Thunder Nerds

By Frederick Philip Von Weiss, and Brian Hinton

A conversation with the people behind the technology, that love what they do… and do tech good.... more

4.9

2222 ratings

Download on the App Store

Download on the App Store

Get it on Google Play

FAQs about Thunder Nerds:

How many episodes does Thunder Nerds have?

The podcast currently has 288 episodes available.

Thunder Nerds episodes:

May 13, 2022293 – 💻 Remote Work & Top Talent With Zack Gottlieb
We talk with Zack Gottlieb, VP Head of Design platform at Atlassian. We discuss Zack’s career journey and what it takes to make it to Atlassian.
Our main topic of discussion is the Great Resignation in the tech industry. We start the conversation by asking why so many people are leaving in the first place. Then we explore why companies want their employees back in the office. Additionally, we examine what companies are doing to retain their top talent.
🔗 Episode Links
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zackgottlieb/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/zackg
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zackg/
- Room to Read: https://www.roomtoread.org
- Hosts:
  Frederick Weiss https://twitter.com/FrederickWeiss
  Brian Hinton https://twitter.com/RealTinyPenguin
  Vincent Tang https://twitter.com/vincentntang
...more
1h 2min
April 01, 2022292 – 🎯 Paid Media Strategies with Michelle Morgan
In this episode, we talk with Michelle Morgan: International Paid Media Consultant, Writer, and Speaker. We explore the realm of advertising on the most popular social platforms and investigate the unforeseen opportunities in others. Additionally, we discuss Michelle’s organization, Paid Media Pros, which provides PPC videos for advertisers with any level of experience.
🔗 Episode Links
- Michelle on Twitter: https://twitter.com/michellemsem
- Michelle on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michellemsem/
- Paid Media Pros website: https://www.paidmediapros.com/
- Paid Media Pros on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/paidmediapros
- TikTok Ads: https://youtu.be/VqPYZ6r7QMs
- LinkedIn Sponsored Messaging: https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/cx/21/10/sponsored-messaging
- Data Studio: https://datastudio.google.com/
- LinkedIn Conversation Ads: https://youtu.be/Zl5KZ4fDa2g
- LinkedIn Ads: https://youtu.be/NB8gCy5tzkY
- LinkedIn Account Based Marketing: https://youtu.be/OC2jGVDSEIE
- Hosts:
  Frederick Weiss https://twitter.com/FrederickWeiss
  Brian Hinton https://twitter.com/RealTinyPenguin
  Vincent Tang https://twitter.com/vincentntang
...more
1h
March 12, 2022291 – 💾 JavaScript, Switching Careers, & ADHD with Chris Ferdinandi
In this episode, we talk with Chris Ferdinandi, #JavaScript Educator, The Vanilla JS Guy. 🍦We discuss how Chris became the “Vanilla #JS Guy” as he shares his thoughts about JavaScript, the modern web, switching careers, #ADHD, and more!
🔗 Episode Links
- Chris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/chrisferdinandi
- Chris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cferdinandi/
- Go Make Things: https://gomakethings.com/
- Special Link: https://gomakethings.com/thunder-nerds/
- Vanilla JS Academy: https://vanillajsacademy.com
- Vanilla JS Pocket Guides: https://vanillajsguides.com
- Being a developer with ADHD: https://vanillajspodcast.com/being-a-developer-with-adhd/
- Paw Patrol – SNL: https://youtu.be/pBFIqRSsixE
- Hosts:
  https://twitter.com/FrederickWeiss
  https://twitter.com/RealTinyPenguin
  https://twitter.com/vincentntang
...more
58min
February 13, 2022290 – 🎵 Little Music Boxes with Travis Neilson
In this episode, we talk with designer, musician, Travis Neilson. We discuss Travis’s career at YouTube Music. We dive into his day-to-day and what it’s like to work at YouTube. Then we explore Travis’s music, specifically his channel Little Music Boxes.
🔗 Episode Links
- Little Music Boxes: https://www.youtube.com/littlemusicboxes
- Travis – Twitter: https://twitter.com/travisneilson
- Travis – Website: http://travisneilson.com/
- Travis – Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/travisneilson/
- Travis – LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/travisneilson/
- Hosts
  https://twitter.com/FrederickWeiss
  https://twitter.com/MrBrianHinton
  https://twitter.com/vincentntang
...more
58min
October 10, 2021289 – ⚱️ The Digitization of Deathcare with Faisal Abid
In this episode, we talk with Faisal Abid: Speaker, Entrepreneur, Google Developer Expert, and co-founder of Eirene cremations. Eirene provides high-quality, affordable cremation services. Eirene allows families to plan an affordable cremation entirely online or over the phone. Leveraging technology to help provide a better funeral experience to families. Additionally, Faisal walks us through the unique business and technology challenges he faced at the beginning of Eirene.
✨ Episode Sponsor
- Auth0: https://auth0.com
- Auth0 on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/auth0
- Auth0 on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/auth0
- Auth0 Avocado Labs online meetup events: https://avocadolabs.dev/
🔗 Episode Links
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/FaisalAbid
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/faisalabid/
- Eirene Cremations: Simple, Modern Cremation Services https://eirene.ca/
- Eirene LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/eirene/
- Eirene Twitter: https://twitter.com/Eirene
- Hosts:
  Frederick Weiss: https://twitter.com/FrederickWeiss
  Brian Hinton: https://twitter.com/mrbrianhinton
📜 Transcript

[00:00:40] Brian
Hinton: Welcome to Thunder Nerds, I’m Brian Hinton.

[00:00:42] Frederick
Weiss: And I am Frederick
Weiss. And thank you so much for consuming the Thunder Nerds. A conversation with the people behind the technology that love what they do,

[00:00:53] Brian
Hinton: and do tech, good.

[00:00:59] Frederick
Weiss: And our sponsor Auth0 is helping us do tech good all year long.

[00:01:07] Brian
Hinton: Yeah. We'd like to thank them again for sponsoring this
season.

[00:01:10] Brian
Hinton: They make it easy for developers to build a custom secure and standards
based unified login by providing authentication and authorization as a service to try it out, go to
Auth0.com. Auth0 is also on both YouTube and at the twitches under a username Auth0 and with some great developer resources and streams.

[00:01:35] Brian
Hinton: Also, make sure to check out the avocado labs who doesn't love
avocados? It's an online destination that their
developer advocates run, organizing some great meetup events. And again, remember to check out Auth0.com.

[00:01:51] Frederick
Weiss: Love it. Thank you so much, Brian. Really appreciate it. Yeah. And go
ahead and start live chatting with us.

[00:01:56] Frederick
Weiss: Now we'll answer your questions in the order they are received.
Additionally, make sure that you subscribe to the show go to youtube.com/ThunderNerds. Click that notification bell for alerts on new videos. And
we also have an exclusive subscriber giveaway. So
please check that out. So yeah, please just do it.

[00:02:21] Frederick
Weiss: So now with that being said, and without any ados being furthered, let's go ahead and
welcome our guests. We have an amazing human being on the show. Joining us
again for the, I don't know, the third, fifth, eighth time we have: speaker, entrepreneur, Google
developer expert, Faisal Abid. Welcome to the show.

[00:02:48] Faisal
Abid: Hello

[00:02:52] Faisal
Abid: I think it is my fourth time?

[00:02:57] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah. Maybe even more than that. I could think of when you first were on
or show way back when you had shorter hair. And I don't think it took that long to grow about way back
in 2018. Maybe we were at DevFest.

[00:03:11] Faisal
Abid: Yep, exactly. Yeah

[00:03:15] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah. And we really appreciate you coming on the show and providing your
insight and your knowledge every time it's it's always super fun and entertaining and we we love
having you on with that being said, let's let's get to know you a little bit for the people that
might not know you, can you just tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do in general and in
your own words?

[00:03:38] Faisal
Abid: Yeah. I'm Faisal. What do I do? So I'm an engineer, entrepreneur.
What I really do is I try to solve really hard problems. Sounds pretty vague, but right now, the problem
that I'm solving is in the space of death which is Eirene cremations. And that's what I'm working on. Aside from that, I do Google cloud
consulting AI machine learning, all sorts of stuff.

[00:04:02] Faisal
Abid: So just have my hands in everything with a big focus on solving hard
problems. Let me

[00:04:08] Frederick
Weiss: ask you then, where are you where are you currently working? What's
your actual maybe I shouldn't employ the word actual, huh? Employ a lot of connections there. What is
your actual day job?

[00:04:20] Frederick
Weiss: Your nine to five and what do you do there? What's your, what's
your day to day? I guess my data would be I'm a juggler because what I really do most of my time is
spent on Eirene. And that is. Understanding the product and
like user UI, UX, product development, customer service, sales, marketing, like whatever.

[00:04:44] Faisal
Abid: I am involved in that. And then outside of that I am now VP of
engineering. So I'm shifted my role to focus internally at bootstraps. And that's where we do a lot
of Google cloud consulting and working with clients, building out machine learning and ML ops and stuff.

[00:05:02] Frederick
Weiss: So the people that know you probably think of you as more someone in a
traditional sense of tech technology.

[00:05:10] Frederick
Weiss: Now you're in this company, maybe you co-founded, it I'll let
you explain in your own words, Eirene, which I believe is
the Roman goddess of peace. Is that right?

[00:05:24] Faisal
Abid: Yeah. It's the Greek goddess of peace. I believe. Yeah. Okay.

[00:05:29] Frederick
Weiss: Let's close. I think, I hope I'm not offending anybody.

[00:05:31] Frederick
Weiss: Excuse my geography. So let's first dive into this. So when, why,
whom when you tell us about it, let's get the

[00:05:41] Faisal
Abid: It is funny. You have a good point that a lot of people do know me.
It's just like this tech person, but Eirene is far
from a tech company inherently. It is a tech company it's using tech to solve a problem.

[00:05:51] Faisal
Abid: My I'm going to give a long winded answer to this. So I think when I
got into tech my history has been very interesting. I dropped out of school and just started this business
when Andrew came out and I was trying to build like a Netflix for games, for Android. And so as I was going
through.

[00:06:15] Faisal
Abid: I just started to as well as I did that up and that didn't work out.
I said, okay I guess I'm not for startups or whatever, I'm going to try something else. But I need
to make money. So I went and joined a company called Kobo and Kobo was great because that really helped me
understand how businesses work.

[00:06:35] Faisal
Abid: I was 21 at that time. And so throughout my twenties, I worked at a lot
of very interesting startups and something that started to change in my way of looking at it was at first,
in my early twenties, I saw tech as a problem that needs to be solved. As I went through my twenties, I
realized that there are a lot bigger problems than building image filters or random apps.

[00:07:04] Faisal
Abid: There are a lot of bigger problems that aren't, that need to be
solved, but they need to be solved using. But tech is not the solution, right? If that makes any sense. In
the case of Eirene the problem for irenas families are
when someone passes away, families are grieving, they're frustrated, they confused or scared.

[00:07:27] Faisal
Abid: They don't know what's going on and they don't know what to
do. Next. The solution isn't Eirene has a website,
right? That is not solving the problem. It's the process that we take technology and the process that we
put them through and the, how we enable technology to help solve their problem. That's the
solution.

[00:07:48] Faisal
Abid: And so for me, I like looking and finding problems and Eirene is this problem that came about. And it's funny because
my co-founder and I both were thinking about Eirene at
different, and we didn't even know each other at this point. Actually I was in Japan. I was trying to
look at. Business ideas.

[00:08:06] Faisal
Abid: And I saw that in Japan, they were handling death in a very interesting
way. And it was very, again, they were using technology to help families in this very awful time in their
lives. And so I said, this is really cool. I haven't seen anything like this in north America. So how do
I bring how do I do this in north America?

[00:08:26] Faisal
Abid: Because by this time I think I was around 27, 28, and I was not jaded of
the tech world, but I was wanting to do more than just work at a company doing scrums every day and filling
fishing Assano tickets and just like fixing bugs, or solving like pubsub or Google cloud problems, stuff
like that.

[00:08:49] Faisal
Abid: It's not really changing anyone's life. It's just improving
the bottom line. And so for me, I said, we're in a very, or I'm in a very interesting sector where I
can make a lot of. But why don't I make a lot of money doing something that's helping people and
that's going to improve people's lives. And so I said, all right, I'm starting.

[00:09:09] Faisal
Abid: I started looking at problems and I looked into crypto and seeing, is
there something in crypto I can do. Bunch of different stuff eventually went to Japan, saw this problem. And
I came back and one of the things I learned while doing multiple businesses, some of them which have worked
out fairly well, some of them haven't is that the businesses that worked well or businesses that I have
really good market knowledge on and really good deep insights on, or I'm working with someone that has
those insights.

[00:09:39] Faisal
Abid: And I'm able to compliment that. And I have no insights on the world
of death. Like sure people die. Everyone knows that. But what happens after I have no idea other than
looking at these Japanese companies do very interesting things. The idea was just settling in back of my
head. And one day by chance, I met my co-founder Mallory and she wanted to chat with me about some ideas
that she had about businesses he wanted to do.

[00:10:05] Faisal
Abid: Anyways, we chatted and nothing really stuck out as something that was
doable. And then just funny enough as the conversation was ending, we probably an hour long conversation, we
spent 50 minutes brainstorming random businesses. Nothing was really sticking. Nothing seemed fun. And then
the last, just before going where we've paid the coffee bill, I asked.

[00:10:27] Faisal
Abid: What are some other things you're interested in that are just like
wild and out there? And she said this is funny because I don't really tell people this. It just people
it's just so strange in the tech role is that I am very interested in deaths because my family's
been in that space.

[00:10:43] Faisal
Abid: Her family owns a funeral home. And I remember going into my backpack and
pulling out this pitch deck that I got from this random Japanese company as I was there and I pulled it out
and I put it on the table. And I said, look at this company in Japan, this is very similar to what
you're saying and what I've been thinking of.

[00:11:02] Faisal
Abid: Let's start brainstorming on an idea in depth. And so 2018 is when we
started brainstorming on Eirene and funny enough, we
thought we would be able to launch this within a couple of months in 2018. And so what happened was I was
leaving a tech company that I was working. And she was working at another tech company.

[00:11:26] Faisal
Abid: And so we paused a bit because tech companies, they go up and down how
they are. And so eventually she finally left and I had finally left, but this was like probably early 20, 19
now. And so at this point, she said, are you still interested? I said, yeah I never, I still have the domain
and everything let's do this.

[00:11:47] Faisal
Abid: So we started working on Eirene and the idea was let's build a simple prototype of Eirene. And what I mean is it helps families. It's Canada's first
virtual funeral home. You can come on and you can get a cremation or acclimation all online without ever
leaving your safe space. Your home, wherever you are.

[00:12:08] Faisal
Abid: You can do it online twenty four seven, or you can call us. And we have
someone available 24 7, and the whole process has done for you. When I talk about technology solving
problems. You can press a, you can fill out information and then that's, it will automatically fill out
all the forms you need to fill out.

[00:12:25] Faisal
Abid: You never need to
leave your house. We'll have someone go to where your loved one is, pick them up, take them to the
crematorium, handle all that for you. All you have to do is either give us a call or just for lots of
information. So this was the idea and we built out the prototype not even a prototype.

[00:12:42] Faisal
Abid: We built out the entire business talk to our partners and stuff. And in
Canada, the funeral space is very regulated. The naive 2019 version of me thought regulation, that's
fine. Less. We just need to apply for a license and we'll get it little. Did we know that when we
applied for a license?

[00:13:03] Faisal
Abid: The Breman authority of Ontario, the regulation in Ontario is really
designed for traditional funeral home. No, one's really thought about what does a digital funeral home
look like? You can draw parallels to this when you talk about as much as I dislike it, but like
cryptocurrency, right where there's a new form of monetary finance and people don't understand that
the bench and understanding it's the same form, right?

[00:13:28] Faisal
Abid: Everything is built to protect the consumer. And then you have an
industry that is so old and has designed a certain way for physical access. And now you have two young
people coming to them and saying, Hey, government, give us a license. We're going to make this all
digital. It's pretty scary to the government.

[00:13:47] Faisal
Abid: And so I don't blame them. And so they started to basically say, Hey,
do you know this doesn't work. The regulation. There's nothing in the regulation that allows you
guys to do. And so we did funny enough, like this is, we spent 2019 kind of discussing this back and forth.
We didn't get the license yet.

[00:14:09] Faisal
Abid: And then COVID happened in 2020. And so we spend the rest of 2020 in a
lot of ways, lobbying the government and talking to them and finding people in the government that are a lot
more future focused and thinking about what's right for the consumer in 20, 20, 20, 21 and on. And so we
found a lot of good partners.

[00:14:30] Faisal
Abid: The government was very helpful. Once we started to talk to them, it
it's funny, like both Mallory and I became lobbyists in a weird way. During COVID. So it's just like
us sitting at our desks lobbying virtually. But luckily we were able to convince the government they
understood our business model.

[00:14:49] Faisal
Abid: They changed some parts of the regulation and
made exceptions and they said, all right, you guys can get this license. So
December, 2020 is when we were able to launch this. And so it sounds like it's such a like not an easy
business, but we're just filling out forms and
we're helping families.

[00:15:10] Faisal
Abid: It's nothing like we're not doing AI, ML, blockchain, all sorts
of things. But there's a lot of work that went into just getting to a point where we can launch. And
then the amount of thinking that goes behind Eirene is
very interesting. It's unlike any other product that I've worked on because every other product that
I've worked on, whether it's.

[00:15:29] Faisal
Abid: Kobo where I was doing eBooks lead, where I was doing health insurance,
zoom, that AI, I was doing art AI, NLP engines. None of them had the user in their most vulnerable states.
And so when you have a user in their most vulnerable state, you cannot, you need to make sure your
experience is solid.

[00:15:50] Faisal
Abid: And you need to make sure that your experience as well thought about
because you can't have random, constantly, no JavaScript bugs, or like weird popups popping up all sorts
of like random things that sometimes are acceptable and you're building these other things. Cause
you're like, whatever, that's an edge case.

[00:16:06] Faisal
Abid: You can't really have edge cases here because if a family has that
edge case, you've already made a really bad time, worse by not giving them the help they need. And
such a sensitive experience, it's extremely sensitive.
And so it's been really fun to build that thinking about. How to build a backend, how to build the front
end, how to design and the design language and the illustrations, everything.

[00:16:30] Faisal
Abid: So that in a nutshell is just like Eirene and everything that I do there. And now it's mostly, my
role at Eirene is really around how do we get in front
of families? How do we have the right content available to them and what tools can we get them so that when
they do come to our site we're empowering them and making them feel comfortable and not feeling like
they're lost and

[00:16:55] Brian
Hinton: visiting the site too.

[00:16:57] Brian
Hinton: It is. And I don't know. It's amazing that you all managed to
establish an aesthetic that's
visually pleasing, but also not. Like calm as well. It's really a nice
experience that you all have built there.

[00:17:11] Frederick
Weiss: Then you look up, sorry. Yeah.

[00:17:15] Brian
Hinton: I looked up Eirene. Its personification of peace is what Eirene is.

[00:17:23] Brian
Hinton: Yeah, according to the Google's

[00:17:27] Faisal
Abid: and then the name is interesting, right? Like when we were thinking of a
name, the name was the hardest thing, what do we call this? Like cremation online, getting how weird and
tacky that sounds. And I always, the first thing I do whenever I think about product names and I'm like,
let's find like a clue code and the code name ended up being the main name here because I just searched
up Greek God names and stumping and Eirene came I'm
like, this is such a good meaning, like lecture stick with it.

[00:17:56] Faisal
Abid: And so I was just

[00:17:58] Brian
Hinton: stuck. That's perfect. Yeah. And I loved how you, like when she
came back here, like I already have the domain. It's like the common thing I bought the domain.
We're ready. Let's

[00:18:08] Faisal
Abid: go. Exactly. We have not a single line of code when I went and bought
that domain. In fact, I bought a bunch of domains, Eirene criminations, blah, blah, blah.

[00:18:16] Faisal
Abid: So my domain portfolio is wild. Like I have some pretty interesting.
I'm

[00:18:21] Brian
Hinton: curious if you can share, was there another name that you all were
like, but it was the other possible big one.

[00:18:30] Faisal
Abid: I am sure there are, but I don't remember. There were probably
garbage, right? Peace, personification, peace.

[00:18:36] Brian
Hinton: How have you beat that? So I actually don't remember what the other
names were. Let

[00:18:43] Frederick
Weiss: me, let me ask you a question. Cause you, you talked about this several
times, maybe more you said you found some inspiration from your travels in Japan. I wonder if you could
communicate like what those are because for me, and probably a lot of people that haven't been to Japan
and know what that experience is like.

[00:19:02] Frederick
Weiss: And specifically this one. Yeah, experience that we're talking
about. Could you tell us a little bit of what that is and how how families are dealing with that over there
and what the translation really of that looks like, that you brought over to Canada?

[00:19:20] Faisal
Abid: I think the, my reading of Japan and the Japanese people are that
they're very pragmatic and they're very they're very well, first of all, they're extremely
nice.

[00:19:31] Faisal
Abid: They're pragmatic and they're very down to earth. And so
everything that they do when they're architecture and just like when you talk to people and like the
reasoning, how even got exposed to like funeral that I was on a vacation it's that I met an old mentor
of mine. He, you, he ended up becoming CEO of Kobo and then I left COBA, but I stayed on good terms with
them.

[00:19:52] Faisal
Abid: And so when I went to Japan, I said, oh yeah. Talk a works at Tokyo.
Let's like, let me reach out to Taka and see what he's doing. And I saw that he was working at a
place called common fruition. And I was like, and when I Googled it, I guess it was like Google translate or
whatever. I was like, what is this paper company?

[00:20:09] Faisal
Abid: What is this tech guy that like ran Kobo and then we'll see you a
Viber, what is he doing at like a random paper company? Did he burn out? And so I went there and he called
me in and that's when I got that presentation from that I pulled out for a Mallory and he said to me
this is what I'm doing here.

[00:20:30] Faisal
Abid: And this is what calmer commission. So is, and as he told me about it, a
light bulb went out where I'm like, wow, this is. Elegantly explains. What I've been trying to
figure out is how I can use tech to solve hard problems and real world problems, not like little simple make
a, how to deploy better, how to deploy your code better problem.

[00:20:53] Faisal
Abid: Not that those are any less challenging, but like something that brings
me a lot of happiness is if I can make a big difference in someone's life. And so when you started to
explain this to me, I was like, wow, this is amazing. And I remember saying, I'm probably going to go to Canada and just figure out
how to do this in Canada, because you can't translate exactly what Japan is doing in Canada.

[00:21:16] Faisal
Abid: There's different cultures. There's different ways of, we deal
with death the way common, Caribbean. So it worked is that it was more, at least back when I was there. It
was more like a. Expedia for Buddhist funerals, where you can call them up and you have an operator, like
they had an entire operators center and someone will pick up the phone and they would go through all the
different providers in Japan and your area and tell you the lowest price with package deals and all that
stuff right.

[00:21:48] Faisal
Abid: Where they can be like if you want and I'm sure I'm getting this
wrong, but it's if you want a prayer plus like a visitation, then this is what you can do. This is the
service to go to. And so you can't really copy that here, nor did I. I thought I could do something a
bit better.

[00:22:04] Faisal
Abid: But I could do it something for the Canadian audience, the north American
audience in general. And so that's where Mallory brought her insights because she knew exactly how
families, because she grew up watching her dad take care of these families and the funeral home that they
own. So that's, that was putting two together where it's like, there's how, that's what I
can do with technology.

[00:22:27] Faisal
Abid: And that's the problem to solve.

[00:22:29] Frederick
Weiss: That's an interesting point. Let me ask these questions since you
said that then, so let me ask you about your customers. You say geographically, you you keep saying Canada,
but I want to know geographically. Does that mean one, all of Canada what are the demographics and.

[00:22:48] Frederick
Weiss: If there are any competitors at all in this space where you're
located, where you're doing business, if there are any kind of differentiators if there's any kind
of competition. So w I'll go back to the first part and re restate that, where exactly are these
services located in what's that radius?

[00:23:09] Frederick
Weiss: Do you also say provide in, in the top part of the United States, Alaska
whatnot.

[00:23:17] Faisal
Abid: Okay. We'll probably get into the United States and United States a
whole different beast. I can talk about after, but right now we operate in Ontario. One of Canada's
largest provinces and we operate anywhere in Ontario.

[00:23:31] Faisal
Abid: And so this is how I read works from the backend aspect. We don't
have our own crematorium. That is an asset that is. Too much to maintain. We don't want to carry that
asset around. So what we've done is we've connected with funeral we've connected with
crematoriums or Pross the province.

[00:23:51] Faisal
Abid: So wherever you are, if you're in thunder bay and messages to
Eirene the way actually to even explain it better, the way
it works is there is a funeral home, then there's a crematorium, right? And sometimes they're the
same. Sometimes there are different as a consumer, you just cannot go to a crematorium.

[00:24:11] Faisal
Abid: You need to go through a funeral home. And so we are that virtual
funeral. The advantage we have over a physical funeral home is that if you go to apple funeral home across
the streets, apple funeral home only serves a radius of say 15 kilometers, right? Because we're virtual.
We can serve all over the world, but right now we serve Ontario only.

[00:24:34] Faisal
Abid: And then when a family reaches out to. They're dealing with
Eirene and Eirene only in the backend. We have a funeral partner, a crematorium partner in thunder bay. And
so they'll reach out to us. We'll send it, we'll get collected information online, and then
we'll fill out all the forms digitally pick up their loved ones.

[00:24:54] Faisal
Abid: So the picking up the loved one again in the tech world, it's like
using API APIs. We have a transfer service that is automatically dispatch, and this is a government
regulated transfer service. So the end user is getting the exact same experience in turn, not the exact same
experience. They're getting the exact same quality as any other funeral home, because we're S
we're all using the same transfer service and perhaps even the same crematorium and a lot of places,
what they're, what the differentiator is.

[00:25:25] Faisal
Abid: They're getting it at a much lower rate because we're on Ontario
on average, we're 50% to. Purely because we don't have the physical cost of maintaining a physical
funeral, home, a physical crematorium, and we have a better experience because you can do it in your safe
space. Huge. All you have to do is just go to Eirene or
you can just call that number.

[00:25:48] Faisal
Abid: You can call us at 4:00 AM in the morning and someone will pick up within
a minute or even 30 seconds. Someone will pick up our funeral directors are amazing. They will pick up the
phone and they will talk to you. They will comfort you and they will take care of everything you need at
3:30 AM. It doesn't matter.

[00:26:07] Faisal
Abid: And so that is our differentiator. And that's how technology enables
us to make that differentiation, because I'm able to build that tech, I'm able to utilize tech that
makes all this happen.

[00:26:19] Brian
Hinton: This all reminds me a lot of Daniel burka, like his resolve to save
lives and the civil project and health, and just how we're taking tech and partnering you're
partnering too with not with non-tech and pulling them into the tech era, so to speak.

[00:26:35] Brian
Hinton: It doesn't mean you're just, you're talking earlier about
how there wasn't even regulation for this. And it's definitely an industry, especially for everyone.
When you're, you've lost someone and you're dealing with all that, having to go into a location
where other people have are there two maybe, and maybe a funeral is
going on?

[00:26:54] Brian
Hinton: And like that's just so hard and yeah. So I applaud this a great
deal.

[00:27:03] Faisal
Abid: Yeah. And the thing is you are right. The partners we work with, they
aren't they're not, they don't, some partners have just a typewriter, we're dealing with
partners like this, but they're extremely good at what they do.

[00:27:17] Faisal
Abid: And so we're helping them in a lot of ways come to the 21st century
because they're on typewriters sometimes because they're amazing at what they do. They're great.
They run a great crematorium. They have a beautiful place, like a scattering garden and stuff, and we're
helping them increase customers, because we're able to reach out to a lot more people.

[00:27:39] Faisal
Abid: We're able to enable a lot more people to come through our service.
Then some like a local funeral home, a local funeral home really has a maximum capacity that they can do
because of the geographic radius that they're in the and the amount of people that they can serve at any
one.

[00:27:57] Faisal
Abid: This is a tech company. I can serve a million people that go through our
service on one day, it's all serverless, right? So there's no like need for more humans, other than
funeral directors that we can just employ very quickly and scale up. Because again, this is all technology
based.

[00:28:16] Faisal
Abid: They can be working remotely. They just have to have.

[00:28:19] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah, I love that because as Brian said I'll append to this a little
bit. When people lose a family member it's probably the last thing you think of what do I do? Where do I
go? Who do I speak to?

[00:28:37] Frederick
Weiss: Am I going to get my iPhone out and look through websites all day and
find like exactly what I need. I I don't even know if the price is right or whatever. I might not even
care or I might be in a position where I go I can't even afford most of these things and it's great
to have that transparency and someone either to talk to, or someone that to not talk to and just do this in
the privacy of my own home where I'm already feeling vulnerable.

[00:29:08] Frederick
Weiss: I I don't know. Want to share my my experience with somebody right
now, because I might not be in the state to share my experience, but look, let me ask you this question.
Cause I'm so curious. Obviously you said you, you did a lot of lobbying both of you to get this going
right.

[00:29:30] Frederick
Weiss: You are seeing results, you're seeing positive results, your your
company's growing. What are those people saying to you now? Or have you had any contact with them? Do
you need to provide any kind of measurements or proof of this is going well, or Hey, after X amount of time,
you need to regain a license or some things such as that, do you mind showing us?

[00:29:57] Frederick
Weiss: So

[00:29:57] Faisal
Abid: There is I guess it's an audit, right? Like they audit us their
regulators often. One of the beauties about the businesses that we really made sure everything was there was
a time when I thought about putting stuff on it, internal blockchain, but like really everything needs to be
auditable.

[00:30:17] Faisal
Abid: And the idea was I'm going to make sure that everything is
transparent. And so when the auditors come and they say, Hey, can you tell us your last 10 customers, all
the files, all I really have to do is like select star and CQL. And here. And so that's really what
happens right now. It happens often.

[00:30:39] Faisal
Abid: And that's just the industry we're in and that's just the
uncomfortable nature. A tech company playing in this space where there's no tech companies in Canada are
doing this. And so the regulators, they want to make sure that the consumer is being protected. So
we're, I'm totally fine that they audit us often.

[00:30:57] Faisal
Abid: And it's totally okay with me. And it's not a lot of work for me
because it is a select star statements. So that is what happens. We're getting in terms of customer
feedback, it's been amazing. And to your part about transparency, one of the big things that I wanted to
make sure was we're transparent, not even jot in just terms of our price and customer quality and stuff,
but we're actually transparent as a technology after you go through us, you shouldn't have to hear
from us till.

[00:31:28] Faisal
Abid: Unless we need to ask you a question or you need to, or we're coming
in delivering, we handle already earns. That's it right? I don't want to be sending of like push
notifications and all sorts of stuff that typical companies do because that's how they get engagement
for me. The less engagement, the better once you come out and you fill it out, we want you would, you just
want to go back to your family and commemorate your lost, loved one and do whatever you need to do without
having to worry about Eirene.

[00:31:58] Faisal
Abid: And then there's a tech company it's sending me emails. I've
had to read it and all that. You

[00:32:04] Brian
Hinton: know, one thing I'm curious about, like why do you think that
we're not seeing more cases of tech really making change in various segments? Like this? Not just this,
but it seems like we're just getting the another image app, another chat app, and oh, now we're
going to do audio.

[00:32:23] Brian
Hinton: Is it the difficulty of getting in this space or what? No.

[00:32:28] Faisal
Abid: So there's two things. I'm sure these spaces are different. But
there isn't a lot of VC money nor there is a lot of angel money. It's just not, it's funny
because angel money

[00:32:42] Brian
Hinton: would fund to invest in something

[00:32:46] Frederick
Weiss: sexy enough.

[00:32:47] Faisal
Abid: Yes. So that's the thing it's not sexy.

[00:32:49] Faisal
Abid: I'll tell you this. We are profitable. As of two, three months ago,
we've been profitable despite having, we have eight engineers. We have eight employees, two engineers
we're growing rapidly. We're starting to move across Canada. We're in the process of applying
and starting to get those licenses, but we're profitable.

[00:33:10] Faisal
Abid: Not a lot of tech companies can say that. And this is one of the
oxymorons of this industry, I guess the paradoxes where it's just a. The investor money. Isn't,
it's hard to actually talk to the investors because the investors are looking for the unicorns and the
moonshots. And that's because that's how that business is structured.

[00:33:30] Faisal
Abid: It's not that the investor, is

[00:33:32] Brian
Hinton: this a moonshot though? Cause you're like, like that's why I
don't get there's so many of these here's so

[00:33:37] Faisal
Abid: many, it's not sexy. Fundamentally. Fundamentally you have a VC firm
where even if the investor personally likes it, the investor needs to justify that.

[00:33:51] Faisal
Abid: If say Anderson Horwitz raises a hundred million dollars, they need to
write 10 checks of $10 million. If they write one check, say they gave a check to Eirene for $10 million, they need to justify that Eirene might give them a $10 billion, right? And so can I give him a
$10 billion exit? Probably in 10, 15 years, perhaps there, the funeral industry has companies that have gone
public, but it is not a company that will give them a $10 million exit in three years on like a crazy
valuation.

[00:34:23] Faisal
Abid: And so that is the, the hard part about the industry. Luckily, we are
profitable. So right now we are raising again, it is another friends and family round. And so our, what I
did and what Mallory did was when we first raised money we raised 250 K and we say, Let's reach out to
entrepreneurs.

[00:34:46] Faisal
Abid: We know, because what I found is angels like Brian, you said angels are
willing to give the money, but it depends a type of angel. There's a lot of angels that still are trying
to on the upper level, nearing VC level, that aren't ready to give money because they're still
looking for MRR, SAS type businesses, because those are very predictable.

[00:35:10] Faisal
Abid: And if you want to put money in a very predictable business, great MRI
and SAS, you show that that this company is going to survive unless there's like a crazy scandal or some
big competitor comes and kills you. We don't have MRR. I hope I don't get MRR. I don't know.
Family coming to us every week, every month.

[00:35:26] Faisal
Abid: And losing someone. So that'd be terrible. Exactly. That's
terrible. So what one time experience? And so there, what we Maori and I did was we reached out to all the
tech entrepreneurs in Toronto, everyone that we knew and they're very supportive. And so we have some of
the smartest entrepreneurs who said, great you're raising to advocate, here's 10 K here's five
K, like we'll help you.

[00:35:56] Faisal
Abid: And so now that we're profitable, I'm in a very interesting spot
because if I was a SAS company, profitable SAS company, I'd be able to raise so much money just going to
any Silicon valley investor, but I'm a profitable, non. Non-sexy company. And so for us, it's okay,
let's raise another 250 K we're raising again.

[00:36:19] Faisal
Abid: Let's our angels are completely on board, but let's try to
diversify the pool and add some new angels with a different perspective because our angels have all been
helpful in providing their perspective on end of life, providing their help in terms of business lobbying,
politics, whatever.

[00:36:38] Faisal
Abid: So that's what we're doing now, but it's very hard for
business for entrepreneurs to do. Maybe this is just in Toronto also. I don't know if it's different
in Silicon valley, but it's hard for entrepreneurs to do non-sexy businesses and get the same level of
hype and money thrown at them as if I started an NFT company that sold monkeys.

[00:37:03] Faisal
Abid: Like I would get so much money around. Oh, yeah.

[00:37:10] Faisal
Abid: Like I'd be on a yacht right now with drawing stupid monkey.
That's the difference. And I think that will change. I strongly because what I, what my belief is, what
ends up happening is these tech cycles, their bubbles go away. You saw this bubble back in 2012 to 2014,
right? With mobile, you built a fart app.

[00:37:34] Faisal
Abid: You built your money. That wouldn't be news science through money,
and then the bubble burst. And now it's almost impossible to raise money if you're a mobile app,
unless you have a solid business. So now it's all about SAS and all that stuff. It's not about the
technology and the business model, but I think there's, this idea will go away because now you have
crypto and all these other businesses.

[00:37:59] Faisal
Abid: Business models, which are most of the time Ponzi schemes that makes zero
sense. But you have these different types of business models that don't, that this bubble will explode
soon enough. And when does bubble does explode? Investors will start to think about we've made a lot of
money because most people will make money.

[00:38:20] Faisal
Abid: Anyways, we'll make a lot of money. How do we take this money and
invested in really solid business models? And so probably in five years, this will happen and then
there'll be another bubble with something else, probably VR or something crazy. And we'll continue
with. I just saw

[00:38:36] Brian
Hinton: that in Silicon valley.

[00:38:38] Brian
Hinton: I just hope all the artists that for like years have been essentially
living paycheck to paycheck, hoping they sell a painting, get so much money and cash it all out. Cause they,
they totally deserve. Yeah. Listen,

[00:38:52] Faisal
Abid: if you can make money off NFTs and crypto do it because that money
isn't going to be there next year.

[00:38:59] Faisal
Abid: If you can make money, who cares? It's a scam. Anyways, there's
the biggest scam like I can go on and on about NFT. I actually was a, still am a big believer in crypto.
I'm not a believer in the use case right now because the youth case right now is just about it's
funny, I read tweets about how crypto is going to enable the 99% and empower them and all sorts of
bullshit.

[00:39:26] Faisal
Abid: But all it's doing is just making rich people richer and we're
all we're doing is just playing Pokemon. Tons of money, right? So it's not really adding value to
the world. All it's doing is just rich. People are going cool. I bought this like monkey or this thing
would laser eyes and I'm making more money off it.

