overheated.
Speaker 1:So when you say a smooth transition, it's if they don't do anything, it'll be a crash transition? It'll, like, fall to a deflated state or something?
Speaker 2:I mean, they're concerned about hyperinflation, which is there's, like, historical examples of what that
Speaker 1:They are actually concerned about it. Okay.
Speaker 2:That that was a concern. Yeah. I mean, because we did print a lot of money. So we need to, like, let the economy absorb that slowly.
Speaker 1:Okay. Is it working? Are they taking steps that are working?
Speaker 2:Yes. It it's surprising. So you because you would think I've always felt like interventions were very ineffective or, like, had second order effects, and it's kinda hard to, you know, like, intervene in a complex system like this. But it feels like the Fed, like, kind of orchestrated it pretty well. Like, inflation is come is has is now down to where the goals are.
Speaker 2:We didn't have, like, this runaway thing. Really? Again, hard to say. It was literally exactly what they did. But, yeah, I mean, we all feel bad about the tech sector, but, like, what are we comparing it to?
Speaker 2:Like, comparing it to, like, a hyperinflated 2020, 2021 state?
Speaker 1:Wait. What do we feel bad about? We feel bad about the tech sector? I didn't feel bad, so I wanna know what everyone else feels bad about that I missed.
Speaker 2:No. They're we're like, oh, there's less jobs and, like, you know, like, we people aren't able to make as much money, but it's all relative to, like, this overheated state. So Mhmm. Yeah. I don't know.
Speaker 2:So I I don't know where anything's going. I I just feel like whatever state we were in a couple years ago, I don't we've had a contraction. I don't know if it's gonna keep going. I don't see how it gets back to that that
Speaker 1:state. That original But, again,
Speaker 2:if you're in the top x percent of people in this industry, it largely doesn't affect you.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So I wanna I wanna talk about what you've been up to on Twitter. Because I I've literally been on so little that I haven't seen your 30 tweets a day.
Speaker 1:Could you just, like, tell me some of the bangers? Like, what's been going on? Or just what's going on with our friends? Just catch me
Speaker 2:up. I don't know. Are you just, like,
Speaker 1:done or you're just not gonna come back? It's kinda to be honest, it's kinda nice to just, like, wake up and program and then be done and then wake up and program and, like, not think about the Internet and all that's going on in Twitter or whatever. Like, I haven't thought about what's happening on Twitter in I don't know how long. Like, until just now, which I would like to hear from you, you know. Is there anything I've missed that was really fun?
Speaker 2:No. It's just the same old same old stuff, you know.
Speaker 1:Prime and Teach had DHH on. Just copying us. Now DHH has officially done the terminal tour. Yeah. Clean sweep.
Speaker 1:Both podcasts. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I called him a moron yesterday. Who DHH
Speaker 1:or Prime? Yeah. No. DTH You called DTH a moron? What for?
Speaker 1:No. It was
Speaker 2:your view. Thing. He was he was like he was like DTH was like, man, these YouTube comments are really nice. Usually, there's people that, you know, reply calling me a moron. So I just reply to him.
Speaker 1:Moron. Moron. That's a good one.
Speaker 2:Which, you know, that that wasn't the first time I had a single word tweet that said moron. I, like, searched my history a lot. I think I've done this before, and I've had a bunch of them.
Speaker 1:And they probably weren't inviting it the other time.
Speaker 2:No. No. Yeah. More on
Speaker 1:the fly.
Speaker 2:Really good. It's just the same old. I feel like, there was this funny thing I saw yesterday, which I loved. So you know how Postmark I don't know if you've ever been following all this Postmark stuff, but they got acquired a bit ago.
Speaker 1:The email?
Speaker 2:Yeah. They had, like, some pretty crazy downtime. And it's it seems like a result that they got acquired and, like, company's been, like, stripped down, and it's just not a good product anymore. Mhmm. And the resend CEO, like, replies replied to them being, like or, like, there's some, like, postmark downtime thing.
Speaker 2:And the resend CEO replied being like, switch over, resend, blah blah blah. And he, like, links to something. He's like, just gonna drop this here. And then Wes Boss replies being like, well, if you're just gonna drop that there, you should also drop this there, which is, like, all of resend's downtime issues. Because resend was, like, ambulance chasing, basically, like, being, like, postmark is down, use us.
