The Swyx Mixtape

Listen to the Infinite Loops podcast: https://www.infiniteloopspodcast.com/alex-danco-everyones-job-is-world-building-ep53/ (40mins in)

Read the full essay: https://alexdanco.com/2021/01/22/the-michael-scott-theory-of-social-class/

See tweet reactions: https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1424953927426928646

Transcript 
 

[00:00:00] Hey everyone today, I'm about to break one of the core rules of this mixed tape, which is that episode should come in at around 10 minutes. Uh, this is a 25 minute rant from Alex Danco, which is still one of the best essays I've read of the year. He posted it on January 22nd, and I think it's still resonating.  

It basically is a theory of social class that is both entertaining and actually strangely true. Just don't think too hard about it because if you do you will realize how true it is. 

Maybe this is a good segue into the other thing that I feel like we were theoretically supposed to talk about this podcast episode,  

which was the Michael Scott theory of social class, which again is like another example of the power of world-building in this  

case, it's the power of  

world-building as applied to the phenomenon of middleman. 

Right, right. Like, what is middle management? If not world built real, because that's all you've got right. Is this  

world you've constructed. So originally a missile, who's  

going to fill the forms out. I mean, come on.  

It's not, it's not anything who's going to fill the firms out. It's like, who's going to create the meaning. 

It's like I forgot who described middle  

management as the control rods and a nuclear reactor. It's like, but the point of them is to slow things down so that it doesn't run out of your control and blow up. So,  

okay. So I wrote this piece, the Michael Scott theory of social class,  

which is basically a re skinning of Venkatesh Rouse article that your base principle, which itself was a re-skinning of Holly White's book, the organization, man. 

Oh, so that's the actual source material is the organization, man. Have you read the organization, man? Do you know that book?  

I don't have notes on it. So that means I didn't take it seriously. It's so good. It's so  

good. It's in the list of  

books that I recommend to everybody. So I'm going to have, I'm going to have to read it again. 

What's remarkable about the organization, man is  

simultaneously how in a literal sense. It did not get the future. Right.  

But at a second  

order sense, it just nailed the future so hard. They got it. So, so, so right, just at a slightly different abstraction layer than people realize. So the general thesis of the organization, man,  

is that all organizations  

that survive have stratified into three layers. 

You have the bottom layer, the middle layer and the top layer. The bottom layer is the people who do the actual work. This is the majority of people. Their lives are spent doing literal things. So these are line workers, frontline people,  

anybody who is  

actually producing something. Literally there are the people at the bottom there, the majority of  

people at the top, you have the exact. 

They actually have a lot in common  

with the people at the bottom  

in the sense that they have very  

literal roles and responsibilities and very real stakes involved. And they see the world very clearly as it is, but the people at the bottom and the people at the top see the world through clear eyes with clear actions and consequences, but there's this group of people in the middle called middle-management that is really, really different than either of those groups. 

And their job is to intermediate between  

the people at the top and the people at the bottom by basically constructing this reality called middle management that does not literally produce anything nor have any literal  

stakes or consequences, but whose job is  

effectively to mediate like the control rods in the reactor to say like, look,  

the goal here is to create a stable system  

that perpetuate. 

Regardless of how efficient it is or how complicated it is or anything just like, can you get something to persist? This group of people will always emerge in one form or another. So in the 1950, in the early  

fifties, when Holly white wrote this book, this was in the era  

of these mega mega conglomerates, like Dow DuPont, us steel, general motors, like this was the field. 

Like the current mindset was that. The frontier of progress was mega organizational dynamics. It was scaled to get scaled, to get scaled. This is how everything works. Eventually everything will be run by four corporations because we figured out the science of how management works. And specifically we figured out what middle-management. 

We created this whole world  

of middle management that has sense of purpose and a sense  

of identity. And it was fed through these institutions called business schools and the NBA. And this whole  

idea that like middle manager was actually this craft more or less independent of the  

industry. It's like, what do you do? 

Oh, you're a manager. Oh, like what kind of industry do you manage? It doesn't matter. Like I do manage. Right. That was the thing that you can learn. Do you go to management school and learn management regardless of where you were from? You remember in the office?  

I'm just sitting here because I love that movie. 