[00:39:46] Faisal
Abid: And that's it. So one day I hope there's good applications for
crypto. I would love to see those, but right now it's not the right

[00:39:53] Brian
Hinton: time. We need to get you on the show to talk about crypto and NFTs. And
that's,

[00:40:00] Frederick
Weiss: who knows where that goes here

[00:40:01] Faisal
Abid: I, 2017, I built a, not, it wasn't a company. It was a fun project in
crypto.

[00:40:10] Faisal
Abid: This was during the first initial hype and I built a gaming call, arcade
block. You could bet money and all that stuff. And that was fun. And then it didn't really work out at
night. And then I held onto all my crypto and I said, cool, the next, thankfully, this bubble's gone
this era of exuberance has gone.

[00:40:30] Faisal
Abid: And the next in the next couple of years we'll see actual
applications for crypto. And then the next couple of years came into the era of exuberance came back, but
now amped up because all the tech people have nothing better to do than just sit home on their computer. And
so we just these guys went crazy.

[00:40:49] Faisal
Abid: These people went crazy. And then, yeah. And then I'm like, forget
it. I'm selling all my crypto. Cause it doesn't make sense anymore.

[00:40:57] Frederick
Weiss: Let me ask you I have two questions before we start winding down the
first question Faisal. Do you have any kind of competitors in the continental United States that are doing
something such as this or doing exactly this and what are their challenges and how are they different from
what you are doing now, if they exist at all?

[00:41:23] Faisal
Abid: So there's, there might be a bit more, but altogether in this entire
planet earth, there's probably six companies that do what Eirene does. There is two companies in America in California and Los Angeles. And California area
Portland, Oregon and stuff. One is called solace and another is called tulip.

[00:41:46] Faisal
Abid: And then there is one in the UK. I don't remember the name.
There's one in Australia. And then there's Eirene in Canada. And I believe there's one more. I can't remember. I think there's
two in the UK and all of us do similar things. The closest thing to Eirene is probably two lip. Yeah, I guess to lip or solace to lip is
found a tulip got acquired a couple of years ago by a bigger funeral home solace.

[00:42:16] Faisal
Abid: It started by X, Nike via VPs or something, some smart guys there. So
we're all trying to solve the same problem. There. We're all in different markets and these markets
are really tough. So the reason America is very tough, specially California is that there is almost a race
to the bottom where there's not a lot of margins.

[00:42:41] Faisal
Abid: Because in California, you have to basically own not. You have to buy you
pretty much have to own your own crematorium. So now you're suddenly dealing with Latin expansion. If I
want to expand to I dunno, LA, I need to go and build a crematorium near LA where I need to be able to
transfer funds, real estate. The Eirene business model,
really, no one has, and that's a by-product of just the regulation in Canada where I just go and build
the crematoriums they're extremely regulated because of environment and all that stuff. And so we've
taken a totally different business model approach where we're like, let's just in a lot of ways,
it's like Uber, where we're in a, we don't own like Uber doesn't own any of these taxi cars.
They just partnered with absolutely everyone. So we're partnering with. Everyone then we want, and the
beauty about us is because it's a regulated space. Uber got into a non-regulated space and then they got
regulated because we were already in a regulated space.

[00:43:42] Faisal
Abid: We already play by the rules. And so we can't tell a crematorium,
sorry, we're only going to pay you like a hundred bucks. No, the law says the crematorium must be paid
X. So we pay them X. We can make our margin there. And then we're able to just partner with as many
criminal terms as possible.

[00:44:02] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah. It's a very interesting how all this works. It's actually
fascinating to me. The technology in this business model My entire philosophy behind the Eirene is to build the most transparent and ethical business
possible. This is something I learned with one of my mentors. He had sold a funny enough, a dating company
for a lot of money backing in Canada, back in the nineties.

[00:44:32] Faisal
Abid: And one of the things he told me and he's massively wealthy. He told
me that there's no point in trying to do dark patterns and like little tiny scams and like hurting
people because that will eventually bite you in the ass later on. Try to always build the most ethical and
transparent product, because if you actually have a good business, people will pay for it and people will
recommend you.

[00:44:55] Faisal
Abid: So that's always stuck with me. And so whenever we're building
something, it's like, how do I make this as transparent, as simple as possible. So users always feel
like there's trust both ways.

[00:45:07] Frederick
Weiss: I love that. That's very admirable. Very needed service. Speaking of
the services one of the things that I read on the blog, that my last question, before we get through a few
things here where we close is acclamation and correct me if I'm wrong.

[00:45:22] Frederick
Weiss: If I'm saying that pronouncing it incorrectly, but acclimation has
no direct emission of harmful greenhouse gases or mercury, and requires no burning of fossil fuels. So how
long does this this process take two. Like it's supposed to be like a alkaline hydraulics or something
like that.

[00:45:45] Frederick
Weiss: Is this is there the same? I hate to use the phrase here, but turned
around if I want to get the service done. And is there like a, obviously this sounds like a much better way
to go I'll just let you explain it different.

[00:46:00] Faisal
Abid: It is, it's a very eco-friendly environmentally friendly way because
there's no harmful emissions being put into the environment and I think it is the future that this is
what's going to happen.

[00:46:12] Faisal
Abid: The way it works is I don't know the science, but yes, you all right.
The technical term is alkaline hydrolysis or acclamation. And what it does is it's 95% water, 5% alkali,
and the water molecules and the alkali, everything mixed in with temperature breakdown. It's in this
really cool looking occupation machine.

[00:46:33] Faisal
Abid: And so when someone passes away and it's really not that even that
expensive, it's 2,500 for a cremation $3,000 for an acclimation. And so just 500 more. And I'm sure
the price will go down as more people use it. And so the body, it gets put inside this awful machine and it
takes around it.

[00:46:55] Faisal
Abid: It's not like cremation where it's so fast. But it takes, I
think, and I could be really wrong here, but six hours or so to fully Aqua mate a body. But when it's
done, what's really nice is the Ash that you get, like the remains, you get a lot more of it because the
body dissolves in a very graceful way.

[00:47:18] Faisal
Abid: And then the bones are left and the bones are essentially. Broken down.
And so you get a lot more of your loved one. And so you have an earn, so families are starting to prefer it
because they go, okay. My loved one was very environmentally conscious. So I think they would have
appreciated affirmation.

[00:47:39] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah. It's amazing all these different services. And I appreciate
it. I'm sure others appreciate it as well. And so Faisal we're getting to the end of the show and
we'll try to end with a little bit of levity, but at first off, I, if you look outside of your window,
is it lightning out there?

[00:48:02] Brian
Hinton: I love that

[00:48:09] Brian
Hinton: lightning round. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. So you're, you might
be familiar with the lightening round. We each ask you a question. I'll go first. You answer it in rapid
succession. Let's see how many we can get through a lot. The record is a hundred. Let's try and beat
that. Do you actually want pineapple on your pizza?

[00:48:28] Faisal
Abid: No.

[00:48:32] Frederick
Weiss: Hold on my pizza. What is your honestly what is your favorite thing
about yourself? About you?

[00:48:41] Faisal
Abid: I can figure it out problems pretty quick. Love it.

[00:48:46] Brian
Hinton: What current fact about your life now would absolutely impress your
five-year-old.

[00:48:53] Faisal
Abid: That I'm actually doing what I love.

[00:48:58] Frederick
Weiss: Faisal. If you could not be around a computer for the rest of your life,
what would you be doing professionally?

[00:49:06] Faisal
Abid: I would make movies. Okay. You're in the circus. Would you rather be
the person that sticks their head inside the lion's mouth or shot out of a cannon?

[00:49:16] Faisal
Abid: Probably shout out of the candidate?

[00:49:18] Brian
Hinton: No one likes the lion.

[00:49:21] Frederick
Weiss: Oh, what was your favorite cartoon as a kid?

[00:49:24] Faisal
Abid: Probably citizens.

[00:49:27] Brian
Hinton: Nice. Nice. Would you rather be able to run at a hundred miles per hour
or fly at 10?

[00:49:37] Faisal
Abid: Probably. Flashers one. I don't know. Probably fly

[00:49:45] Frederick
Weiss: Faisal. What podcasts are you listening to recently for? Just to

[00:49:49] Faisal
Abid: relax. Oh, man. I was listening to Lex Friedman, which is a pretty cool
podcast. I try to go for the scientists he brings on and it's really interesting.

[00:50:05] Brian
Hinton: What chore do you absolutely hate doing

[00:50:10] Faisal
Abid: Putting, loading up the dishwasher.

[00:50:13] Faisal
Abid: I wish I, someone makes a roadblock for this. Every time I load it on
like this needs to be automated

[00:50:21] Frederick
Weiss: next year. Musk might bring it out, but Faisal, let me get back to this.
What would you tell your 18 year old self? If you could go back in time?

[00:50:30] Faisal
Abid: Don't stress about. As I get older, I start to stress less and
less.

[00:50:37] Brian
Hinton: Okay. You have 30 minutes of completely free time. No obligations. How
do you pass it?

[00:50:43] Faisal
Abid: I will either play halo or I will lie on the couch and just watch YouTube
videos. Love it.

[00:50:50] Frederick
Weiss: What are you reading for educational purposes?

[00:50:55] Faisal
Abid: I bought this book called crafting interpreters. It is by a Robert and
ice storm.

[00:51:01] Faisal
Abid: It's a really cool book on building interpreters and stuff.
That's been interesting. It's right here. Actually I'll plug the book, please.

[00:51:17] Brian
Hinton: What general fact just amazes you

[00:51:22] Faisal
Abid: that we are. So tiny in the universe, like I'm fascinated about
galaxies and stuff, and just understanding of the scale that we existing, even in the span of time where
we're insignificant, it's amazing.

[00:51:38] Frederick
Weiss: Faisal. Do you play an instrument? And if you do, what is it? And can
you show us?

[00:51:44] Faisal
Abid: No, I don't play

[00:51:45] Brian
Hinton: an instrument. Good. Try there. I know. You know what he's trying
to do there.

[00:51:49] Frederick
Weiss: Shh. Don't ruin it for everybody. You're trying to go.

[00:51:53] Brian
Hinton: Where do you mind not waiting? You're perfectly fine. Just waiting

[00:51:57] Faisal
Abid: In a line to a movie. I have waited like six, seven hours for, to watch a
movie.

[00:52:05] Frederick
Weiss: What movie?

[00:52:06] Frederick
Weiss: That's going to be? My question

[00:52:08] Brian
Hinton: three.

[00:52:10] Frederick
Weiss: Okay.

[00:52:10] Brian
Hinton: Brian, that makes sense.

[00:52:12] Brian
Hinton: What do you miss most about being a kid?

[00:52:15] Faisal
Abid: I guess like recess and stuff was always fun. There was always drama. And
it was always like a reality show happening. So that was fun.

[00:52:25] Frederick
Weiss: Th this will be my last question. Faisal, if you could solve just one
world problem, what would it be? What would it be?

[00:52:36] Faisal
Abid: Ooh energy, probably something to do with energy storage or energy
production.

[00:52:44] Faisal
Abid: I think just having a lot of energy and being able to store it really
well. Just empower so many people in parts of the world where they don't have energy and climate change.

[00:52:57] Frederick
Weiss: Nope. No face a hold onto your hat. If you don't have a hat on what
you don't for our audio listeners, I said just getting one and putting one on and holding on tight
because I believe Brian's going to tell a joke.

[00:53:07] Brian
Hinton: No, I, before I go with my last one, I think you should ask the
traditional one. You've always asked. It's hot Faisal.

[00:53:17] Frederick
Weiss: Faisal. Yeah. That's very well put Brian, thank you so much. Faisal.
You come home. It is late. 2 37 in the morning, it is raining cats and dogs like literally. And you're
like, ah, you're like, I just need to get in the house you get in your keys, you get in the house, you
close it.

[00:53:36] Frederick
Weiss: You turn around you look and there's a ghost.

[00:53:42] Faisal
Abid: I run prob most likely run.

[00:53:46] Brian
Hinton: Well done. Alright. Fair enough.

[00:53:49] Frederick
Weiss: Okay. Here's where you should have had that hat on.

[00:53:54] Brian
Hinton: You can do the buildup. Why wouldn't the skeleton go trick or
treating?

[00:54:00] Faisal
Abid: Because it had, I don't know. I don't know because he didn't
have any

[00:54:04] Brian
Hinton: guts.

[00:54:11] Frederick
Weiss: I got one for ya. You ready? Brian? What does a vamp hire? Never order
at a restaurant stick.

[00:54:24] Faisal
Abid: where are you saying? Speaking of vampire. I hope you guys want, watch
what we do in the shadows. I love it. Every

[00:54:31] Frederick
Weiss: single episode and the movie. It's so good. I want my witch hat. I
love that show. My theory

[00:54:41] Faisal
Abid: is going on too oh yeah. And I love Matt Barry. He is just amazed. Oh
wait. Yeah. Such a

[00:54:48] Brian
Hinton: good show.

[00:54:48] Brian
Hinton: I watched a recent vampire one only lovers left alive. Highly recommend
that movie so long ago. Yes. I don't believe

[00:54:59] Frederick
Weiss: I did. I told you I can't. I saw on Twitter, you said you just
watched it. And I was like, Brian, I told you about that forever ago. Go good.

[00:55:07] Brian
Hinton: It is really good.

[00:55:09] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah. Anyway, Faisal, we're right about at the end.

[00:55:12] Frederick
Weiss: Two last things first. What's the best way people could find out
about you and Eirene

[00:55:18] Faisal
Abid: Are what you have on the screen. You can add me on Twitter. You can add
me on LinkedIn or you can go to Eirene.ca directly.

[00:55:27] Frederick
Weiss: Excellent. All right, great. And for our last segment,

[00:55:34] Frederick
Weiss: thank you for the dancing Brian audio listeners. I suggest you go back
and take a look, words of wisdom Faisal. We like to provide our guests with a closing opportunity to provide
words of wisdom to our audience, Faisal. The stage is yours.

[00:55:51] Faisal
Abid: It's what I did is just work your ass off to try to get to a point
where you can do exactly what you want to do how you want to do it.

[00:56:02] Faisal
Abid: You'll have to grind for a while. I'm sure many years but grind
with the thing with the goal in mind that you're saving for some amount of money for some type of life
that you want, and then just do it as soon as you hit that number.

[00:56:20] Frederick
Weiss: I love it. Excellent. Thank you so much. Yeah. W Faisal man, we're
at the end of the show and I can't thank you enough for sharing your story and talking about
Eirene and the amazing product and service that you're
putting out there, which I helps out a ton of families.

[00:56:37] Frederick
Weiss: In a way that is appropriate especially in this day and age. So it's
amazing. And thank you. Thank you so much, Brian. Thank

[00:56:46] Brian
Hinton: you. Yeah, thank you. We're spending another bit of your time with
us. Time is valuable. Yeah, and you shared it with us and we appreciate that

[00:56:55] Frederick
Weiss: now. I really appreciate it.

[00:56:57] Frederick
Weiss: So that being said, thank you, everybody really appreciate you watching
the show and we'll catch you next time. Take care!
...more
1h 2min
October 10, 2021288 – ⚖️ Digital Ethics, Rights & Responsibilities with Ali Rizvi
In this episode, we talk with Ali Rizvi, Vice President of Product Management at Star2Star, a Sangoma company. We discuss digital ethics, rights & responsibilities of technology companies such as Facebook. There are many aspects to how these entities influence our political climate and unnaturally distort social behavior. Some of the social media algorithms are presented to make our lives better, but do they? Are these types of technologies a fundamental threat to the whole of humanity, or just misunderstood?
✨ Episode Sponsor
- Auth0: https://auth0.com
- Auth0 on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/auth0
- Auth0 on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/auth0
- Auth0 Avocado Labs online meetup events: https://avocadolabs.dev/
🔗 Episode Links
- Ali Rizvi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zalirizvi/
- Ali Rizvi on Twitter: https://twitter.com/aliknowsproduct
- Guest co-host Nick Sollecito: https://twitter.com/oticellos
- ‘The Buck Stops With Mark’: Facebook Whistleblower Says Zuckerberg Responsible for System Harming Kids: https://gizmodo.com/the-buck-stops-with-mark-facebook-whistleblower-says-z-1847797678
- Hooked: https://www.nirandfar.com/hooked/
- Hosts: Frederick Weiss: https://twitter.com/FrederickWeiss
📜 Transcript

[00:00:00] Frederick
Weiss: Welcome to the Thunder Nerds. I'm Frederick Weiss, and you’re consuming a show with the people behind the technology
that love what they do, and do tech good. And our sponsor Auth0 is helping us do tech good all year
long.

[00:00:13] Frederick
Weiss: Auth0 it makes it easy for developers to build a custom. Standard-based unified login by providing
authentication and authorization as a service.

[00:00:25] Frederick
Weiss: Try them out now by going to Auth0.com. Also, check them out at YouTube.com/Auth0, Twitch.tv/Auth0, and Andavocadolabs.dev for their online meetup events. Thanks again Auth0.

[00:00:45] Frederick
Weiss: Let's go ahead and
first welcome our guest co-host.

[00:00:57] Frederick
Weiss: We have Nick Sollecito, Nick, thank you so much for joining us.
we're very honored and happy to have you, and I guess without any, ados
being furthered, let's go ahead and welcome our guests. We have Musician,
Martial artist, and Vice President of product management at
Star2Star, a Sangoma company… Ali Rizvi.

[00:01:26] Frederick
Weiss: Welcome to the show.

[00:01:32] Ali
Rizvi: Hello everybody. Yeah, this is cool. I like the
Thundercats so,

[00:01:38] Frederick
Weiss: so you appreciate the theme?

[00:01:39] Ali
Rizvi: Yeah.

[00:01:42] Frederick
Weiss: Let me ask you, who's your favorite Thundercat then?

[00:01:45] Ali
Rizvi: Cheetara.

[00:01:49] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah, I think mine was Mumm-Ra, because I always vote for the villain.

[00:01:54] Frederick
Weiss: I think that says a lot about me.

[00:02:29] Frederick
Weiss: So Ali, let's, go ahead and talk a little bit about you first before we jump into your role and exactly what you
do. So first off, let me ask you, how have you been with
everything going on with the COVID?

[00:02:42] Frederick
Weiss: you know, a lot of people are worried about the Delta and the
Mu and there's a Lambda, I guess, coming up, how
are you doing? And how's your family and everybody?

[00:02:55] Ali
Rizvi: Everybody's good. I
mean, vaccinated. So, and, really proud to be vaccinated. And I guess the way of putting it,
aside from that, I mean, you know, It's just, the overflow digitization is like the main
sort of one that really kind of, hurts, I suppose, on top of the challenge of having a deadly virus,
you've got a, at least deadly virus in a, in a biological sense.

[00:03:24] Ali
Rizvi: We've got a deadly virus in a, in a psychological sense going on at
the same time. and, and so, you know, we've got, two deadly viruses to contend with. and
they all like any organic, organic matter or sides, psychological matter. Maybe I just invented something,
grabs, you know, they, they change, they evolve, they, they find new hosts and they find,
you know, new target audiences, all day long.

[00:03:59] Ali
Rizvi: yeah, there's

[00:04:00] Frederick
Weiss: definitely certain variants of. You know, low-key going around and each
one is different depending on your, your mental capacity or, you know, to be fair to where you get your
news. But I, I wanna, I wanna really ask you about, you made a big move and I like to dive into that, and
I'm wondering if this move was, you know, if, if the, the COVID was the catalyst for this big move
politically and physically

[00:04:29] Ali
Rizvi: partially.

[00:04:29] Ali
Rizvi: Yeah. I mean, I'm a big reason for my move was actually more for my
daughter. you know, she kind of grew up, and I'm, I'm not gonna, I'm not judging anything
here with, she grew up in a small sort of, suburban New Jersey town. And, as we've seen, in,
in our sort of current history and current psychological states of, of the Americas, That, you know, those
kinds of small towns create echo chambers, and those echo chambers become, you know, a rash, so to
speak that doesn't go away necessarily.

[00:05:15] Ali
Rizvi: That takes a lot of time to kind of, and I'm speaking a little bit a
territory, but, for me, it was really taking her out of that echo chamber and exposing her to a wider
reality. that exists outside of the United States up,
unfortunately, that wider reality. and so, I w I made it kind of a mission for myself to go seek out a
country where, people live more, people live more organically, I think, as a way of putting it, and have,
and have some old-style values about a deeper
connection, about, less judgment.

[00:06:00] Ali
Rizvi: I'm more open, I'm more willing to connect emotionally and not
just the, not just physically and sort of in a work situation. And, we've certainly found that in Mexico. so I live in a small town called San Miguel de
Allende and, it's a old colonial-style town and it
could be anywhere in Europe to be, to be honest, you know, you've got a, a world heritage site
here.

[00:06:30] Ali
Rizvi: that's a cathedral in the center of town and there are always parties going on center of town, lots of
tequila, which I'm a big fan of. I also

[00:06:44] Ali
Rizvi: of course, and, mariachi bands and, people really,
generally getting along and partying and I've yet to see a fight and break out and in the center
of town and the. the garden. and so, and, and people have disagreements and don't, don't
necessarily get into, confrontational situations.

[00:07:07] Ali
Rizvi: so that kind of genteel lifestyle, people, and we, I mean, you
know, in America, in America, yesteryear, we have that as well. Uh we've we've just let it degrade.
And, so for me, it was really that wider exposure. and, and on top of that, the COVID
thing was very interesting because I actually moved here.

[00:07:29] Ali
Rizvi: I actually came and sought out this place in, in, November. Oh,
wait, November last year, 2020. And like the. You know,

[00:07:39] Frederick
Weiss: before the election, right after the election,

[00:07:42] Ali
Rizvi: I guess, right after the elections. That's right. and it was kind of
timed with the elections in case something went wrong.

[00:07:51] Frederick
Weiss: Like an Insurrection?

[00:07:53] Ali
Rizvi: Yeah.

[00:07:54] Ali
Rizvi: so, you know, something went wrong. I had a, I had a really good plan B
already in place, which became plan a, yeah. And, I'm very, very happy about it.

[00:08:05] Frederick
Weiss: love that. I think it goes along with, a theme of our current working
situation. Now with our quote-unquote new normal, if,
if that's still a phrase people use where, you know, you can work anywhere in the world and you should,
because it's so advantageous for companies one to, you know, kind of, bring down some of that
brick and mortar that they're paying for all that overhead.

[00:08:33] Frederick
Weiss: And to just to be able to, pull talent from anywhere in the world,
there are so many amazing individuals out there that, you know, might not be acquitted, Quint incidentally
in your backyard. Right. You know, they might not be within a 50-mile radius.

[00:08:52] Ali
Rizvi: Hey, you know, I'm, I'm looking for, three or four product
managers right now.

[00:08:59] Ali
Rizvi: Anybody comes on and listens to this, later on, you know, look me
up. So, the, yeah, from a talent standpoint, You know, my, I worked for a really good company
in the sense of there, there were conscientious there, their consciousness around, around talent and,
and, that they were so flexible with me to, to make this move.

[00:09:24] Ali
Rizvi: and, and what's funny is that, you know, my, the, the, the,
the town that I live in, they've got fiber here. And so, yeah, my internet actually here is better than
my internet in Jersey. so that's all, that's interesting.

[00:09:44] Frederick
Weiss: I can say a lot of
things about things being better from Jersey cause I'm from Jersey and yes, you definitely don't
want to be in Jersey.

[00:09:51] Frederick
Weiss: Trust me.

[00:09:53] Ali
Rizvi: Oh yeah. I've got so much family there. It's really kind of
interesting. and now there are people interested in moving here and that, you know, I wonder, I wonder,
If I'm likely not the only one. and if there are certainly some, some trends where, where
people are engaging in this kind of flexible work, and flexible lifestyle, I'm sure there are.

[00:10:19] Ali
Rizvi: And, and, hopefully, you know, that as an industry, as a,
as a, employer, employee culture, we would even further evolved, you know, even, even,
more globally. and I think, you know, I think those trends are certainly going in that
direction. Although at the same time, we have a lot to get into politics too much, but we have a global sort
of nationalism going on at the same time.

[00:10:51] Ali
Rizvi: And I'm really curious how those two play where, certainly I would
seek out, I mean, we currently hire people from, from Russia and from Ukraine. and, but at the
end, at the same time we have these, you know, political, silos being created. And I wonder how
that's gonna play out, for hiring talent across the world.

[00:11:23] Nick
Sollecito: What do you think about that? I mean, I think one question I had
was, like how has the change in the time zone to like, did you, did you find any challenges not being in the
same time as the rest of your team that you're working with? Or, you know, just, just trying to
coordinate work across, different, different parts of the county.

[00:11:45] Ali
Rizvi: Sure. That was kind of part of my analysis. when I first was looking at
different places in the world to live in my first choice was, Sorento, Italy.

[00:12:00] Ali
Rizvi: the Amalfi coast was my first choice, but, so that didn't work
out because of time zones. I would have been working from 2:00 PM or whatever, you know? and so I sought out
and I love that kind of Mediterranean landscape that, that mixture of, of green and sort of deserty
climate. It's just, I love that.

[00:12:27] Ali
Rizvi: And so, I sought that out in our time zone and, and so this city is in
the same time zone as Mexico city, which is, central, so central. So one hour, one hour off
from, Eastern. Oh, so it actually worked, worked out and I, you know, working with teams and in India
teams in Russia teams and, parts of the cell, California, and so many different time zones Dallas at
the same time zone to me.

[00:13:00] Ali
Rizvi: so, you know, after a while it just becomes like, eh, time zone, what
does it really mean? right. And it'd be, I think it's beginning to mean less. and I said seems to be
the trend. Yeah.

[00:13:19] Ali
Rizvi: But, but, but I will say that. A lot easier being at least somewhat
close. I really, I wouldn't want to be working nights, you know, from an India office, you know
what I mean? Oh

[00:13:31] Frederick
Weiss: yeah. I've had conversations with people that have been working from
like, well, I had a meeting the other day with a gentleman that was like, oh yeah.

[00:13:41] Frederick
Weiss: It's like one 30 in the morning here. I'm like, oh, I want to
call, oh my God. I feel horrible.

[00:13:46] Ali
Rizvi: Yeah. Yeah. and that's an interesting thing that you mentioned
I've had that same thing happen to me where. You know, they made a decision to work in that time zone
and, and to kind of take the hit, right. I'm going to, yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to do this,
but what's weird is like, I feel bad about it. Like, oh shit, I'm gonna, you know, sorry, dude. You know, you're not sleeping at a
normal time. but you know, so it's kind of interesting, and this is a topic that I kind of wanted
to touch on. it's kinda near, near right now for me, it gave some of the transformational changes that are, that are, that is going through is the
emotional part of work, you know? And, we're all under a lot of duress. we are, feeling unsafe in the
world, not just because of COVID, but because of climate change, the amount of violence in the world
has skyrocketed. and, you know, the, sort of the siloed,
nationalism, and then, you know, the extent the, actually the real manifestation of imperialism, all
of these things, and feudalism coming back at, you know, raging back, and.

[00:15:13] Ali
Rizvi: Not really, not a monarchy, but certainly a whole lot of all their
Garcon bolt patterns showing, showing up. Yeah. We definitely have

[00:15:21] Frederick
Weiss: these two, two different tribes for the most part, within the
United States, you know, you could say there's, you know, the far right. And the far left and you know,
the, the people in between, but those two tribes are really at each other's throats where, you know, a
lot of times, in holidays, you can't, you, you know, you don't go to someone's house just
because of that.

[00:15:42] Frederick
Weiss: One reason alone, like, oh, you voted for so-and-so. Oh, or you're
not wearing a mask or you are wearing a mask. These are, very polarizing topics. And a lot of it it's a
P people blame each other and say that, oh, this person's stupid. Or that person's stupid. Or
everybody's saying that each other is stupid, but it's really that people get their news from
two.

[00:16:05] Frederick
Weiss: main rivers, right? They drink from two different rivers and they, they,
they communicate back and forth to each other. Let's say, Hey, don't drink out of that river. That,
that water is poison, but really it's, you know, there's, there's some in-between if, we
could get back to a place of civility.

[00:16:24] Ali
Rizvi: Yeah.

[00:16:24] Ali
Rizvi: But I think that what I was kind of getting at is that I don't think
that's possible anymore. in the sense that there's a lot of these type of patterns happening, plus
not being a product person on like, you know, into patterns. and, and you know, there's a lot of
these very, what are becoming very deep-rooted patterns, especially the oligarchical patterns.

[00:16:53] Ali
Rizvi: yes, becoming very deep-rooted whether it's a corporate oligarchy or, or actually political, or systemic
oligarchy anyway, but, but I was kind of getting back to, I want to get back to the, the, the work part of
it and the, the human part of it, where there's so much, there's so much conflict and so much stress
because of all of these things.

[00:17:15] Ali
Rizvi: And we know all about them because we can get them in our social feeds,
get them in our, you know, in YouTube, we get them from the news network news or news networks or whatever
echo chamber of news that we decide to participate in. that’s, that stress, is actually the beginning to me, as I can see it in the world beginning to, erode,
productivity, productivity in a creative sense.

[00:17:45] Ali
Rizvi: People certainly go to work and get a paycheck. but when you don't
feel safe in the world, you know, our brain is, is, negativity has a negativity bias. And when, when
there's so much negativity happening, our brain is preoccupied by that bias and less and less of our
brain share on Mindshare is occupied in creative work, unless we can really like, you know, I really applaud
people, these, these great masters that show up on YouTube, just guitar genius or, or whatnot.

[00:18:25] Ali
Rizvi: but they're all, they're almost like savant because they live
in a bubble and that's how they're able to kind of, you know, continue to operate at that creative,
creative space. But if you're in a work environment, so I've started those exceptions. If
you're in a general your general employee,

[00:18:48] Ali
Rizvi: I find like how, how is everyone really.

[00:18:52] Ali
Rizvi: Really dealing with this. I think I said interesting, you know, at
least interesting question for me. How are you, how are, you know, people being creative, within
the context of being an employee? because that's different from me sitting at my house and playing
guitar and kind of be expressing their creativity.

[00:19:12] Ali
Rizvi: so as a musician and as, you know, someone working in technology as
a business person or technologist, it's a really
interesting curiosity because I can find myself too distracted, for my creative juices to easily flow. And
that's been my experience. I have to literally silo myself from all the shit that's happening, all
the, you know, through the news media and all that jazz.

[00:19:42] Ali
Rizvi: So, that's and I just wonder, like how that's really impacting,
In fact, people. and I haven't burned any studies on, this particular thing, but I'd be curious
about that.

[00:19:57] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah, because it's interesting. It's one of those, basic,
I'm not sure the term, maybe it's the pyramid, something such as that, of a, of safety,
you know, where yeah.

[00:20:09] Frederick
Weiss: Shelter, food, water, et cetera. Right. and if you don't have those
things, you're not running at an optimal capacity,
you don't have the ability to put out the things that you may need to, be, to fully be
productive.

[00:20:28] Ali
Rizvi: Yeah. I mean, we're in us, experiencing. We used to, we used to look
at the outside world, like, you know, someone in Afghanistan as an example in the hinterland of, of Gunnison
where there's a lot of military conflict and they don't have food on their table.

[00:20:51] Ali
Rizvi: they're sick, they're poor, they're starving. they don't
have time for any higher level thinking. Right. Because they're surviving. Yeah. And, and we would
always look out and, you know, as, as, as Americans and look out and say, oh man, look how sad that is. But
to me what's interesting is while it's not in the same way, happening it's, but it is
happening in the inbox.

[00:21:19] Ali
Rizvi: we are, there are definitely places where people are starving quite literally within the United States. That's right. And how, you know, for, for a. a country
born of the Protestant ethic, right. and across the manifesto, which is such a part of our work culture, and
how we call it productive. And in this country, is that playing out?

[00:21:47] Ali
Rizvi: it's just, it's a degradation of all of those values completely.
but it is what's happening by default, right? And that's, that's where I get into product
management where, the beauty of I'm going to segue to, the beauty of product management is that it,
products are done by design. and not by default.

[00:22:15] Ali
Rizvi: A big believer in that. I hate products that are created by
default. I got hate is a strong word, I guess, but I think I do hate products that I've created by
default, versus by design. and I, you know, saying, I feel like product management is a, especially in our
kind of world where we've productized the hell out of everything, right?

[00:22:38] Ali
Rizvi: your Instagram, identity as a product. you're, you know, we've,
we've created this concept of personal brands,
which essentially means, or productizing yourself.

[00:22:53] Frederick
Weiss: Everyone's a
product, everyone's an influencer, right?

[00:22:56] Ali
Rizvi: That's right. That's right. And so, but what's
interesting is that a lot of the way people end up creating products, even themselves is by default,
versus.

[00:23:10] Ali
Rizvi: You know, and then they find out and they discover, well, why am I in so much pain? Well, because
it's by default, people are operating from, you know, their fears and their traumas and, or their
external environment. and, they become expressions of that versus, you know, pulling back and taking
the time, to really, make a decision about what matters to you.

[00:23:43] Ali
Rizvi: And do you have a set of principles? that's one of the things I
always teach other product managers is having a set of principles for your product, a guideline that's,
unbreakable, as much as you can. Right. but you will never.

[00:24:03] Frederick
Weiss: Do you mind if I, I don't mean to interject, but that, that, that
certainly brings up something that I did want to talk to you.

[00:24:10] Frederick
Weiss: And I want to get back to that point, but you know, when you're
talking about, ethics and honesty and responsibility and, you know, to extent governance of, of these
products, I would love to talk about something that's, very, topical, of, of
recent, which is the whole, the thing with Facebook and
how they went down.

[00:24:33] Frederick
Weiss: And, one of the things that I found very, McCobb was, one, a
part of the algorithm that they discussed was how, when you could make people angry, you could get more
engagement. So they would try to get people angry about a subject, and then they would be able to, to hook
them in. to, to get more, you know, you know, obviously if they get more engagement on their platform,
they sell more ads would be to do everything's wonderful for them.

[00:25:06] Frederick
Weiss: How does that reflect on a company like Facebook? kind of, I
don't want to say taking advantage of humanity to make a dollar, but maybe I am.

[00:25:20] Ali
Rizvi: What do you think? Yeah, I mean, look, I mean, guys like Asimov, grape,
you know, science fiction writers, I was in law, a timeline, you know, Scott Carr, they, they all
predicted these type of things and, you know, many, many years ago.

[00:25:36] Ali
Rizvi: and, so, I, I'm going to kind of take the conversation a
little bit higher. we call these things called, we call these things social networks. All right. But
if you, you know, one of the things I'd love to do is break down language. if you break down the words,

[00:26:00] Nick
Sollecito: social network,

[00:26:04] Ali
Rizvi: in net is something that you use.

[00:26:08] Ali
Rizvi: for two purposes, one, a net helps you quantify

[00:26:15] Nick
Sollecito: an object, quantified and bits and bytes of an object. You
can surround it with a

[00:26:21] Ali
Rizvi: net and you can see every part of the net and kind of say, oh, this is
25 pieces based on the net that I, but it's really, then the second part is to design, to, control or
your net.

[00:26:33] Ali
Rizvi: You control thing, throw a net on it, on the animal.

[00:26:37] Nick
Sollecito: you know,

[00:26:38] Ali
Rizvi: it's designed for control and, and you know, and so it's very
easy. I mean, social net, I mean, it's a net around
society at the end of. and so I don't think anyone should be surprised, that a piece of technology
that was designed to be a net around societies is doing nefarious things.

[00:27:06] Ali
Rizvi: and we should be surprised. I mean, if you go back to the history
of Silicon Valley, and the early writings of, you know, the
gurus of Silicon Valley, who eventually became very
wealthy venture capitalists, because they not only built the technologies, but they, you know, told
everybody, through various forms of propaganda, what people wanted.

[00:27:36] Ali
Rizvi: and when you can, when you know, there's a great book,
we're kind of going deep here. It was a great book called manufactured consent by non-Chomsky, either one, you guys have read that book, but it's
a great treatise on how to manufacture consent.

[00:27:53] Ali
Rizvi: so you don't have to force someone to do something you just
manufactured their consent to do it.

[00:27:59] Ali
Rizvi: And the social networks were great at that. they manufactured our
consent, our consent to give up our data consent, to give up our entire lives. you know, everything about us
into a platform that, then hired neuroscientists and, you know, all kinds of specialists and built
monster AI as is, and, and, to analyze all of this data and then, and then double down on the concept
of the net.

[00:28:33] Ali
Rizvi: and in fact that the internet is, is, has another net. and it's
military technology, right? So you can also go directly to the yesteryears, know why does a military, why
do military create technologies? That basic question? Why
do you guys think militaries create technologies?

[00:28:56] Frederick
Weiss: I would venture a guess.

[00:28:59] Frederick
Weiss: That is very obvious, but I'm going to assume it's not. So
I'm going to defer to your answer, which is

[00:29:06] Ali
Rizvi: okay, which is its warfare

[00:29:13] Ali
Rizvi: war and war is about either taking something from someone or subjugating
them. Right. Okay. So, so if, you know, you know, going back again to yesteryear's, DARPA, you
know, financing most of the early Silicon valley products, and DARPA the defense agency that, is
involved with, you know, acquisition of technologies through funding startups.

[00:29:46] Ali
Rizvi: Uh it's, it becomes really obvious once you look at the history of
it. And so I'm certainly not surprised, by, at Facebook. and, and the other thing to really
look at for me is, to even get more basic and get more human, most of, most of the, to me, most of these
technology companies, when I want to invest in them, I do invest with them.