Speaker 2:But then resend has, like, a crazy amount of downtime, including stuff they haven't even, like, officially written up. Like, there was one thing from a couple weeks ago. I have grown to really dislike Resend and that company in general. They are just yet another company that are just spending stupid amounts of money on stuff that's irrelevant. And at the end of the day, they're just building yet another wrapper of SES like
Speaker 1:Mhmm. This is really an interesting conversation right now. The the just the multiple angles. It's so interesting.
Speaker 2:It's it's like you go and you're like, I'm gonna found a company. This is like a very big decision in your life. Like, it's your career. Mhmm. You decided it's gonna be a venture scale thing.
Speaker 2:Again, another big decision. If it works out, you're gonna spend the next 10 years of your life working on this thing. Mhmm. And you're like, I'm gonna build a thing that sends email. That's, like, what you're gonna do, of all that.
Speaker 2:And to me, it's just like, what a waste of resources, effort, whatever. And it's just you know, people have done this before. There's a 1,000,000 email things like, yeah, just cause you, like, wrap it in this fancy design. They have this, like, philosophy page about their, like, this, like, really pretentious designed, like, this sort of philosophy on, like, products in life, and, like, we believe that documentation should be good, and we believe that they have a whole section on how they're, like, uptime should be like water. Like, this is, like, crazy shit like that.
Speaker 2:And it's funny to have that section when, like, they've literally had the worst downtime I've seen.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna defend
Speaker 2:something so dramatic.
Speaker 1:This person because I love Dracula. I use it on everything. It's my keyboard theme, like, my physical keycaps, Dracula.
Speaker 2:Don't make Dracula?
Speaker 1:He did.
Speaker 2:Is it Darkula or Dracula?
Speaker 1:Dracula.
Speaker 2:Dracula? Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Just gonna defend him for that reason.
Speaker 2:That's fine.
Speaker 1:Because he wants to buy some terminal coffee for his team. You know what? Maybe we could do a Dracula coffee. I would love to do this actually just to spite you. Can we do a Dracula themed terminal coffee partnership with your favorite CEO?
Speaker 1:We'll talk about it offline. That would be the best. Again, it's not even just
Speaker 2:a I'm just like
Speaker 1:it's the product. Yeah. I get it's kinda like I'm just tired of his playbook. Clover.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. He's that's not the only start there's a lot of startups doing similar, like, low, it's like not having your sites high, like, kinda aiming for medium outcomes and, like, doing the whole startup thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And it's just like and then it just creates a ton of noise. So the other thing is going back to their downtime, the last downtime was because their AWS account I'm I'm actually make a quick little short about this later because I've been trying to figure out how to explain this. So their last downtime was because their, SES sending got banned in US east 1, which gives you the hint that they just have a single AWS account and they put all their customers in there, which if you are trying to be an infrastructure provider, I hope you at least understand why you shouldn't just use a single AWS account for this reason. But this brings up, like, a more root problem, which is AWS built a one giant system, and they solved the multi tenant problem.
Speaker 2:You can go sign up for AWS. You can use a bunch of resources. It's okay if somebody else is also using AWS, and they use it for something sketchy or they, like, have a ton of traffic. It doesn't affect you. They have built a multi tenant system,
Speaker 1:has
Speaker 2:a lot of work, and they solve that problem. Then you have these middlemen come in where they sign up for 1 AWS account, and they put all their customers in it. And all of a sudden, all these problems come back. It's like, I'm I'm assuming their stuff got blocked because one recent customer did something crazy and it's all of them. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And
Speaker 2:they'll spend the next 6 months, like, fixing this problem that was already fixed, and they'll write a bunch of blog posts about, hey. We've solved all this crazy stuff for you. It's like, no. You just it just was already solved. Like, this wasn't a problem.
Speaker 2:Uh-huh. And so much of effort is going into this this thing. It's kinda resolving these same problems again. And, yeah, to me, it just, like believe What a waste.
Speaker 1:Any, like, cloud wrapper companies. And you have to, like, be intelligent enough about a company and know enough about a company to know whether they really are just, like, this third layer cloud wrapper. Like, PlanetScale, not a cloud wrapper. They're an actual business. They build actually great technology, and they happen to use cloud resources for that, but there's a difference.
Speaker 1:Like, there's so many startups that got funded in this kind of, like I don't know why I say 3rd layer. What's the first layer? I don't know. I'm considering, like, the public clouds, the second layer. I don't know what the first layer is.