There was one particular episode of the office  

where David Wallace, a CFO brings in a new boss for Michael. Who is Idris Elba who comes in as like the professional manager. And Michael's like, where are you from? He's like, oh, steel.[00:05:00]  

Um, but anyway, so this is idea. It's like, like as Holly white describes  

it, William H. White, he went by Holly white as  

he describes it. Right? So the whole book is about this three layer system. And this three  

layer construct where you have the people at the bar. Who again are doing all the actual work and have no path to leverage. 

And the people at the top  

who have all the leverage, but  

are very deeply suspicious of everything and are perpetually trying to acquire and keep control over this huge sprawling.  

Basically those two sides in order  

to not fly apart at a hundred miles an hour, need this mediating influence in the middle called the middle management. 

<...

Listen to Brett Goldstein's podcast https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/films-to-be-buried/bill-lawrence-films-to-be-vyfQWE4F5O3/ (20 mins in)

Listen to/Watch the Tiger Belly podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUNZe_ghZK4

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deal_or_No_Deal_(American_game_show)#Season_one_(2005%E2%80%932006)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howie_Mandel#Later_work
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Harvey

Transcript
 

[00:00:00] swyx: This is the story of how, Howie Mandel booked Deal or No Deal, completely turning his career around, even though he originally didn't want the job in the first place.  

As a word of caution, there is some swearing, there's a lot of swearing in this story. So you've been warned.  

[00:00:13] Bobby Lee: You told me once though, too, is that, um, At first, when dealer knew no deal was presented to you, you didn't really initially jump on  

[00:00:20] Howie Mandel: it, jump on it. I said, fuck you to the person. I know I was at 2005. I T I told you this, my career in my mind was over, you know, I had, I had done, uh, St elsewhere and I had done Bobby's world in the nineties, and I did a lot of TV. 

And I did a lot of movies in the eighties. And by about 2004, I was getting jobs at comedy clubs, which were maybe twenty-five percent full when I got there. So there was no people in the audience. So the audience has waned in my, in my height. I was playing like 10,000 seats and 84 or 83 and doing the tonight show. 

But now. 60 people in the audience. And I was reading for parts for five lines and under, so I bead outside a casting office and then I get this call from my manager, says, you know, NBC wants you to do, uh, a game show and I went, fuck you. And if you remember. Uh, nobody remembers, but if you remember 2004, 2005, at that time, not one comedian ever since Groucho Marx had done a game show, Gracia marks, did you bet your life, which Leno is actually doing right now, but, but no comedian had done that. 

And in fact, you know, being the game show host was the punchline. You know, it was kind of a joke. It's just the guy in a suit who reads trivia question. I didn't want to be a game. So I said, fuck you, you know, Career is over and I'd like to leave and leave. No, I'm I, I deal in, uh, I've I've done. Okay. But I like real estate as much as I like show business. 

So I was doing real. I said, listen, as for money and business, I can do okay. I just don't need to be constantly humiliated, embarrassed, kicked in the nuts mentally every fucking day. This is a really hard thing. Even when you're doing well, even when you're doing well, because the better you do the harder the rejection feels because you feel like you got that self worthiness and how can he say no? 

You know, even up to like two months ago, I've, you know, as you talked about, I produce shows, I've even said to a network, you know, All hosts this one and they have said to me, well, we don't want you. So yeah. You know, which is funny, but it's also, it's a kick in the nuts. So w what I'm saying is I couldn't, I wasn't, I didn't have the success along with the kick of the nuts. 

So I just said, listen, I'll make money. I'll do it. I don't need to do this to myself every day. And if I do a game show, that's going to be the nail in the coffin of my career. Wow. You know, game show hosts. That's the last thing I want to do, or I'd be embarrassed in front. Comedy community or anybody in show business. 

The last thing he did, he did St. Elsewhere. He did movies. He created shows. And now he's saying, what is the capital of Arizona for six points? Yeah. You know, it wasn't something I thought was an in the cards for me. And, and so I said, no, then they call back a half hour later they go. I just want you to understand that they're going to do this game. 

It's not an afternoon game show. They're going to do it in primetime five nights. And no network has ever devoted five hours in one week of prime time television to a game which already exists in most of the world and it's kicking ass. Ah, so I said, I really don't want to do it. He calls me back half hour later and he's. 