[00:30:15] Ali
Rizvi: I look at the CTO, I really analyze the CTO, and. Because the CEO and a
lot of these companies represent the company,
represents the ethics of the company, or represents the mindset, the value. Yeah. I mean, well, the culture
from the founder, right? Just the word founder, right? Again, you dissect that word.

[00:30:42] Ali
Rizvi: we say a founder of a religion, a founder of this and a founder of
that. so this is a mythological, you know, model, and, we are, humans are mythological printers. We,
we, you know, no matter how much you try to cut it out, you're the religion that you were born.
Good has a mythological influence on you and how you see the world.

[00:31:09] Ali
Rizvi: And so, we kind of touched a lot of different things, but
that's how I see it. So when you, when you, when you see, Zuckerberg, in an action. You know,
either in a Senate hearing or wherever, it's, a person that, for, for whatever reason, no judgment in
terms of perhaps they're, you know, naturally born psychological challenges potentially, but someone
that doesn't have any, true, doesn't have a broad connection to feeling compassion or
empathy.

[00:31:52] Ali
Rizvi: Right. It becomes very obvious, or the lack of empathy, not only,
you know, and if you have a lack of empathy in general, that's gonna, that's gonna permeate in your
organization.

[00:32:06] Frederick
Weiss: Let me, let me ask you a question then. Cause that, that brings up a
very, very interesting point. So as, a medical professional, such as a doctor, For example, let's say
they have to disconnect themselves every day at a, at a certain extent from what they're doing.

[00:32:24] Frederick
Weiss: They, they see a lot of different things. there could be multiple,
scenarios with a loss of life through just their, you know, nine to 10, through the day,
right. Nine in the morning through 10 of the night. So, you know,

[00:32:42] Ali
Rizvi: as a physician. So definitely.

[00:32:44] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah. So you, so you got the idea. So I just want to play devil's
advocate and see what you think.

[00:32:49] Frederick
Weiss: So hypothetically, and I'm not defending anybody devil's
advocate. You could see my horns they're there naturally, but to play devil's advocate, this gentleman, mark Zuckerberg, ease. Oh, let's approach it this
way. He's developing a process. He's finding these behaviors that, you know, as I cited earlier, oh,
making people angry and aggressive helps, get engagement to a higher performance rate, which sells
more ads.

[00:33:22] Frederick
Weiss: That's my business model. That's what I'm doing, et cetera,
et cetera, et cetera. Right now that being said. and, and also let me append to that where I also read
things about how, young people are going to Instagram and they're finding all these things like, such as
being, uh and going down those roads where they normally wouldn't have, prior to, you know,
you know, technology and all these things being so accessible, you know, tech content being available,
information being available is great, but is it being misused?

[00:34:01] Frederick
Weiss: So. To all that being said, let me put this into a question. Mark
Zuckerberg is putting out a product. He sees the different things. That, make his product more performance.
And to a certain extent, people are quote-unquote,
enjoying them. They're using them. They're getting more engagement. So obviously these are
things that people want now, is that a fair statement or is it more than not, this guy is obviously a dirtbag?

[00:34:36] Ali
Rizvi: well, I think you can't isolate it into one person. Right? We've
got a systemic issue. and, and you know, while I certainly look, as a product person, I love to create
great products that someone wants to be. and, and enjoy, you know, I'm in, I'm in the
business, you know, in the business, an enterprise product business, that's, that's
different than commercial products, but, or consumer products at the same time, you know, similar,
similar sets of patterns apply.

[00:35:16] Ali
Rizvi: but, the systemic problem is, is deeper, right? look, we've
known all this since the beginning of, the beginning of that, this kind of, fast-moving technological advancement, you know, no surprises,
there are no surprises, no one should be surprised. And on
top of that, we've created a cult of capitalism, that you know, that we'll constantly subvert any,
any questions.

[00:35:52] Ali
Rizvi: Of, that, something is morally or ethically incorrect if it's
in the name of money and business

[00:36:02] Frederick
Weiss: MSG.

[00:36:04] Ali
Rizvi: Right. And, and so, yeah, I mean, you know, DDT,
right. I mean, we, or, or messing with genes and, we know that we have no freaking clue what
actually is going to happen as a result of that. Right? We have no freaking clue. we pretend to, we even pretend
to make decisions based on data. And for the most part, we do a lot of nice data crunching, and then we make
a, you know, just a decision, which is why most businesses fail. right. Because you always know what the
right thing is to do.

[00:36:50] Ali
Rizvi: But the question is whether you going to do it or not. and so when you
know, we've set this up, you know, this whole Facebook thing is a symptom. It's a symptom of,
it's not, it's a sin. Look, if you, as a, if you were a good example is, maybe clothing,
right? Look, it's great to make good quotes. and you, if you'd love to make clothing,
and you make this clothing and you, and you love, people, love your clothing and they buy your
clothing and you made clothes for the sake of the love for making clothes.

[00:37:32] Ali
Rizvi: but if you make clothes for money, then you're not making clothes
anymore.

[00:37:42] Ali
Rizvi: that's not what you're doing anymore. You're making money.
And if money is the objective, then you're going to cheat on the clothes.

[00:37:49] Frederick
Weiss: That's right. Yeah. It's, it's funny. It makes me think of
this. A quote, which I think is very apropos from, Silicon Valley, which I'm sure everyone here has seen nice necklace by the way.

[00:38:02] Frederick
Weiss: from, oh, I forget his boss at the time the CEO, he asks, what's his
name? Richard. He asked Richard, what do you think our product is? Richard? And Richard of course said,
well, you know, the, the algorithm that's, that's the product. And he said wrong, Richard it's
stock.

[00:38:23] Ali
Rizvi: Yes. and it's even more insidious, right?

[00:38:28] Ali
Rizvi: Because a lot of these startup guys and gals initially had a, had a
value-based purpose there. It was, you know, there was a sense of, you know, rightness about these early days of the valley and early days of techno. I think,
you know, and based on the works I've read, I believe it was there, but what's insidious is that
once you move away from just the backs of the close example, once you move away from making good clones to
making money, and you start cheating on the clothes, you export your labor to a really cheap country, where
there's labor is really cheap, where you Chan obfuscate the fact that you're using slave labor
to make the great stuff that you have and sell it for ridiculous amounts of profit.

[00:39:26] Ali
Rizvi: and, and hence, you know, really co you know, act like a colonial
power again, through the lens of a corporate entity. and, you know, you can do that if you're
that, if you, your greed as operating begins to operate at that level, imagine where else, this, this
thing, this sort of virus and this greed begins to permeate your value systems, your, you know, look at all
the people that hung out with Epstein.

[00:40:02] Frederick
Weiss: Oh, Jesus. Right. There's a photo of so many high profile
individuals like bill Clinton, Donald Trump,
gays. I think

[00:40:13] Ali
Rizvi: your mission around gates, you know, has his, does, does the dissolution
of his marriage is linked to his, his,
relationship with Epstein and whatever the fuck he did over there. We don't know.

[00:40:29] Frederick
Weiss: Good idea. Good idea. Good idea. There's some FDF stuff going on
there. And when they say F I mean, fucked up,

[00:40:36] Ali
Rizvi: really fucked up, but most awful of awful. Awful, awful, awful, awful.
But it all comes down to. A, a society that is not willing to fold certain things sacred anymore. All
right. I'm going to kind of go into a little bit of metaphysics.

[00:40:56] Ali
Rizvi: here is that, if you can't, if you lose that, sense of sacredness
about things, like you, like just your ethical, your value system, if that becomes fungible because the
operating system that the society is beginning to move towards is, is complete, you know, opposite
of, of that. And slowly but surely, right?

[00:41:28] Ali
Rizvi: You become more and more influenced, you know, and these technologies
have to create incredible acceleration of. Really moving people's psychological and value systems along
towards, you know, wherever they want to move it. and so, yeah, it's interesting that we've gone
down this rabbit hole. but, but you know, it, it, it goes back to, from a product management
standpoint.

[00:41:58] Ali
Rizvi: I remember this, this book that came out, fall hooked by NIR Eyal.
yeah,

[00:42:04] Frederick
Weiss: love that book.

[00:42:06] Ali
Rizvi: I love that book too, but I completely disagreed with him. I said, Tom
said, this shit is fucked up, dude. You are, you are doing, you are, you are, creating a product out
of, manufacturing people's consent, you know, and you're selling this book.

[00:42:33] Ali
Rizvi: Making millions of bucks dollars on this book that is teaching people
how to fool people at the end of the day. At least for me, that's my opinion, right? I'm creating a
product that is going to hook you, and I'm going to look a, the word hook has been around for a long
time. I mean, you know, musicians use that as well.

[00:42:56] Ali
Rizvi: You know, you create a riff, you create a hook, it's a Griff,
it's a, it's a, it's a verse. you know, in song learns, there's a hook. it's a great
time time. I'm a big fan of seven, eight says Russia's man speak brush fan. but,
but you know, that, that I disagree with the flack that, that he made a text.

[00:43:30] Ali
Rizvi: Really at the end of the day, about how to create more products like
Instagram. there's this book that I've read, that was reviled by the, you know, especially all you
see is called the internet is not the answer. and, you know, it had a bit of influence on me. at that
time, I didn't agree with everything that this, this, I forgot the official name.

[00:43:58] Ali
Rizvi: but I did agree with him that, we know that if we go headlong down this
path, and if you've seen the matrix, you guys seen the matrix, right? There's a part in the majors
where Trinity opens up the door of the car and she points out and she says, you know, you know where
that's going to leave. and I think we always know where that, where things live.

[00:44:31] Ali
Rizvi: but, whether, you know, you call it human nature or, or whatever you
call it, just the movement of the cosmos may be, that,
that, that, you know, we go down this path knowing, I mean, we know, and, and that's where I
really disagreed with him because he, he, he, productize, taking people out and convincing them
to do things that maybe they really didn't want to do.

[00:45:00] Ali
Rizvi: And as a technologist, you know, it's kind of an as an, as an anathema, the right word, in essence, you
know, but, but I want to, I believe in the value of creating a great product that people want to use,
and sure we got to make money off of it. Absolutely. Yeah. We need to make money. We need to make, to
survive.

[00:45:20] Ali
Rizvi: We need to make money for our shareholders, but if your point becomes to
make money and not about providing value. Through to your customers through great product, then you've
got problems.

[00:45:33] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah. Well, if you have to use these, anti-patterns to get people to do
the things that you want them to do, is that the, you know, there are, there comes a question up from that,
you know, is your, is your product questionable?

[00:45:50] Frederick
Weiss: is your product actually a good product or is it just something that,
you know, somebody, you know, a few levels above, you said, oh, that's great MVP, ship it. And you
know, you have to do whatever you can to provide your users. Some dopamine hits an order to, you know,
make sure that you're around next quarter.

[00:46:14] Ali
Rizvi: Well, that's it right? I mean, you, you said something really
interesting here, the duke, you mean heads, it's obvious that Facebook can afford the, scientific
research, but they need to understand how to control people. Get them to do what they want. Right. And, or
to provide a technology that allows others to control people, to get them to do what they want.

[00:46:37] Ali
Rizvi: my daughter actually just wrote, an article on media bias for her class.
and, you know, and, and, and, and she's, you know, she's at this generation she's 16 and,
and she's, you know, it was an interesting learning experience for her because she got to actually pull
the veil off of all of these, you know, apps.

[00:47:03] Ali
Rizvi: She regularly uses, you know, Instagram and WhatsApp. you know, a lot of
WhatsApp here because Mexico is a big WhatsApp, country. in fact, what's really
interesting in Mexico. Facebook has an agreement with Mexico. so when you buy a, the mobile sign
here, all the WhatsApp. Yeah, what's that all of all the apps, Facebook apps, messenger, WhatsApp,
they don't count against your data.

[00:47:33] Ali
Rizvi: I

[00:47:34] Frederick
Weiss: actually had a lot of conversations with many, many people, all
over the globe and WhatsApp. That's the way they, have these conversations with their family all
around the world is, is yeah. It's they leverage it in the exact same way without having to use their
data. WhatsApp is a great,

[00:47:52] Ali
Rizvi: yeah. great technology and look, I think that's an incredibly
valuable technology.

[00:47:59] Ali
Rizvi: but do I find the echo chamber of these Facebook forums valuable? a lot
less. So, they've created they've, you know, made a lot of trouble, going back to
the Facebook, you know, outing of them, by the name? I forgot her name. yeah. It's oh, the
whistleblower, the whistleblower, right,

[00:48:27] Frederick
Weiss: right.

[00:48:28] Frederick
Weiss: I don't recall her name off the top of my head. It would have
to

[00:48:34] Ali
Rizvi: know that is, I mean, it's, it's gone to the lack of trust is
the other thing. the lack of trust now, and amongst the people of the world, the lack of trust in
institutions, the lack of trust, and I think basic humanity,

[00:49:00] Ali
Rizvi: is really interesting because right now, the way I feel is, I don't
know if she's a whistleblower and meaning, meaning that I'm wondering if she's just simply part
of the great distractions.

[00:49:13] Frederick
Weiss: Ah, yes. If that was an intentional, whistleblower, if you will, like,
it was more of a ruse to cover something up because we all know, you know, the following day there
was, some kind of hollow blue, which took the platform down for hours and hours and hours, the
building was locked. What kind of coverup did they do?

[00:49:34] Frederick
Weiss: And so was that all part of some kind of, I don't want to go
all conspiracy theory on everybody, but you know, maybe it was some part of a, a planned kind of thing
done by the, by,

[00:49:50] Ali
Rizvi: by, the people in Facebook, the nefarious evil Cadray and say,

[00:49:59] Frederick
Weiss: yes, I was trying to not say like the robot people from Venus, but yes,
you get my point,

[00:50:03] Ali
Rizvi: you know?

[00:50:03] Ali
Rizvi: but, but, but think about, you know, controlling the narrative as part
of manufactured consent, um,

[00:50:12] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah, I think early yesterday, I mean, right. Like right away on Twitter
when Facebook was down for maybe an hour, I think
those conspiracy theories started that, oh, you know, there's this big Senate hearing, that's coming
up with a whistleblower. So Facebook's just trying to control the narrative. There were, there was
those, ideas kind of being floated out there almost immediately, that I saw.

[00:50:34] Nick
Sollecito: So it's, so it's interesting that you bring that up too
because I think it's just very common that we're, you know, as a society, so skeptical these days
that, you know, we're so quick to think, you know, this is something that far is going on.
It's not, you know, it's not just black and white. There's definitely nuance in there.

[00:50:50] Nick
Sollecito: And, you know, we're trying to find like, what's the real
answer and we may never know, you know, that's, that's, that's kind of what too, right?

[00:51:00] Nick
Sollecito: we may never know like it could have been just like a, you know, a
major outage incident, that was completely unrelated to the news, or it could have been.

[00:51:09] Ali
Rizvi: Yeah. I mean, it almost doesn't matter anymore. It

[00:51:13] Nick
Sollecito: doesn't,

[00:51:16] Ali
Rizvi: it's actually deeper. Right? I say I would say it's deeper than
noise because, it, it reflects on the systemic problem. a breakdown and, and, common value systems. You
know, we used to all believe that there was a thing called a

[00:51:40] Nick
Sollecito: fact.

[00:51:42] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah. And now we have fake news

[00:51:46] Ali
Rizvi: and now the fact is a fact is debatable.

[00:51:50] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah. Facts are debatable fact awaits. People still believe that
there's a lot of people that believe that the earth is flat. Like legitimately believe intimately,
believe that the earth is, you know, stood upon four elephants that stand on a turtle,

[00:52:09] Ali
Rizvi: and then we can walk up to the edge, like a crystal at the end that you
can go and touch

[00:52:16] Frederick
Weiss: again.

[00:52:17] Frederick
Weiss: I, again, though, this goes back to my previous point, I don't
think, and I'm going to, I think I might be, being generous. but I don't believe that these
people are stupid. I think again, it goes back to there's people that get their news from over here and
people that get their news from over there. I bet if you measure their IQs, there's probably a lot of,
equal, intelligent and less intelligent individuals, but it all comes to where certain people get
their news and who, is in charge and possibly controlling either in a negative, positive or neutral
sense.

[00:53:03] Ali
Rizvi: I, I would take it further. I think that I think we in the us, got
really lazy, in the sense that we believe that, we had evolved as humans for living. We actually have.
And, you know, and, and, evolution is a very long. Long-winded, you know, pattern, you know, for,
fruit flies to grow, you know, little spiny things on
it's on this legs, it takes, you know, a million years.

[00:53:46] Ali
Rizvi: well,

[00:53:47] Nick
Sollecito: what happened,

[00:53:47] Ali
Rizvi: you know, very long time, and, and humans had been around in the
great evolutionary chain. and you know, just not only are just an organic matter, forget about this
geological matter, for a very short period of time, but, kind of moving to, a couple of
other topics, I think we got really lazy cause we thought we were more, and, and technology kind of fooled
us.

[00:54:17] Ali
Rizvi: All right. It did look, we create these amazing

[00:54:22] Frederick
Weiss: things. this iPhone, oh my God. It could make me a cheese pizza, but
yeah, we're, we're, we're just, we're just people. and these things aren't might
not be as great as we imagine them to be. We are, we're not even a type one civilization.

[00:54:40] Ali
Rizvi: No. I mean, you know, I love the work of, what's his
name?

[00:54:45] Ali
Rizvi: no. Yeah. I love his work too. no, there's a guy who, who was
actually tossed at a Ted Conference. and then. Yeah,
they'd bend his TedTalk. can't don't remember his name, but he did this interesting. He
found this interesting, this is going to sound wacky, but, in this day and age where, you know, where the
stuff that was supposed to be believable is less believable.

[00:55:19] Ali
Rizvi: I tend towards thinking that the stuff that was less believable maybe is
more believable. You know, the stuff that we, you know, through propaganda and the right set of, you know,
marketing messages, I'm always supposed to push aside, which is that, it could very well be
that there were much more advanced societies before the society.

[00:55:42] Ali
Rizvi: Absolutely. and, we don't know for sure. but we have some good
ideas. and, there are some really good, studies in scientific research on this, but the reason why we
wouldn't explore that, or wouldn't allow that to come within our psychological frame. Is
because it is that it would begin to diminish our ego, you know, and that sound of the powers that be,
that's just something that we can allow.

[00:56:12] Ali
Rizvi: And so in our, in our country, in us, we can simply not allow ourselves to be involved. That's something that's pretty prevalent.

[00:56:25] Nick
Sollecito:

[00:56:26] Ali
Rizvi: and to the point that, you know, we've never been removed any form of competition, you know, real
competition in our schools and forget about the educations that, oh my God, we could go off on that big time
as well.

[00:56:39] Ali
Rizvi: Right. that's another hour, that's another hour. But, but the,
but the, what I was getting at is that we got really lazy and, and also we, we lost our ability to
self-reflect and really take a stoic approach of, of, you know, self-criticism. and having lost that, we let this complete, just let this
thing go, just fly on its own.

[00:57:11] Ali
Rizvi: And this thing is carrying us the technological part is it's just a symptom of the greater, you know, movement of, I guess
because we don't curb it. the cult of narcism, I guess the best way I could put it.

[00:57:36] Frederick
Weiss: Absolutely because we're projecting our own, our own egos out there.
look at me.

[00:57:44] Frederick
Weiss: How many followers do I have? Did everybody like my photo of the dog? If the man, I'm having a bad day. Oh, I got three more likes or that made my afternoon. Is
that real emotional currency and how. Healthy are those patterns on a day to day for a grown human being and
how, how, how devastating could those be for a child using this technology?

[00:58:14] Frederick
Weiss: You know, it's some of, it's just, it's, it's, it's
really out there, but, let me, let, let, let me, communicate here that we're, we're
right at the end of the show. And I know probably

[00:58:26] Ali
Rizvi: talk a lot of different directions then talk about a product so much.
No, but, but

[00:58:31] Frederick
Weiss: we did talk about the ethics of products and I think that's a
really, really important conversation to have.

[00:58:39] Frederick
Weiss: So, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm deeply, deeply appreciative of,
both of you for, for sharing your time and talking about this today, but I have two last questions for
you, Ali, that, that I like to always ask my guests first off, obviously, where can people find out more
about.

[00:58:57] Ali
Rizvi: Yeah. So, I mean, I've got a LinkedIn presence.

[00:58:59] Ali
Rizvi: certainly, I have a very, at this point, a little news,
Twitter presence, you know, but, you know, I know products and, and products built an
ethical way, with the intent of solving, solving real, real problems for, for customers, for, for
users. and then, you know, certainly, hopefully, the money is as simply a by-product of, of really
helping, helping to provide a great service.

[00:59:34] Ali
Rizvi: so that's kind of the way I look at it. the other thing is
that, you know, the LinkedIn presence there, but, I am big sort of slowly beginning to,
actually work on a book, product management book, kind of centered around, Kind of centered around
this, this particular topic that we kind of, we went deep and, you know, I've spent a lot of my, my, my,
I've had a lot of experience in Senate, spent a lot of time studying metaphysics, and you
know, some, a lot of esoteric, literature.

[01:00:11] Ali
Rizvi: and I have this idea of combining metaphysics with, with product
and mainly about this notion of coming back to, ethical patterns that, you know, that was really loved for
the world to begin to embrace again, and feel like there is a thing, that we all share, and it's
called truth, and it may be different for all of us.

[01:00:40] Ali
Rizvi: but we all share it. and, and we can, we can certainly learn from
each other and appreciate each other's version of what is true at the heart of it. It's all one.
And, and you know, I feel like when I was a product person, I, I put that same sort of heart and soul
into the way I dealt products.

[01:01:01] Frederick
Weiss: I love that. Well, the last question I have for you, Ali is, we always
provide our guests an opportunity to say a few words of
wisdom at the end. So the stage is yours, any words of wisdom for our audience, departing the parting words
of wisdom,

[01:01:21] Ali
Rizvi: get into the Headspace of non-judgment, recognize that at the heart of,
all of us is a certain truth about our humanity.

[01:01:37] Ali
Rizvi: And, expose yourself to literature or that it and con and content and
literature and thinking and philosophy that is outside of your echo chamber. do it in a way that's
that's that you can actually allow yourself to learn from it. And in that, expand your horizons and,
begun to begin to have a level of compassion and empathy for the person next to you that may, that you may
think that it looks different, talks, different things, different, but at the heart of it all, we
share a common humanity and let's focus on that.

[01:02:24] Frederick
Weiss: Love it. Thank you so much, Ali we'll we'll say yeah, really
appreciate it. Well, that's it for a show. I want to thank, first our guest co-host Nick
Sollecito. Nick. Thank you so much for joining.

[01:02:38] Ali
Rizvi: Thank

[01:02:39] Frederick
Weiss: you and Ali, thank you so much for sharing your time with us.

[01:02:57] Frederick
Weiss: And I'm really glad that we had it.

[01:03:01] Ali
Rizvi: Thank you for your time.

[01:03:14] Frederick
Weiss: Absolutely. Thank you all. And thanks to everybody for watching. Really
appreciate it. And we'll catch you next time.
...more
1h 6min
October 03, 2021287 – 🧠 Learning in Public with SWYX
In this episode, we talk with SWYX, author, speaker, podcaster, and learning in public evangelist. We dive into his career history in finance and how he transitioned into development. We also discuss the challenges of Developer Experience, the advantages of learning in public, and lessons learned from podcasting. Additionally, we get a musical performance from SWYX himself.
Bonus: We have Software Engineer, Arit Amana as a guest co-host.
✨ Episode Sponsor
- Auth0: https://auth0.com
- Auth0 on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/auth0
- Auth0 on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/auth0
- Auth0 Avocado Labs online meetup events: https://avocadolabs.dev/
🔗 Episode Links
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/swyx
- Author: Coding Career Handbook: https://www.learninpublic.org/
- Website: https://www.swyx.io/
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/swyxTV
- The Swyx Mixtape: https://swyx.transistor.fm/
- Swyx on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/swyx
- Build Invincible Apps: https://temporal.io/
- Guest co-host: Arit Amana
  Twitter: https://twitter.com/aritdeveloper
  Website: https://arit.dev/
  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aritamana/
  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/AritDeveloper
  Github: https://github.com/msarit
  Arit Amana on Thunder Nerds: https://youtu.be/i74Swu8Us-A
- Hosts: Frederick Weiss: https://twitter.com/FrederickWeiss
📜 Transcript

[00:00:00] Frederick Weiss: Welcome, I’m Frederick
Weiss. And, thank you for consuming the Thunder Nerds. A conversation with the people behind the technology
that love what they do, and do tech good. And our sponsor Auth0 is helping us do that all year long. Auth0 makes it easy for developers to build a custom secure and standard-based unified log-in by
providing authentication and authorization as a service.

[00:01:08] Frederick
Weiss: Try them out now by going to Auth0.com. Also, check them out at youtube.com/Auth0, Twitch.tv/Auth0, and Avocadolabs.dev for their online meetup events. Thanks again,
Auth0. And let's go ahead and welcome our guests, you know, speaking of the guests, we actually
have a co-host on the show today, which I'm so grateful to have.

[00:01:44] Frederick
Weiss: We have Arit Amana.
Thank you so much for a guest hosting!

[00:01:48] Arit
Amana: Thanks for having me. It's great to be back.

[00:01:52] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah, absolutely. Appreciate it. And with that being said, and no
ados being
further, let's get to our guests for today. Learning in public evangelist, speaker, author, teacher
writer, programmer podcaster.

[00:02:08] Frederick
Weiss: SWYX himself.
Welcome to the show.

[00:02:13] SWYX: Thanks. Yeah.

[00:02:16] Frederick
Weiss: Thanks. I feel really lucky to have both of you on the show today. So
thanks both of you, I guess, at the start for, for sharing your time. I know it's always, um, a little
challenging on a Saturday, so, you know, thanks again. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, um, you know, I know you were having
some issues SWYX with, uh, with traveling.

[00:02:39] Frederick
Weiss: Uh, do you mind talking a little bit about that? I think, uh, you got
caught up. Uh, Trump travel ban. And now you're back in Washington.

[00:02:47] SWYX: Yes, sir. Seattle. Um, yeah, I went to Croatia for a conference. They shift conferences as
amazing as my first in-person conference in a long, long time. Uh, and it's always amazing to have like
an all-expenses paid, uh, conference travel
trip.

[00:03:05] SWYX: And so I, I went with it with all my friends who were also speakers and had a really good
time there and give a, give a talk and met a lot of interesting people, came back to the immigration gates
and got turned around by the customs and border patrol because they said that I came from a restricted
country.

[00:03:25] SWYX: So, uh, it turns out that, uh, I mean, I knew in concept about the chunk travel ban, but
like that was imposed. Early in the pandemic. And I had the vaccine and I had a negative COVID test. I just
assumed that I'd be fine. Uh, cause like it's like I have American vaccine in me. Uh, but no, it
just as a, as a, as a rule of law by executive proclamation, uh, I am a higher COVID risk because I have the
wrong piece of paper.

[00:03:53] SWYX: Uh, so I had to go quarantine in Mexico for, for 14 days. Uh, don't really speak the
language. Didn't have a place to stay. Didn't have any cash on me, uh, and just had to figure it
out. Wow.

[00:04:05] Frederick
Weiss: So what did, did you, did you not have a, like your COVID registration
card or did that just

[00:04:11] SWYX: not count the matter? Yeah.

[00:04:13] SWYX: It didn't

[00:04:13] Frederick
Weiss: matter. It didn't matter. That is so crazy. Well, you know, speaking
of your travels then I, I know you said you had got caught up in Mexico. Um, you know, w within these
travels, how, how was everything did you feel safe with, with the, uh, with the vid going around? Like, was
everybody mask app is a little bit better than, than here?

[00:04:34] SWYX: Um, everyone's, everyone's fairly actually, I think, yeah. I would say, I'll
say that Europe is actually more uptight or strict about having a mask on properly and at all times. So, uh,
yeah, that's, that's even the ironically surprising bit that the US is enforcing Europe travel ban when, uh, okay. Quite honestly,
Europe is doing a better job of keeping them.

[00:04:56] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It's, it's, it's
interesting how that, that all works and hopefully within, um, I don't know, maybe I'm being
optimistic in six months. We'll get to a place that's a little bit better. It seems that
those Delta variances are kind of slowing down in certain
locations in the United States and the same thing with, what is it?

[00:05:15] Frederick
Weiss: I don't know how you pronounce it.

[00:05:19] SWYX: Lambda.

[00:05:20] Arit
Amana: There's a new one. Yeah. Lambdas picking up.

[00:05:26] SWYX: Oh, is

[00:05:26] Frederick
Weiss: that the one that's supposed to be like resistant to the vaccine or
something such as that, um, maybe we'll get back to, uh, feeling safe again, you know, going to
conferences and seeing people and all that, but, uh, yeah.

[00:05:41] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah. I, think we have to, uh, it's, there
are too many smart people out there to not get us through, uh, the
situation.

[00:05:55] Frederick
Weiss: So switch, tell me a little bit about yourself and your own words. I
know X is from your, your name, Sean, and it's the initials within Chinese of your English and American
name. Um, would you mind just giving our audience a brief, uh, context about

[00:06:12] SWYX: yourself? Yeah, I'm born and raised in Singapore and came to the states for
college.

[00:06:16] SWYX: Uh, and I spent my first career in finance where I did, uh, investment banking and hedge
funds mostly learn to code on the job, but I never had the title of a software engineer. So I made my own
tools, but I didn't, I wasn't, I didn't do any software engineering best practices, no testing.
Haha no version control.

[00:06:36] SWYX: Ha. It was fantastic. Uh, I had, I came out of investment banking with a 4,000 line, uh,
uh, VBA script that I copied and emailed to myself every single time. Chemo with a new version. So that was
my version control.

[00:06:55] SWYX: Uh, yeah. It's, it's on, it's on, they get up just actually, cause I, I lost it
for a while and then I was like, wait, hang on. Like, that was the most significant program I ever made
America years. I better figure it out. So if you search my Twitter and look for VBA, you'll see it. Um,
and yeah, eventually I burned out at the finance bit.

[00:07:13] SWYX: Uh, it was very stressful, and uh, I think it's not very good for, um, just like
fundamentally it's very closed. Uh, ecosystem very zero-sum like, I win you lose. And I realized that,
uh, it wasn't actually compounding. That was the main thing I was okay with. Zero-sum actually because
like somethings have to be, but, uh, it wasn't compounding.

[00:07:34] SWYX: So whatever trade I made, whether or not it made money, the next trade, uh, would have to
top it. And if I lost money, I would have to make up what I lost. Um, and it was just like a black hole of,
of ideas and, and energy. And after two years of day-to-day stress, you know, some days, uh, just sleeping
under the table, cause I was just too tired to go home.

[00:07:55] SWYX: Um, I just, I had enough, I just burned out. Um, and it wasn't, it wasn't like, I
think it was like a 50 50, like me and them thing. Like, uh, I think that, uh, you know, there are some
people who are just really insanely talented at it. Uh, but I put in my all for two years and I there's
a, there's like a company wide ranking of like analysts and I came in in the middle, um, and I looked at
the people who are at the top and I was like, I'm not.

[00:08:19] SWYX: You know, so, uh, but there was one thing I was good at, which is coding, uh, which was
like making my own tools. And I realized that, um, I was doing a lot of number crunching. So I did, uh,
Python and Haskell uh number-crunching for my derivatives trades and for my portfolio risk management. Um,
and I was often the script monkey whenever people wanted to make any changes to calculations or like, Hey,
like, can you rerun the analysis?

[00:08:42] SWYX: Like in this different way, I would have to go back and punch those numbers in and get the
numbers out and then like send it back to them. Um, if I could remove myself from that equation, then, uh,
people would get. Use out of my, my work without me there. Uh, and that's what led me to front end
development and JavaScript.

[00:08:59] SWYX: Um, I think actually front end developers, don't under, don't appreciate sometimes
the power that they have in creating applications that standalone without them. And they can scale basically
infinitely without any resources whatsoever, apart from the browser. That's just an amazing tool. So,
uh, yeah, I, I, and, you know, even despite all the language that I learned Java was the hardest.

[00:09:23] SWYX: So I tried six months of self-learning with free code camp and I didn't feel it was enough. So I enrolled in a bootcamp and
that got me my first job. Uh, so I did, uh, so just to wrap up, I did, uh, I did a year and two Sigma and
then joined Netlify, that's kind of my claim to fame where I, I joined fairly, fairly early on and then,
uh, grew with them and, uh, and then joined AWS, uh, to do.

[00:09:46] SWYX: More like basically five-plus plus,
because like, it was a Netlify competitor to plus storage plus, you know, uh, AWS often stuff like that. Um,
and then year early this year I joined Tim portal as had a developer experience. Yeah, that's it. Well,

[00:10:02] Frederick
Weiss: let me ask you this question. I want to jump back to what you're
doing now, but there's a lot of us that we, we, we start off in these careers that we believe are, um,
you know, the best path for us or, you know, I went to school for this, or my family told me to do this, or
I, I feel like I'll be able to make the most money in this.

[00:10:21] Frederick
Weiss: What, what exactly got you into finance? And, um, what, what, yeah, I
mean, you, you went into the turning point, but w was there an actual love or a passion for finance, and
then you kind of discovered your actual

[00:10:36] SWYX: passion. I think there was a, there was passion, otherwise, I wouldn't have stuck with
it for so long.

[00:10:42] SWYX: Um, I w what got me into it was honestly the 1997 and 2001 financial crisis. So 1997 is not
such a big deal for Americans, but, uh, in Asia it was a big deal. Uh, there was an Asian financial crisis currency crisis, uh, entire governments collapse because of mismanagement of
their, uh, economy. So, um, and also hedge funds.

[00:11:07] SWYX: But, but, uh, I realized that basically every other job, every other industry is inherently
tied to the economy, except if you deal in finance, and if you can short the market when everything is going
to hell, and I kind of saw that again, during college. Because I already decided on Korean finance, but
during college, uh, I went through the great financial crisis of 2007, 2008.

[00:11:35] SWYX: And again like everyone, you know, out of a job or like overextended in your loans or
whatever, but if you're a hedge fund, you were managed, you managed to be able to short the market. So
it seemed like the only career where, uh, if you could call bullshit on those. I'm sorry. I don't
know if I can swear. I think I'll be S on, on, on, uh, sometimes central bankers who are quite frankly,
you know, they, they view their confidence, men, confidence, women.

[00:12:02] SWYX: Like they, the, they say things that are, may not actually be true. And if, if you, if you
cash them out doing it, you can actually make a lot of money. But at the bare minimum, you can at least look
after yourself. If everything is going to, you know, too, to
hell in a handbasket, as you can actually, you know, move yourself to cash or like you are.

[00:12:21] SWYX: In the center of the financial transformation of assets. And I think that's a very
powerful position to be in. And I thought if I could understand that and get good at it, then, um, it would
be, it would be a really great position to be in. Um, I think I, I got there in understanding, but I
wasn't good at it.

[00:12:42] SWYX: That's kind of the summary of it. Um, I also didn't like the people I would say
like, yeah, there were a lot of, um, um, I think money, money is money is an interesting thing. And when you
deal with other people's money and you deal in very large sums of it, like we were three, we're a
three person team running a billion dollars in, uh, gross notional value.

[00:13:05] SWYX: Why say was a notional. Uh, it's not actually, we didn't have a billion dollars
sitting around, uh, that was including the shorts that we had. So we were a market-neutral, long, short funds. So we had to buy $500 million worth of
shares, but then also shorts, uh, 500 million of other shares that which will hopefully go down and make
profit on a difference.

[00:13:26] SWYX: And yeah. I mean, I thought that that was my deal position. I spent 10 years getting there
and I got there and I realized I didn't like it. Um, so, uh, was, that was the second part of the
question

[00:13:39] Arit
Amana: I'll go ahead. No, no, no, please. No, I had, that's an,
that's an incredible story suite I have to say. And
I guess a follow-up question.

[00:13:47] Arit
Amana: I know we need to get to the rest of our talking points, but I'm
curious to hear you speak about how you, cause it takes a lot of courage. I feel like you can know that
something isn't working for you and you can know that I'm not happy here and I'm not as
fulfilled as I thought that I was going to be, but I still think it takes a certain level of courage to walk
away from the familiar.

[00:14:08] Arit
Amana: So can you talk about like how, how you. More. So the, the mental and
the emotional side, I mean, we know you transitioned out of that job, but if you could speak to maybe any
challenges you faced either mentally or emotionally, or in terms of, yeah. Right.

[00:14:25] SWYX: I speak to a lot of, uh, finance refugees who are like me, they heard my story and then,
and then they want to do it, but then they're kind of like, but I have a really comfortable life, you
know, I get paid well in finance.

[00:14:36] SWYX: Like, do you want me to walk away from this? Uh, and yeah. You know, and changing careers,
like, you know, I, unfortunately, I don't have like a kids or anything, so it was a little bit
easier for me, but changing careers, uh, at the, you know, at the age of 30. Is still something that's
intimidating. I think it's like, you feel like you should have, you should be hitting your
stride.

[00:14:56] SWYX: You should be, uh, it should be well-known in your industry by now. And to say like, ah,
screw it. I'm going to start over is you have to be in certain point of like, uh, understanding that
there's a lot of life left and it's life is too short to, um, to spend doing something that you
don't enjoy or are not good at.

[00:15:15] SWYX: Um,

[00:15:15] Frederick
Weiss: it reminds me of a tweet. You just put out the other day where, and
I'm going to read this verbatim, so I get it right. There's a lot of quick quote, unquote, quit your
job, indie hack your way to freedom on social media. I want to articulate a middle path, a work at a company
on interesting problems, but also maintain side projects, reputation as backup and longterm game.