Speaker 1:Just that's my terminology. Okay? It's the 3rd layer. 1st layer is like electricity and atoms. I don't know.
Speaker 1:Whatever. Yeah. The first layer is
Speaker 2:the layer that God works with, and there's
Speaker 1:And then the second layer is where AWS comes in. Okay? And then the 3rd layer is Resend and Vercel. Okay. I just don't believe in those companies.
Speaker 1:I just think they're all gonna die.
Speaker 2:What's funny is, during this recent thing earlier, I won't because everyone was looking for postmark alternatives and recent kept coming up. Again, to me, it's extremely obvious when there's a company in this category. But, apparently, it's not super obvious. But you know who has a good nose for it is Levels. Because Levels is like, what the fuck?
Speaker 2:Like, this just seems like another he calls it VC pump and dump. Like, it's just grabbing a bunch of ways. So he has a great nose for it, but the thing that he's wrong about is he always frames it as the VCs are scamming you. No. The VCs are losing money on this too.
Speaker 2:I guarantee you, they are gonna, in the end, lose money on all of this. These are not, like Super smart. To, like, that's the one thing he's wrong
Speaker 1:about. Like, they're yeah.
Speaker 2:No one's making money. Uh-huh. This is just a waste of resources. Yeah. Yes.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I'm with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So that was going on. That's been bugging me or it's been I'm just, like, tired of this same story over and over again.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I haven't really been on the Internet since we did the whole Lyricon thing. Did they have a base switch over to PHP? Is everyone running Laravel now? Did we do our job?
Speaker 2:A lot of comments being like, oh, man. I'm sure a lot of people checked it out that they haven't Nice. Haven't before.
Speaker 1:And then they were like, oh, PHP looks like that? Never mind. Arrows instead of dots? I'm out. Just kidding.
Speaker 1:We love PHP. PHP is so great. Buy artisancoffeetermal.shop. You know what I'd like to do someday? I'd like to, like, get so good at an ad read that, like, it seems like it's just a prerecorded ad read, but I'm actually saying it exactly the same every time.
Speaker 1:Does that make sense? That'd be fun. Like and then maybe throw in one little change, like, one little intonation memorize it? Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Just like it could have just automated this, could have just recorded it and played the thing. But instead, I'm gonna say it every time. Oh, let's take a break.
Speaker 3:Hi. This is Totally Adam, the host of the podcast, reminding you in this sponsor, Reed, that is clearly not a prerecorded bit that you should check out terminal coffee at terminal dot shop. Amazingly awesome products for developers brought to you by a group of talented, good looking, and humble heroes like Dax, Adam, the Primogen, Deej, and David. To order your next great coffee, please visit
Speaker 1:terminal.shop. I'm sorry. I just remembered I should do that sometimes. That's what you do on podcast. We're gonna take a break for the podcast.
Speaker 1:Like, why do people take breaks? Do they, like, need a break?
Speaker 2:Do podcasts take breaks? It's just yeah. I You don't listen to podcasts. Listen to podcasts, so I have no idea if what we're doing is.
Speaker 1:I could tell you they do things on podcasts that they don't actually do. And you'd believe me, that's funny. No. They're always like, we're gonna take a break. And then they just come right back.
Speaker 1:And I'm like, did did they have to pee? Could they not have just cut that out? Like, I don't know what the break is.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Okay. So the, the other oh, what were you just talking about?
Speaker 1:PHP, Laravel,
Speaker 2:Lambo. I've been doing a bunch of elixir. I started streaming in, by the way.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. I caught I caught 1.
Speaker 2:2 days into it.
Speaker 1:A little hurt that you didn't notice I was in there 50% of
Speaker 2:the strength. I I right.
Speaker 1:You were you
Speaker 2:were in there. I definitely
Speaker 1:You were right. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Whatever. You said something about Tailwind, if I recall correctly.
Speaker 1:I just find an opportunity to to shield Tailwind at it every turn.
Speaker 2:Well, I I'm stuck using Tailwind. So I'm using, Elixir and Phoenix and and Light. I'm trying to use all that stuff for the thing I'm building. But I had a post yesterday about this. So I've used Elixir for a very long time.