Will you just talk to the guy? I go, I'll talk to the guy, but I don't even want to, you know, part of the humiliation is me driving and trying to find the place I don't like today. Anyway, uh, he comes in and he goes, let me just show you the game. And I thought I was being pranked. It's this guy, Rob Smith from Endemol. And he brought in, he had a cartoon, he had a cartoon, he had a, um, an art card, like a piece of paper, and he had drawn 26 squares. 

He didn't go to Kinko. He didn't spend, it looked like a special needs after school project. Yeah. And, and, and he, he puts these 2016. I'm going to show you something, pick a card and don't show me what it is. And I pick a card and I don't show him what it is, but he's got the, each card had the amount of money on it, like a million and what yeah, he goes now, do you think you got the million? 

I go, well, I got the soup and why do I think he goes, watch this open up six other cards and whatever's in those cards is not in York and I didn't really understand. I go. Is there any trivia? Is there any skill. I went home and I told my wife, this is the worst fucking day, an hour an hour. And they kept saying to me, you are perfect for this. 

We can't do this without you Howie. We see you as the perfect person for this game, which bothered me more because there's no fucking game. Maybe it's because I had no fucking careers. So a guy with no career doing no games. Perfect. So. I went home and my wife said to me, what did, I said, it's his game. 

They opened up cases in that and she goes, do it. And, and, um, she just said flat out do it. Yeah. Well, she said, I don't want you in the house. She said, just do it please. You just gotta, I was going down a really dark wormhole. I was just sitting there horribly and she goes, I don't care what it is. Just do some, you just need to do it. 

And, and so she talked me into doing it, which I thought was. Horrible idea, but I listened to her, like you listened to her. They seem to be a little smarter than we are. Um, and, and the thing is that, so I went there and I was devastated, you know, was because they were practicing it and it didn't make any sense to me. 

And then I said, oh, and this is fraud. So I called them back on Friday and I said, okay, I'll do it. And they went great. We told you, you're the perfect person for this. You're the guy that can do this. And I said, when do we tape? And he goes Monday and I go Monday, Monday, but what about the models you need 26 months? 

We got, yes, you've already cast all the models I go. What about a set built? How fucking far down the list was? I, I called them back. I was terrified that I said, okay. But my wife made me say, okay. 

So I called them a couple hours later and I said, can I, I don't know what to do. And I've never done a game show QBO. I live vulnerable and scared, but yes, I was even more heightened vulnerability and fear because we were about to start. And so I said, can I hear some comedy from my friends too? Right? 

Maybe we can write maybe if nothing else, if this ga...

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9qsxhhNUoU

• 1. Wake up whenever you want 
• 2. Make sure your house is a complete disaster 
• 3. Procrastinate 
• 4. Pretend to be busy
• 5. Wait for opportunities 
• 6. Always say no 
• 7. Be suspicious of people
• 8. Never fix the things you dislike about yourself
• 9. Focus on things you can’t control 
• 10. Use fear as motivation 
• 11. Only do what is comfortable 
• 12. Believe you are special
• 13. See life not how it is, but how you wish it to be

Transcript

Here's a quick tutorial

on how to be miserable
for the rest of your life.

Step one, wake up whenever you want to.

Don't wake up at a reasonable hour,

an hour that makes you
feel good about yourself.

Make sure you wake up

when everyone has had a
head start to the day.

You really wanna make sure

you feel like you've missed any chance

to start your day off on the right foot.

And when you get out of bed,

don't make your bed and don't shower.

Just wear whatever you wore
yesterday and head downstairs.

It's important that you start the day off

with little to no self-respect,

feeling as grimy as possible.

Step two, make sure your house

is always a complete disaster.

Your house is filled with many rooms,

each with a specific purpose.

You wanna make sure that
it's extremely difficult

to accomplish those purposes.

The pigsty will also help
subconsciously reinforce the idea

that you're a disorganized person

whose life is not in order.

This is an extremely
important belief to have

when trying to remain miserable.

Step three, procrastinate.

When the thought dawns on you
to do something productive,

like clean your disgusting kitchen,

just ignore that feeling.

After all you just woke up,

and you have so much time later
in the day to get that done.

You wanna get in the habit

of delegating all your life's problems

to the future version of yourself,

who will probably have
a lot more motivation

and energy than you do right now.