[00:15:40] Frederick
Weiss: AKA have a job while not being your job. That kind of.

[00:15:47] SWYX: Is that fair? Um, that was that's a slightly tangential thing. Uh, but I was definitely
my job, uh, went during finance. Like there was nothing else about me apart from my job. Um, and I think,
but it also applies to a lot of devs who are their job and that's their whole identity and they're
kind of banking on their job, treating them well to take care of them.

[00:16:07] SWYX: Long-term, uh, I don't think it serves them very well sometimes because I find that
basically, you know, jobs don't have your long-term best interest at heart. They, they wants to slot you
in to, um, somewhere within the hierarchy, uh, to, for you to perform according to the letters and career
metrics that they've defined.

[00:16:25] SWYX: Um, but sometimes they don't know what your interests are and if your interest diverged
at all from the company, then you're kind of screwed. If you don't have a network outside of your
job, um, and to build a network, you probably should do something interesting to others that are interesting
to them beyond the company that you work at.

[00:16:42] SWYX: So. Yeah. Th this tweet is a more recent realization, nothing to do with the finance bit.
Um, but it, I guess it's related.

[00:16:52] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah. I was just thinking it, thinking as a way of a, more of like
advice for people that, you know, you, you don't, don't, don't, you know, if you're looking
to do something, you don't have to jump off a bridge to get to a shift.

[00:17:03] Frederick
Weiss: You know, you, you know, you, you can work at where you're at and
kind of build up and then find that. Or, you know, some, sometimes it makes sense to just drop what
you're doing and go,

[00:17:14] SWYX: go, go forward for anyone who's considering a career change or anyone who knows a
friend who's considering a career change.

[00:17:20] SWYX: This is exactly what I did. I took a year to do it. Um, I left my hedge fund. I joined a
startup that was serving my hedge funds. Um, so I went from customer to employee. Uh, and so I was tech
adjacent, right? I was tech and Jason and still using my finance knowledge, but, uh, trying out a, uh, a
startup role, I was a non-technical product manage.

[00:17:43] SWYX: And, uh, while I was there, I learned to code on decide, uh, F using free code camp.
I'm a massive supporter of them. I've donated to them every year since I graduated. Um, and, uh,
they really, they're really helpful in trying this
on and seeing if you can hack it as a, as a developer.

[00:18:02] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah. Sorry.

[00:18:02] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah,

[00:18:04] Arit
Amana: I do. Yes. Yes, I do. I love free code camp as well. You're so
right. This is just a really robust platform. And I feel anyone, anyone who's heard my story and reaches
out to me asking that they want to do the same thing. I always point them to free code camp. I'm like,
if you can gain all those certificates and have fun doing free code camp, then you, you could probably, you
know, um, make it as a Dell, as a developer and enjoy it, which is also important.

[00:18:32] SWYX: Yeah. Yeah. How long did you take to go through this whole thing?

[00:18:36] Arit
Amana: Uh, my journey was 11 months, 11 months from. My first line of code to
my first job was 11 months. Yeah.

[00:18:46] SWYX: That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Yeah.

[00:18:48] Arit
Amana: Yeah. But I had a lot of privilege working for me, so I don't want
to make it sound like it was, you know, yeah.

[00:18:55] Arit
Amana: I had, I had a lot of perks like I didn't have to work. And so that
was a huge, you know, like burden not to have is, you know, not worry about bringing a paycheck. Yeah. I
would say that was the biggest part of my privilege was not having to work, but it wasn't easy. I had,
an infant daughter and a son, so it wasn't easy by, by any means.

[00:19:16] Arit
Amana: Um, I would like to segue if it's okay with you switch into your
current work as a developer experience, I feel like there should be a third word. I should be singing.
Right.

[00:19:29] SWYX: The title is head of developer experience. It's kind of

[00:19:31] Arit
Amana: head of developer experience. Thank you. At temporal.io. Uh, talk to us
about what developer experience is, um, and what your day-to-day is like in that.

[00:19:42] SWYX: Sure. I, I, I've been asked to, uh, various versions of this car for quite recently,
and there's a lot of interest around this. I
don't really know why. Um, so I segment developer expert into a kind of two, two large segment sections,
and then I'll focus on the section that I part I focus on. Uh, so internal developer experience, uh, is
often formed by companies and teams that have a lot of developers internally and they want to improve their
productivity.

[00:20:11] SWYX: So you see developer experience teams that like Spotify or slack or, um, Netflix, uh, their
customers are not developers, but internally they have a lot of developers. And, uh, if you can improve the
productivity of 1% of them, then you just gained the equivalent of like a hundred developers for free.
Right?

[00:20:30] SWYX: So, uh, for those people, the way that I split it up is kind of. You there the three main
buckets. And I think the Netflix model was really interesting. If you listen to their podcast, they talk a
little bit about it. Uh, it was just essentially, uh, getting people started really quickly. So boots, the
bootstrap phase.

[00:20:48] SWYX: That's the first bit, the second bit is, uh, getting from code to deploy really, really
quickly. So that's kind of deployment, I guess, or CIC D and then the last bit is getting from
production back to deployment. So getting data logs, errors, all that, uh, feeding that into the dev
environment so that they can respond to incidents or outages or errors very quickly.

[00:21:11] SWYX: So, uh, that's kind of like the full software development life cycle that I really like
in internal developer experience. And I think when development and developer tools companies like the one I
work at or Netlify, or AWS, we try to market to developers, then that becomes external developer
experience.

[00:21:28] SWYX: So, um, what we are trying to do is we're trying to serve these internal developer
experience teams or the VP of edge or. Whoever, uh, is trying to make their own life more productive because
obviously suffered development is as cool as it is. It's still very unproductive in some elements and we
could do better with better tooling.

[00:21:47] SWYX: So external developer experience, uh, Kind of mostly right now developer relations, which
is, Hey, we have an awesome, we have an awesome product. Uh, let me tell you about it. Right. Um, but, but
that's a lot of content marketing. So, you know, you see people writing blog posts, giving talks and
doing workshops and stuff like that.

[00:22:05] SWYX: Um, but also I think it's starting to evolve a little bit more into community
management. So instead of me telling you what to do, or, uh, uh, me traveling out to, uh, you know, travel
the world and do conference talks, um, let's actually have a community where people talk to each other,
people hire each other people, uh, build libraries that help, uh, an open source for each other.

[00:22:27] SWYX: And they realized that a more vibrant community actually is, uh, is a more sustainable moat
than turning out content day after day after. Right. So, uh, there's the concept piece, there's the
community piece. And then the last piece, which in my mind is that forms of external facing developer
experience is the product piece.

[00:22:46] SWYX: Uh, what I mean by products is that, um, that no amount of advocacy you can do in the
content, no amount of community, user generated content or a forum support or. Uh, or conferences or what
have you no mana that can fix a broken product. And if you could just give really good feedback to your
engineers and PMs about, Hey, I talked to a lot of users as part of my job.

[00:23:10] SWYX: Uh, here's all, here's what, here's the pain points and here's how, what
they struggle with when they go through our product right now. And if you build that into the product that
people don't have to docs, they don't have to read blog posts. They don't have to read, they
don't have to talk to any other humans.

[00:23:22] SWYX: It just use your thing. And it just.

[00:23:26] Arit
Amana: Awesome. You know, I hear you speak about, um, just with the
descriptions that you gave and thank you so much for that was very helpful for me. What's the
delineation between developer experience and developer relations, which is another term that I'm hearing
more and more.

[00:23:40] Arit
Amana: Um, could you speak, uh, can you speak to how you manage the flow of
information as head of developer experience? Because from what I hear you describe, there's like a lot
of feedback, feedback loops happening either between the DX people and the developers, whether internal,
external, how do you, um, handle all that flow of information and even from the applications and the
technology itself, and how do you handle that and almost, um, um, like manage that information in a way that
it, it becomes usable and actionable for the, for, for other.

[00:24:20] SWYX: We don't handle it very well.

[00:24:25] SWYX: Let's just be honest, right? Like we're still figuring this out. Like, um, I, I
don't want to say, you know, I want to sit here in front of you and say like, I have this all on. I
figure it out. Um, what we do is we hire really capable people. And then we talk a lot and we talk about the
things that we've come across and we have a, what we call a CRM, a customer relationship management
tool.

[00:24:47] SWYX: That's the notion essentially like we take notes, uh, when we interact with customers
and potential customers. But also we, when you run an open-source tool, custom portal.io is open source. Um, there's just sometimes too many anonymous
customers who, who you never really talked to again. So, uh, it's hard to take notes on everyone and
it's unrealistic.

[00:25:07] SWYX: So we don't do that. Uh, we do that for, you know, large names and prospective
customers that we expect to have along dealing with. Um, and then. Surfacing issues in a holistic manner. So
we love the word holistic internally within temporal. To me, what that means is like, okay, where does this
slot within a developer's journey through temporal, right?

[00:25:31] SWYX: Like, uh, from the landing page to onto the first page of the docs to the hello world. Um,
do we throw the book at them or do we, uh, I realized though the book is an idiom. So a book at them, like,
do we, like how much information do we overload you with and how much is above the fold? Cause that's
quite realistically all you're going to read on your first encounter.

[00:25:53] SWYX: Um, and so what can we squeeze in there that will get you interested in and get you to come
back? And then maybe the next level is after your interest, like, how do you get you to a hello world that
is not only productive but also like it's insincerely is something that you cannot. Uh, on your own or
something that you would take a lot longer to do with other tools.

[00:26:16] SWYX: Um, and then once you've decided to use the tool, how do we get you to production with
all the best practices that we found so far, uh, deploying on your own cloud or on ours and, and then once
you've deployed it, like, what are the practices for optimization and scaling? No. So, so there's a
whole journey that we've been mapping out and I'm using that essentially to coordinate, um, how we
structured the docs, how we do developer relations, like, uh, workshops and our content and all that.

[00:26:44] SWYX: Uh, and then community-wise, I think
it's really helpful when people give you feedback, where does it slot in that, in, in that journey. So,
um, and then hopefully you've you build it out, but, um, I don't mean to say it's a, any, by any
means scientific, um, you know, we're a small team, um, that is serving a fairly large user base, uh,
and it's a very complex product.

[00:27:07] SWYX: So a lot of things get dropped. Maybe we could do a better job of it, but also I would just
need someone full-time taking notes.

[00:27:17] Arit
Amana: Thank you so much. Um, and, uh, just rounding up, I guess, this section,
um, it sounds like interesting work, um, very involved work, but as a developer, it doesn't sound like
there's a lot of coding involved in developer experience work. And so how do you handle that as a
developer individually? And how do you keep your coding skills sharp?

[00:27:38] Arit
Amana: If your day job is wrapped up in that kind of.

[00:27:43] SWYX: Yeah. Um, to some extent I've already given up and being like a full-time developer. So
you just have to make a piece with that. Um, and, but, uh, you know, we do we do code, uh, so I'll give
you examples. Um, and Netlify where I used to work. Uh, our developer relations program formerly had a
rotation onto an edge team for one quarter of the year.

[00:28:05] SWYX: So three months out of the 12 months of a year, you are on the edge team. You do not have
any different responsibilities and you take tickets, you execute on them, you understand architecture,
your document, you write tests, uh, all the other
engineering stuff. So you keep sharp, you work on the products and then you go evangelize the
product.

[00:28:20] SWYX: I think that's a really nice thing to do. Unfortunately, three months is actually quite
a short time. So onboard and offboard. So people can give you long-running tasks and stuff like that. So, uh, I, on some level
you're still not a real engineer, right? You're not maintaining something day in and day out.

[00:28:37] SWYX: You're not on call for the thing that you wrote nine months ago. Like, uh, there are a
lot of nuances that, uh, you just don't get if you're a tourist, uh, and in that space. Whereas, um,
we do write a lot of, uh, example code, so demos workshops, stuff like that. And for me, so for example,
we're building out a TypeScript SDK, um, I'm engaged in API design and that's some of the
heaviest technical challenges I've ever faced.

[00:29:02] SWYX: Uh, even though I'm not writing. Production code. I am determining the design of
production code for years to come, which is a fairly high-stress job. Um, so I mean, it's not high stress. I mean, I'm, uh, I'm enjoying it.
I'm just saying like, uh, to say that that is not technical as a joke like we're discussing,
we're discussing, uh, API design and like implementation details and stuff like that.

[00:29:27] SWYX: Um, there's, there are a thousand
more ways to be technical than like hands-on keyboard
committing code. So, uh, I don't know. I think that's, I'm enjoying it and it's, I'm not
scared if I ever have to go full-time coding again.

[00:29:47] Frederick
Weiss: Well, speaking of coding, I'd love to talk about our next subject,
which is the, uh, coding, a coding career handbook.

[00:29:56] Frederick
Weiss: Um, so first off, when did you write this?

[00:30:01] SWYX: a few years ago. No, this is April to May,
uh, April to June 2020. There was last year. Yeah.

[00:30:07] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah. Sorry. That's what I meant by if your time is going by
quickly. Uh, so what was the, what was the catalyst? What, what
made you write this book?

[00:30:16] SWYX: I had two months off between uh Netlify and, and, uh, Amazon. So I, uh, I decided that I
wanted to do it in India. Everyone was like launching their own books and like running your own courses. I
was like, okay, okay, I'll get into this. And, you know, uh, I looked around for what's, which of my
blog posts have had the most readers.

[00:30:35] SWYX: And my blog was on learning and public has had over a million. And constantly get
shoutouts there, bots that like are written because of it
there are translations. I think there are like 10 different translations now of, of that essay. And
so it really resonated. And I was, and I was like, okay, probably people want this as a book.

[00:30:54] SWYX: So I expanded upon it. I was like, okay, I'll, I'll try to make this like a
two-week project because Daniel Vassallo and Twitter-like encouraged me, like, you know, just to get started to
get it out there. I ended up planning on 50 chapters, uh, and having to cut it down because I, I,
there's no way I was gonna ship 50 chapters and, and then just wrote and wrote and wrote for two months
and, uh, wrote everything that I thought was true.

[00:31:21] SWYX: What's what, there's a little bit of imposter syndrome giving out career advice
because everyone's journey is different. Everyone starts from a different place, you know, depending on
your privilege and, uh, your, you know, just your circumstances. Right? So, um, how do you get around that
is you collect advice from other people?

[00:31:37] SWYX: So, um, it's, this is not advice, not just advice from me, this advice from 1400 other
resources that I collected and put in the bibliography of the book. So it's very much a starting point
for like, okay, you just graduated from your Bootcamp or your free code camp. Um, here's every, let's say you just got your first job as
a.

[00:31:55] SWYX: Um, I, I try not to address the like first job hunts thing because a lot of other resources
do that. So I think that's overcrowded, but, um, it's very important by the way, you don't have
a job. You don't, you're not starting on the rest of the journey, but once you get in the job, um,
the people stop learning and they're not reading.

[00:32:12] SWYX: They're not resources to get you from junior to senior. And guess what? Like, most
people want to hire senior engineers, not juniors. Uh, so my focus was to level you up from junior to
senior. And that was the entire messaging entire focus of like, okay, here's everything that they
don't tell you when you start the job.

[00:32:27] SWYX: Uh, I think it's the equivalent of having a good mentor, um, at work. And sometimes you
don't get to choose your mentor, you just show up and they assign you someone and they may or may not be
that great. And I'm finding that so many people are mistreated by the employee or just like
under-resourced by their employer.

[00:32:44] SWYX: So they come to me and, uh, I try to help them as best as I can.

[00:32:48] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah. I love too that you have like a full-on, like, it's very interactive too. Like you can obviously buy
the book, but you also have all this other material. Do you mind kind of touching on like the, uh, the
advanced options of, of the purchase?

[00:33:02] SWYX: Yeah, I've actually simplified. I used to have three tiers and that was just like,
okay. Let's like trying to make the most money out
of this thing. And I realized like, I, you know, I have a, I have a good job. Uh, I don't need, I
don't need to maximize the money. I just need to charge for my time. And also, I don't want to like
add on another monthly charge to people's bills and stuff like that.

[00:33:21] SWYX: It's just super stressful. I'm, I'm sick of all the subscriptions I'm
paying. So I made it a one-time fee if you want the book, get the book, but it's already like, you know,
pirated too, to oblivion. Um, what, what really, what really
matters is the community, like read the book together with other people, reading the book and me and ask me
questions as you go along.

[00:33:42] SWYX: It's a one-time fee of like, I don't know, like 40, 50. Uh, 40 bucks and, and yeah,
and I have a discord and I have a circled forum and we
chat about the book we meet up. Uh, I show you how I wrote the book cause I have, um, you know, recorded
lectures and stuff like that. Um, and I give you extra commentary. So, um, it's everything I think, uh,
I think it's, I think it's just, uh, uh, steel of my time, but, uh, I love, I love running the
community and like, I love the the chats that we have.

[00:34:10] SWYX: I have people showing up and saying, they asked me questions, and then you go away and come back seven months later and they go like, Hey,
by the way, you know, uh, I, uh, I haven't, I've been pretty quiet, but like, this is what I've
done in my, in my job. And, um, I had, I had a couple of people. Go from actually go from junior to
senior.

[00:34:25] SWYX: And one of them doubled their pay, um, going from junior to senior. And, uh, I was just,
you know, I mean, I can't take credit for all of it, but I can, I can at least say I helped them, uh,
with allowed their questions and their interviewing and stuff like that. And it's just really cool to
run a community on the side where people have a trusted place.

[00:34:42] SWYX: They can talk about career stuff apart from their friend network who may not be developers
apart from the people at work who may, you know, you can't be 100% honest with them. Uh, but here you
can, because we're all, we're all interested in growing ourselves and in our careers,

[00:34:59] Frederick
Weiss: speaking of, uh, trusting people, uh, I wanted to talk a little bit
about the whole learn in public thing.

[00:35:05] Frederick
Weiss: If you don't mind, like, uh, I, I'm going to read a little bit
from one of the PDFs that you had for free on here. Uh, one of the chapters, which you communicate that, you
know, uh, you've been trained your entire life to learn and practice. And keep what you learned to
yourself. Success is doing things better than everyone else around you.

[00:35:25] Frederick
Weiss: And of course, I'm going to just, just with brevity to just kind of,
I'm just reading some things here, but, and of course you don't share your secrets with competitors,
uh, which I found super interesting. And then you have here a point about Eagle, this programming, where,
uh, you could learn so much on the internet for the low, low price of your ego.

[00:35:46] Frederick
Weiss: Do you mind just kind of speaking about this whole, um, learn in public.
Y, uh, it's, it's important to let go of that feeling of, oh, you know, I don't want to put my
ideas out there because, you know, I might get, um, you know, shamed for it or something such as this. And
you know, one of the things that I did see, um, you talked a little bit about, you know, you don't want
to build a brand of, you know, somebody not knowing things, but it's also really.

[00:36:13] Frederick
Weiss: Put yourself out there and get some eyeballs and, and kind of share your
learning experience with everybody, right?

[00:36:20] SWYX: Yeah, that's true. Um, I think it basically takes advantage of the fact that tech is a
fundamentally open and positive industry. Uh, we are encouraged to go on stage and share our lessons and our
failures and that's, what gets voted on hacker
news.

[00:36:37] SWYX: You know, we open-source our code that
we, we wrote, uh, in a, in an attempt mostly to hire more engineers, but also to spread good ideas. And, you
know, partially the company I work at is, is a benefactor of that. Uh, you know, temper, uh, Uber had no
reason to allow open-sourcing temporal, but like, uh, it got a lot of traction and externally you got a lot
of contributions and then eventually the whole
community benefited as a, as a result of that.

[00:37:03] SWYX: Um, and so I think if, I think if you do that for your own learning, you actually learn
much faster than you. Um, by yourself. And there's a, there's a few reasons why, so the first reason
that I, I, I think I list like nine reasons. So I'm not going to go through all of them. This is way too
long. But, um, the, the most important reason to me is the feedback loop.

[00:37:22] SWYX: Um, because when you start off learning, it's a, it's always a burst of inspiration
and motivation, like, okay, today's going to be the day I change my life. I will get good at whatever it
is I'm trying to get good at. Uh, and then you get into it, and then you're like, oh, okay, this is
actually hard. And then you give up, um, so what the learning public does is actually it gives you a
feedback loop of like, okay, when you share what you learned and people respond to you, you have some
impetus and external expectations to go.

[00:37:47] SWYX: Like actually, you know, other people are in the same boat with me or they're mentoring
me, or they're looking up to me. I gotta keep. Um, and, and that feedback loop actually turns, it turns
it into a positive cycle of like, okay, I'll, I'll share what I learn, get feedback on what I
learned and then go fill in the gaps on what, I didn't know that I thought I, that I thought I
knew.

[00:38:09] SWYX: Um, and that's just a fundamental thing. Like I've done it for maybe four to five
years now. Um, and I've already had amazing success. And I just can't imagine that. What if, what
happens when I do it for 40 years or 50 years? And I think a life of life lives where you learn together
with others, uh, that you learned in public.

[00:38:29] SWYX: Uh, such a more fulfilling one than something where you keep everything to yourself. Um,
and people have no, uh, it's just, it's just like, it's, it's just inherently better. Uh, I
even have the math to prove it. So I call this a big L notation. So it's comparable to the big O
notation. The algorithm for big L notation is a log of N which N be the number of years.

[00:38:51] SWYX: And it's always the question of like, how do you grow better than the average by a
number of years, we all know that years of experience is not a very good metric. Um, but we still do it
right. I, I, my company does it and we don't have any other better objective number to gauge the amount
of experience or knowledge or skills that a person has just off of a one-line judgment.

[00:39:13] SWYX: Um, but as an, as an engineer or as a. With the, with the knowledge was it was a knowledge
worker. How do you grow your skills disproportionately to your career? Um, to your years of experience? Like
you need a different algorithm. Is this the same as big
O right? Like if you're on the algorithm, no matter how hard you try it, you're, you're just
going to grow by the big O of your algorithm that you picked.

[00:39:34] SWYX: So if the different algorithm is instead of learning private learning public, and we learn
in public, you. Uh, another factor, which is P so, uh, the number of people that you learn with. Um, and so,
uh, L L N times P uh, that's, that's kind of like the the mathematical improvement on that, uh,
because, um, you grow by essentially the number of important questions that you are the answer.

[00:39:57] SWYX: And sometimes you answer when people ask questions of you, um, they ask they're asking
something that you never know. That you didn't know. And so you, you, you should try it. You tend to
uncover things a lot faster. Um, and also when, whenever you get anything wrong, um, you will just remember
a lot faster. So, and people, people will crawl over broken glass to remind you of something that you got
wrong.

[00:40:18] SWYX: So, uh, it's just a funny way that the internet works, but I just really like it
because, um, you know, the only thing that you lose is some sense of ego that you got everything right on
the first try. And if you can let go of that, you can learn so much.

[00:40:33] Arit
Amana: Do you feel like, uh, what would you say to someone who may be saying, what if I put, you know, I'm learning in public and I put
my mistakes, quote, unquote, out on the internet.

[00:40:45] Arit
Amana: Um, what if they come back to bite me or what if they come back to, you
know, like how, if I put my mistakes out, how do I then convince people that these mistakes that I made, or
it may not even be a mistake? It might just be like substandard code, for example, or substandard. Um, Um,
convention, you know, it could be, it doesn't have to be like a wrong thing, but it might just be maybe
not as optimized, for example, how do I then convince people that I've grown past that level?

[00:41:16] SWYX: Ooh. Um, sometimes yeah, just a track record of putting up increasingly better stuff. Um, I
don't think there's any shortcut to it. Uh, so by the way, uh, there are definitely repercussions
for this and you do have to be careful. Um, I have lost friends over it. I have, I have, uh, put out some
stuff I should not have put out because it was in private conversation or a not public yet or something like
some stuff like that.

[00:41:41] SWYX: Um, and you have to recognize that there's a certain journalistic responsibility that
you have when it comes to affecting other people. Like if it's yourself, you can be as public as you
want. And nobody cares. But if, if it involves other people, other people may have a different preference
level. Uh, sharing that they do online and you need to need to take care of not to hurt them.

[00:42:00] SWYX: Right. Um, and that's on, that's on you, that's on me. Um, and all that. Um,
but uh, specifically people judging you because of bad stuff that you put out. Uh, I don't mind, I
don't mind, again, that's part of the ego, right? Like, uh, it's part of the journey of like,
you had to put out the bad thing in order to get good.

[00:42:18] SWYX: Um, and guess what, like a year from now, two years from now, you should look back on what
you put out and you should, you should think of that. It's terrible because that's that, that way,
you know, that you've grown. So, um, if you try to only put out, you know, the best perfect quality
every time you might find yourself less productive than you would if you just put out the incremental steps
along the way.

[00:42:38] SWYX: And I think people, um, there's a certain amount of like you can't please
everybody. Um, and so the people who get it, get it, and we'll support you along the way. And the people
who judge you based on your first impression of you, you don't need them in your life.

[00:42:55] Frederick
Weiss: And it's also, you're going to be, uh, people are going to more
appreciate that kind of level of granularity. If you're if you're putting out those details, right.
It, it, it provides an opportunity for others to learn. Like if you're, I dunno if you're a designer
and you go to dribble and you see all these, like, you know, beautiful designs, but you don't
seem like the actual, like pen and paper sketches of how
somebody got to that idea.

[00:43:17] Frederick
Weiss: Like, that's, that's the good meaty stuff that really helps
people learn. Right. Wouldn't you agree?

[00:43:23] SWYX: Yeah. Oh, okay. I'll say, I'll say this. Some people want, uh, different levels of
signals versus noise, right? Like some people, they have more time to follow your journey. So they don't
mind putting up with more noise, more work in progress, more drafts.

[00:43:37] SWYX: Uh, but some people just want the quick hits of like, give me your top three
accomplishments, you know, and just give me the, uh, the best image of you then. That's quite honestly
all you're evaluated on. When people look at your resume or look at your portfolio or your site to see
if they want work. Um, so I do think that different mediums should have different levels of effort.

[00:43:57] SWYX: Um, and, and so if you set the expectations clearly, like this is my work in progress, uh,
the channel where I share everything I go in progress and here's my finished product channel, where if
you only want my finished product, um, go here, right. And have a very clear channel. Uh, and that's
consistent communication across all your, all your social media and your, your personal channels.

[00:44:19] SWYX: Um, I think that that works really well. So, um, I do like having a space to experiment and
to fail and to, uh, just complain and that's essentially Twitter. Uh, but then I do have more sort of
professional channels, which is my blog, uh, where we're putting a lot more hours. Its kind of like the hours is the ratio of hours.

[00:44:40] SWYX: Spent in creation to the hours spent consuming. So you want higher ratios on the media that
you own versus a lower ratio in a borrowed media
borrowed platforms and borrow platforms are literally
like YouTube. Like anything that can be taken away from you eventually like Twitter or YouTube or
whatever.

[00:45:00] SWYX: Um, yeah, so, so that's kind of how I think about it. Like, um, there's,
there's a, uh, I spent 600 hours writing my book. Um, you probably will not get better writing that out
of me than in that book, because that's the one I, I wrote for under my own name for, for money. Um, so,
uh, but everything else, like my, my tweets, like you get it for free.

[00:45:20] SWYX: Uh, I don't put a lot of thought into them. Uh, it's fine. But also, uh, you know,
it's, it's, it's weird cause like it's also a semi-professional channel, but, um, I do think
that people sign up for the work in progress on, on Twitter in, in, in a way that's kind of different
on, then on YouTube or on a blog post.

[00:45:36] SWYX: So I like that.

[00:45:39] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You know, we're getting short on
time and I do want to just quickly touch a little bit on your podcast, which I find just super fascinating.
I am I'm hooked now, which is the six myths mixtape and it really is a mixed tape. I mean, you talk
about things like from the six principles of influence to Pokemon jazz, like it's, it's anything and
everything and you, and the mixtape part is you, you
know, you bring in a lot of these pieces of media into the podcast.

[00:46:11] Frederick
Weiss: And I, at first, I just want to ask you, how did you come up with the
idea and, uh, what, what are people's responses to the show?

[00:46:20] SWYX: Um, how did I come up with the ideas I wanted? So I had a dabble in. Professionally or more
highly produced podcasts. I love podcasts. I listened to, I subscribed to over 250 podcasts and I listened
to podcasts maybe like three to four hours a day, thunder nurses on there, by the way, uh, love the
show.

[00:46:40] SWYX: Uh, so, so it's an honor to be on. Um, but also I think that podcast is a very lonely
experience and, um, I'm doing all this listening and I wish I had a way to take notes on the stuff that
I listened to. And also, I wish I had a way to share it, share the joy and, uh, with others. So, uh, when I
decided to start my own podcast, I thought that something that was that wasn't, that was kind of missing
in the world was, uh, audio notes just to friends of like, Hey, um, there's nothing in common with all
these topics, except that I'm interested in.

[00:47:16] SWYX: And if you're, if you're along for the ride, if you like, what I like, uh,
here's a way to subscribe to it. Um, I will never make any money on this. It's actually mostly for
me. Um, but if you, but you know, I'm kind of working with the garage door open is, is the ND two shock
phase phrase of, of, of this. Um, but like, if you like this stuff, I like, and if you like my
recommendations, then here's a daily feed of them.

[00:47:39] SWYX: I love them that people, people, people really, I mean, the audience is pretty small,
it's in the hundreds. Um, but uh, people still give me good shoutouts, um, every week or so I'd say, um, and I don't really
know how to grow a podcast. I, I don't think it's like the most productive hour of my day, but also,
um, it makes me, I think get much more out of my own listening and honestly like that's a win in
itself.

[00:48:04] SWYX: Like, um, and I love these, uh, basically what I call single-player games, uh, where that can they have the option to turn
multiplayer, right? Like, um, As much as you learn in public, like you might get discouraged if you never
get feedback. Right. Like if you're like, okay, I worked so hard on his blog post and I put it out there
and I get one, like, which, uh, is very demoralizing.

[00:48:26] SWYX: Um, if your entire goal was to get likes and views. So if you try not to measure yourself
on those things and you, you just, you, all, you say you flip the switch and you're going, okay, I'm
doing this for. But I'm even open to the opportunity for others to get through, join along. That's
much more authentic because you're not performing anymore.

[00:48:43] SWYX: You're literally fulfilling your own needs. Um, and you win no matter how much people
respond, whether or not it's a hit. I still, I get hits and I get misses. Even today. I have over a
million visitors a year to my blog. Um, I get hits, I get misses. And, uh, it doesn't matter. I still
win because I wrote. And it expresses something or in notes down something that I've been researching
and studying for a while.

[00:49:05] SWYX: Uh, so that's kind of how I approach my, my mixtape as well. Like I still win because I w had the chance to go over a passage within a podcast
that I really liked. Um, and so, yeah, and then the eclectic mix is it's inspired by a few things. Um, I think, uh, the technique right home is
like a very short daily news podcast.

[00:49:24] SWYX: Uh, the, the breakdown is, is a crypto podcast. There's also daily it with, uh, with extended pieces on the weekends. And then, uh, so what
I do is, uh, on Monday Mondays, Thursdays, I do clips of other podcasts on Fridays. I do music because music
is another interest of mine, and I like to share my musical pixel.

[00:49:42] SWYX: And then on weekends, I'll do long-form audio sometimes of others, but most of
me, so my appearances on other podcasts or resyndicate it onto my own feed. So if people like what I do,
they'll find it on my feed eventually. So, uh, I like, I like that. All those, all those things, just,
just so that. It makes it easier for people to find me.

[00:50:02] SWYX: And also it makes it, uh, it preserves it in case the other podcast goes away.

[00:50:10] Frederick
Weiss: Well, I'm looking forward to us being on a, on the mixed tape. No, I
know what you're what you mean because I have the same thing, at least for me is where I'm like,
like, I, I take a lot of notes. Like are well contested, this use all, like, I take a lot of notes.

[00:50:26] Frederick
Weiss: I do a lot of research on every guest. And for me, like I, if even if we
don't like ask like 10% of the questions, I still feel justified because I got to internally learn from
all these things and I got to learn from you. Uh, and it's, it's very fulfilling for me. So, uh,
everybody else getting a little bit of the podcast out there, like that's just a bonus, you know, for
me, I do it for me.

[00:50:52] SWYX: Yeah. Yeah. Um, I think people also like a commentary on podcasts, like meta-commentary. So that's what I try to do, on most episodes. Like,
why should you listen to this? What did I learn from it? What is my personal connection with this 10 minutes
of audio that you're about to hear? Um, and it's basically friend, like, like you would, if
you're talking in-person to a friend and saying, I heard a really good podcast yesterday, let me
tell you about it.

[00:51:14] SWYX: Right. Like, um, and so I think it's great. So I don't, I don't know where to
go. I don't know where to go with it because like, um, I also want to grow on YouTube. And so like
there's only so many hours in a day and, uh, I

[00:51:29] Frederick
Weiss: would love to see it as, as a, as a YouTube thing. I think you would do
great with that.

[00:51:37] Arit
Amana: I have a YouTube channel and it's, there
are some crickets there now. Cause it's been a minute since I put anything
on there. Video is hard when I started putting things on YouTube. Respect for video content creators just
skyrocketed because it's just, I'm just speaking for myself, but it's a different level entirely
from writing audio, which is more my comfort zone.

[00:52:04] Arit
Amana: Yeah. But video it's another level.

[00:52:07] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah. I agree.

[00:52:09] SWYX: Well, we're getting. Oh, sorry. So I have lunch, I have lunch, a YouTube version of my
podcast and that's mostly interviews. So I want to do it native to the format, of each medium. Uh, so
my, the first like interview a podcast interview that I did went super well.

[00:52:26] SWYX: Um, it was with Sunil PI, who is the, who is former react core team member. And just the
general thought lowered on all things JavaScript. And we just went from one and a half hours talking about
everything. And when you touch on every company's products, uh, they listen and then they spread and
their newsletter, their, their, their followers.

[00:52:45] SWYX: And, uh, I just got a notification that we were on the react newsletter. So that's
going out to like 300,000 people. So that's going to be, that's going to be pretty interesting. Um,
and I don't think I can keep it up, but at least I think YouTube, the easiest format is the interview
format. So I'm probably going to do that.

[00:53:01] SWYX: Yeah.

[00:53:02] Frederick
Weiss: Nice. I'd love to, I'd love to see that, please. Well, we're
getting to the end of the show. And I like to ask two questions a year first way. What's the, uh,
what's the best way for people to get a hold of you? Obviously, we'll put all this in the show
notes,

[00:53:17] SWYX: but, um, yeah. Uh, my, my side is six that I owe my Twitter is at six.

[00:53:23] SWYX: And then, um, I guess if you want to email me six at six, that I, oh, everything's
available on my website anyway. So just go there. Um, that's it.

[00:53:32] Frederick
Weiss: Perfect. And the last thing is if you could provide our audience with
some parting words of wisdom

[00:53:39] SWYX: learning public, I think it changed my life has changed the lives of many, many, many,
many, many others before me and after me.

[00:53:46] SWYX: Uh, and don't need, you don't need to credit me at all because, uh, you just take
it and run with it. It's uh, and I hope it changes yours.

[00:53:56] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah. So the last thing I wanted to ask you, I see that guitar in the
background and it's just itching out my brain. Are you going to sing us off?

[00:54:05] SWYX: I know. I, I, I'm still learning.

[00:54:08] SWYX: I still

[00:54:12] Arit
Amana: learn,

[00:54:14] SWYX: but it sounds, it sounds terrible.

[00:54:16] Frederick
Weiss: Let's hear it. Come on. We've heard worse. Come on. Let's
hear it. Really? Yeah, absolutely.

[00:54:23] SWYX: Okay. If you, it says I insist,

[00:54:35] SWYX: um, what am I playing?

[00:54:38] Frederick
Weiss: Whatever you are comfortable playing.

[00:54:50] SWYX: Its attitude. It's. Okay. It's
amazing how you can speak and it's the GSI just way out. No, no.

[00:55:05] Frederick
Weiss: To stop doing that, you're sounding great. Your voice is

[00:55:08] SWYX: awesome. Um, but it really bothers me as a musician. No, no. Keep going. I can appreciate
that.

[00:55:19] SWYX: Um,

[00:55:21] Frederick
Weiss: don't let perfection get in the way of progress.

[00:55:30] SWYX: it's amazing. It's amazing. It's amazing how you can speak to my heart.

[00:55:49] SWYX: I'm still learning.

[00:55:51] Arit
Amana: Amazing.

[00:55:57] SWYX: um, so I actually, uh, I've been advised that should not do finger-picking these finger
pickings harder and I should do chords. Um, and so I, I know it's just that I like things, I like the
sound, the thing of picking and I'm trying to do that. Um, and, uh, what I really should do is, is
memorized some chords because I can change chords much quicker.

[00:56:20] SWYX: So I used to be a singer and a much more of a singer than I am a guitarist.

[00:56:25] Frederick
Weiss: Gotcha. Yeah, you have a great voice. Thank you. Is there anywhere where
people could go to, to hear some stuff?

[00:56:32] SWYX: Um, uh, I have a song called nobody knows about, um, Sure. Uh, I'll look up the
SoundCloud of God. You see, you made me, you made me frustrated now.

[00:56:44] SWYX: Cause like I am not learning in public. Yes, exactly. Wow. Okay. It's in here. So
soundcloud.com/twix is very on-brand. Awesome.

[00:56:55] Frederick
Weiss: Oh, perfect. Nice.