Speaker 2:So I know how to write Elixir. I'm, like, very familiar with it. I've done some pretty, like, deep things with it. But this is my first time using, like, the batteries included, like, out of the box experience, etcetera, all that stuff. Phoenix and all that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And, man, is it it is not a good onboarding experience. Like, there is just so much going on. It uses, like, a crazy amount of macros, so it's, like, really hard. Macros basically let you invent magic Mhmm.
Speaker 2:In the in the in the basically. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just, like, so hard. There's, like, there's just so much thrown at you right away.
Speaker 1:We're just spoiled with Next. Js. Let's be honest. I mean, the meta frameworks have really taken it to another level in JavaScript. Sorry.
Speaker 1:That was double sarcasm. I don't know if everyone caught that. Or was it triple? It might have been triple. I'm not sure.
Speaker 1:Go ahead.
Speaker 2:So I'm like, okay. What this these frameworks, I think they don't have this competitive pressure where they need to, like, really focus on this progressive disclosure thing. So after using it for 2 days, I'm like, oh, the way to do this is I have to go pick up a book on Phoenix and Live View and just read it, which is fine. Like, I've done that a bunch of times before.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:But that's just not optimized for adoption. Whereas if you look at something like let's take Astro, whatever. You know, they're entering this, like, hypercompetitive market. They're way better about, like, here's, like, a really small starting point. You can kinda get a handle of things, and you kind of progressively add stuff and, like, you kinda grow with
Speaker 1:it. Is it just the competition? It's just there's so much more competition in JavaScript world because there's a framework every week. Is that the idea?
Speaker 2:I think I'm that's, like, my explanation. Like like, to explain the differences, I just think that we've got so, like, we've put in so much of work to make it so SSD is one file. Like, that was so much work Mhmm. To, like, get it to that point, like, years of refining and figuring that out. So you can start with a single file and then get more complex over time.
Speaker 2:Yep. And you start, like, a Phoenix app, and it's like so many files. And that's not even enough. You, like, start that thing. It's like run all these generators that generate even more files, and it's just like
Speaker 1:Oh, jeez.
Speaker 2:So much thrown at you, and it's so the different like, such a different mindset than what we're, like what we, like, spend all day thinking about. So, yeah, I think these frameworks would benefit a lot if they, like, rethought their process of, how can we make this feel like a natural progression where someone can tinker, learn, tinker, learn as opposed to feeling like, I, like, learn all this stuff up front and then actually build my thing. Because I'm like as someone that's, like and, like, has used Elixir a lot, if I'm having a tough time getting through this, like, that's
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:That's a good sign that it needs to be improved.
Speaker 1:I I will say, I do think the, like, MVC, MVVM like, if your framework still uses those paradigms, I just don't think people have the attention span in 2024 to, like, use that. You know what I mean? Like, the Phoenix app we had at statmuse is giant, giant Phoenix app. The number of files in that app just boggles the mind. I guess it's like our node modules.
Speaker 1:It's, like, insanely verbose amount of files, and it's all the MVC stuff, I guess. And same I saw people criticizing Laravel now that Laravel got a little more attention, for the same. It's like there's so many files. I can't I can't wrap my head around all this. I guess JavaScript world, we've we've pared it down.
Speaker 1:There's still too many files. I mean, there's too many, like, stupid dot files in your root directory for, like, all the different tools. But
Speaker 2:Well, you have to add those in.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You have to opt in.
Speaker 2:It the I guess people for that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. People. I blame people for all of this, Dax. But I do think, like, the MVC thing is just it's too archaic feeling at this point. I don't know.
Speaker 1:Do you agree with that, or do you think it's, like, good pattern? Do that.
Speaker 2:I just don't know what the alternative is if you're doing a,
Speaker 1:What are we doing in JavaScript? We got an alternative. We don't we don't do MVC.
Speaker 2:I don't I just don't, like, do server rendered JavaScript. So, like, I just
Speaker 1:Domain driven design. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. To be honest, I learned all the domain driven design stuff from Elixir. Like, the the Phoenix documentation on context is where I, like, picked up all the stuff I do in JavaScript. But Yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't know what I'm talking about then.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I'm okay with the final set of files being large. I think I'm technically okay with that. I understand there's a lot of capability in there, and that's why it's all there. Like, if you say there's too many files, they're gonna say, well, your framework doesn't can't do x y z thing.