Step four, look busy.

After you sit down to do some
work, open up a Word document

to help yourself feel like
you're being productive.

Give your document a nice title

and then immediately open up Reddit,

Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter

just to check if you missed anything.

You see, it doesn't
really matter what you do.

As long as you're sitting on your desk

and that Word document is open,

it'll help trick your conscience

into thinking you're doing work,

but you won't be getting
any further in life.

Step five, wait for opportunities.

Never be proactive with
finding new opportunities

to grow your career or meet new people.

Wait for all of that to
come knocking on your door.

After all, if it's gonna
happen, it's gonna happen.

You'll meet the girl
of your dreams one day

and things will kinda just work out.

You'll probably also land your dream job

if you just wait long enough.

Anyways, the important
thing is to not take action.

Don't try to figure out
the most effective way

to get what you want, just
wait until things work out.

Step six, be default no.

When a friend asks you to go
out for a drink, just say no.

After all, you're super busy these days

and have a lot of work to do.

When your boss gives you the opportunity

to lead a meeting at work,

try to find an excuse to slink out of it.

The key here is to give
everyone the impression

that they should just let
you do your own thing.

Be so good at saying no

that people just stop
asking you to do anything.

Step seven, be suspicious of people.

Never give people the
benefit of the doubt.

Believe that everyone

basically just wants to
take advantage of you,

and because of this, you should be guarded

and put up walls to protect
yourself emotionally.

Assume the smiles people give you are fake

and that their motives are malevolent.

Step eight, never fix the things
you dislike about yourself.

Continue to engage in activities

that make feel subhuman and weak.

Never prove to yourself

that you can overcome
obstacles or better yourself.

Never attempt to transcend your vices

or change your lifestyle for the better.

Subscribe to the idea
that people can't change,

so you shouldn't try.

Step nine, focus on
things you can't control.

As often as possible, get
pissed off at the traffic,

the government, the pandemic.

You really wanna reinforce the idea

that the world is messed up

and there's nothing you can do about it.

Focus on the shortcomings of others,

the failings of your country,
and the state of the economy.

Maintain a constant
external locus of control

over all the events in your life.

This will really help you feel powerless.

And if you're trying to be
miserable, that's perfect.

Step 10, use fear as motivation.

Make the fear of negative consequence

your primary motivator
for everything you do.

Set up deadlines that frighten you

and punish yourself for
failing to meet them.

Use white-knuckle tactics

to force yourself into productivity

and remind yourself constantly

that your entire life could fall apart

if you don't keep your head above water.

Step 11, only do what is comfortable.

Let your comfort zone be the authority

on what you do and don't do.

If it's not comfortable, don't do it.

Avoid discomfort at all costs

and participate only in activities

that are familiar and effortless.

Don't concern yourself with gaining

fresh perspectives or novel experiences.

Stay in your lane. Operate
in your wheelhouse.

Step 12, believe you're special.

Behave like you're entitled to things

on the basis that you're just
different than everyone else.

Assume that the people that
have what you want in life

just don't deserve it as much as you do.

Always regard yourself as talented,

unique, one of a kind.

This will really help you
develop an outsider complex,

which will make it difficult
to open up to other people

or see things from their perspective.

But since you don't wanna do

any of that uncomfortable
stuff anyways, that's perfect.

Step 13, see life not as it is,

but how you wish it to be.

Daydream of a day where things are better,

fantasize about a life where
all your problems are gone.

You wanna make sure you mentally
escape as much as possible

to distract you from the
obstacles in front of you.

Pour your mental energy

not into fixing your problems
or improving yourself,

but into building up this fantasy

to be as detailed as possible.

Reflect daily about what you would buy

if you won the lottery
or became a celebrity.

Constantly compare your
life to this fiction

and become resentful at the juxtaposition.

So if suffering is what you're after

and you crave the...