[00:56:59] SWYX: Uh, so yeah, that's my acapella stuff. Um, I would like to do multiple instruments, but
um, uh, that's beyond my reach right now.

[00:57:09] Frederick
Weiss: Do you mind if we put that in the show notes?

[00:57:11] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah,

[00:57:12] SWYX: go ahead. Go ahead. It's not active, but um, oh man, you, you flustered me you’re, uh, this is like one of my most insecure things. Cause I
don't practice enough in a really.

[00:57:29] Frederick
Weiss: Well, that's it for our show. Do you have any more?

[00:57:36] Arit
Amana: have thoroughly enjoyed myself.

[00:57:39] Arit
Amana: Thank you so much for coming on. Good. Learned a lot. And just so
encouraging things.

[00:57:45] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah, same. Thank you Arit for co-hosting today.

[00:57:49] Arit
Amana: Absolutely. It's it's fun.

[00:57:51] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah. You

[00:57:52] SWYX: got some more. I found I found my chords. You want to, do you want me to try it again? Do
you have time?

[00:57:58] Frederick
Weiss: Yes. Yes we do. Please.

[00:58:05] SWYX: And, uh, it didn't even put up a fight. Didn't even bake. So I found a way to let
you in, but I've never really had it standing in the middle outta your hand. Gum. My angel now

[00:58:23] Arit
Amana: I kept being awake. Every room I had your break.

[00:58:28] SWYX: It's the rest. I don't take it. I ain't never going to

[00:58:32] Arit
Amana: shut you out.

[00:58:39] Arit
Amana: I'm

[00:58:39] SWYX: surrounded by every, I can see. You know, you're my saving grey, everything in

[00:58:51] Arit
Amana: over

[00:58:52] SWYX: me. I can feel you. Hello? Hey, won't fade away. There we go. That was awesome. Thank
you so much

[00:59:05] Frederick
Weiss: for sharing that. That was beautiful.

[00:59:08] SWYX: Give me a second shot. Cause like the person sucks so bad. I was just like, I'm not
ready at all.

[00:59:13] SWYX: Like I haven't warmed up. I can play it while singing. That was my achievements. But
um,

[00:59:18] Frederick
Weiss: I think I put you on the spot. I apologize.

[00:59:21] Arit
Amana: And I said, no, you handled it excellently slicks.

[00:59:27] Frederick
Weiss: Well, thank you again for being on the show and thanks to everybody for
watching. Really appreciate it. And we'll catch you next time.

[00:59:33] Frederick
Weiss: Thanks all
...more
1h 2min
September 19, 2021286 – 🌩️ Effective Conflict Resolution with Joshua Mauldin
In this episode, we get to talk with design director and conflict resolution expert Joshua Mauldin. We discuss the most effective techniques for conflict resolution, how to establish trust, and employ empathy. Joshua explains when we should use a third-party mediator, start a conversation with safety checks and lead a talk with facts. Additionally, we dive into disaster recovery. The approach of creating a shared purpose in building alignment.
✨ Episode Sponsor
- Auth0: https://auth0.com
- Auth0 on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/auth0
- Auth0 on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/auth0
- Auth0 Avocado Labs online meetup events: https://avocadolabs.dev/
🔗 Episode Links
- Website: https://www.joshuamauldin.com/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/joshuamauldin
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuamauldin/
- Conflict Resolution for People Who Hate Conflict with Josh Mauldin: https://userdefenders.com/podcast/077-conflict-resolution-for-people-who-hate-conflict-with-josh-mauldin/
- Oreilly: https://www.oreilly.com/attend/fundamentals-of-conflict-resolution/0636920329473/0636920339069/
- Conflict Resolution for People Who Hate Conflict — Joshua Mauldin: https://youtu.be/suA7WL6l3pA
- Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships by Marshall Rosenberg: https://www.amazon.com/Nonviolent-Communication-Language-Life-Changing-Relationships/dp/189200528X
- Blog: https://medium.com/@joshuamauldin
- How using Cranky Conclusions makes tough conversations easier – https://medium.com/conflict-resolution-for-people-who-hate-conflict/how-using-cranky-conclusions-makes-tough-conversations-easier-4af9789dfa1e
- Hosts:
  Frederick Weiss: https://twitter.com/FrederickWeiss
  Brian Hinton: https://twitter.com/mrbrianhinton
📜 Transcript
[00:00:37] Brian
Hinton: Welcome to Thunder Nerds, I am Brian Hinton

[00:00:39] Frederick
Weiss: … And I am Frederick Weiss. Thank you so much for consuming the Thunder Nerds. A conversation with the people behind the
technology that love what they do. And. Good. And speaking of doing tech good, our sponsor Auth0 is helping us do just that.

[00:01:01] Brian
Hinton: Yes they are.

[00:01:02] And we’d like to think Auth0 is this season’s sponsor. They make it easy for developers to build a custom secure and standards-based
unified. By providing it as a service to try it, go to Auth0.com today. Also, they
have both a YouTube and Twitch channel under the username Auth0 with some great developer resources and streams.

[00:01:27] And lastly avocado labs. It’s an online
destination that their developer advocates run, where they organize some super great meetup events. And
remember to check out Auth0.com.

[00:01:40] Frederick
Weiss: Thank you so much, Brian, I really appreciate it. And let’s welcome our amazing guest today. We have speaker director of design
and author, Joshua Mauldin.

[00:01:53] Welcome to the show Joshua, really appreciate you joining us today.

[00:01:56] Joshua
Mauldin: Thanks. Uh, I am pumped to be here, especially after that opening
theme.

[00:02:07] Frederick
Weiss: a lot of people say that you’re not the first, probably the third,
but yes, that’s, that’s what we’re going for. Right on the money

[00:02:13] Joshua
Mauldin: you hit it.

[00:02:13] All right.

[00:02:15] Frederick
Weiss: So, Josh, hi. How have you been first off? Uh, you doing good? A family.
Okay. Friends. Okay. Everything going all right with the, uh, with the vid hitting, hitting home.

[00:02:26] Joshua
Mauldin: Yeah, so the folks are doing well. Uh, they’re, they’re fully
vaccinated trying to just stay healthy. They both work in a hospital, so we’re just very happy that
they’re fine.

[00:02:37] Uh, I’m doing good. Picked up some odd
hobbies that don’t involve screens like restoring watches and clocks, which is kind of a fun thing. A
nice, yeah.

[00:02:48] Frederick
Weiss: That’s cool. Well, why don’t we start off with a little bit of
context about you for the people that might not know Joshua, so you a director of design?

[00:02:57] What does that mean? And what is your day to
day like and what do you do at

[00:03:01] Joshua
Mauldin: atrium? Uh, it’s Artium actually, the last one I said the first

[00:03:06] Frederick
Weiss: the time I became a survey. You’re

[00:03:09] Joshua
Mauldin: right. You’re right. Uh, instantly my parents work at atrium, so.
That’s what was, that’s what I

[00:03:14] Frederick
Weiss: was. That’s what I meant because I was talking to your point

[00:03:16] Joshua
Mauldin: earlier.

[00:03:19] Oh, rad. Okay. Yeah. So the day-to-day of me
at Artium is. I run a team of designers. We work with
clients to help, uh, build software, try to add a little bit more humanity into it and just help them build
better software. So we’ve, I’ve got folks all across the country that, um, I’m working with and,
you know, some days it’s me making prototypes another day.

[00:03:53] Frederick
Weiss: Nice. I think we’ve all been there. Right? Brian.

[00:03:57] Brian
Hinton: Absolutely. Why?

[00:04:00] Frederick
Weiss: Oh, nothing, no worries. I sense a little, a little conflict there and
which, which brings us to our main top. I guess we could jump into

[00:04:13] Joshua. We’re here to talk to you about
conflict resolution. I think first off you could tell us what exactly is a, what does conflict

[00:04:21] Joshua
Mauldin: mean to. So really it’s about a disagreement in viewpoints.
It’s like when I think the thing a and you think thing B and neither one of us want to go to the other
thing and, you know, there’s the unhealthy kind of conflict where you have like, you know, verbal abuse
and harassment and stuff like that, which is not the kind of conflict that I’m into.

[00:04:46] Uh, Actually, that’s a funny statement
who would be, um,

[00:04:52] Frederick
Weiss: well I think Brian, probably this

[00:04:54] Brian
Hinton: guy, definitely. Yeah,

[00:04:56] Joshua
Mauldin: yeah. Yeah. It’s just people, people trying to work out
differences of opinion. And it’s really about not necessarily the things that you say or the viewpoints
that you hold it’s really about managing the space in between those words.

[00:05:10] If that makes. Yeah,

[00:05:12] Frederick
Weiss: absolutely. So it’s not so much about, I think what comes up in a
lot of people’s minds right away is, um, uh, the negative points of view, right? It has, uh, a certain
connotation to it, like, like backstabbing, um, gossip behind one’s back. And then people tend to avoid
conflict because they bring their personal emotions to the table.

[00:05:36] With with conflict, but a lot of it is that,
uh, finding a common ground and that resolution to that answer. Would that be

[00:05:44] Joshua
Mauldin: fair? That’s entirely fair. Probably put better than I could. So
I’m going to steal it.

[00:05:50] Frederick
Weiss: All right. I like that. Do you mind providing us maybe some examples?
Uh, just to start everything off of what, uh, what conflict looks like and how people could use some basic
basic

[00:06:03] tools.

[00:06:05] Joshua
Mauldin: So there, there are several examples. One being, you been working with
someone who has a particularly malicious body odor that you really, uh, oh, all right. So it looks like
I’m going to be mediating some conflict. Um, yeah. So it’s, you know, you’ve got some, some
personal hygiene issues that you want to discuss.

[00:06:29] You’ve got someone who is constantly
talking over someone else in a meeting or interrupting them for even interrupting. You know, this is just
him

[00:06:39] Frederick
Weiss: for our audio listeners. Brian is pointing at me.

[00:06:44] Joshua
Mauldin: Uh, also listeners, I’m pretty sure that Frederick is pointing at
himself through a mirror. That is offstring right.

[00:06:50] And hypothetically, if you

[00:06:52] Frederick
Weiss: look at that in an existential way, that is, it goes back to
Brian. So I get it well said, but keep

[00:06:59] Joshua
Mauldin: going. Yeah. So really it’s, it’s just about like, Hey,
I’m, I’m getting interrupted a lot in meetings or I can’t come to an agreement with someone.
With this user, flow or user journey should look like, and we’re just butting heads.

[00:07:16] Well,

[00:07:17] Frederick
Weiss: you talked about a mediator. When do we, when do we actually need a
mediator? Is that something to when, uh, you know, HR gets involved and we need, you know, like for example,
I, I could say, and again, hypothetical, oh, Brian’s talking over me in that Monday meeting? Um, and I had enough, like, do I, do I see.

[00:07:39] To, uh, address him and resolve this conflict
or do a w w when is there, uh, the opportunity that arises when I should get that third party,

[00:07:51] Brian
Hinton: I’ll say I prefer that you, uh, come to me directly and let me
know. I had no idea. It was interrupting you, Frederick

[00:07:57] Frederick
Weiss: every Monday morning meeting, which is completely fictional because we
do not work together, but Josh.

[00:08:04] Joshua
Mauldin: Sure. I actually lost the question, uh, in the, in the banter, I was
like, kids, I’m going to turn this car around. Um, once you get a mediator. Yeah.

[00:08:13] Frederick
Weiss: When is it appropriate? And when should someone not think about doing
that?

[00:08:16] Joshua
Mauldin: So if, if you don’t feel safe having this conversation yourself,
it’s always a good idea to get a mediator, but also a mediator can just be someone else in a group
setting, jumping in and.

[00:08:28] Hey, this is the fourth time you’ve
talked over. Stephanie, if you do it again, we’re kicking out of the meeting. Joking, not joking. Um,
for more serious things, you, you may need to like grab a, grab a manager, grab HR. But really the
preferences for people to be able to resolve these things, uh, between themselves.

[00:08:49] I think back to an episode of Ted lasso when
there were, there are a couple of players, right. That show, I will fight anyone. Um, so there, there are
two players who were having an issue with one another. And when the coach asks Ted, like, aren’t you
going to do anything about this? Now we’re going to let them work it out.

[00:09:10] Um, and the, the reasoning behind that is,
you know, if, if you get a director or HR involved, the magnitude of it increases and the severity of it
will increase just by necessity, bringing in someone. Yeah, that

[00:09:23] Frederick
Weiss: makes a lot of sense. I have the same experience with the Gilmore girls
where Ari was the photographer and then Paris really didn’t want her on the newspaper.

[00:09:32] So they worked it out. They didn’t need a
mediator. And they came to a common goal, which is they want to make the paper better, uh, within the school
of the fictional story, the Gilmore girls, and they worked it out and they, the conflict was successfully
resolved.

[00:09:49] Brian
Hinton: It’s not, it’s also not about, uh, Like the conflict between
people at that at the level we’re discussing, it could be conflict with, you know, when you mentioned
design, like the two different people have two different opposing views.

[00:10:03] Uh, how do you mediate that without stifling
the creativity?

[00:10:08] Joshua
Mauldin: I can approach this in two ways. One is the person talking to person
and then also. This is when an adult has to step in. Um, so person to person it’s, you really need to
figure out before you have this conversation, what is the goal that you’re trying to achieve?

[00:10:26] Like, what is it that you want in this?
Always keep focused on that and always trying to understand what the other person’s goal is. Um, a lot
of times we have the same goals, but we end up inadvertently stepping on each other’s toes. Um,
sometimes that can cause a little ego bruising. Sometimes it can, you know, if you hadn’t slept well the
night before it can, it can cause a little unnecessary tension.

[00:10:48] So figuring out what it is that both of you
need to succeed is the way to resolve this between each. Now there’s another situation in which you
might need to get a mediator involved. Uh, you, you’ve got, let’s say design and engineering, uh,
engineering doesn’t want to do the thing that the customer wanted.

[00:11:12] You validated through your testing and, and
all those things. Uh, and if the two of them can’t work it out between one another, sometimes it’s
both of them make their cases to the mediator, but ultimately the mediator’s goal is going to be to ask
those questions that were really hard for those people to ask each other.

[00:11:29] What, what do you really need? What are you
trying to accomplish here? What’s your end goal? And let’s find a way forward.

[00:11:34] Frederick
Weiss: That makes a lot of sense. I think this goes to the, um, one of the
things that I saw you talk about in your, uh, YouTube videos is the pyramid of how to construct effective
conversations.

[00:11:45] So. Others input conclusions, facts, real,
not opinions and psychological safety. And I think, uh, psychological safety plays a big part of this. Yes.

[00:11:59] Joshua
Mauldin: Yeah. It’s that’s, that’s why it’s the, the base of,
of this. Like it underpins every conversation that we’re going to have with one another. And if you
really want this to be a success, then psychological safety is definitely a thing you have to have for
everyone involved.

[00:12:15] You can have these conversations without
psychological safety, but the risks and tension are probably going to be much higher than they normally
would be. Um, there will be situations where you have to do this. Uh, it’s not ideal, but really if you
can let the other person know that you’re here, just to try to find a way forward together.

[00:12:36] It’s, you’re, you’re not there
to, to steamroll them or things like that. That can go along with. And there’s some really small, subtle
ways that you can start to build this as well. Such as if I come to you, Brian, and I ask you like, Hey, is
this a, is this a bad time? Are, are you super busy? And you have the option.

[00:12:59] Yeah. Come back later. Uh, yeah. So you, you,
as the other person have the ability to opt into this conversation or opt out of it and ask. The question
that prompts a no response around, like, are you busy? Is this a bad time respectfully of the person’s
agency, which is really great. Um, and it goes a long way towards building psychological safety because
they’re bought into the conversation.

[00:13:25] And a lot of folks can just begrudgingly, you
know, if you ask like, Hey, do you have a sec? Uh, most people are going to begrudgingly say yes, but they
probably have a billion other things. They’d rather be.

[00:13:37] Frederick
Weiss: Well, can you provide a example of say the wrong thing to say something,
somebody might say, you know what, I’m having problems talking to hypothetically, uh, some, you know,
hypothetical name like Brian, I’m having problems talking to Brian.

[00:13:52] Whenever I approach him, you know, it seems
like there’s some kind of weird tension or he gets angry. Like what, what are the, the, maybe the, the
wrong things that I might be.

[00:14:02] Joshua
Mauldin: Uh, one is leading with your opinions and conclusions. Like, Hey, you,
you were a total jerk back then just by speaking over me all these times, uh, I really want you to stop,
like your brain is going to stop immediately after I called you a jerk.

[00:14:19] And you’re going to go in to defensive
mode and try to try to just get this conversation over with and stop me from. Um, another thing that you
really want to avoid is starting with things like Y um, because that triggers our defensive mechanisms. Um,
you, we have a lot of chemistry that is going on in our brains, uh, that really, while society has evolved
over the last several millennia, uh, our brains are a little slower.

[00:14:47] So like we tend to perceive these conflicts
between one another, the same way that we would a stranger coming from. Another tribe to steal arm or food.
Uh, these are definitely not the same things, but according to our brains, it’s about the same. So if
you, if you ask someone, I’m sorry.

[00:15:07] Brian
Hinton: No, I was just going to say, not to mention when you go in aggressive
like that with emote, leading with emotions rather than logic.

[00:15:14] Um, you’re not doing yourself

[00:15:17] Joshua
Mauldin: any favors too, right? Right, right. And sometimes that’s going to
happen. Like I’ve done it a few times and I teach this stuff to people. So it’s, it’s pretty
natural. But if, uh, if you can go in and ask someone, what led you to this? How did we get here asking
those kinds of questions keeps that very logical part of your brain engaged so that you can have this
conversation.

[00:15:40] Whereas if I asked you, why were you such a
jerk back then? Uh, that is the least veiled jab I can think of. And the conversation’s not going to go
well as a result,

[00:15:53] Brian
Hinton: have you ever failed at meditating?

[00:15:57] Joshua
Mauldin: Uh, let’s see. Most of my, most of my conflicts happen one-on-one
um, but I have been in a couple of situations where I got outward agreement on something.

[00:16:11] And then the moment that this conversation
ended, things went right back to, to where. So I kind of count that as a failure because the outcome
wasn’t really achieved. It was just tacitly agreed to, and then definitely ignored. What, uh, what
happened

[00:16:28] Brian
Hinton: after that? Like how do you, if you fail initially, what’s the vet

[00:16:32] Joshua
Mauldin: steps.

[00:16:34] So I tend to look at these kinds of things
like gardening. Uh, you want to make sure that the soil is fertile. You keep it watered and. You’re not
going to be able to have every conflict get resolved. You’re not going to be able to have everything go
smoothly, but it’s really about playing the long game and being open to these conversations.

[00:16:55] So temporary setbacks, you know, sometimes
that means you just try again another day. Um, there’s some times when you have to take a more
aggressive stance to these kinds of things, you know, if you were a director or you’re leading
something, Sometimes it’s got to be all right. I understand where both of you are coming from.

[00:17:14] I, I understand what the trade-offs are.
We’re going to do thing a and I realize that doesn’t please everyone, but I can be transparent about
my reasoning, but the decision is final. I

[00:17:27] Frederick
Weiss: think I read in Forbes sometime at the beginning of this year, if people
are, um, three times less likely to. Imagine the perspective of the other party, if they feel like
they’re in a situation where they’re in power of the other person, uh, like, like if they’re a
supervisor, a manager, et cetera, they don’t tend to feel obligated enough to have that empathy.

[00:17:58] And it’s, it’s all about empathy.
When you say.

[00:18:01] Joshua
Mauldin: I would certainly agree with that. And this, this kind of healthy back
and forth between supervisors and people who report to them. It’s, it’s really, it’s really
modeled by the leaders. So if you really want both sides to see other people as humans, then you as a
director are obligated to ask people for feedback.

[00:18:23] I’ve started to build this culture of
feedback at, at the company I’m at now, I’ve done it at places I’ve been at previously. And
it’s really like, you give your director feedback, like, Hey, what could I have done better here? And
this is kind of tricky because the power dynamics do come into play. But if you, as a director are modeling
that it is okay to give feedback and that it’s safe to give feedback.

[00:18:48] Then the whole organization. Not to mention
your relationship with this other person is going to be much. It

[00:18:55] Frederick
Weiss: makes sense. Another thing that, uh, I wanted to talk about is you have
this whole thing about preparing for conversations. Uh, so conflict resolution for people who hate conflict
resolution. So you have these four points, which are.

[00:19:11] Checking yourself. Don’t assume that
intense, uh, use empathy as we just discussed. Don’t demonize people. Um, so getting your facts in line,
uh, forming conclusions, how, how did something make you feel? Um, how did it impact you or your team and
then setting goals? So writing down. What you want to get from a conversation before you have that
interaction might help the outcome be beneficial for both parties,

[00:19:42] Joshua
Mauldin: right?

[00:19:43] Yeah. I th I find that, you know, this
reflects how conflicts have gone for me. And I’m very much a, a planner. Like I want to think out
things, I want to explore potential ripple effects of my decisions. And so this more contemplated approach
before having a conversation is definitely beneficial. And I’ve seen it work very well for other
people.

[00:20:09] It’s not always going to be like that.
You don’t always have a chance to, to plan everything out in advance, but just thinking about like,
okay, am I going off like kind of half cocked here? It just, you know, shooting my mouth off. Like, did I
have anything to do with this? Like, these are really good questions to start asking yourself, and
there’s this great Alvarez.

[00:20:32] That I really like to keep in mind,
that’s called Hanlon’s razor and they’re different variations of it. But the theme is don’t
attribute to malice what you can attribute to an oversight. So yeah, someone may have crossed a line, maybe
they didn’t mean to, uh, it’s probably more that they just missed something.

[00:20:56] There is a chance that someone is actually
malicious and just manipulative, but more often than. It’s someone just didn’t see the impact of
what they did. And on that note, it is really important that we separate both the intent and the impact from
each other. Because like, one of the things that I say a lot is like, I can make a really terrible
joke.

[00:21:18] And like, if we’re in a room together, I
feel such shame about this terrible joke that I made, that I run out. And then as I’m running out, I
step on your toes. Um, I didn’t mean to, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt. You know? So like
these are, these are things that you still have to deal with. W what about

[00:21:36] Brian
Hinton: on your, on your end from you?

[00:21:38] I mean, we’re talking about resolving
other people’s issues. Um, what about you being the mediator and the emotions and the stress and all of
that that you have to deal with? How, how do you cope with that in yourself?

[00:21:50] Joshua
Mauldin: That really, he took a little bit of training, but way less than you
might think. Um, one it’s, it’s a lot easier to have that third party involved because you’re a
little more new.

[00:22:02] Um, you’re not experiencing the
personalization of this, this disagreement. So it’s much easier for you to say, okay, you’re trying
to do things. They’re trying to do thing B let’s figure it out. Um, but sometimes. Conflicts do get
really tense. I’ve I’ve had, uh, I’ve, I’ve been involved in really hard conversations
between, uh, other directors and people that report to me.

[00:22:29] And I was obviously very invested in, in this
conversation going well. So there was a little stress on my end for that, but it’s really where
mindfulness and focusing on your breathing and focusing on the outcome that you want. Is probably the best
way to go. And I’m toying with this idea and I haven’t worked it out yet around like ways to just
really remove your emotion from the mediator situation and position.

[00:23:00] I haven’t really worked it out fully, but
the idea is just to try and be as you know, logical, if then statement as you possibly can. Um, We’ll
see where that goes.

[00:23:14] Frederick
Weiss: Do you mind diving into that a little bit more? Uh, could you explain
that?

[00:23:18] Joshua
Mauldin: Sure. So I think a lot about like, I can be very invested in getting
one outcome and by me being invested in that outcome, I tend to, I would probably get a little tense if
things seem to not go my way.

[00:23:36] So if you can remove the emotion from it,
like, okay, we’re thinking. About this outcome that we’re trying to get, which is, for example, we
want to build this thing that our client has paid us for. And we need to stop these, these two parties from
bickering and being at loggerheads with one another. Um, if you just think like, okay, what is going to get
us to this goal?

[00:24:04] Let’s go do that. Or in, in more personal
situations, like, okay person A’s problem is they feel like they’re not getting the same amount of
respect as person B’s friends, because person B doesn’t talk over them or interrupt them. And so.
You try to find a way of making sure that you don’t have person a feeling really unsafe.

[00:24:34] And it’s not really about having a
compromise with each other because that’s kind of like a recipe for both people being equally miserable,
um, in situations like where someone’s safety feels, uh, threatened or just general respect. Like
it’s, it’s pretty clear which way you need to go, like person. You just need to sit down and we are
going to start like raising our hands when, when we want to talk in meetings or something.

[00:25:04] Frederick
Weiss: Well, isn’t a lot of it just about emotions. Things are emotionally
charged and there’s misunderstandings. And sometimes people have a bad day kind of like, um, and
there’s things that are just not, um, not intentional, like, like the example you provided, where you
walked out and you stepped on someone’s toe, you know, it was not intentional.

[00:25:26] These are just. Very simple miscommunications
of random events. And, and if we could just sit down and have a civil conversation, everyone would see
things clearly. Right?

[00:25:41] Joshua
Mauldin: Usually. So there’s a little bit of calculus involved in like, do
I want to have this conversation right now? So you have to think about yourself.

[00:25:50] Like, am I really hungry that I get enough
sleep last night? Is it the end of a long day or a long. Um, are things okay at home with me or the other
person, if that’s the case, like maybe let it cool off a little bit, unless it’s absolutely critical
for the success of everyone involved. Um, so you tend to be a little more calculating about exactly when you
would want to have this, just so that you time it so that you can have the best possible outcome.

[00:26:19] Um, and that’s part of the reason why
I’ve constructed this framework so that we can. Just try and make it as safe as possible, where like
I’m not coming at you Friday at six o’clock when everyone else is going out for happy hour or things
like that. Um, and you know, there, there’s so many other things to consider.

[00:26:40] Like I could go on for days about this kind
of stuff. Know, can we start with some political safety? Okay. Here we go. We have days it’s a, it’s
a weekend experience. Thunder nerds. Right? Okay. So, and, and that’s really why you want to lead with
facts after psychological safety, because like, if you can recount to someone else, what, uh, what a
security camera would have seen in this situation like this very detached, factual.

[00:27:10] Oh, I saw that you did, you, you didn’t
raise your hand or like I saw that you spoke over this person a few times. Um, then you talk about the
impact. It’s much easier to have this conversation, I guess it, it, doesn’t presuppose that you have
reached your conclusions in a, I really want to focus on like, Hey, this is what I saw.

[00:27:33] This is how it made me feel. Am I missing
something? Th this depends on the situation. Like some are pretty clear cut and you don’t need to be so
hand wringing about it, but I’m talking about normal situations where you have conflict. Um, I, I hope
that that kind of starts to answer that question a little bit.

[00:27:56] Like you start with safety, you talk about
the facts, you talk about how you interpreted them and see what you might be missing or how you can get to
where you need to.

[00:28:05] Frederick
Weiss: No, th I think that’s, that’s really, really helpful because a
lot of times we’ll, um, we’ll project our own insecurities onto people, you know, like, oh, you
know, Brian thinks I’m stupid because I made this comment about, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah.

[00:28:20] But in fact, that’s fine. Doesn’t
care. It’s not even in his head that has nothing to do with the conversation we were having. Brian was
just having a bad day because he didn’t get his morning. Right. It’s a lot of these things are
about, like you said, the appropriate time to have these conversations and have these, um, the safety
checks, which brings me to the next part of the conversation I’d like to discuss is disaster
recovery.

[00:28:45] So you talk about, you know, the safety
check, um, add contrast, uh, I’m not saying, uh, correctly or misunderstanding, uh, things, et cetera,
et cetera, or creating a shared purpose. Uh, the pullback. Um, I love this fact that I read in one of the
things that you, uh, you put out there where you said, like, if, if you’re, uh, if you have some kind of
thing in your mind, before you go into one of these conversations where things might get heated, you could
say something such as, I can’t talk to you until you lower your voice, and that will allow you the
opportunity to leave a room or exit the zoom conversation.

[00:29:28] What have you.

[00:29:30] Joshua
Mauldin: Yeah. So this, this whole idea of doing safety checks is like, okay,
things are getting really weird. Do I want to try and write this situation? Who do I want to get out of it?
And so we’re really good at perceiving emotions, especially when we’re in real life with one
another. It’s a little harder over zoom, even more difficult when it’s just audio and the most
difficult one that’s over.

[00:29:57] But if you can pick up on tone on body
language and things like that, you can really start to tell things are getting weird. And a lot of times
I’ve seen that if you can’t like a lot of these things happen just because of misunderstandings,
like we’re just missing each other. And so that’s where the contrast comes in.

[00:30:14] You know, I’m not saying you’re bad
at your job. I’m saying that I need you to consult with the team before making a decision that affects.
That has helped in the like highest number of conversations that I’ve had in coach people through. Um,
so yeah, there, there are lots of other aspects to talking about safety, recovering things.

[00:30:42] And a lot of this has really framed in
what’s called nonviolent communication. And this, this was by an author a few years ago. Um, I got to
give me a second to get his name because I do want to get it right, because it was so important. Um,
Marshall Rosenberg was, uh, it was, this is a psychologist who coined this framework, but basically it’s
framing things in terms of how you saw it, how it impacted you.

[00:31:13] And so it’s very clearly articulated.
What the impact is on you and you still get to keep your, your agency in this and it’s less accusatory.
And so that’s when you’re able to start to have strong conversations, have easier conversations,
even when it’s kind of difficult, but, um, that’s, that’s where, like, I can’t talk to you
until you lower, your voice comes in.

[00:31:39] And like, I, I don’t no one likes to be
yelled at, um, But if you tell someone why are like, why are you yelling at me? Stop yelling at me? Um,
that’s th that’s, that’s still like, it’s not trying to lower the temperature. Um, but if
you’re

[00:31:59] Frederick
Weiss: return, right?

[00:32:00] Joshua
Mauldin: Yeah. Yeah. It’s just, it’s just a thing that escalates. And
so saying like, okay, look, we can’t have this conversation until.

[00:32:08] Your voice lowers. It’s not until you
calm down or until you stop yelling at me because those are, those are a lot more concrete

[00:32:18] Brian
Hinton: triggers. Yeah. Triggers. I like what, uh, the, like the description of
nonviolent communication. Uh, I just looked up when I looked up the book, not a technique to end
disagreements, but rather a method.

[00:32:32] Designed to increase empathy and improve the
quality of life for those who utilize the method. That’s nice.

[00:32:39] Joshua
Mauldin: Yeah. Yeah. It’s adopting those things has been extremely
beneficial for both my professional and personal life.

[00:32:49] Frederick
Weiss: I also really appreciate what you, uh, discussed. I think I heard you
talking about it on user for fenders, with Jason Ogle about.

[00:32:59] Uh, right now with all the video conferencing
that we’re having it it’s, it’s sometimes it, it presents a challenge to read, uh, the other
person with these low fidelity conversations. Right. A lot of times we, you know, we turn off our camera
because we have to zoom. Um, or, or even just literally like, sure.

[00:33:20] We could see each other, but it’s not the
same thing. Um, it’s not that same, uh, rich level of conversation. Right,

[00:33:28] Joshua
Mauldin: right. Yeah. And you know, when you’re, and that’s why I
mentioned earlier, like these things are best handled in person, but that doesn’t mean you can’t
have these kinds of conflicts. Like we’ve all had like tense exchanges over texts with people or over
slack.

[00:33:43] Um, you just need to communicate. You just
need to basically over-communicate like preemptively adding contrast to things because you have like, I have
no control over how you read a message for me. You know, if you hadn’t had coffee, if it didn’t
sleep well the night before, if things aren’t going well for you, you’re going to interpret this
kind of stuff.

[00:34:06] Way more negatively. Um, in fact, our
survival circuits, uh, how the us just by default filling in these gaps of communication. With negative
interpretations because that’s what leads to our survival. And so the natural thing for humans is when
something is kind of unclear, you basically just assume that the other person’s being a jerk.

[00:34:29] So correct that by using. Emoji sparingly,
uh, don’t don’t send me like 10 poop emojis or something like, I’ll get it. Um, but you know,
use emojis, uh, add contrast, um, you know, try to get ahead of like things that you might see as potential
issues. Like, you know, you’re going to think, I’m saying that this is a terrible idea.

[00:34:54] What I’m actually saying is that I think
this has a really big impact on, on the product. And it’s

[00:35:00] Frederick
Weiss: interesting. You bring that up because I think I also heard you say on,
on user defenders that people interpret emojis, just like, like if they see a smile emoji they’ll end
their minds they’ll have the same emotional connection to a, like, as an actual human smiling.

[00:35:17] Yeah,

[00:35:18] Joshua
Mauldin: it’s just powerful. That’s a fascinating thing that I read
about. And it was actually initially written to discuss emoticons, you know, before we had emojis, like, you
know, just the colon and right. Parentheses, like, yeah, we, we, we get it. We kind of understand where the
other person’s coming from. Um, and emojis just really increase that level of fidelity in
communication.

[00:35:42] It’s a nice.

[00:35:44] Frederick
Weiss: Why don’t we actually talk about it? Cause we, we, you touched on it
briefly, but you, you developed a framework for conflict resolution. What does that look like? What does
this framework? And I, I believe you also have a book on the way about this.

[00:35:57] Joshua
Mauldin: Yeah. So working on the book, um, taking it slow with the publisher,
just making sure that we get all the bits, right.

[00:36:04] Um, so no, no release date as of yet for that
one, but it’s, it’s gonna come out one way or the other singer later, um, So as far as the framework
itself, um, I, I really just wanted to see what the common parts of really solid conversations are. And I
stepped back and I thought about, you know, the things that I needed in conversation, the things I’ve
seen, other people need in conversation.

[00:36:34] And so that’s, that’s where this
framework came from. Um, safety. First, you talk about the facts you talk about. The impact of those things.
And then you open it up to the person. I think there might’ve been another question in there that I, I
didn’t process.

[00:36:52] Frederick
Weiss: I was talking about your, um, uh, the framework you actually built for
conflict resolution.

[00:36:58] And, uh, you know, you go out and you speak
about this all over the world. Um, what, what actually made you get into this? Like why, why this subject,
how, how did you get onto this point? Obviously we’ve all had conflicts, but. I guess one, how did you
get into this? And what was that conflict that, that lit that fire for you to go?

[00:37:21] You know what, um, I’m, I’m in all of
this, this is what I’m going to really talk about.

[00:37:26] Joshua
Mauldin: Yeah. So I grew up in the south and we’re all super nice down
there. We don’t want to rock the boat. And so my parents were also very clear on like, we. We don’t
want to fight in front of our kids. So really I didn’t, I didn’t have like a really good model of
going and having conflict with people.

[00:37:51] And so it was more of a lifelong study. Um,
And really the thing that just like galvanized my desire to do this was like I was dropped into some wild
situations when I started consulting. And I noticed that I was just getting wrecked. Like my stomach was a
massive eye. There were muscles in my body that I didn’t know to Twitch that were twitching.

[00:38:17] Uh, it was just, it was not a good situation.
And so I realized. You know, this is really hurting me and I need to figure this out. What is behind all of
this stuff. And so that, that led me to do a ton of research, get a lot of mentoring, uh, go through some
training. And then that’s, that’s where the framework came from.

[00:38:40] Um, I think specifically there is an incident
when I was at a consulting gig where we had a PM who was doing their own. Uh, we’re on the same project.
We had an engineer who treated the designs that the client had approved, that we tested, that we validated,
uh, they were like, she’s just kind of suggestions.

[00:39:04] I’m just kind of go do it my way. Um, and
you know, we’re also having to work with a client who was changing their mind from time to time. So. I,
it, it felt so chaotic. And I was like, how can we write this? What can we do to get on well together? And
so that’s, that’s the thing where I was like, okay, I gotta figure this out.

[00:39:29] I gotta get some training. And then I came
back and we got it figured out. It was, it was kinda magical.

[00:39:39] Frederick
Weiss: I love that, you know, I was thinking about, um, doing an actual live
conflict resolution with you as the mediator between Brian and I, do you mind trying that out? I

[00:39:50] Joshua
Mauldin: let’s go and see.

[00:39:52] Frederick
Weiss: Okay, here we go. So real situation, Brian, how come whenever I text
you, you take forever to write me back.

[00:40:01] It’s like, I feel like you’re
ignoring me. You don’t appreciate what I say. And I’m just trying to have a conversation with you
and it makes me want to text you less because I don’t feel like you value my opinion. Now you go, Brian.

[00:40:17] Brian
Hinton: My phone is muted most of the time. That’s why

[00:40:22] pretty much the only answer I have.

[00:40:25] Frederick
Weiss: So what do you do with that, Josh?

[00:40:28] Joshua
Mauldin: Uh, I would dig in and say, okay. Fredrik it seems like you have an
expectation that Brian respond immediately to your texts. Am I, am I missing anything here? Is there
something you want to add to this? I would

[00:40:46] Frederick
Weiss: like him to respond within three days.

[00:40:50] Joshua
Mauldin: Okay. So I would ask Brian, how often do you check your messages? How,
how important is this to you? Do you have another method that you are more reachable by, or that you prefer.

[00:41:07] Frederick
Weiss: Nice. Okay. So, so immediately Brian’s not wrong here and that’s
not what I was expecting or thinking of, but I like where you’re going with

[00:41:17] Brian
Hinton: Twitter.

[00:41:18] Twitter’s the way Frederick, I don’t
pay, I have badges hidden on my mat on my messages, so I don’t even see them most of the time.

[00:41:27] Joshua
Mauldin: Okay. So

[00:41:29] Frederick
Weiss: pretty like conflict.