Speaker 2:So fine. I'll give them that those files are necessary. I just want to, like, get there over time. Like, I wanna be, like, okay. I wanna do events now, and then I start start to add the files related to events.
Speaker 2:I don't want it to all, like, bootstrapped and set up and, like, kinda confusing me when I'm not interested in, like, 90% of the stuff that's there. So to me, it's purely an onboarding initial adoption experience thing. Whether it's not too many files in the end, I think that's, you know, that's kinda subjective because people will argue, well, I need those, you know.
Speaker 1:That's so reasonable, Dax. Why are you gonna be so reasonable? I'm just trying to be inflammatory.
Speaker 2:I'm just trying to not have annoying people reply to you with annoying thoughts. That that's that's really all it comes down to. People have really stupid surface level replies to things. And
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:If I'm not specific, I will get those. It's inevitable. I'll get them anyway.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I feel like you became too much of a character on the Internet. You you gotta lay a little lower. You became a little too, like, people wanna they wanna say things to you in reply. People don't really care to say anything in reply.
Speaker 1:Maybe because I just talk about, like, eating plants and jujitsu and stuff, and they don't have anything to say. But I've laid low enough that I don't really get the angry replies. And if I do, I guess, I don't notice because I'm not on Twitter. I don't know.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm I'm currently thinking about going in 1 or 2 directions. Like, yes, that that's one option we described. But But then when I think about, like, DHH and levels, I'm like, they're, like, way more reasonable than I am. Yeah. I'm like, should I just do that?
Speaker 2:Like, maybe happier? Maybe. Can't tell.
Speaker 1:Maybe.
Speaker 2:Who knows?
Speaker 1:Alright. I gotta get off here. I'm sorry. I'm staring at I've gotten distracted. I'm staring at the waiting for review on the app thing, and I have to make changes to the web thing because our thing uses the web.
Speaker 1:And if I don't make those changes, it's not really ready. Just go go go. You know?
Speaker 2:Okay. Well, before you go, for our event in New York, we need to figure out some stuff with you. Just Let's figure
Speaker 1:it out. Let's do it now.
Speaker 2:No. No. Not not right now. Oh, okay. Me and Liz need to talk to you a bunch about a few things because there's, like the production of it itself
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Is gonna be a little tricky. So I just wanna, like, talk through that to make sure that. Love it. We're gonna have some staff at the venue.
Speaker 1:Oh, staff? Like a butler? Like a No. Maitre d? I don't know.
Speaker 1:What are staff? I don't No.
Speaker 2:No. Like like like tech people. Like tech. Oh. Because they have, like Nice.
Speaker 2:Equipment to, like, gain mics, speakers,
Speaker 1:all that stuff. I like this idea. Wait. Are we just doing it on iPhone, though? Can we just record everything on iPhone now?
Speaker 1:Is that what we decided? Well, I'm
Speaker 2:getting my new iPhone tomorrow. I'll make sure to put
Speaker 1:that up. There you go. We'll just record on your new iPhone. No. No.
Speaker 1:No. No. No. No. No.
Speaker 1:No. Cameras. DSLR. The whole thing.
Speaker 2:I don't know. We we need to talk about it. Yeah. I was like,
Speaker 1:let's let's talk. You you and your people will talk to me and my people. Can begin veganbot veganbot will be my people, and you and Liz are your people.
Speaker 2:We have a DM with the with all you guys that nobody's replied to. So
Speaker 1:yeah. I hearted it or something. I did something, Dax.
Speaker 2:I don't even think Beagan checks that Slack, so I don't know how we're gonna come to that. I don't even know if he's confirmed going. Like, it's it's gonna be a mess. It's gonna be a mess.
Speaker 1:I gotta find that message. Was that in oh, it's in Slack. I forget. We're a Slack company now. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna say something in it
Speaker 2:right now. Are doing real things. You have to be a Slack company.
Speaker 1:Yeah. We're doing
Speaker 2:real things.
Speaker 1:Real things. I thumbs up and hearted it. Thank you very much.
Speaker 2:Okay. Thanks.
Speaker 1:It's been good. Thanks, Dax.
Speaker 2:Thanks for the thumbs up and the heart.
Speaker 1:You're welcome. There's more where that came from. More laughy faces and crying laughing faces. Those I do those a lot. Okay.
Speaker 2:Alright. See you.
Speaker 1:See you.