This podcast involves two live demos, you can catch up on the YouTube verison here: https://youtu.be/T3K_DrgLPXM

Links

• Builder.io https://www.builder.io/
• PartyTown https://github.com/BuilderIO/partytown
• Qwik https://github.com/builderio/qwik
• https://dev.to/mhevery/a-first-look-at-qwik-the-html-first-framework-af

Timestamps

• [00:01:53] Misko Intro 
• [00:03:50] Builder.io 
• [00:08:31] PartyTown 
• [00:11:41] Web Workers vs Service Workers vs Atomics 
• [00:15:02] PartyTown Demo 
• [00:21:46] Qwik and Resumable vs Replayable Frameworks 
• [00:25:40] Qwik vs React - the curse of Closures 
• [00:27:32] Qwik Demo 
• [00:42:40] Qwik Compiler Optimizations 
• [00:53:00] Qwik Questions 
• [01:00:05] Qwik vs Islands Architecture 
• [01:02:59] Qwik Event Pooling 
• [01:05:57] Qwik Conclusions 
• [01:13:40] Qwik vs Angular Ivy 
• [01:16:58] TED Talk: Metabolic Health 

Transcript
 

[00:00:00] Misko Hevery: So the thing that I've learned from Angular.js days is make it really palatable, right. And solve a problem that nobody else has. Doing yet another framework in this state of our world would be complete suicide cause like it's just a different syntax for the same thing, right? So you need to be solving a problem that the other ones cannot solve.

[00:00:22] swyx: The following is my conversation with Misko Hevery, former creator of Angular.js, and now CTO of Builder.io and creator of the Qwik framework. I often find that people with this level of seniority and accomplishment become jaded and imagine themselves above getting their hands dirty in code.  

[00:00:39] Misko is the furthest you could possibly get, having left Google and immediately starting work on the biggest problem he sees with the state of web development today, which is that most apps or most sites don't get a hundred out of a hundred on their lighthouse scores. We talked about how Builder.io gives users far more flexibility than any other headless CMS and then we go into the two main ways that Misko wants to change web performance forever: offloading third-party scripts with PartyTown, and then creating a resumable framework with Qwik. Finally, we close off with a Ted Talk from Mishko on metabolic health. Overall I'm incredibly inspired by Misko's mission, where he wants to see a world with lighter websites and lighter bodies. 

[00:01:23] I hope you enjoy these long form conversations. I'm trying to produce with amazing developers. I don't have a name for it, and I don't know what the plan is. I just know that I really enjoy it. And the feedback has been really great. I'm still figuring out the production process and trying to balance it with my other commitments so any tips are welcome. If you liked this, share it with a friend. If you have requests for other guests, pack them on social media. I'd like to basically make this a space where passionate builders and doers can talk about their craft and where things are going. So here's the interview.  

[00:01:53] Misko Intro 
 

[00:01:53] swyx: Basically I try to start cold, 

[00:01:55] assuming that people already know who you are. Essentially you and I met at Zadar and, I've heard of you for the longest time. I've heard you on a couple of podcasts, but I haven't been in the Angular world. And now you're no longer in the Angular world.  

[00:02:11] Misko Hevery: The child has graduated out of college. It's at a time.  

[00:02:15] swyx: My favorite discovery about you actually is that you have non-stop dad jokes. Um, we were walking home from like one of the dinners and that you're just like going, oh, that's amazing. 

[00:02:27] Yes. Yeah.  

[00:02:28] Misko Hevery: Yes. Um, most people cringe. I find it that it helps break that. It does and you know, the Dad jokes, so they're completely innocent. So you don't have to worry. I also have a good collection of, uh, computer jokes that only computer programmers get.  

[00:02:47] swyx: Okay. Hit me with one.  

[00:02:48] Misko Hevery: Um, "How do you measure functions?" 

[00:02:51] swyx: How do I measure functions? And the boring answer is arity,  

[00:02:55] Misko Hevery: and that's a good one! "In Para-Meters." Uh, 

[00:03:03] swyx: yeah. So for anyone listening like our entire journey back was like that it just like the whole group just groaning. No, that's really good. Okay. Well, it's really good to connect. I'm interested in what you're doing at Builder. You left Google to be CTO of Builder. I assumed that I knew what it was, from the name, it actually is a headless CMS and we can talk about that because I used to work at Netlify and we used to be very good friends with all the headless CMSes. And then we can talk about Qwik. How's that ? 

[00:03:34] Misko Hevery: I can jump into that. Sorry. My voice is a little raspy. I just got over a regular cold, like the regular cold ceilings  

[00:03:42] swyx: conference call, right. I dunno, I, I had it for a week and I only just got over it. 