[00:41:30] Joshua
Mauldin: Yeah. It’s pretty easy for the two of you to see like, okay. He
needs quicker responses to urgent matters. And Brian doesn’t care about his phone.

[00:41:42] So you two just found a way to get in touch
with each other quicker, with a better response rate. And neither of you are wrong. Neither of you were
jerks. And in fact, Ryan I’m with you I’ve needed all my notifications on my phone. Even text
messages.

[00:42:01] Frederick
Weiss: I love it. That’s perfect. I think that that conflict was
resolved.

[00:42:05] Joshua
Mauldin: Good job, gentlemen.

[00:42:07] Frederick
Weiss: Thank you so much, Joshua. Well, why don’t we, uh, why don’t we
go into the lightning round, Brian? You good with that? Yeah,

[00:42:14] Joshua
Mauldin: absolutely. Let’s do. All right.

[00:42:20] Brian
Hinton: Yeah. So the light lightening round is where we ask you a question, uh,
in succession. Uh, you answer it. Fredrick asks the question, uh, fast paced, fast paced. So, um, my first.
Is do you actually want to have pineapple on pizza?

[00:42:37] Joshua
Mauldin: Oh my God. No, get out.

[00:42:41] Frederick
Weiss: I love that. Joshua. Why do, uh, why did people call you a Gumby in
school?

[00:42:49] Joshua
Mauldin: I was double jointed and so I could jump rope with my arms. I was, uh,
it was a very stretchy.

[00:42:58] Brian
Hinton: Okay. You’re in the circus. Would you rather be the person with
their head inside the lion’s mouth or shot out of a cannon?

[00:43:07] Joshua
Mauldin: We got shut out of a candidate. That’s amazing. You get a
lion’s mouth is just gonna be like real kind of like wet, nasty and Gingervitis in there.

[00:43:18] Yeah, dude, not into it. Like just let me,
let me help you. Let me get you some floss. Let me get you some dental.

[00:43:25] Frederick
Weiss: Josh. Who is your mentor when it comes to this subject of conflict
resolution?

[00:43:32] Joshua
Mauldin: I do not have a quick answer for that. Um, I have a whole stack of.
That I read, um, there’s one called culture organizations, which really helps me understand like power
dynamics in different cultures.

[00:43:47] Um, and I’ve read a lot about how to have
conflict with people in different cultures. And most of those things are extremely stereotypical, which is
something you want to avoid. Um, cultures and organizations is really more of a holistic approach and
it’s more of a prototyping approach. Like these things might happen.

[00:44:05] So keep them in mind. Um, but yeah,
that’s, that’s probably the most recent one that I’ve, I’ve been into

[00:44:14] Brian
Hinton: please. What’s one pet peeve of yours that hampers your whole life
to such an extent that if you could get rid of it, it would just increase your enjoyment of life,
exponentially,

[00:44:26] Joshua
Mauldin: uh, algorithms in my social media.

[00:44:31] Frederick
Weiss: Well said, Josh, what is your favorite thing about yourself?

[00:44:38] Joshua
Mauldin: Ah, I I’ve really been working for a few years on cultivating
resilience and it’s just, that’s just, I feel like I’ve gotten to a much better place about it.
And so, you know, situations change, I can roll better with the punches. I’m a little less brittle when
it comes to, uh, addressing.

[00:45:02] Brian
Hinton: What chore do

[00:45:04] Joshua
Mauldin: you hate doing? Oh, cleaning my shower. Just like the legitimate, like
it’s like, it is the most intense cardio that I will do. And like, I’ve done like the like cardio
strength, workouts, where you like have a hammer and you just like hit it on a tire for awhile. Like I could
do that longer than I could, like intensely scrub.

[00:45:26] Frederick
Weiss: Just got to spray the scrubbing bubbles. They take care of it. I saw the
animation. Oh,

[00:45:31] Joshua
Mauldin: right, right. Yeah. That’s for next. I’ve been, I’ve been
knowing it this whole time.

[00:45:37] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah. Hey, you know, live and learn. Right. Josh, what is your, um,
rather if, if you couldn’t do what you’re doing now, uh, what, what else would you be doing for a
career for the rest of your life?

[00:45:52] Joshua
Mauldin: I think it’d be a therapy. Or a coach or a counselor or something.
Um, I get, I enjoy listening to folks and like poking through things with them and helping them explore
things. And so like, you know, that’s not that different from what I do with conflict resolution, you
know, we’re working through hard things together to make real progress on ourselves and our teams and
our products.

[00:46:17] They’re not

[00:46:17] Frederick
Weiss: that different. No.

[00:46:21] Brian
Hinton: So would you rather live where it snows all the time never stops or
where the temperature never falls below a hundred degrees.

[00:46:33] Joshua
Mauldin: So do I want to keep living in Los Angeles is the question. Um, I
would, I would love to go and live where it’s nose all the time. It’s very cozy.

[00:46:44] You get your scarves, you get your cocoa, uh,
you get your snowman. I think you’re up, you’re in the right place. We all agree with that. Good,

[00:46:55] Frederick
Weiss: good gut. Josh, what are you, what are you reading for fun these days?

[00:46:59] Joshua
Mauldin: Um, I just picked up this book called the French art of not trying too
hard and it just, it really.

[00:47:08] It vibes with named man. Like we’re just
a lot of times we try and force ourselves through a process or like, you know, if we want to get this
outcome, we have to do all of these other things. And it’s just, it’s very intensive. And so this
book is really espousing the idea of ease and grace and intuition.

[00:47:29] And I think that it’s really important
for people who make things, because yeah, we can use this framework all the time. And we can make things
very formulaic. Sometimes they work. Sometimes it has a little issue, but you know, we spend our whole lives
cultivating this intuition, and it’s a shame that we discard it in favor of a prescribed number of
steps.

[00:47:58] Brian
Hinton: So don’t answer this if it gets you in trouble, but what, if
anything, have you.

[00:48:07] Joshua
Mauldin: Uh, okay. So when I was young, uh, I ended up getting a gift from my
youth group and it was just a, a bucket of popcorn, caramel cheese, and regular. Why would you require six?
Well, dude, I was like seven, so I was like, I have to figure out something to give my dad for
Christmas.

[00:48:31] And so. I didn’t even change the, like, I
didn’t put a different bow on it. I just, after I had been inside it and like opened one of the packages
and I was like, Merry Christmas dad. And they were like, did you get this from youth group? And I was like,
no, no, no. I went out and bought it myself. Uh, I was just doubling down on my bullshit and yeah,
that’s that one.

[00:49:02] That’s a good one.

[00:49:03] Frederick
Weiss: Well, Hey, you were seven. It’s all good. But yeah, that’s how

[00:49:07] Joshua
Mauldin: I met 27. My bad,

[00:49:09] Frederick
Weiss: no 27. Gotcha. Yeah, either way. It’s very difficult to give away
popcorn. So, uh, I guess you, Josh, what, uh, what podcasts are you listening to lately for? Um, not just
entertainment or for, uh, for learning purposes.

[00:49:25] Joshua
Mauldin: So I enjoy, Adobe’s also nerds.

[00:49:30] Uh, obviously, um, I, I tend to keep my
podcast listening a little more on the like entertainment side. So my, uh, I actually, I hear a lot of
podcasts because my wife is listening to them all the time. Um, Smartlist has really hilarious. With Jason
Bateman and will Arnett and some other guy. And I’m not quite remembering, sorry, other guy.

[00:49:53] Um, yeah, like mostly my brain hears people
talk all day. And so it’s very exhausting to process a lot of like canned conversation. So I tend to
prefer music or things that like song Exploder. I don’t know. I do a lot of reading these days rather
than.

[00:50:14] Brian
Hinton: So no one really that I’ve ever met enjoys waiting anywhere, but
where’s one place that you don’t mind waiting till you’re like it’s okay.

[00:50:29] Joshua
Mauldin: Like, Hey,

[00:50:30] Brian
Hinton: let’s help this guy.

[00:50:32] Joshua
Mauldin: Okay. So here it is. Here’s why, because like we talked earlier
about, you know, this hypothetical conflict where you turned off all your notifications. Um, I am making my
phone as dumb as humanly possible while still being able to live in the modern world. And so, like, I
don’t have notifications, I don’t have social, I don’t have email on my phone.

[00:50:53] And so it’s like, I’m able to just
like, hang out and be. Uninterruptible. So waiting is pretty much good. I love that. I just wrecked your
question.

[00:51:09] Brian
Hinton: Yeah, you did. Yeah,

[00:51:12] Frederick
Weiss: I think we’re, we’re probably, we’re getting, uh, we’re
getting at the end here, Brian. I’m sorry. Do you have one last one of these

[00:51:18] Brian
Hinton: one, one last one. So why is count Dracula? A terrible project.

[00:51:25] Joshua
Mauldin: I don’t know. I’ve always been able to count on him. No,

[00:51:30] Brian
Hinton: that’s good. But it’s because he always avoids the
stakeholders.

[00:51:34] Joshua
Mauldin: Oh man. This guy, like, he just, he does it by the number. Like
he’s the most reliable person out. That’s true. I love it, Josh.

[00:51:45] Frederick
Weiss: We’re right at the end here. I want to ask you two things first. Uh,
where would you like people to find out more about.

[00:51:53] Joshua
Mauldin: I come join me on Twitter. Uh, I’ve also got some things on my
personal site, uh, before warrant, if you follow me on Twitter, there is a lot of dumb jokes.

[00:52:04] Frederick
Weiss: Gotcha. Love it. And the last question,

[00:52:11] words of wisdom. Uh, do you have any parting
words of wisdom for our audience?

[00:52:19] Joshua
Mauldin: Yeah. I would say that if you can see conflict as something that you
can embrace and learn from and have the discovery mindset, things are going to go much better for you, for
your team, for your company, for your product. Um, it’s, it’s, it’s the thing that keeps me
going this discovery mindset.

[00:52:42] So look at cultivating that you won’t. I

[00:52:46] Frederick
Weiss: love it. And I think the last thing that we agreed on before we started
the show was you were going to play us out. I see your guitar back there.

[00:52:54] Joshua
Mauldin: Wait, what we agreed

[00:52:55] Frederick
Weiss: on this? Yeah. So go ahead and grab it. And same whatever song you want.
We’ll wait for a second.

[00:53:03] Joshua
Mauldin: Um, well, here we go.

[00:53:07] I I’ve got my, I’ve got my air guitar
right

[00:53:10] Frederick
Weiss: here. Oh, you’re going to do an air

[00:53:11] Joshua
Mauldin: guitar. Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess we’re going to go
with, uh, what are we going to go with? Reluctantly crouched at the starting line engines pumping and
something in time, the green light flashes the crowds, something, something, and this guy goes to the
distance.

[00:53:30] We did it boys. We did it.

[00:53:32] Frederick
Weiss: Nice, well done. Beautiful performance by Joshua Malden. Joshua, thank
you so much for being part of the show and joining us.

[00:53:43] Brian
Hinton: Yeah, thank you for spending Saturday with us. A time is valuable. So
thanks for joining us. And I apologize for Frederick.

[00:53:54] Joshua
Mauldin: I

[00:53:54] Frederick
Weiss: apologize for Brian. Apparently

[00:53:57] Joshua
Mauldin: I apologize that my bad karaoke skills. So I’m going to go work on
that. I

[00:54:01] Frederick
Weiss: think you karaoke was on point in your air guitar for audio listeners.
You got to go back and watch because he was hitting him. He was hitting the courts. That’s

[00:54:09] Brian
Hinton: right. Flying all over the place. It was amazing.

[00:54:13] Frederick
Weiss: What was that? That was Kate, right?

[00:54:15] Joshua
Mauldin: Yeah, it definitely was.

[00:54:17] Frederick
Weiss: Yeah. Nice. Nice. Thank you everybody for joining. Really appreciate it.
And we’ll catch you next time. Thanks all
...more
57min
July 30, 2021285 – 🎯 Essential Marketing Strategies with David Portnowitz
In this episode, we get to talk with David Portnowitz, Chief Marketing Officer at Star2Star, a Sangoma company. We discuss Star2Star, their solutions, and how they’re providing services that address the challenges of our new normal. We also delve into Marketing in the 20s and leverage the lessons learned from 2020 to ready business for the future. Additionally, we evaluate the current marketing trends and hypothesize which opportunities hold the most value.
✨ Episode Sponsor
- Auth0: https://auth0.com
- Auth0 on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/auth0
- Auth0 on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/auth0
- Auth0 Avocado Labs online meetup events: https://avocadolabs.dev/
🔗 Episode Links
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/dportno
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-portnowitz/
- Star2Star: https://www.star2star.com
- Sangoma: https://www.sangoma.com
- Project Hail Mary: https://www.amazon.com/Project-Hail-Mary-Andy-Weir/dp/0593135202
- Desktop-as-a-Service: https://www.star2star.com/DaaS
- Host: Frederick Weiss: https://twitter.com/FrederickWeiss
📜 Transcript

Frederick Weiss: welcome. I am Frederick Philip von Weiss,
and you are consuming the Thunder Nerds! a conversation with the people behind the technology that love what
they do, and do tech good! Welcome to the show everybody. Go ahead and start live chatting with
us.

[00:01:38] We'll answer your questions in the order they are received. Additionally, make
sure you subscribe to the show at YouTube.com/ThunderNerds
and click on that notification bell to get alerts for new videos. And we also
have exclusive subscriber giveaways. Now with that being said, and without any ados being furthered,
let's go ahead and welcome our guests.

[00:02:03] We have: speaker, host, bourbon connoisseur, and chief marketing officer
at Star2Star, a Sangoma company. David Portnowitz! David, welcome to the show. Appreciate you coming.

[00:02:17] David Portnowitz: [00:02:17] Thanks
so much for having me, Frederick, it is so good to be here with you. I know this has been something
we've been trying to schedule for a while.

[00:02:24] And I got to ask you about avocado labs. I'm getting hungry now.

[00:02:28] Frederick Weiss: [00:02:28] yeah, I
hear what you mean. I do enjoy the avocado in the guacamole. It's one of my favorite treats, but
yeah, man, I really appreciate you being on the show. We've worked together in some capacity now for
a pretty long time, and I'm very grateful to have you on the show my friend.

[00:02:44] And, just thank you so much for sharing your time with us!

[00:02:47] David Portnowitz: [00:02:47] Yeah. We
have a long history, right? I guess we could go back to just trying to think about 2007, 2008? I guess it
would have been 2008 maybe. Was that, does that sound about?

[00:02:59] Frederick Weiss: [00:02:59] That does
sound about right. Which sounds like a lifetime ago, really.

[00:03:04] Especially the way the world is changing. Excuse me. Just quick,
disclaimer, I've been very sick, so you might hear some coughing, sneezing and other mysterious
noises. So forgive me for that. Just putting that out there. But David let's build up
a little bit of context about you for our audience first off.

[00:03:23] So you are the CMO at Star2Star communications, a Sangoma company. Maybe
you could tell us a little bit about that. And so we could get a more idea about what you do, who you are.

[00:03:33] David Portnowitz: [00:03:33]
Absolutely. So I have been at Star2Star now for going on, I guess this will be my eighth year there. I
started in 2013 as head of digital and have worked my way up to the CMO role.

[00:03:47] I've been in that role now for about three years. And previous
to that, I worked at IMG Academy, which is, if you're familiar with the sports world, the largest youth
training facility in the world based here in Bradenton, Florida. And I started there right out of
college and that was my first job.

[00:04:03] I, and I've spent seven or eight years there doing that. And
that's where I met Fredrick when he was working at an agency nearby. And so we actually were
using the agency and. I crossed paths first, and then I left IMG and I guess it would have been October of
2013 and started at Star2Star a month later about, I don't know, maybe a year later.

[00:04:24] When did you start there? I started to start,

[00:04:27] Frederick Weiss: [00:04:27] I think I
started there maybe like nine months after you, because every time I see the career history on
LinkedIn, you're like just a few months ahead of me on the thing. I think I'm set. I just got
my seven years, your eight

[00:04:41] David Portnowitz: [00:04:41] years.
Maybe I'll be eight in November, I think, because I think that makes sense, right?

[00:04:46] 20. Yeah, let me do it fast. And Star2Star. Just for all
intents and purposes is a UCaaS company around. For 15 or 16 years and was recently acquired by a company
called Sangoma that's based in Toronto, Canada. And we are really excited about this merger and
coming together with the single-mode folks and joining forces.

[00:05:10] They've got an entire suite of communication as a service products.
Obviously we are a full service UCaaS company and kind of put our products together. We think we have
the largest sort of portfolio in the industry now. It was a very exciting time. We're going
through all those integration pains.

[00:05:27] If you've been on, I'm sure many of you have probably experienced
merging with another company and integrating. It's tough. There's a lot to
Wade through it's nerve wracking. It's exciting. It's all of those things put together.
So you know, we're going through that right now and yeah, that's kinda where we
are.

[00:05:45] Frederick Weiss: Let me
ask you a question. So as a CMO, what exactly do you do? What is your day to day like for people that
might not understand that concept or are interested in maybe having aspirations to become a CMO?

[00:05:58] David Portnowitz: [00:05:58] Yeah, I
think it's a lot. I spent a lot of time talking to the product side to the sales side, to
customer service, trying to understand where we want to position ourselves in the market, how we
want to talk to our customers and our partners where we want to put the focus where sales is
where, what kind of leads we want to drive all of those things that.

[00:06:22] That we're focused on driving revenue essentially. And then
executing from there, right? Like I then go down to my team and say, look, where's your,
here's what we want to focus on. Here's the kind of campaign we want to run. Here are the
priorities we have and I like to run my department in a couple of ways.

[00:06:42] One I'm not. I'm not a very, I'm not a micromanager. I think
maybe Frederick will correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't try to be a micromanager, not if I
know there are times when I don't have to be a little bit more hands-on and try to push things
through.

[00:07:00] I am impatient. I will tell you that. But I also like to run the group as
more of an agency that kind of approach. And we help our partners out. We help our salespeople out. We
help the company out. Those are our three main customers. If we were to look at the agency model
and we are a lean to yes organization.

[00:07:20] We want to do what we can do to help. We will go out of our way to
be responsive. I do think it's really important if someone sends us an email or someone sends us a
note. Let's respond to them, let's make sure we hear they're, they feel like they're
heard. And that goes a long way.

[00:07:35] And I think marketing for us, there has been a bit of a differentiator.
When space, the UCaaS space has been commoditized, prices have been driving down partners. Their
choices have been dwindling as companies merge together. Marketing is an area where we think we can
differentiate ourselves in this and the level of service we provide and the quality of things we do and the
content we create.

[00:07:56] All of those things are things I focus on a daily basis. And
you're also managing people. So that's something you have to be comfortable with. If
you want to get into the CMO role. I It is you're dealing with people and you're dealing with
their issues and you're making sure that they're taken care of.

[00:08:11] And all of those things are a balancing act. And that's
what being a manager is in general. You've got people on top of you, you've got people below
you and you've got to balance in between. It definitely makes for interesting days.

[00:08:25] Frederick Weiss: [00:08:25] Yes. And
also you're responsible for your customers as well. And for your partners,

[00:08:32] David Portnowitz: [00:08:32] Yeah.
For us, we're a partner led business. And we don't sell anything directly.
We sell everything through a reseller or through an IT professional who is going to resell our product to an
end-user, to a customer.

[00:08:46] Think about it like a car dealership, right? So when you go to buy a
Subaru you don't go right to Subaru corporate to buy that car, there are, there's a
Subaru dealer in your area. You go to them, they get, they buy the car from Subaru. They resell it to you at
a higher price. There's a markup in there and they're making that money probably upfront
whatever that difference is.

[00:09:07] There's probably some money in there recurring too. And once
you're paying on a car payment so those are the kinds of that's the model that we
say, so we've got partners that are local, if you needed. Voice service. If you needed security,
if you needed a virtual desktop, if you needed those kinds of things, you would go to your local IT
guy and say, Hey, look, I don't have an IT department.

[00:09:28] Or maybe my IT department can't handle this kind of thing. I
need help. An MSP or which is a managed service provider will come in and say, okay, we
recommend star to star. They can help solve these problems for you and et cetera, et cetera.

[00:09:41] Frederick Weiss: [00:09:41]
Excellent. Yeah. So go ahead. Yeah. I wouldn't be the person or you wouldn't be the person I
would go to then to say, Hey, my tires are, or I'm low on my Subaru.

[00:09:51] I would be going to my a Subaru dealer.

[00:09:55] David Portnowitz: [00:09:55] Yeah.
And then the Subaru dealer is going to go back to Subaru and say, Hey Subaru, can you help us market
these cars? Can you run ads? Can you give us money? Do you have money so that we can run local
advertisements here? Do you have collateral on these cars that we can put in our dealerships?

[00:10:11] Do you have a portal we can go to and download all the assets that we
need? That's the same kind of thing we do for our partners, right? Our partners are in the field
they're selling, but they need the support, right? They need financial support. They need collateral
support, they need content. They need to understand how the products work.

[00:10:28] They need to have, they need to be trained on what to say and how to sell
the products. Is very similar to that. You could think about it like the real estate model as well.
That if you're a real estate agent for Coldwell banker or something like that, or
Coldwell banker is this massive corporate company, but you're going to you're a local
agent.

[00:10:47] They're going to provide you with tons of material, tons of content,
training, financial support, all of those things. So very similar to those kinds of models. And then. For us
from a marketing standpoint we're charged with helping those partners sell. We're charged with
making sure that they have the right materials, that they have the right people to help them.

[00:11:06] So all of those things are part of what we do on a daily basis. Yes.

[00:11:10] Frederick Weiss: [00:11:10] And for
full transparency, this episode is sponsored by Subaru. They provide a little bit of cash for the analogies.
Thank you. Subaru. Just want to get that out there. It's just in case all the cards are on the
table. So

[00:11:22] David Portnowitz: [00:11:22] did you
own a Subaru?

[00:11:24] I wish they were sponsoring. Cause then maybe my Subaru, but yeah.

[00:11:28] Frederick Weiss: [00:11:28] Do you
like

[00:11:28] David Portnowitz: [00:11:28] your
Subaru? I love my Subaru, so no, you're not

[00:11:32] Frederick Weiss: [00:11:32]
You're not going to go the Tesla route.

[00:11:33] David Portnowitz: [00:11:35] I
think I need a few more dollars to get into the Tesla route. So what do you think?

[00:11:41] Frederick Weiss: [00:11:42] I saw
that I don't know if the Musk is, and has put in some jokes out there talking about how a cyber
truck might cost a million dollars.

[00:11:50] Are there any, yeah. Is there any

[00:11:52] David Portnowitz: [00:11:54] I
don't love the look of the cyber truck. I'm not going to be on it. I'm not going to lie to you.
I'm sure I can do my thing. I do listen, I do the a, what is it? The why? I think, why
is it worn out? I would definitely get a Y. My wife would love it if I got a Y she would love the idea
of getting an electric car.

[00:12:11] So they're safe, two very safe cars. Yeah. They're just just
a little bit out of my price range and just more money that I want to spend on a car. I should say
I guess I'm not that kind of guy. I, it's not that important to me, I guess I would say,

[00:12:26] Frederick Weiss: [00:12:26] I think
if you balance the if you look at a few different factors, like how much it costs like gas per month,
and you factor that into your monthly payments, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:12:36] It had my balance out in some scenarios because of course your insurance
goes up a little bit, depending on who your agency is. Yeah, but I

[00:12:44] David Portnowitz: [00:12:44] digress.
I would love to get it. I'm not gonna lie to you. I'm like, I would love to get my love. I love the
fact that it's just one big computer screen. It's very minimal.

[00:12:52] I love all that.

[00:12:52] Frederick Weiss: [00:12:52] So
I'm in, yeah. I'd love to get the cyber tracker. That's definitely my style.

[00:12:57] David Portnowitz: [00:12:57] I need a
cyber truck.

[00:12:59] Frederick Weiss: [00:12:59] I would
love the cyber truck. That is me all day meat all

[00:13:02] David Portnowitz: [00:13:02] day. It
looks like a, yeah. I don't know about that. I don't know about that. Look, it looks so weird

[00:13:09] Frederick Weiss: [00:13:09] again.
Not you, I'm the target.

[00:13:13] David Portnowitz: [00:13:13] Okay. It
looks very long. I don't think it would fit in a garage.

[00:13:18] Frederick Weiss: [00:13:18] I would
make it fit. My garage is pretty long. I like it. I guess I would golf it all out. I totally would love
that.

[00:13:24] David Portnowitz: [00:13:24] All
right. I hope you will one day. Get it.

[00:13:28] Frederick Weiss: [00:13:28] Me too.
That's my plan

[00:13:29] David Portnowitz: [00:13:29] right
now. There's one, I think right now there's one of them.

[00:13:31] So I don't know.

[00:13:33] Frederick Weiss: [00:13:33] Just that
one that Jalen was driving around. Yeah, exactly. I'm sure he has that in his thing. Let's go
ahead and get to our main topic.

[00:13:45] So David, our main topic is marketing in the roaring twenties. Ooh.
What's some of the dances in the twenties, the chocolate

[00:13:54] David Portnowitz: [00:13:54]
Charleston

[00:13:55] Frederick Weiss: [00:13:55] has

[00:13:57] David Portnowitz: [00:13:57] the arms
in your legs like together, like

[00:13:59] Frederick Weiss: [00:13:59] a cross.
I just see Amy Poehler in somebody doing that yeah.

[00:14:07] David Portnowitz: [00:14:07] I think
icebergs had a moment there.

[00:14:10] Icebergs

[00:14:10] Frederick Weiss: [00:14:10]
didn't have a moment. Maybe that was before then all that stuff could come back. I do love the
cold. One of the things that I go to in my head right away with the roaring twenties. It's
a product of the COVID is everything to do with coffee and the industrial revolution, really.

[00:14:32] And I promise I'm going somewhere where people used to drink alcohol
all the time, because it was safer than water. And then people started drinking coffee because it was a
different kind of beverage that allowed us to not be governed by the sun and the moon. We
could work linked to the day.

[00:14:49] We could be more productive and frankly, we weren't drunk as we were
trying to get things accomplished. And then in the late 17 hundreds coffee became very popular,
industrial revolution, et cetera, et cetera. Then we started having the coffee breaks and I think in
Wisconsin, in the late fifties, maybe early fifties, 51 ish somewhere back to the future with Marnie,
the coffee break became law, right?

[00:15:16] What happened with the coffee break is people started to become more
productive. They had a coffee break in the morning and then the afternoon. And I think there's a lot of
similarities here. Some parallels if you think about it with remote work and flexible work, and
we're seeing that people started with remote work and flexible work or rather remote
work at the beginning of the pandemic, that people would work a lot more.

[00:15:42] They wouldn't take a lot of breaks, so they would work way into the
night. I think a lot of people have done that. I know I did that. I subscribed to that kind of
lifestyle, but they were also happier and more productive and got a lot more done. Do you see any kind
of similarities to this?

[00:15:59] David Portnowitz: [00:16:00] Yeah,
first off, I don't know what you're talking about. So excuse me.

[00:16:04] Frederick Weiss: [00:16:04] How did
you not catch

[00:16:05] David Portnowitz: [00:16:05] that?
No, I didn't know. I didn't know where you're going with the coffee thing, but now it makes
sense. No, I think, look, when you, when we were home last year, there was less of a, there was
you didn't have that sort of difference between work in your home, you
were working from your house all the time. There was no break. When you left work, you could stop
thinking about it or you could put it behind you and you could go home and you could be with your family.
There was less of that and it spilled over into 1, 1, 1 big blob of work and home and
kids and your significant other was that it was just, it was chaos.

[00:16:44] And. As we are getting back into the office a little bit
there's definitely going to be this idea of a hybrid environment where there is
you're home for a little bit, you're at work for a little bit, you're in the office
there, and I think we're all going to have to get used to that.

[00:17:02] What does that look like? For example, one of the things that I just was
like I'm so tired of carrying my monitor and my key in my mouse and this back and
forth. So I was like, I'm just gonna order a second one for my home. And second, the idea of needing
this and then not having a setup every time you move back and forth that wasn't something we had
to deal with 18 months ago.

[00:17:24] I think there's going to be a. Yeah. A learning curve for a lot
of companies. So how to do this. I think the technology side is going to be very interesting.
Cause I think everyone was like, oh, we gotta get everyone set up to work from home. They did that
now, how do you deal with getting everyone working from home and also working from the office at the same
time and balancing that and dealing with COVID and dealing with someone in the office getting
sick and then people going back home for all of this is going to happen.

[00:17:53] We were fortunate enough in our. World where we didn't have to
go into the office last year there and there are a lot of people who, that, that wasn't the
case, the majority of people. We're a little bit, but you and I are a little bit
behind that curve, so we're going to have to figure out what it's going to be, it's going to be
interesting to see what else.

[00:18:12] There's

[00:18:13] Frederick Weiss: [00:18:13] a thing I
want to read here from Apollo technical.com? I'm going to read this quote, Upwork estimates that
one in four Americans and over 26% of the American workforce will be working remotely through 2021. And they
continue to say, they also estimate that 22% of the workforce, 36.2 million Americans will work remotely by
2025.

[00:18:45] So that being said, how do we take advantage of that from a marketing
perspective? What do we think?

[00:18:53] David Portnowitz: [00:18:53] I think
I think it's probably pretty accurate. As we see companies have plans to send people back to
the office just this month and had to push those back because of COVID.

[00:19:03] I think it's a rolling kind of calendar. No one knows
exactly when that's going to be. How do we take advantage of it as one we have to be more
personal, right? We have to understand that people are at home. We have to understand how
they're spending their time.

[00:19:18] If you look at Gartner, they put out a digital distraction document that I
thought was fascinating. That the sort of the top distractions impacting employees, ability to
concentrate, and you had this sort of work distractions like emails, unscheduled work-related calls, and
some messaging mixed with digital distractions, like your personal emails, your text messages, your social
media alerts mixed with personal distractions, like housekeeping responsibilities, caretaking deliveries,
mail.

[00:19:44] Yeah. Picking up your kids, all those kinds of things. And there's
sort of a point where at least things overlap we have to be cognizant of that. You have to be
able to if you're trying to get a customer that's working from home, you need to be able to
speak to them in their language.

[00:19:58] What are the things they're dealing with? How do we help them
get through the Workday when their kids are at school and their significant other is here. And they've
got, they're dealing with trying to do laundry and clean all of these things at the same time.
I think it's important that marketers understand those kinds of things.

[00:20:18] And if you're going to send something to them, if you're
going to send them a package, don't send it to their work address, find out their home address, little
things like that make a big difference. And I've seen some companies do that well and some
companies still struggle with it.

[00:20:30] Yeah. Yeah. I I think it's all about understanding the
mindset or what the customer is dealing with at the time.

[00:20:40] Frederick Weiss: [00:20:40] It's
interesting. You bring that up. What is besides that? What are some other lessons
we've learned from the lack of face to face that we didn't have, this
deficiency in business that we could and empower ourselves to use going into 2020.

[00:21:02] David Portnowitz: [00:21:02] Wow.

[00:21:02] Frederick Weiss: [00:21:04] Like some
best practices, the future. Yeah.

[00:21:05] David Portnowitz: [00:21:05] I
think one, it is if you're if you're managing people, I think it's being flexible. I
think you have to be flexible. I think you have to understand that people are going to work from home.
Sometimes they're going to come into the office.

[00:21:18] You can't have this Idea that everyone's just going to be
there every day. I think you have to have that. I think you need to be realistic with people.
People have been working from home and they like the idea that they can do that. And I
think you need to be realistic about what's going to happen sometimes.

[00:21:34] And to me, those are the kinds of things I think about from
from the customer standpoint w what's going to drive them is they're going to be
looking for technology that makes it easier for them to go back and forth, to work from anywhere to
have one seamless application that they can do all these things in they don't want to have to drag
a big computer back and forth.

[00:21:55] They want to be able to boot up quickly. They want to be able to get
their stuff right away. You want to make their life as simple as possible. It's going to help
increase their productivity. It's going to make them. No technology stack is easier. These
are the things that we're hearing from our customers.

[00:22:11] They want one vendor for these things. They want to be able to go to one
place and get all this stuff. That's what's important to our customers.

[00:22:19] Frederick Weiss: [00:22:19] Yeah.
I hear you when you talk about that kind of stuff, that makes me think about things like
desktop as a service to where people could utilize some kind of central source for their for
that kind of technology and then to distribute basically machines and all that stuff is going to cover
you don't have to worry about the security of what happens if that laptop gets stolen or
you don't have to worry about having somebody come to your location and loading a
bunch of things on their machine.

[00:22:52] Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Do you mind just maybe I know I just put out
a statement like that. Do you mind just briefly with some brevity's just going over, what
that Daws solution might be.

[00:23:04] David Portnowitz: [00:23:04] Yeah.
You think about it, you want to boot up your computer and you want to be able to have the
applications that you use every day.

[00:23:11] So let's say you're in Salesforce every day. You use
Adobe and you use your email. Those are really the only applications you use. So you have a virtual desktop,
so you boot booted up, it looks like a regular computer, but those applications are in the cloud. And
you're not taking up your computer hard drive space.

[00:23:26] You could use a thin client. If you could use a Chromebook or a
lightweight tablet or something like that. And the applications are in the cloud, they're secure.
If you lose it, like you mentioned, you can just erase it from wherever you are and then
get a new one.

[00:23:42] Inexpensive piece of hardware and global applications. And
again, be you left off in someplace, you were doing emails you were using office 365 or whatever
the case is, and you want to pick right back up. You can do those things because it's all stored in the
cloud. Yeah. And from a corporate standpoint, it's really nice because I can control what's on
the machine they're on, they can't download their own personal email.

[00:24:05] They can't be checking Facebook. You can monitor those
things and it reduces your costs, right? You don't have to buy everybody a $1,500 Macbook.
Although we like our nice Macbooks or you can get a Chromebook. Yeah. But you can spend two or $300 on
a Chromebook and you can get the same kind of functionality or you can, a lot of times you can,
you might even just build this with a raspberry PI 40, 50 bucks monitor and be good to
go.

[00:24:29] Those are the kinds of things you can do in a virtual
desktop experience. And we work closely with Citrix and they're the leader in this space on the
virtual desktop side. And there are. Multi-billion dollar, large enterprises using virtual
desktops.

[00:24:46] It's a it's and it became more popular during the pandemic because
you had people working from home and you wanted companies to be able to control the applications on
the computer. And they wanted to make sure it was secure and that and they want to make it so that
you don't have to VPN in, it slows you down.

[00:25:02] This takes all that away. So it's just it's a very
elegant solution for that problem.

[00:25:08] Frederick Weiss: [00:25:08] Yeah. I would say if
anybody wants to learn more about that, they could go to Star2Star.com/DaaS, and we'll put a link to
that, obviously in the show notes.

[00:25:24] Frederick Weiss: [00:25:24] Let's
go to our next kind of topic here.

[00:25:28] It is Virtual Event Marketing. One of the things that I know you very much
enjoy for these virtual events without these events and These kinds of things in
2020 it's what did businesses do? And more importantly what are the takeaways for empowering the
future?

[00:25:48] We're gonna start to get back to the way things look a little
bit we're going to have some of these events, but w we've learned that a lot of
times these virtual events people are either they're halfway there halfway, not they're either
eating Chinese food or yeah.

[00:26:07] Really not even that I'm being gracious.

[00:26:09] David Portnowitz: [00:26:09] Yeah. I
think you're being very gracious.

[00:26:10] Frederick Weiss: [00:26:11]
Tell me about that. What do you think the results were and what can we do better moving forward?
Obviously people are starting to get out a little bit. We don't know what the fursuit foreseeable future
holds, but we'll not jump into

[00:26:24] David Portnowitz: [00:26:24]
that.

[00:26:24] Yeah. So I think last year, the virtual events were really, really
difficult. I think people were overwhelmed with them. It's very hard to do a virtual event while
also being. Checking your email and doing work. I think when you're at an event, you can be
there. You can monitor your email on a phone.

[00:26:42] If you need to jump on a quick call, you can do that, but you're not
really in the office. Your staff knows you're not there. There's not an expectation that
you're going to be able to return this email in two seconds or that you're going to be able to jump
on this project right away but when you're at a virtual event, I think some of those barriers are
not as clear.

[00:27:03] There is an expectation that you're doing the virtual event and
you're still working at the same time. And it's hard to schedule around. I You really
needed to pretend like you're at an event and then clear your calendar and then do that all day. And I
think that's hard.

[00:27:16] It was hard for me because some other people may have been
more successful with it. It was not for me and for the events that we tried to do and do
recruiting in and things like that, they were just not super successful. I am looking forward to getting
back to in-person events when it's safe.

[00:27:32] I'm hoping that we can do that this year. And I think that
they're not going to be as, as well attended as they have been in the past. I think that's going to
be part of the new normal all over the next, I don't know, 12, 24 months. But I think people
were also excited to get back out.

[00:27:50] You look at, I know you look at places like Las Vegas and
Florida, which we do a lot of. There's a lot of people who come to Orlando for events
big, and center. Those places have been pretty crowded. Yeah, no. So I think people, they
want to go, they want to be able to travel again.

[00:28:06] I know if you have, if you have done any traveling and had in the
past six months, you know how hard it is. Flights are expensive. Rental cars are hard to get. Hotel rooms
are expensive. And again so people are, people want to get out of the house. Virtual goal of going back to
virtual events is to not for me.

[00:28:26] I didn't find anything that really worked.

[00:28:29] Frederick Weiss: [00:28:29] Yeah. I
hear a lot of people talking about things like incentivizing with games, contests, quizzes, but I, it
seems like everybody had that same kind of experience where they tried so many different things, but
again it's one of those video fatigues.

[00:28:45] Like you don't want to sit in front of the camera or the computer for
some kind of events such as this or such as that rather for a five hour time period. It's
just, it's

[00:28:57] David Portnowitz: [00:28:57] too
much. It is absolutely too much. It's there, it's exhausting. You just can't do it all
day. The video fatigue was real, it was a real thing.

[00:29:05] People experienced it all across the world really. And it's
just, it's a lot to sit there and listen just to listen to sessions and listen, and
that's hard to do and it's hard to not get distracted and go back to that digital distraction
thing that I talked about it's hard to not do laundry at the same time, or you're
checking Twitter or you're texting with your friend, or you're also doing email those things
all come up when you're just sitting there you're like I'm just sitting
here listening.

[00:29:34] I could do this at the same time. When you start doing those things,
you're not really listening anymore. You're like half listening, half doing this, a
third, doing that so it's becomes very difficult to keep anybody's
attention for any period of time.

[00:29:47] Frederick Weiss: [00:29:47] Yeah. And
it makes a lot of sense speaking of that then Jumping into my next question which blends into what we
were just talking about.

[00:29:55] I wanted to ask you about how you re-imagined marketing through all this.
And what did you find successful? If we think about demand generation being the top of the
funnel, the marketing qualified leads and the bottom of the funnel being sales, qualified leads, like how,
w what exactly did you do in the response once?

[00:30:15] Once we got a little bit down the line of 20, 21, and maybe
w what kind of takeaways can we apply that's applicable to next year?

[00:30:27] David Portnowitz: [00:30:27] Yeah,
good question. So I think for us, it was important to double down on digital, wherever we could this was the
case for a lot of companies now, you were looking for ways to drive new leads. People were spending a lot of
time online. How could you engage with them through SEM, through SEO? How could you engage with them
where they are, what the platforms they're using and how do you reach them at home?

[00:30:49] We did several things where we mailed something to someone's house.
That was not something we used to do. We would send somebody to the office courtesy of their
name. And those kinds of things were important to us and we all, so we were cognizant that people
were.

[00:31:05] They were, it was a time of unease, right? So people
didn't know what to expect. They didn't know where we were, so we tried to be very comforting to
them. We tried to be there for them to support them both financially. And when you did, we tried to
make sure that their needs were taken care of if they needed something someone got sick
God forbid we, you just tried to be a good partner.

[00:31:26] And from my driving lead standpoint, I think you really
needed to focus on digital. You need to be socially socially there, you need to have a
presence there. You need to be tapping into that. You needed to be. When people were looking for
you online you needed to be there.

[00:31:41] You needed to look at review sites and be, have a presence
there you needed to do no marketing, which I think God got we've. We certainly jumped the shark
there. If we hadn't already five years ago, we certainly did last year with the amount of emails that
we, you would get from companies trying to be a little bit pitchy about, oh yeah, you're at home
so look, everyone we all have we all dealt with that.

[00:32:10] Yeah. But there are only so many levers you can pull and you
just have to be, you have to pull the right one at the right time and that's it's more
sometimes a little bit marketing is a little bit more of an art. That's balancing that art with
that side.

[00:32:27] Frederick Weiss: [00:32:27] Yeah,
that's fair. It's definitely numbers and numbers and all that. Yeah so do, would you
then think that COVID has has changed the practice of business as a whole forever? Will
marketing ever be the same or are we just full on focusing on these digital experiences?

[00:32:45] David Portnowitz: [00:32:45] No
I think that there have been some areas where it's, we're, you're never going to go
back.

[00:32:50] It's never like we talked about events. They're never going to be
as big as they were before. Just because people are there, they don't have to travel. They
don't feel that need. I think, like I said, there may be, there's going to be a boom. People wanna
get out of the house.

[00:33:06] But then they'll probably slowly trend back down. When people
get tired of traveling again when they get in the airport and they're stuck there overnight and
they're flames, plane's been delayed for no reason people are going to remember why they
didn't want to travel to begin with quick, quickly get reminded when you go to an airport and
you're like, oh God.

[00:33:21] Now I know I didn't want to do it because I think there are some
things that will change. I think digitally the main thing that I think we're going to
see going forward is people want to be able to get access to the information as quickly. This is already the
case, but I think it was doubled down on because people don't want to spend a lot of time on your
site looking for a million different things.

[00:33:45] They come there for a specific reason. They've most likely
already done the research, as you'll hear that they've already talked to somebody about your
company. They've already looked you up online. They've thought they've read a review, they come
to your site, they want to be able to buy or download or, and when they want to go they don't want
to spend a lot of time.

[00:34:03] So I think you have to do a good job of trying to capture their attention
right away. You want to provide the right content to them that they're happy and they don't
feel like you're attacking them, or they don't feel like your Dropping in on them
and pouncing on them.

[00:34:17] That was one thing that you saw a lot of, I, I didn't even bring this
up, but like this whole, like LinkedIn pouncing thing where you would, I don't know, I got so many
LinkedIn invites and you would get in time, you get an, all the time, you get an, a, you get an accept and
then three seconds later, they're pouncing on you with it, with a message.

[00:34:34] And you're like, dude, I don't even know who you are.

[00:34:36] Frederick Weiss: [00:34:37] 10
paragraphs Hey good buddy. And you instantly regret, like I, why did I?

[00:34:45] David Portnowitz: [00:34:45] Yeah, I
have been like, I have definitely found myself being way more discerning around LinkedIn
invites. I'm like, if I don't know you, or if I don't have a lot in common with you,
I'm definitely not accepting you.

[00:34:58] And it is a cesspool right now to me and I have no offense to
LinkedIn, but it's hard to navigate. It's hard to know when things were posted, like the time
it's really good for me to be in interacting, but as a, as someone who just goes on there to
see what others are talking about, as someone who you might be using it for job searching or things
like that, it's it is overwhelming the amount of pitches you get and yeah.

[00:35:26] People trying to sell you something. It's just, it is tough.
It's tough to break through there. And it's very hard. The pouncing is really annoying. Like
it's very annoying. I

[00:35:36] Frederick Weiss: [00:35:36] think it
goes back to the the old 80 20 rule, which is you want to make sure that your take 80% of
your time and use that to provide value, give things back like podcasts or
courses, live streams or special links that you find will be usable for your audience.

[00:35:57] Things that they find value in, and then take that other 20% and then
actually promote your business and talk about the things that you're doing. Otherwise, you just
become like a small piece in the mosaic of a spam on the wall, and nobody hears you. It's there,
there is no value in it.

[00:36:18] David Portnowitz: [00:36:18]
Yeah.

[00:36:18] Or you just become a Nat,

[00:36:22] Frederick Weiss: [00:36:22] just go

[00:36:22] David Portnowitz: [00:36:23] Go away.
I hope LinkedIn, I'm sure LinkedIn has obviously seen them, probably their open rates are very low
in those kinds of I'm sure that they're working on things to help improve that. But they also
will probably like it, people are on their site. More people are connecting more. Those are all
things LinkedIn wants you to do. It does not make for a real grading experience in my mind. I
have a hard time with it. Yeah, even if you're, even if you're getting, sorry to interject,
but even if you're getting like those meet those quick span things like blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah.

[00:37:00] Frederick Weiss: [00:37:00] If you
read it for an extra 10 seconds, while you stayed on the site a little bit longer, he stayed there.

[00:37:07] David Portnowitz: [00:37:07] I think
LinkedIn has served its purpose with job searching with some networking and people in your community
with being able to reach out to potential partners or customers.

[00:37:22] But understanding that it's just one medium for that, that
it's not going to be the be all end all like you can't just say, oh we're just gonna do
all of our things here on LinkedIn, which I think a lot of companies do. They just rely on LinkedIn for
finding new customers all the time.

[00:37:36] And I think you have to just understand how it should be. And understand
that people do not want to spend hours reading your 10 paragraph LinkedIn mail about your company.
It's just pointless, be quick, be direct, be connected with them on something.
Mention that you mentioned the university that you both went to, or connect try to
bring something to the conversation other than just being annoying.

[00:38:02] Frederick Weiss: [00:38:02] I love
that. Yeah. Speaking of LinkedIn, what about some other platforms? There's a lot of buzz about
these audio only platforms. There's things like clubhouse Twitter spaces, discord, and now
Spotify has Spotify greenroom, which I've downloaded about.

[00:38:21] I haven't had a chance to actually try it out yet. What do you
think about these? These are going to be the future. They're definitely the answer to video
fatigue. And there are certainly a great way for a lot of people to just open up without having to
quote unquote, to be on camera for people that don't care for that.

[00:38:39] David Portnowitz: [00:38:39] Yeah. I
was following the clubhouse pretty closely. And if you notice their trends last year, they added a ton of
users. They were in beta. For a long time. And then their numbers went plateaued, right?
People were interested in it. They thought it was CMO. And then the numbers kind of plateaued.

[00:38:56] They just recently opened it up to open up any, anybody, their
numbers went up again, I think last week, but they're not they were not adding the same number of
users that they were back in the middle of the pandemic last year. So I think there's a little bit of
interest there.

[00:39:10] I am keen to see where it goes. You obviously see companies like
Spotify and Twitter putting money into this. So there's something there for them. I
saw Twitter spaces are allowing their content creators to Mo monetize those things.
So you could create a Twitter space you can charge for that exclusive content, which is very
CMO.

[00:39:30] I think that's an awesome thing for Twitter to do. I think
Apple's

[00:39:34] Frederick Weiss: [00:39:34] doing
that now, too. Apple. Yeah, they're going to start doing some exclusive paid podcasts. I
believe in podcasts.

[00:39:42] David Portnowitz: [00:39:42] Yeah, I did.
I did see that too. I think. And Spotify does that as well. So I think any time these
companies are giving their creators opportunities to make to monetize what they're doing.

[00:39:53] I think that's great. I'm all for that. The gig economy, I think,
is still roaring with people who may disagree with me there, but I think people are still doing a lot of
freelance work and creating content on the side. And if Apple and Twitter and Spotify or giving
are providing opportunities for them to monetize that in any way to do that and make that easier, I think
that's great.

[00:40:11] I'm absolutely all for that now. I think there
will come a time when those platforms are. Maybe hit their limit. I don't know. We haven't
seen it yet. Obviously. I don't know. But I am, I think there's a limit to the
sort of audio only spaces. I don't know. We'll see. We're not there yet.

[00:40:33] But I do think at some point there's going to be just too
many applications. Look at TikTok, there's a lot of people that are making money with TikTok. It's
really easy to do that. You don't have to do overproduced content because it's
more about just being authentic, being yourself and getting things out there.

[00:41:01] Frederick Weiss: [00:41:01] Look at
the ocean spray guy, right? A guy riding the skateboard, ocean spray C singing, Stevie Nicks or
something like that. Look how much interest that generated for the ocean. And that, that
came out of nowhere and then ocean spray, like just banked on that. And that guy became a pseudo
famous on his own.

[00:41:22] In, in that 15 minutes, but there's so many opportunities
and these in these emerging communities and platforms, that's you'd be crazy not
to try to take advantage

[00:41:33] David Portnowitz: [00:41:33] oh yeah.
I agree. I think right now you want to strike while the iron's hot. So I think you want to
be there.

[00:41:40] And I'm getting some funny comments here. I
think there's an opportunity to try to monopolize, to try to take advantage of those while
they're, while people are using them. But again, now there's Twitter space and there is
a Spotify green room and there is a clubhouse where people actually like it. It's hard
you just, there's one after another, and you're trying to reach those people.

[00:42:06] Frederick Weiss: [00:42:06] Sorry to
chuckle. I'm just looking at Jeremy's comment here about how for the record, ocean spray is nasty.
Thank you for your clever insight there. Jeremy much appreciated. I don't think

[00:42:17] David Portnowitz: [00:42:17] I've
ever had ocean spray, to be honest with you. I

[00:42:20] Frederick Weiss: [00:42:20] think I
had ocean spray quite a while ago, and yes you might have to add some simple syrup to that.

[00:42:26] I'm not a fan of cranberry juice in general. So
that's not my thing I

[00:42:31] David Portnowitz: [00:42:31] prefer
two things in that, from that video, I prefer Fleetwood Mac over oceans.

[00:42:36] Frederick Weiss: [00:42:36] Yes, I
would. I would definitely lean into the Fleetwood Mac over the ocean spray. It's just nasty. They
got a lot of hits.

[00:42:43] They did. I'm sure people went out and tried their nasty drink
and said, oh it's good enough for that guy. I don't know how that worked out for
them, but apparently well,

[00:42:54] David Portnowitz: [00:42:54] Now that
you've ruined your opportunity to ever get ocean spray is fun. I,

[00:42:59] Frederick Weiss: [00:42:59] you know
what I think I'm okay with that.

[00:43:01] Sorry, but speaking of those audio platforms like we
were talking about discussing clubhouse, et cetera, et cetera, audio format and video content
are really becoming more of a big thing. Because, and you see that trend a lot now because nobody
wants to Google things like how to tie a tie for example, and see a 1500 word article on it and read
it and go, okay, CMO.

[00:43:31] They want things that are easily digestible and they could
consume it, get it like that and get on with their day. So things like short form videos and audio
it's so powerful. If you create like a little three minute video, and again
talking about that ocean spray guy, that was a three minute video and look at the power that, that
Yeah.

[00:43:54] Yeah. I know people getting more into that.

[00:43:57] David Portnowitz: [00:43:57] Yeah, I
think I think that's right. I think that's only going to continue. I'll give you a
good example. I had, I bought during the pandemic, I got a Peloton bike and I started in the
first day I get it. I get it. I clip in with my shoes and on, and then the clique, I
didn't have it screwed in all the way.

[00:44:14] And it got stuck in the thing. So I'm like, gosh, Nike's
first day I have this thing and I've already broken it, but I go, I Google it. I search for
what would happen and then boom, Peloton. Literally a one minute video on if this happened to you,
here's how you, here's, how you get to clean out.

[00:44:30] Th did. It was like that, so I didn't have to read anything. I watched
the video. It was very, it was quick, it was informative. It showed me exactly what to do and how to get the
cleat out. And boom, I was back, I was riding like, so it was really nice to have them answer my question
right away.

[00:44:45] And that kind of thing I think is going to become it. Isn't
it already more, it's already pervasive to be able to serve up that kind of content
for your customers is super helpful. I think that right there a customer has a problem.
Doesn't need contact support.

[00:45:03] Isn't tying up your people isn't driving up
your wait times on your support line. You created this video, which probably took you about
20 minutes to create an edit and boom, you fixed it, so like it's super, super common as
only going to become more.

[00:45:19] Frederick Weiss: [00:45:19] It's
interesting here.

[00:45:20] Here's an interesting comment from Jeremy again. Thank you so much,
Jeremy talking about going back to the ocean spray just a little bit and how this affects Spotify.
That's very interesting. Do you have any response to this?

[00:45:32] David Portnowitz: [00:45:33] Yeah.
The tick tock has a huge draw on what songs are popular.

[00:45:37] I am not the guy you want to talk to about what's popular on
TikTok. That is not an app I have on my phone. I've only recently discovered Instagram stories,
Instagram reels and oh yeah, that was fascinating to me. That was like a bad rabbit hole
for two weeks.

[00:45:55] But I have not delved into the Tik talk. I feel like I need
to spend less time on my phone. Not more so I don't think, I don't think that would be healthy
for me. I think my dog has started watching TikTok videos nonstop. Am I already spending too much time on
Twitter as well? But

[00:46:11] Frederick Weiss: [00:46:11] maybe you
could be more of a content creator mindset, maybe it could be a thing where we may need to
start looking at TikTok and more of a serious kind of fun way to help get things out.

[00:46:24] It's definitely about putting out things like marketing tips or
sales tips. They're there, there's an endless amount of different things you could do depending on
who your audience is. That would very much enjoy a little things like that, that you put out
one of the things that I do want to hold on, hold

[00:46:42] David Portnowitz: [00:46:42] on. Do I
have to dance? Do I have to like, do a little dance while I'm like, where you like point to something
and then like pops up and then like you point to over here. And then it pops, like if I have to do like one
of

[00:46:51] Frederick Weiss: [00:46:51] They do
recommend using a song,, a very popular song and the filters to get your views up.

[00:46:57] So yeah, I'm going to say that's mandatory.

[00:47:00] David Portnowitz: [00:47:00] All
right. I I can dance.

[00:47:02] Frederick Weiss: [00:47:02] I
recommend the Macarena.

[00:47:03] David Portnowitz: [00:47:03] Oh
okay. We'll see what we can.

[00:47:07] Frederick Weiss: [00:47:07] I know
why, but I do, you know what, one of the things that I wanted to get to quickly we don't have to
touch on the too fast, but Google localization I think a lot of people don't understand the
the power here of having things like a local phone number or a local website and showing
up in the SERPs for things that are very local.

[00:47:28] For example if you are in Washington, DC and you're in
Atlanta, Georgia, and you search for a lawn company, you're going to get very different results.
Obviously, but do you mind touching on that and just with some brevity about the power of
that and exactly how people could take advantage of Google.

[00:47:48] Okay.

[00:47:49] David Portnowitz: [00:47:49] You have
to think of Google maps as a social network. That's the way I would say it is Google maps. And Google
maps and Google localization tie right there. They're there, they're basically two sides
of a coin, right? So you're gonna, you're going to if you're a co a company that is
promoting some kind of product in your area and you want people to find you, you've got to be localized
to that area and you've got to be on Google maps.

[00:48:16] If you're, if you've got a retail if you've got a retail
side of your business, you know why there are more people spending time on Google maps and they're
probably spending time on anything else. And Google maps makes it super easy to localize your
business to add in descriptors, to add keywords, to add in videos, to answer reviews, to post
pictures.

[00:48:35] It has all the things that you would think about in a social
network, but you just don't think about it like that. To me it's as crucial as anything else,
especially if you've got a retail side of your business. If you're not on Google maps and you
don't show up there, you don't exist.

[00:48:51] And from a local SEM standpoint you need to. Be
optimized for the area you're in. You've got to have keywords that are local to your area
that you use. If you're in Atlanta, like Jeremy is, you've got to be able to say if
Atlanta something or other Atlanta, this this, isn't it like, you have to put that in on
your website.

[00:49:12] You've got to put videos out, that talk about that. You've got to
have customer testimonials that Google wants to see all of these things. You can't just stuff your
page with the word. You have to have other stuff up there. You've got to have video. You have to have
social skills. All of those things are super, super important.

[00:49:27] To me, if you're a small business, that's local there
is nothing more important than being optimized on Google. It is if you're not you're dead.

[00:49:41] Frederick Weiss: [00:49:41] Well said
if you're not, but yeah I totally get your point in that. It's super valuable and definitely
worth investing.

[00:49:49] We're getting really short on time here. So I want to get to the
two last segments. The first one being

[00:50:01] David Portnowitz: [00:50:01] while I
was dancing,

[00:50:02] Frederick Weiss: [00:50:02] I was a
good dancer. I think we got that on camera. So I'm really happy about that. Yeah. So the
lightning round, just that it's exactly how it sounds. I'm going to ask you some questions.
We'll do some quick Q and a here. David, what is your favorite thing about yourself?

[00:50:19] David Portnowitz: [00:50:19] My
favorite thing about myself. Gosh, just about yourself is a lightning round question.

[00:50:26] Frederick Weiss: [00:50:26] You
should have answered already. It's a

[00:50:28] David Portnowitz: [00:50:28]
lightning round. My favorite thing about myself honestly, I guess it would be my, my sense of
humor.

[00:50:37] Frederick Weiss: [00:50:37] I
wouldn't go with that, but, okay. That's good. I'm just joking.

[00:50:42] That is my humor. Just being funny. What book are you reading right now
for enjoyment?

[00:50:49] David Portnowitz: [00:50:49] I just
picked up the new Andy Weir book. The guy who wrote the mat was that Matt Damon movie. That was about Mars.
I'm talking about the Marshall, the Martian Marshall. Yeah. I read that book, Martian, and he just
wrote a new book.

[00:51:03] And I just got that and I, I got that two days ago, so I'm
really excited to, to break that open and start reading that,

[00:51:10] Frederick Weiss: [00:51:10] that
sounds great. You'll have to send me a link so I can put that in the show notes.

[00:51:13] David Portnowitz: [00:51:13] Hold on.
I'm going to tell you the name of it. I'm going to Google it cause I'm on cause you can do
those kinds of things.

[00:51:18] It's called a project.

[00:51:22] Frederick Weiss: [00:51:22] Ooh.
Okay, CMO. Yeah. Yeah. Shoot me a link if you can please. So I have it in the show notes. David, if
you can not be around computers for the rest of your life, what would you play? Golf and golf. Oh, are

[00:51:34] David Portnowitz: [00:51:34] Are you
good at golf? I did too, I define your definition of good.

[00:51:36] I can, I

[00:51:39] Frederick Weiss: [00:51:39] I'll
take that as a note. Next question, David, just get

[00:51:43] David Portnowitz: [00:51:43] it. I
enjoy playing golf. I, it's my favorite thing to do outside of work and that, and collect bourbon.
I need a computer for that project. But the golf thing I can do with that,

[00:51:57] Frederick Weiss: [00:51:57] I think
my last lightning question here is tell me about being a bourbon kind of store.

[00:52:03] Tell me a little bit about your bourbon collector.

[00:52:05] David Portnowitz: [00:52:05] What do
you want to know? I've got an, I know I have a spreadsheet. I spent one Saturday morning, about
two weeks ago, creating a spreadsheet where I categorized all my bourbons that I have. I've got
about another 105 bottles or so and it makes a good bourbon.

[00:52:19] Frederick Weiss: [00:52:19] Then
tell me that

[00:52:21] David Portnowitz: [00:52:21] I like a
weeded bourbon that's something that's been aged probably at least four to six years.
Something that's got a little wheat flavor to it, maybe a little bit of spice. I like something that you
can sip very easily, a little bit.

[00:52:36] Maybe it has a little bit of that vanilla or nutmeg and/or cherry flavor.
They're just, it's just a nice way to end the evening, I would say. So I gotta tell you
the best, the most fun thing about the whole bourbon thing is collecting. It's just finding the CMO,
finding different bottles that you would, you could it, it is that to me is the most fun part,
right?

[00:53:00] You're trying to find new bottles that are not you can't buy
in every store that maybe you're behind the counter or you have to build a relationship with
someone to get it. There is, there's just there's a whole it's basically
it's the same if you're collecting baseball cards it's the same kind of concept.
I'll tell you a quick, funny story. So please, my son is super into Pokemon and has this big
Pokemon card collection. And one day he got, we picked, I picked him up from school and I was with my
daughter in the car and she had a couple of his Pokemon cards in her hand and she was playing with them and
she, and he was like, give him back to me and give them back to me.

[00:53:39] And I was like, are you, it's fine. Just let her hold him. And he was
like, what would you say if I was taking your bourbon bottles, you feel

[00:53:48] Frederick Weiss: [00:53:48] got you.
That's awesome.

[00:53:50] David Portnowitz: [00:53:50] So I was
kinda like, oh, I guess you're right. So I was like, all right, so I'll give them back.

[00:53:57] Frederick Weiss: [00:53:57] I love
that. That's so CMO. Could you mix bourbon with ocean spray? You think that would

[00:54:02] David Portnowitz: [00:54:02]
improved. Like cranberry juice and bourbon. I'm sure you could come up with
something.

[00:54:07] I see there's a tic-tac right there. Yeah. I guess ocean spray. If
they want to sponsor my tick talk, if I could, you know what I'm like I don't care about the
ocean spray sponsorship, but if Buffalo trace wants to come in and send me free bourbon to try and
then I make I'm in for that.

[00:54:23] Frederick Weiss: [00:54:23] I love
it.

[00:54:24] All right, David, let's get to our very last segment here

[00:54:31] again. Excellent dancing applause. By the way, you look very dapper today
looking good. I like your outfit as always a very dapper man, David. This is our part where we like to
provide an opportunity for a parting words of wisdom for our audience. All you, my friend

[00:54:47] David Portnowitz: [00:54:47] Parting
words of wisdom. Get vaccinated and wear a

[00:54:52] Frederick Weiss: [00:54:52]
mask.

[00:54:53] Excellent. Any kind of marketing stuff.

[00:54:56] David Portnowitz: [00:54:56]
That's not what you expected me to say, right?

[00:54:59] Frederick Weiss: [00:54:59] Maybe
not.

[00:55:00] David Portnowitz: [00:55:00] No, I
think from a marketing standpoint be agile, be flexible, be authentic. Don't be too pushy. Customers
will find you if you have the right content in place. And it's, it is a matter of.

[00:55:19] Making sure you're ready for them to come to you and making sure
that you have the right process in place to take advantage when they do come. Be prepared, all of those
things are going to happen. And lastly, the last thing I'll say is if you're running an
organization or if you have people take care of your people too.

[00:55:38] They're the lifeblood of what you're doing and make sure
that they're happy and they're healthy. Those are my, I guess my parting thoughts.

[00:55:47] Frederick Weiss: [00:55:47] Those are
great. No, that's excellent. Thank you so much, David. And for people that want to find out more about
David Portman, which you can find them at Twitter, De port no.

[00:55:56] And the website for Star2Star.com. You can find him on LinkedIn and
saying goma.com. We'll have all those links in the show notes, David Portnowitz. Thank you so much
for being on the show. Super appreciate it. And you are sharing your time with us. And again, my
friend, I'm very grateful and honored for you to come on the show.

[00:56:17] Thank you

[00:56:17] David Portnowitz: [00:56:17] so much.
It was great being here. I just wish that we could have had Brian on too, but it was great talking to your
friends.

[00:56:23] Frederick Weiss: [00:56:23] Yeah, absolutely.
Thank you so much. And thanks everybody for watching. We'll catch you next time. Take care!
...more
1h 3min
July 10, 2021284 – 2021 ❤️ Conf-amigues 4 Life
In this episode, we get to talk with Baskar Rao Dandlamudi, Santosh Hari, Super Di, Faisal Abid, Sivamuthu Kumar, Todd Libby, Vincent Tang, Tessa, Jared Rhodes, and Stacy Devino. It all began with a tweet; we should do a show where we connect with some of our best conference friends and have a virtual conference… So we did, check it out ❤️
We also discuss COVID: Going to events, work-life balance, and should/can we go back to the office.
✨ Episode Sponsor
- Auth0: https://auth0.com
- Auth0 on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/auth0
- Auth0 on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/auth0
- Auth0 Avocado Labs online meetup events: https://avocadolabs.dev/
🔗 Episode Links
- Tweet Origin: https://twitter.com/ksivamuthu/status/1271485429666242563
- Sivamuthu Kumar
  Twitter: https://twitter.com/ksivamuthu
  Website: https://www.sivamuthukumar.com/
  Webinars on ML / App Modernization – YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTWEip7qMz2HP-0daYA8nvA
  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ksivamuthu/
- Jared Rhodes
  Twitter: https://twitter.com/QiMata
  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/qimata/
- Baskar Rao Dandlamudi
  Twitter: https://twitter.com/baskarmib
  Website: https://baskarmib.netlify.app/
  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/baskarrao-dandlamudi/
  JavaScript and Friends – https://www.javascriptandfriends.com/
- Todd Libby
  Twitter: https://twitter.com/toddlibby
  Todd’s Website: https://toddl.dev
  Front End Nerdery: https://www.youtube.com/FrontEndNerdery
- Vincent Tang
  Twitter: https://twitter.com/vincentntang
  Website: https://vincentntang.com
  Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/vincentntang
  Github: https://github.com/vincentntang
  Building cool 3d stuff using JavaScript + TinkerCad: http://inspiredtoeducate.net/inspiredtoeducate/3d-modeling-for-minecraft-using-tinkercad/
  Suncoast developer guild hackathon from Tampa (June 19-21): https://hack.suncoast.io/
  Codechefs podcast https://codechefs.dev
- Faisal Abid
  Twitter: https://twitter.com/FaisalAbid
  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/faisalabid/
  Eirene Cremations. Simple, Modern Cremation Services: https://www.eirene.ca/
  Eirene Blog: https://blog.eirene.ca/
- Santosh Hari
  Twitter: https://twitter.com/_s_hari
  Website: https://santoshhari.wordpress.com/
- Super Di
  Twitter: https://twitter.com/cotufa82
  Github: https://github.com/sponsors/alphacentauri82
  Website: https://superdi.dev
  ScoutX: https://scoutx.dev
- Stacy Devino
  Twitter: https://twitter.com/DoesitPew
  Website: https://stacydevino.com/
- Podcasts and events mentioned:
  Enjoy the Vue
  Code Chefs
- Hosts:
  Frederick Weiss: https://twitter.com/FrederickWeiss
  Brian Hinton: https://twitter.com/mrbrianhinton
📜 Transcript

Brian Hinton: [00:00:00] I’m Brian
Hinton.

Frederick Weiss: and
I’m Frederick Philip von Weiss. And thank you so much for consuming the Thunder Nerds, a conversation
with the people behind the technology that love what they do

[00:00:46] Brian Hinton: [00:00:46] and do tech good.

[00:00:52] Frederick Weiss: Yeah, thanks everybody for watching the show. If you can please go to the notification
bell and subscribe.

Brian Hinton: We’d like to thank Auth0, Auth0 is
this season’s sponsor. They make it easy for developers to build a custom secure and standards-based
login, a unified login and authentication as a service, to try them out, go to Auth0.com today. Also check
out their YouTube and Twitch under the username, Auth0 with some great developer resources and streams, and
last but not least is our avocado labs.

[00:01:52] Frederick Weiss: [00:01:52] Yes. Thanks Auth0! Let’s go ahead and welcome our guests. We
have a, uh, a lot of guests today. We got, Baskar Rao Dandlamudi, Santosh Hari, Super Di, Faisal Abid,
Sivamuthu Kumar, Todd Libby, Vincent Tang, Tessa, Jared Rhodes, and Stacy Devino. Welcome!!!

[00:02:19] Frederick Weiss: [00:02:19] So many
people today. We got a full house, so Hey everybody. Thank you so much for being here. It's part of the
show. Here we go. So we're doing this just for context for everybody. We did this last year, having the
conflict, uh, meet you guys. And we basically had a, uh, What have you, uh, talking about how during the
really hard days of COVID out, none of us could, you know, go out, go see your family and go to
conferences.

[00:02:45] And, uh, these are the people that we see at the conferences. These are
our good friends and we're so happy to have them. And, uh, I think Shiva started the thread and then we
said, let's do it. And now we're doing year number two. So Shiva, maybe you could start to tell us
what's going on. Yeah.

[00:03:01] Sivamuthu Kumar: [00:03:01] So not a
problem we are seeing like, uh, for the last few years, right?

[00:03:05] Yes. Um, so last year, like, uh, I just missed, um, seeing people saved my
friends in the conferences. So I just started that week. Like, Hey, I'm missing. Some of my prints are
usually seen at a conference. Those people they're not under nets jumped in and we set up this, uh,
meetup. Um, and we shared like, uh, what are the things we faced while we are in COVID and, uh, how that new
normal life is looking for us.

[00:03:35] So it's good. It's good to see you again. Um, after like one year
and things got changed, I believe, I think most of us are like vaccinated, fully vaccinated. Right? So
hopefully your things will go back to normal and we will be able to see each other again. Um, so yeah, I
think it cost this year. Uh, hopefully I will see most of the people.

[00:03:57] Frederick Weiss: [00:03:57] Right.
Well, now that we have, uh, two shots in her arm, um, how is everybody doing? Is everybody going back out
and do we, do we feel comfortable seeing people or going to events and, uh, live human to human action?
Anybody?

[00:04:13] Super Di: [00:04:13] I don't
know. I'm going to jump in and I know they see we'll follow where sisters.

[00:04:20] Hello everybody. I'm Diana Rodriguez. You all know me as a cotufa.
That means popcorn in Venezuelans. I am from Venezuela, but anyway. Yeah. Um, but I know I'm fully
vaccinated, but I'm in a risk group. I am a, um, a cancer patient and also type one diabetic. And I love
seeing people who are fully vaccinated. I want Conway to hug my friends, but I don't feel comfortable
being in enclosed spaces.

[00:04:54] And I know this is going to bring up a lot of, um, commentary and polemic,
but there are people who are not vaccinated and these people actually cause viruses to mutate. So that's
my take. I, um, I can't wait to see people, but I've been taking care of myself for a whole year.
Like I don't wanna, I don't want to spoil that, but yeah, this is me.

[00:05:23] Brian Hinton: [00:05:23] Yeah, I do
want to say too, that with this discussion we're vaccinating everything. Um, I w we all understand
it's still going on in the rest of the world and our hearts go out to everyone who is still experiencing
it, just because we're a vaccine and talking about going out. Doesn't mean we don't understand
that and care about everyone else.

[00:05:40] So I just want to put that out there.

[00:05:42] Frederick Weiss: [00:05:42] Yeah,
very well said. There are a lot more hard hit locations in the world. And even if we're talking about
the United States, even some parts of the United States too, but, um, you know, let me ask everybody this,
since we're talking about, you know, we have, we're lucky enough in, in some of our locations to get
these shots, especially in the United States being possibly one of the most safest places now for COVID, uh,
depending on where you get your news from, uh, how does everybody feel?

[00:06:10] Going back to an office environment, there's been a lot of studies and
surveys talking about how half of the people really, really want to get back. And another half of the people
don't ever want to go back and then there's people in between that want that flex work. But for me,
I'm scared of the Delta.

[00:06:30] Plus, uh, variant. So, um, speaking of low-key, uh, we'll get to that,
but, uh, that variant scares the crap out of me. Uh, anybody have any thoughts on that?

[00:06:40] Santosh Hari: [00:06:40] Yeah, so I,
I, you know, I can kind of chime in, so, you know, I rent this, uh, news story, uh, I think it's, uh,
Hillsborough county or someplace like that, where the entire it department got sick.

[00:06:52] So if I entertained any ideas of going back to any office, until then
after that, I was like, heck no. So, you know, uh, the problem is not that, you know, people are, uh, many
people are vaccinated. The problem is also that many people are not vaccinated. So, you know, um, you
don't, you cannot tell by looking at someone.

[00:07:14] So, you know, it's, uh, it's gonna take a while for me to go to any kind of
confinement.

[00:07:27] Stacy Devino: [00:07:27] Uh, yeah, I
thought I might bring a couple of little points in, so, uh, I'm also gonna preface this by saying I am
28 weeks pregnant. So I am in a different category, I guess, than most people. Um, I got my shot as early as
I could. And, uh, I guess that's a little different than some other people who were in similar
situations, but I was like, Hm, I see that you are like a hundred times more likely to end up in the
hospital.

[00:07:58] So, um, I think I need to live for my baby to live. So I'm going to go
ahead and get that for myself just as a safety precaution, if nothing else. Um, And, uh, you know,
personally, I think that, you know, the lives of the mothers are more important than the children, but Hey,
you know, I live in a different society.

[00:08:19] Uh, not everybody shares that same opinion. It's okay. Um, but when it
comes to going out, my husband is fully vaccinated. Um, we have an 18 month old kid, um, who, you know, uh,
was, you know, got some residual stuff, but that's about it. Uh, and we're just not doing anything.
That's crazy unreasonable, like going to a local restaurant, but, you know, a lot of places are still
doing a pretty good job of not putting tables right next to each other in groups right next to each
other.

[00:08:56] Um, and of course, visiting with family now comfortably, we waited until,
um, even visited with family until, uh, especially older family members were all. Uh, fully vaccinated. And
even then we never, uh, congregated more than like four or five people at a time, um, close family only for
over a year. Uh, and I will tell you that I am fully remote.

[00:09:22] I have been fully writing for the last three years. So, um, I'm not
going back to any office, uh, sorry. But my husband was an office worker prior to this and now he is like
converted and sometimes like, he was just like going, well, if we want to meet, you know, everybody loves
coming over to our house.

[00:09:45] Cause we got all these pinball machines and arcades and I made a lot of
cookies. So they just like going, yeah, we'll just meet over it's Steven's house because
they've got the space and all the fun stuff. Um, more so than there was in the office anyway. So, um,
They're not even looking at ever going back. And that's actually what I hear from a lot of
engineering and engineering circles companies aren't, uh, are hiring people fully remote.

[00:10:12] And to that effect, we've seen that the prices that people are able to
command for their skill sets, especially in tech, have gone up. So, uh, you know, if that works out for you,
Stay at home. Like it's, it's not bad. I make lunch every

[00:10:31] Frederick Weiss: [00:10:31] day.
It's great. Widespread. It, it, I've seen at least for me in my location of Florida, there are a lot
of companies.

[00:10:39] Um, uh, maybe anybody else here that also, uh, lives in Florida.
There's a lot of companies that are demanding people in the next month to go back full time, not, you
know, flex work, not part-time, but full time and amount. I'm talking about just any kind of job. I
mean, I'm seeing this in a lot of different industries, you know, our industry too, where people are
saying you have to put butts in seats where the conversation seemed very different just a few months ago,
and it's kind of.

[00:11:08] Uh, there's some kind of duplicity going on here. I don't, I
don't know what the messaging is, is, is coming from and how it's changing, but what, what, what do
we say to those people that have to go back and, um, where offices possibly are not enforcing masks?
They're not like saying, you know, Hey, show me your vaccination card.

[00:11:28] What do people do in that case?

[00:11:29] Brian Hinton: [00:11:29] Well, I can
say we're hiring at my company and we're fully remote. So if that's what your current job says,
that's my opinion on that. But what does everyone else say?