[00:03:46] Misko Hevery: It was from the conference. Maybe it wasn't from the other trip I made anyways.  

[00:03:50] Builder.io 
 

[00:03:50] Misko Hevery: So let's talk about Builder. So Builder is what we call a headless visual CMS. Uh, I did not know any of that stuff. Would've meant. So I'm going to break it down because I assume that the audience might not know either. 

[00:04:01] So CMS means it's a content management system. What it means is that non-developers, uh, like typically a marketing department think like Gap. Gap needs to update .... If you're showing stuff on the screen, you can go to Everlane. Everlane is one of our customers. Okay. And so in Everlane case, the marketing department wants to change the content all the time. 

[00:04:22] Right? They want to change the sales, what things are on the top, what product that they want to feature, et cetera. And, um, this is typically done through a content management system. And the way this is typically done is that it's like a glorified spreadsheet where the engineering department makes a content. 

[00:04:39] And then it gives essentially key value pairs to the marketing. So the marketing person can change the text, maybe the image, but if the developer didn't think that the marketing person might want to change the color or font size, then there is no hook for it, and the marketing person can't do that. 

[00:04:54] Certainly marketing person won't be able to add new columns, decide that this is better shown in three columns versus two column mode or show a button or add additional text. None of that stuff is really possible in traditional content...

• Listen to Jenny: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHTxqk_UxHo
• Listen to Father and Son: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cZAr_WaLcw
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_of_the_Conchords

Watch the TED talk: https://ideas.ted.com/why-you-think-youre-right-even-when-youre-wrong/

Scout Mindset book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089CJ6SVS/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Imagine for a moment you’re a soldier in the heat of battle — perhaps a Roman foot soldier, medieval archer or Zulu warrior. Regardless of your time and place, some things are probably constant. Your adrenaline is elevated, and your actions stem from your deeply ingrained reflexes, reflexes that are rooted in a need to protect yourself and your side and to defeat the enemy.

Now, try to imagine playing a very different role: the scout. The scout’s job is not to attack or defend; it’s to understand. The scout is the one going out, mapping the terrain, identifying potential obstacles. Above all, the scout wants to know what’s really out there as accurately as possible. In an actual army, both the soldier and the scout are essential.

You can also think of the soldier and scout roles as mindsets — metaphors for how all of us process information and ideas in our daily lives. Having good judgment and making good decisions, it turns out, depends largely about which mindset you’re in. To illustrate the two mindsets in action, let’s look at a case from 19th-century France, where an innocuous-looking piece of torn-up paper launched one of the biggest political scandals in history in 1894. Officers in the French general’s staff found it in a wastepaper basket, and when they pieced it back together, they discovered that someone in their ranks had been selling military secrets to Germany. They launched a big investigation, and their suspicions quickly converged on one man: Alfred Dreyfus. He had a sterling record, no past history of wrongdoing, no motive as far as they could tell.

However, Dreyfus was the only Jewish officer at that rank in the army, and unfortunately, at the time the French Army was highly anti-Semitic. The other officers compared Dreyfus’s handwriting to that on the paper and concluded it was a match, even though outside professional handwriting experts were much less confident about the similarity. They searched Dreyfus’ apartment and went through his files, looking for signs of espionage. They didn’t find anything. This just convinced them that not only was Dreyfus was guilty, but he was also sneaky because clearly he had hidden all of the evidence. They looked through his personal history for incriminating details. They talked to his former teachers and learned he had studied foreign languages in school, which demonstrated to them a desire to conspire with foreign governments later in life. His teachers also said that Dreyfus had had a good memory, which was highly suspicious since a spy must remember a lot of things.

The case went to trial, and Dreyfus was found guilty. Afterwards, officials took him out into the public square; they ritualistically tore his insignia from his uniform and broke his sword in two. This was called the Degradation of Dreyfus. He was sentenced to life imprisonment on the aptly named Devil’s Island, this barren rock off the coast of South America. He spent his days there alone, writing letter after letter to the French government begging them to reopen his case so they could discover his innocence. While you might guess that Dreyfus had been set up or intentionally framed by his fellow officers, historians today don’t think that was what happened. As far as they can tell, the officers genuinely believed that the case against Dreyfus was strong.

So the question arises: What does it say about the human mind that we can find such paltry evidence to be compelling enough to convict a man? This is a case of what scientists refer to as “motivated reasoning,” a phenomenon in which our unconscious motivations, desires and fears shape the way we interpret information. Some pieces of information feel like our allies — we want them to win; we want to defend them. And other pieces of information are the enemy, and we want to shoot them down. That’s why I call motivated reasoning “soldier mindset.”

While you’ve never persecuted a French-Jewish officer for high treason, you might follow sports or know someone who does. When the referee judges your team has committed a foul, for example, you’re probably highly motivated to find reasons why he’s wrong. But if he judges that the other team committed a foul — that’s a good call. Or, maybe you’ve read an article or a study that examined a controversial policy, like capital punishment. As researchers have demonstrated, if you support capital punishment and the study shows it’s not effective, then you’re highly motivated to point out all the reasons why the study was poorly designed. But if it shows that capital punishment works, it’s a good study. And vice versa: if you don’t support capital punishment, same thing.

Our judgment is strongly influenced, unconsciously, by which side we want to win — and this is ubiquitous. This shapes how we think about our health, our relationships, how we decide how to vote, and what we consider fair or ethical. What’s most scary to me about motivated reasoning or soldier mindset is just how unconscious it is. We can think we’re being objective and fair-minded and still wind up ruining the life of an innocent person like Dreyfus.

Fortunately, for Dreyfus, there was also a man named Colonel Picquart. He was another high-ranking officer in the French Army, and like most people, he assumed Dreyfus was guilty. Also like most of his peers, he was somewhat anti-Semitic. But at a certain point, Picquart began to suspect, “What if we’re all wrong about Dreyfus?” Picquart discovered evidence that the spying for Germany had continued, even after Dreyfus was in prison. He also discovered that another officer in the army had handwriting that perfectly matched the torn-up memo.

It took Picquart ten years to clear Dreyfus’s name, and for part of that time, he himself was put in prison for the crime of disloyalty to the army. Some people feel that Picquart shouldn’t be regarded as a hero, because he was an anti-Semite. I agree that kind of bias is bad. But I believe the fact that Picquart was anti-Semitic makes his actions more admirable, because he had the same reasons to be biased as his fellow officers but his motivation to find and uphold the truth trumped all of that.

To me, Picquart is a poster child for what I call “scout mindset,” the drive not to make one idea win or another lose, but to see what’s there as honestly and accurately as you can even if it’s not pretty, convenient or pleasant. I’ve spent the last few years examining scout mindset and figuring out why some people, at least sometimes, seem able to cut through their own prejudices, biases and motivations and attempt to see the facts and the evidence as objectively as they can. The answer, I’ve found, is emotional.

Just as soldier mindset is rooted in emotional responses, scout mindset is, too — but it’s simply rooted in different emotions. For example, scouts are curious. They’re more likely to say they feel pleasure when they learn new information or solve a puzzle. They’re more likely to feel intrigued when they encounter something that contradicts their expectations.

Scouts also have different values. They’re more likely to say they think it’s virtuous to test their own beliefs, and they’re less lik...

Watch full talk on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVkLVRt6c1U

The FYPM app https://www.theverge.com/22684237/fuck-you-pay-me-lindsey-lee-lugrin-decoder-interview

Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6PgHFS48gY

I was interviewed by Sai of Redpoint based on these blogposts:

• https://www.swyx.io/community-builder/
• https://www.swyx.io/measuring-devrel/

The session was covered by Tom Tunguz, whose blog I love (https://tomtunguz.com/shawn-wang-offi...) and the feedback was wonderful!

Full video on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guK1XiLQbH8

Timestamps

• [00:01:42] What is DevRel? 
• [00:04:59] Where should DevRel report? 
• [00:06:57] Getting Started with Early Stage DevRel 
• [00:12:28] How to Structure DevRel Efforts 
• [00:16:02] When to Hire First DevRel 
• [00:18:23] Community and DevRel 
• [00:25:41] How to Start a Community 
• [00:29:47] Technical Community Builders 
• [00:31:04] Social Media Managers 
• [00:33:14] North Star Metric 
• [00:39:20] Product DevRel 
• [00:40:37] Finding Great DevRels 
• [00:43:47] DevRel for Dev Platforms of non-DevTools companies 
• [00:46:38] DevRel Tooling 

Transcript
 

[00:00:00] Sai Senthilkumar: My name is Sai and I'm at Redpoint investing primarily in B2B software with a focus on developer oriented business. I'm very excited to be chatting with Shawn Wang today about the importance of developer relations for any company selling to developers. 

You know, we find that several developer companies we work with today are hiring for diverse leaders and oftentimes it's function gets overlooked early. Or maybe not built out soon enough. So today we'll talk a little bit more about how to structure and measure our world-class Debra organization for any startup and why it's so important for a company's overall health. 

So I'm wanting you to be joined today by Shawn, who is the head of developer experience at Temporal. Shawn, do you want to briefly introduce yourself?  

[00:00:39] swyx: Yeah. Hi everyone. I am Shawn Swyx online as well. I guess my dev role ex experience starts at Netlify where I was the second DevRel hire. And we grew from about 30 ish people when I joined to about 250. 

And. I think something like 300,000 developers to 1.5 million. And then we, and then I left in 2020 to go to Amazon where he spent a year working at amplify and thinking about AWS level or branded Daryl. And we can talk about what it's like to work at. You know, a series B to C stage company. 

The rail versus a big company devil. And then I joined Temporal this year in in February to head up developer experience. And we're a series, a company focused on microservice orchestration, which is a bundle of words, but basically we're reinventing asynchronous programming. And if that doesn't hook your interest, I don't know what will, so I'm happy to talk more about that. 

[00:01:42] What is DevRel? 
 

[00:01:42] Sai Senthilkumar: Awesome. So is that Shawn is the, is the guy to speak with, in terms of structuring and starting out in Beverly also Shawn, I guess starting with the basics here, you know, many people wrote in asking for clarity around the devil row. So, so in your, in your mind, what is Deborah and the various roles and responsible. 

[00:02:04] swyx: In what is dev route and the various rules and responsibilities. Okay. There a very big question. So dev REL I think is essentially for a lot of people is essentially rebranded marketing. Developers. Don't like to be marketed to every time you hire a professional marketer and you get them to talk at developers, their eyes glaze over and they're turned off by your marketing buzzwords and your emphasis benefits over features because you refuse to talk about how things work because marketers don't know how things work. 

Cause they're not technical. You hire developer relations before. Developers want to be spoken to by other developers. And they want to be explained on how to use things, why, and not to be handheld too much to do some hand hand-holding, but not to do too much handholding that you restrict their creativity. 

Because I think some of the best DevRel programs have often just said, we can't wait to see what you build, which is a very cliched term in Debra. It's actually, it's pretty true. If you talk to the early Twilio, derails, they just held hackathons and they're like weird a communications layer. What can you come up with? 

And they are often impressed in a lot of their new products direction comes from the, the stuff that developers want to take their product in. And so Val is very much of a bottom line. Developer first marketing efforts. And I personally segments the growing sub specialties that devel into three set, three segments, which is community content and products. 

The reason I add products in there, which is not a very common thing to, to emphasize with Daryl is because developer relations has. Background or backstory as developer evangelism, which is kind of the old Microsoft slash Google name for it, which is essentially you hire professional influencers to travel the world and give talks. 

And it's very us to the rest of the world. Like I'm pre. The good word, which is very nice because a good talk and a good useful demo or a good you know, explanation is, is actually a very important, but there's not much of a two-way street. So, it's very, it's very like us coming out to them. And I think now people understand that they, once they're devils. 

Their PR company in front of developers. And they talked to them so much that we can actually use that product feedback to feedback into the development of the actual product itself. That's the vision. That's the, that's what a lot of people say that Debra is a two way street developer. Evangelism is a one-way street in practice. 

It's more like 99% outbound anyway. And 1% inbound. The reason being that no one has time for your product feedback. Everyone has their own product roadmap. You're not proud of the PM org. You're not part of the engineering org. Who are you that I have to listen to you. So people are still figuring this out, but I think the content and community pieces REL are a bit more developed. 

[00:04:59] Where should DevRel report? 
 

[00:04:59] Sai Senthilkumar: Totally. 100% agree. And when you mentioned this in the beginning,...