[00:11:41] Frederick Weiss: [00:11:41] Yeah.
Anybody else?

[00:11:44] Faisal Abid: [00:11:44] So fully
remote. It's the best because you know, I've been, I've been remote now for, you know, I mean,
obviously all year, but, um, I'm able to do more, but I'm also able to do it in a vastly different
frame of time.

[00:12:00] I don't have to go from like nine to five or 10 to six, you know, I do
some work till like 11, then I'll go out for a walk and I'll come back to like one, I have my phone
with me, so Slack's always running. But aside from that, it's up to me when I should work. And
Stacy's right. You know, you can command a higher salary.

[00:12:18] Uh, you can actually get a lot more done. I do find myself doing a lot
more being at home versus being in the office because of office 10, you know, so you go to work at 10 and
then like 45 minutes later, your friend comes over. It's like, let's go get coffee and then you go
get coffee and then you'd go ahead and get a vending machine.

[00:12:36] And then it's lunchtime. So you go on an hour lunch, right? Because
all your friends are going. And so the whole thing just ends up being a waste of time. And then you got to,
you know, do the whole commute. Um, and so it was just a colossal waste of time. I'd much rather just
work from home and, you know, go to the office like a WeWork or something and meet for a meeting.

[00:12:58] But even so, you have a good webcam, good microphone. You can have good
work from home.

[00:13:06] Frederick Weiss: [00:13:06]
That's fine. What about anybody else? Thank you so much, basal. I mean, that, that makes sense. Like,
um, it, it seems like there's, there's, there's really not a lot of reasons, depending on your,
your role or at your company to why you need to be there.

[00:13:21] If it, uh, allows for you to work remotely, if you were a developer or
designer, et cetera, et cetera. Um, but, um, I don't know what everybody else has experienced.

[00:13:32] Brian Hinton: [00:13:32] I do want to
also point out in a, in a private chat that we're all talking. We're admiring Faisel's
background. If you're on the audio on audio listener right now, go watch the video.

[00:13:41] His background is amazing. I don't know, like

[00:13:45] Faisal Abid: [00:13:45] working
remotely.

[00:13:47] Brian Hinton: [00:13:47] I can
understand that.

[00:13:50] Stacy Devino: [00:13:50] Yeah.

[00:13:51] Tessa: [00:13:51] I like, I guess I
would just say that I, I feel your pain. Like it's not so easy for me to just feel like, oh, I'll go
find a new job. Cause we all know how fun it is. To look for a new job and how little work that is,
especially if you're already working, but, uh, yeah, just, uh, I

[00:14:08] Stacy Devino: [00:14:08] will
commiserate with you.

[00:14:11] Frederick Weiss: [00:14:11] Well,
does anybody have any jobs where they're asking them that you have to come back in the office full time
or is it

[00:14:22] Super Di: [00:14:22] special case?
Cause I worked for pitch and one of the things they said to me was that I was a special case cause I'm
in North Carolina and that they are more into, um, office works, which in AWS, but given the circumstances,
you know, I'm, I'm, I'm going to continue to remote.

[00:14:43] Um, and I've been working remotely since 2015. So I've seen the
benefit of it. I don't think I would go to an office at all. I know only the commute, I just get
distracted, you know, I'd probably just do social with people and never getting anything accomplished,
you know,

[00:15:08] Brian Hinton: [00:15:08] that's
me.

[00:15:11] Baskar Rao Dandlamudi: [00:15:11]
Yeah. To me, I think, uh, we had seen here, uh, people, at least in Columbus region, like, uh, that is, uh,
pushed towards, uh, having, uh, uh, at least once in a week, uh, to be in an office and, uh, staying remote.
That's what I'm hearing from friends over here. Uh, I have been currently working remotely, uh, but,
uh, thanks to my, uh, company, uh, which is allowing me to do that.

[00:15:41] Uh, but over here, uh, it is a general sentiment that at least once in a
week, uh, people.

[00:15:46] Jared Rhodes: [00:15:46] Uh,
expecting

[00:15:48] Baskar Rao Dandlamudi: [00:15:48] a
team to be in office so that way they can have all those, uh, interactions. Uh, so

[00:15:55] Jared Rhodes: [00:15:55] that's
what I'm seeing in

[00:15:57] Frederick Weiss: [00:15:57] my
circle. Yeah. Wonder if a lot of these companies, maybe smaller companies are looking at the higher end
enterprise.

[00:16:05] Like if they're looking to see like what, I don't know, like, uh,
like Tim cook is doing, like, I, I think I read something like apple is, wants to bring everybody back full
time in September or something like that in September. Isn't that far away, but it's, it's at
least it's far enough away for us to see if there's any kind of, uh, uh, ramifications of this Delta
plus variance going on.

[00:16:28] Um, I don't know. Well,

[00:16:30] Faisal Abid: [00:16:30] now, now
they're talking about Lambda. Um, I, I wanna add one, one thing, um, to remote working. So one of the
things that, one of the things I could do, because I'm, we're, we're working with multiple
things. And so out of these multiple things that I do during the day, one of the things I'm part of is a
consulting agency, uh, that, you know, I joined just before COVID and when COVID hits, we were trying to
expand the team.

[00:16:56] But what I found was that, you know, it was very hard to hire anyone
during COVID like the first one, March, April, and we're a Google cloud consulting company. So we were
getting tons of clients, uh, through Google cloud. And so what I started to do was I started to look outside
of North America. One of my thesis is not to pay people based on location, but pay people based on their
value.

[00:17:20] And so what I started to do was find this, I tapped into this massive,
amazing talent pool in Africa, specifically in Nigeria, in India, in Bangladesh, where you have. Kids
I'm saying kids because they're like 21, 22 were extremely talented, but they're working for
really bullshit weight, which is like $300 a month, which is garbage.

[00:17:43] And, you know, cloud consulting is very lucrative. And so what I started
to do was I started to hire, uh, these kids based on what you

[00:17:51] Jared Rhodes: [00:17:51] would pay a
junior intermediate

[00:17:53] Faisal Abid: [00:17:53] in Canada.
And my entire idea is let's pay them really well. And because of COVID, it's, you know, we're
all remote anyway. So if we're building this, we're actually forced to learn how to work
remotely.

[00:18:07] And so we've been able to do that for six, seven months. Uh, and now
we've gotten really good at it. And so since like October, uh, we've started bringing on foreign
developers and just integrated into the team. And one of the cool things about that is the company works 24
* 7. You know, you're sleeping.

[00:18:25] A developer in Bangladesh working. And we're not, he's not having
to grind anymore. Right. Because a lot of times the North American companies pay them like $200 a month and
they grind for it because that's still pretty crappy wage even for them. Um, so he's not having to
grind anymore. He's getting paid like 70 K, uh, and he's happy.

[00:18:46] We're happy. We're getting good quality work. And then it also
builds the brand of the company where he tells his friends. And so we have this incoming talent pool of very
talented people, uh, from Nigeria, Bangladesh, and even India, we just have. Coming in. So that's what
COVID enabled me to do, um, where it's just look outside of North America, look outside of Europe and
just tap into a whole new talent pool that we haven't been able to.

[00:19:12] It

[00:19:12] Frederick Weiss: [00:19:12] makes a
lot of sense because why waste, um, why limit yourself to just the people, like, as you said, Uh, just in
your general, uh, facility, right? If you're just reaching out 20 miles in a diameter and that's who
you're going to hire you miss out on so much talent all around the world. It's, it's just
ridiculous.

[00:19:33] And also if you're going to keep up with, with a giant office on, you
know, the fourth floor of some really fancy Knights building that is great, good for you. But I mean,
aren't you wasting a lot of money on that brick and mortar on those bills to keep that building running
clean, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:19:51] When you could be more focused on hiring talent, for sure.

[00:19:55] Faisal Abid: [00:19:55] We were
spending, uh, about $18,000 a month in office space. Right. All for what we were there. And we were on slack
anyway. Right. And we were doing the same thing we're doing at home. And so, the one point I want to add
about the remote work revolution, I guess, is with as much as I dislike Elon Musk, but something interesting
that Elon Musk and stuff I've done through Starlink is bringing access to the rest of the world.

[00:20:23] This high-speed internet access. If that promise can be lived, you know,
in six, say five years from now, uh, then you'll have a whole different way of working where you can
hire someone from like the most right now, the big restriction I have when I'm hiring in parts of
Africa, actually, you know, that the person's extremely talented, but the internet is very poor.

[00:20:45] So if we can't even have a basic video chat, then it gets really hard
to collaborate. And so when you have an internet like Starlink, uh, being distributed across the world, I
think you'll end up more and more companies will hire people. From the regions, uh, and be able to just,
you know, bolt, it will be laterally right now.

[00:21:06] A lot of North American developers compete with North America, Toronto
competes with charter developers to get a job, but now we'll be competing globally. Cause you'll
have kids who are extremely talented, like a hundred times smarter than I am, uh, because they're
learning in like the wildest conditions.

[00:21:21] So they just have grit. And I think it will be very interesting for the
job market. I hope in like five years.

[00:21:27] Brian Hinton: [00:21:27] I do. I do
sympathize though, with all the people that are the exact opposite of, I feel like most of the people in
Nichol that need that, that person to talk to. And yeah, the hardcore extroverts.

[00:21:42] I mean, I feel like they could probably get it and like zoom calls, but,
um, I feel like it's just like sipping through a straw when it's a zoom call.

[00:21:51] Frederick Weiss: [00:21:51] Well,
it's, it's, it's not the same thing. Yeah, you're absolutely right. It's not the same
thing for them because when an extrovert they need to recharge in a group of people, not on a call, like
we're having this, doesn't do it for them.

[00:22:02] Um, I'm an introvert, that doesn't mean I'm shy. It means I
recharge by myself. I need, I love people and I love to be around people, but after a little bit of time,
please go away. So I can go home and lock myself in a room and watch, you know, a few episodes of Loki. And,
uh, after that I will feel so much better.

[00:22:23] I

[00:22:23] Tessa: [00:22:23] means also when
you're in a, in a real, like an in-person meeting, you're not just looking at everybody directly in
their face and looking at your own face. Like I'm looking at my face on a huge screen right now. Like
that never happens.

[00:22:37] Faisal Abid: [00:22:37] One thing I
would say is the downsides of remote work, I think will be for the junior engineers who are just joining the
field.

[00:22:45] I am very biased because I'm a senior. I've been in the industry
in a physical aspect, but I think most of us here are seniors. But when you have a junior developer, I know
as a junior developer, I found it very useful just in term two, this even deals with my, I guess like
imposter syndrome to read someone's face if I screw up.

[00:23:05] Cause I've screwed up so many times, uh, early on in my career. But
like having, just being able to go and talk to that person physically, you get to read the person's
emotions and feel better that, you know, you're not going to get fired tomorrow because you've
messed up. So I think the juniors are going to have it the worst.

[00:23:22] And I don't know what the solution is. If companies go remote.

[00:23:28] Stacy Devino: [00:23:28] I think I
have a little bit of an idea here, right? Like what it really does is it puts work and the impetus on your
senior, your principal, your higher level people to actually become active advocates for their junior
developers. And it means putting time on your calendar, you know, two, three times a week to spend time
working through stuff and taking the time to actually do like work on a PR together, do those kinds of
learning sessions have structure to what they're learning and how they're actually.

[00:24:04] Um, and, and essentially you, as somebody who's higher up is kind of.
A professor in a way, right. Whereas before we had this be a very informal relationship, we're adding
some additional layers of formality and then we're starting to connect people. So I think there is a way
to solve this. I think you just have to, uh, be willing to be more social and be more guiding and be more
willing to be a true teacher, um, to those younger people.

[00:24:40] I do

[00:24:41] Brian Hinton: [00:24:41] think
though, like, uh, I know a few, a few friends of mine have had issues because that's where as we all get
older, Uh, we're not like there's no outlet to gain those personal relationships with friendships,
so to speak, uh, other than work. So if you're not going into work and you're like, Hey, let's
go out to lunch somewhere.

[00:25:03] You're Kantz cause you're in Kentucky or, or New York or wherever.
So, I mean, there's, that's definitely, I feel like a big issue for a lot of people too. I don't
know the solution for that beyond like, you know, streaming, zoom, cocktail hour or something. But even that
it's a little weird.

[00:25:22] Frederick Weiss: [00:25:22] I had a
friend today just tweet about how they were hallucinating because they.

[00:25:27] Felt so isolated. They were walking by a fire hydrant and they heard it
hiss or something like that. That was me this morning. Sorry. Oh,

[00:25:40] well,

[00:25:41] Brian Hinton: [00:25:41] two of them
did it. It was like a weird, it sounded like water resistant any now I looked, there was nothing and it was
like this, like

[00:25:48] Frederick Weiss: [00:25:48] Brian is
making my case. You know, you could go a little bit crazy if you're not seeing people. Sometimes even
Brian. Exactly, there was another statistic I wanted to, uh, uh, ask you guys about which, uh, I read on a
few different things.

[00:26:04] It says, um, according to, um, well, a lot of recent studies that were
based on the past several, several months, that one in four women are considering downsizing their career
and leaving the workforce due, due to COVID because they, a lot of times, um, it seems that women been
thrusted into the role of the primary caregiver.

[00:26:28] Um, or sometimes they were the only ones to take care of the kid while,
um, you know, their, their partner was working. Um, what do we, what do we think of that? Is, is that
something that's, uh, gonna hold, uh, hold us back and progress.

[00:26:43] Stacy Devino: [00:26:43] I think
you've already seen that there was an impact in progress to some of that, right?

[00:26:48] Like that was, that was already something that was brought up and I'll
be perfectly honest. We were unable. Uh, with my kid, you know, being his age, uh, I went back to work at
the end of March and it was right when everything was like super locked down and we had no childcare. And so
I came back from maternity leave with no childcare and trying to reacclimate back into work.

[00:27:18] And so, you know, uh, it became, and while I was still breastfeeding and
all that other stuff, so it was, it was extra hard. My husband and I, uh, passed off who had mornings who
had afternoons based off of our meeting schedule. We sync our calendars, you know, um, and because of just
the nature of food and things like that, like I made it, my thing, like I make lunch every day.

[00:27:47] I pretty much always do that now, um, for everybody, but then he also
takes. Uh, take care of the kiddo while I'm making dinner and, you know, all that kind of thing. So, um,
I think that not everyone has, uh, maybe a supportive partner because social norms, uh, in the past have
been less gracious, uh, to women.

[00:28:12] And there are a lot of undo, extra, I guess, extra responsibilities that
even women can put on other women, like if something's messy in the house, uh, and whatever it is,
it's, it always gets like the immediate look to be never to him and that's from other people. Uh,
and that's unreasonable if we start to really think about the fact that like childcare is, uh, w you had
two people to make a kid, so.

[00:28:48] It seems like two, people's you shair the responsibility? Uh, a

[00:28:52] Frederick Weiss: [00:28:52] little
bit, right.

[00:28:53] Brian Hinton: [00:28:53] I do also
want to point out. It's not, I think, a big hit on that. Uh, I just looked it up cause I remember the
statistic a little bit existing, but in October last year, 865,000 women were laid off in the workforce
compared to 216,000.

[00:29:11] So it's also women who are being disproportionately impacted by, you
know, layoffs, which,

[00:29:20] Faisal Abid: [00:29:20] uh, yeah.

[00:29:22] Frederick Weiss: [00:29:22] I,

[00:29:23] Brian Hinton: [00:29:23] other than
being angry and sad.

[00:29:25] Frederick Weiss: [00:29:25] Yeah.

[00:29:26] Super Di: [00:29:26] What about, um,
also the impact of, I mean, Coming out of the childcare situation, but the balance between work and life,
because for me it happened, I've always worked remotely.

[00:29:40] But with the coronavirus and being in lockdown, it became like home was
work, homework and really spent 14 hours in front of a computer. And it wasn't healthy. And then heard
of cases of, of companies that were time tracking in unreasonable ways. And we're having a conversation
backstage with, um, Boscov saying that flexible schedules are a thing, and I've always believed
that.

[00:30:14] At the end of the day, the end result is what really matters versus you
saying you have to put this many structured hours into work because some days, and I have no shame in saying
this. Some days you get 2% of me because I might be exhausted because maybe I need to take more walks. Um,
and some other days I'm at a hundred percent and it's grand and everything flows.

[00:30:43] And I think this is a new, um, chance to rethink how we measure success
and how we think of our matrix when talking about development. Is it, yeah, the end result, what are we
measuring as effectiveness? Cause, cause I can see how this

[00:31:08] Stacy Devino: [00:31:08] can be

[00:31:09] Super Di: [00:31:09] toxic if. I
mean, if it's not already toxic, um, I think it's, it's, it's a conversation that we should
all have

[00:31:18] Stacy Devino: [00:31:18]
rhino.

[00:31:21] Faisal Abid: [00:31:21] It's
totally toxic. If you're measuring by how many hours you're putting in, I agree with you. Uh, it
should be by the, you should just be accountable to your delivery. If you're agreeing on your juror or a
sauna that you're going to get this done by Friday, but it doesn't matter if it, if you work at 6:00
PM and the whole day you're sleeping or you just needed a day off, as long as you can get stuff done on
time and be able to communicate that with the stakeholders, your manager or PM, I think that's how it
should be done.

[00:31:50] Um, in, especially in a very remote, decentralized environment. I think
it's unfair as always to ever measure, you know, okay. He coded like six hours grades, you know, someone
coding six hours as a better developer than someone coding three hours. I think.

[00:32:09] Frederick Weiss: [00:32:09] I often
see people say things like don't confuse effort with results, but on the other side of the spectrum,
right, where, where they talk about, you know, you're, you're doing this and don't confuse your,
your efforts for the results you do.

[00:32:25] But how about the other way around with the company don't confuse? Um,
maybe if I need to take a day off as, you know, not putting in maybe the effort, but just look at my results
that, that, that I have at the end of the project, as you said,

[00:32:40] Faisal Abid: [00:32:40] ultimately
engineering is a knowledge base. And so for knowledge base, you can be charged by time.

[00:32:45] You have to charge by value, right? Um, because it's the value of
bringing, I might know something, I mean, consulting, I've learned this actually in the past year where,
you know, someone asks me a question and I CA if I can answer that question, then like 10 minutes, but
doesn't mean that I should get paid $10 for.

[00:33:06] Uh, I should be paying the Mac tire project fee because I have experienced
knowing that that's the value that I bring. It's not how long I spend on the project. It's how
much value I get. And so knowledge and workers should always charge by value and not time. There's

[00:33:22] Vincent Tang: [00:33:22] actually a
story where it's like G had like a factory, like GE like the organ company, refrigerators turbines, et
cetera.

[00:33:32] And they had an issue where it's like, oh, we have a systematic
failure with our mechanical systems. And they only had one person that knew how to fix it. And that guy was
one of the consultants and he just gets called in and literally spends five minutes drawing like one pencil
mark on the device and then walks out and then does the bill.

[00:33:55] And the bill is for 10 grand. And then the company is like, why are we,
why are we getting built 10 grand for this? Okay. You literally just came in here for five minutes and just
painted a pencil mark on the, on the, on the device. And then it's like, we need to, you know, itemized

[00:34:11] Frederick Weiss: [00:34:11] line item
for everything they used.

[00:34:13] Vincent Tang: [00:34:13] And it just
built, uh, like a pencil for $1 and then $9,999 for the experience and years that. So for him to understand
that, um, I guess like value based propositions, like if you're able to get something done quicker, you
shouldn't be penalized for it. Um, I've worked at companies where it's like, everything was style=”color:red”>Santosh Hari: [00:34:49] in three
hours and then here's, you know, five more hours of work just because you finished telling you don't
to get home early. You get to know more work.

[00:35:01] So the other thing I think we should address is, uh, the, uh, you know,
all the remote work and flexible work schedules, you guys feel like, you know, the 40 hour work week is
pretty much a product of the pastor. Like, you know, people are going to be kind of in not during the
daytime, I'm going to be going to the dentist and you know, doing other things.

[00:35:22] And then I may catch up at night. So how do other people do that? Is that
just me being

[00:35:29] Faisal Abid: [00:35:29] crazy?

[00:35:30] Vincent Tang: [00:35:30] Oh, I do
that too sometimes. Like if there's like, cause like the nice part worker mode is you don't have to
work like a nine to five schedule. Like we have four hours at work since we're a remote first company
and everyone works in the U S and the west coast in the states.

[00:35:46] And you know, as long as you're getting your meetings and like
actually doing your work and getting stuff done and making sure things are operationally efficient, as well
as getting your own tasks. It doesn't really matter, you know, in the grand scheme of things, like if
you get it done at 8:00 PM or if you get it done at 8:00 AM, for instance, um, as long as it's
done.

[00:36:07] And I think that a lot really matters. And also another bonus of worker
mode is, um, if you're not vital or like one of the main presenters of the meeting, you can just get
other stuff done at the same time. Like, I'll just get my actual work done during the meeting or do
house tours or, and still listen to like, and do everything else.

[00:36:25] That's necessarily the meeting though, to facilitate what we're
actually working on. So it's another side

[00:36:31] Tessa: [00:36:31] bonus. I hate
multitasking league. If I don't need to be at the meeting, I would rather just leave if I have to work
on something else while paying attention to the meeting, like I'm not going to do either well.

[00:36:42] And I think it becomes a problem when that's an expectation. Cause I
do think there are places that expect you to work when you're not actively participating in the meeting.
And I think that that's really

[00:36:51] Stacy Devino: [00:36:51]
unhealthy.

[00:36:55] Brian Hinton: [00:36:55] Definitely

[00:36:56] Santosh Hari: [00:36:56] act as if
you are not actively participating in the meeting, uh, the chances are you should

[00:37:02] Brian Hinton: [00:37:02] not be in
that meeting. Right? Right. Yeah.

[00:37:05] Frederick Weiss: [00:37:05] Yeah.

[00:37:07] Vincent Tang: [00:37:07] Well, so
like, you know, when you're sending like an email blast to a group of people and you have like a to feel
great, and then you have like a CC field and a PCC, well, meetings are kind of the same way where it's
like, there's a two fields, right.

[00:37:21] And these are like the meet Jessica to the meeting, but you also have
audience vendors, the CCS, and BCCs, um, they don't really contribute as much to the meeting, but they
still need to be there to understand the grand scheme of things and sometimes just be available in case. Um,
there's a question that comes up.

[00:37:38] They need a product expert related to that specific topic. Um, you could
think that it's like being on call at the meeting, but you're not actually needed most of the time.

[00:37:48] Tessa: [00:37:48] Yeah, I think they
should definitely try to have more meetings where it's considered normal to like come in when you're
needed and then leave when you're not, instead of having to sit through the whole meeting, if like you
just need to present like 10 minutes out of two hours.

[00:38:03] Brian Hinton: [00:38:03] Yeah. And
back to back meetings. I am so tired of back-to-back meetings. Oh my gosh. Like 15, if you see there's a
meeting, you don't have to schedule the next meeting directly after the previous one, you can have a
gap. It's okay.

[00:38:19] Frederick Weiss: [00:38:19] No, no
bathroom for you. Actually, I actually

[00:38:23] Vincent Tang: [00:38:23] prefers
having all my meetings, like all in one day.

[00:38:26] And like, after that, like no meetings for like several days in a row.
That's just me personally though. Or just like having minimal meetings after that. Like I think
yesterday I had like seven hours of meetings. Like most times I actually don't feel it that much since,
uh, more for lead developments and just like delegating tasks to different developers.

[00:38:48] Um, so it's actually been a Wellston cheer in India.

[00:38:52] Brian Hinton: [00:38:52] I really am
in miring your cat in the background, by the

[00:38:55] Frederick Weiss: [00:38:55] way, I
was just going to say that cat.

[00:39:00] Vincent Tang: [00:39:00] Oh. Since I
last came on the call, um, yeah, I thought that a cat six months ago, his name was Mazzi

[00:39:06] Frederick Weiss: [00:39:06] he's
stupid. Oh, it's a cute cat. Let's talk to him. What do you think?

[00:39:14] Yeah.

[00:39:16] Vincent Tang: [00:39:16] Yeah. Well,
he's got that. He's got the, he's got the floor, but he doesn't want to say anything

[00:39:21] Frederick Weiss: [00:39:21] now
that's cats. I tell ya. Yep.

[00:39:25] Baskar Rao Dandlamudi: [00:39:25]
Because, uh, coming to meetings, uh, since it's we are all remote and everyone gets all this zoom
fatigue and all that stuff. So one good thing our company does is like we do, uh, No meeting days.

[00:39:40] So one day a week is a no meeting day, uh, across the company. And, uh, we
are also finding in understanding that it's not needed for everyone to switch on their camera and, uh,
uh, keep the Evo, uh, Mike on drive every time. So if they are needed, there will be, we generally have all
our meetings, no camera. So that way, uh, people we are just in listen mode.

[00:40:09] Uh, so I don't want to, uh, concentrate on what people need to
concentrate on, like what I'm doing, how I'm there, right. And being remote, uh, people regularly, I
think, uh, most of them will try to, uh, check, uh, whether a person is online or offline and it should not.
When in remote, as engineering managers, uh, We should not give that much concentration on those.

[00:40:37] Like at what point of time you are looking green on your messenger or when
you went away, it's not so good that I don't have any of those and like to have good managers. Uh,
but I think most, um, there are companies where they will be, uh, focusing on those, like when a person is
on cream or when he is, I'm right, like KB themes.

[00:41:04] If you have teams on mobile, uh, I think, uh, some few days back before,
sometimes it used to show online every time. Right. Even if you are at your desk or if it is on your mobile.
So that's where I think, uh, people used to tweet like, okay, teams, I'm on my mobile, I'm away
from my office. Why, why are they showing it as green?

[00:41:26] Right.

[00:41:27] Frederick Weiss: [00:41:27] So
I've been in meetings where people give you guff for not having your camera. Uh, where we're like,
Hey, everybody has their camera on. Come on, turn your camera on. Why, why do you need to see me? Uh, is it
imperative for this conversation? I get to share my screen if we need to do that, but I don't, I
don't need to turn my camera on for us to have a, have a, have a meeting.

[00:41:51] Yeah. I just

[00:41:51] Faisal Abid: [00:41:51] thought

[00:41:51] Baskar Rao Dandlamudi: [00:41:51]
also like, and also what

[00:41:53] Sivamuthu Kumar: [00:41:53] about
like the kids noise in the background, right nowadays, like, it's, it's also part of the life, uh,
example for my company, everyone know like my kid and my kid know like overall, my coworker said, so you see
just we'll come to the call and just make the time to them.

[00:42:12] So it's more like a family. And also like, they, they just like, uh,
um, although the kids to be paid the background, right. We should intellect stop the liveliness around our
home. Since we are working from home. It's not like our office, it's still a home. Right. So we
should download those kinds of. In like a meeting

[00:42:33] Faisal Abid: [00:42:33] date.

[00:42:35] Brian Hinton: [00:42:35] What I want
to know about life's texture is definitely what I want to know. People like to change that, and while
still on a zoom call or like to do all sorts of things that they should not be doing. It's like,
it's really obvious that you're still on the call. Like I'm like super I'm like, okay, is
the camera off?

[00:42:56] Okay. Let's just turn the camera up, or put something over it. Like,
like how do people not like thinking about this? It's so funny. It's human

[00:43:05] Frederick Weiss: [00:43:05] nature,

[00:43:06] Brian Hinton: [00:43:06] I think. Oh
yeah. I know. It just surprises me that I think that they're just not used. Yeah.

[00:43:11] Frederick Weiss: [00:43:11] If
you're in

[00:43:12] Jared Rhodes: [00:43:12] meetings for
eight hours a day, you become so used to the meeting that you forget the meeting.

[00:43:20] Frederick Weiss: [00:43:20]
That's true.

[00:43:22] Jared Rhodes: [00:43:22] When you
create

[00:43:24] Vincent Tang: [00:43:24] like steps
and like any mishaps from happening, like. A camera shutter. You turn off your camera, you mute it, you
disable your mic, et cetera. That way you don't accidentally leave your camera on and some embarrassing
moment or leave your mic on, on some embarrassing moment, which, uh, I think I actually turned on my mic one
time when I was shopping at the Hershey shore, but

[00:43:53] Super Di: [00:43:53] that was so
cute.

[00:43:56] Stacy Devino: [00:43:56] He really
likes that bus. I mean, he's all about that bus, but I mean the more meetings you're in, the better
you get at it. And honestly like the higher up you go, the more meetings you're going to have in half my
day, pretty much every day is meetings. If not more so, so, uh, and working with people, like if you count
that, like just anytime you're going to be on a camera, um, invest in a quality microphone.

[00:44:27] Uh, get a boom stand, put a decent camera up there. Um, you had a little
bit of shaky noise in the background with me right now because of the lighting, but eh,

[00:44:37] Brian Hinton: [00:44:37] Stacy, do
you have, do you have nine microphones? I

[00:44:40] Stacy Devino: [00:44:40] do not have
nine microphones.

[00:44:43] Frederick Weiss: [00:44:43] Nine
headphones,

[00:44:44] Stacy Devino: [00:44:44] nine
headphones, nine keyboards, actually one. Oh, I, um, I think I may have forgotten 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,
9, no 10 keyboards and keyboards.

[00:44:57] Cause I forgot about my, uh, my IRS, uh, Alps, quite a click build.

[00:45:03] Frederick Weiss: [00:45:03] Are they
all on the keyboards?

[00:45:05] Stacy Devino: [00:45:05] Are they all
white emoji keyboards? No, they're not emoji keyboards. That's great. Although, I mean, would you, I
mean, how RGB do you need your keyboard to be. This is one of my favorite ridiculous ones. Um, not the
craziest thing you've seen in your life, other than it's just very, I, this is not even full
brightness.

[00:45:32] It would blind you. This is like half brightness

[00:45:35] Frederick Weiss: [00:45:35] or
I'm going to be blinded.

[00:45:37] Brian Hinton: [00:45:37] Yeah. Audio
listeners. It's a, what's the brand too. Or

[00:45:42] Stacy Devino: [00:45:42] there's
no brand. These are custom builds. Yeah.

[00:45:46] Brian Hinton: [00:45:46] Can, you can
highlight where you got the, got the stuff. So people who see it. Yeah.

[00:45:51] Frederick Weiss: [00:45:51] Um,

[00:45:52] Super Di: [00:45:52] does it pew
brand custom built people, blinding lights

[00:45:59] Stacy Devino: [00:45:59] and
everything else

[00:46:01] Super Di: [00:46:01] is the white
good hub theme on vs code or

[00:46:08] Stacy Devino: [00:46:08] like rolling
through the. The RGB things at the moment I shoot, I have to look at my

[00:46:20] Yeah. So I even, uh, everything is near

[00:46:25] Frederick Weiss: [00:46:25] where you
holding one,

[00:46:26] Super Di: [00:46:26] find it when
you're coding.

[00:46:31] Brian Hinton: [00:46:31] Yeah.
Mine's just a cute, cute Lance out of nowhere is fancy and secure. The key shrunk

[00:46:40] Stacy Devino: [00:46:40] right. Like,
Hey,

[00:46:44] Brian Hinton: [00:46:44] I

[00:46:45] Frederick Weiss: [00:46:45] backed
up. I like that.

[00:46:49] Stacy Devino: [00:46:49] I like my
key

[00:46:50] Super Di: [00:46:50] crone.

[00:46:50] Frederick Weiss: [00:46:50] I'm
showing it to hold on. Which one do you have? A little closer

[00:46:55] Super Di: [00:46:55] six and I have a
custom made Paul. Oh my God. Um, for, for the escapee it's

[00:47:04] Frederick Weiss: [00:47:04] playing.
Oh, I love

[00:47:07] Stacy Devino: [00:47:07] it. I gotta
send you a woman who codes keycaps. Yes. I tried

[00:47:12] Super Di: [00:47:12] printing my own
keycaps and I am a mess with resting printers.

[00:47:17] It's so messy that I haven't done it in like six

[00:47:21] Stacy Devino: [00:47:21] months.
Yeah. So you can see like mine over there. Uh, I've got resin stuff and I, uh, you can actually look up.
I have like nerd key caps I've made on Thingiverse and done a bunch of like open source profiles for
everything. Okay.

[00:47:36] Super Di: [00:47:36] Ms. Guilty, this
woman is guilty of, uh, me getting into 3d printing and then getting into keyboards.

[00:47:45] And I haven't bitten the beat for the

[00:47:49] Frederick Weiss: [00:47:49]
headphones.

[00:47:55] I mean,

[00:47:59] Super Di: [00:47:59] You just meant
you each know how to make trends, Stacy, your trendsetter for nerdy things. The first thing I'm going to
do, as soon as I can travel, is go and check her keyboards with all her headphones and with our game
consoles. We're pinball machines. Cause, cause yeah, I see Stacy's house as like the holy grail, the
place where I want to go and play with everything.

[00:48:28] I mean, I'm going to play one, your Porsche dish with everything.

[00:48:32] Frederick Weiss: [00:48:32] Show me
your hover

[00:48:33] Brian Hinton: [00:48:33] chair. Stacy
just showed that to a split keyboard that she had for audio listeners. And why?

[00:48:42] So

[00:48:42] Stacy Devino: [00:48:42] you'd
say it's an Iris, uh, keyboard with a rotary encoder, um, built without switches, not cherry compatible
at all. So they have their own keycaps.

[00:48:53] And I also designed and printed the key cap. For the top row. And you can
find that completely open source, uh, stuff on Thingiverse. So, um, anybody else who needs it? Cause
there's like a couple of people who have some other ones that they've posted, but they've put
all kinds of rules on it and other things like that.

[00:49:15] And I'm just like, um, if you need it, here you go. And here's a
bunch of parts, including how to make space bars and all kinds of other things. So, um, you know, uh,
it's not like I get paid to code and like I have a kid and I cook or anything, that kind of stuff.
Right. But I have stupid, I have stupid, stupid collections of things.

[00:49:38] Like why do I have, why do I have so many fountain pens? Why do I have so
many fountain pens? I don't understand me. Why do I, why do I have this?

[00:49:47] Brian Hinton: [00:49:47] Well, what
if you need Ryan one doesn't have any, does anyone else? When one of them doesn't have ink put, put
it back into it and grab another one

[00:49:57] Frederick Weiss: [00:49:57] because
I'm a crazy person.

[00:49:59] I don't want to do that. And don't clean as you're cooking.
Oh,

[00:50:06] Brian Hinton: [00:50:06] um, yeah. I
tend to not, yeah, just do that. Yeah,

[00:50:12] Frederick Weiss: [00:50:12] no, no.
You got to add your cooking. You got to clean as you're doing it. So you don't have a giant mess,
but I liked

[00:50:18] Brian Hinton: [00:50:18] the giant
mess. It's like something to look forward to after eating. Well,

[00:50:22] Frederick Weiss: [00:50:22] if you
are a giant mess thoughtless, I get it.

[00:50:26] Stop judging you. I love you. And I love the giant mess that you are. And
I embrace it. Frederick,

[00:50:34] Stacy Devino: [00:50:34] just
explains the difference between seniors and leads and leads and principles. It's all about how you clean
as you cook as you do a little something, you clean it off, you move through it once you're ready to
push that thing up, you know, and present that food.

[00:50:50] The kitchen is clean. Everything's ready to go. That sir. That's
the difference between.

[00:51:10] Frederick Weiss: [00:51:10] And the
toys she

[00:51:12] Brian Hinton: [00:51:12] made me feel
more judged.

[00:51:16] Stacy Devino: [00:51:16] I am just

[00:51:19] Frederick Weiss: [00:51:19] we're
we're, we're getting close to the end of the show. So, uh, does anybody want to talk about what they
got going on? Any other, uh, subjects or projects they got? I

[00:51:33] Super Di: [00:51:33] apologize, but I
have to, this is so exciting. So I just leased a mobile application that can save lives.

[00:51:40] it's for diabetic patients, it's called Scouts X dash mobile
on GitHub. Um, you know, I have a sensor and this goes to a mobile dashboard called Nightscout. And for
diabetic patients, they can basically connect their nice Nightscout dashboards to this application and with
a little bit of help.

[00:52:03] They can actually forward location and blood sugar levels in case of
emergency to their emergency contacts. In this case, if anything happens, I get a phone call because it
wakes me up. Okay. People can disable it. And then if the levels are really bad, my mom will get a call
informing her of my blood sugar levels, but she will also get a link to maps and can follow me in real
time.

[00:52:34] And this, I know as it, has saved my life and my ideas, you know, to make
it available for everybody and see how many lives we can say with this. So I'm really excited. This,

[00:52:47] Frederick Weiss: [00:52:47] I love
that. Thank you for sharing that. Anybody else want to go next? I

[00:52:52] Brian Hinton: [00:52:52] have

[00:52:52] Faisal Abid: [00:52:52] an

[00:52:53] Jared Rhodes: [00:52:53] article
coming out tomorrow on smash and smashing magazine.com.

[00:52:58] Frederick Weiss: [00:52:58] Nice.
What is it about? It is about brevity.

[00:53:02] Jared Rhodes: [00:53:02] It is about
the importance of accessibility

[00:53:08] Frederick Weiss: [00:53:08] right up
your alley.

[00:53:12] Brian Hinton: [00:53:12] Can you

[00:53:12] Frederick Weiss: [00:53:12] read that

[00:53:13] Brian Hinton: [00:53:13] out loud
right now? Todd, go. What's that? Can you read it all out loud right now? Uh, I

[00:53:20] Jared Rhodes: [00:53:20] just did.

[00:53:21] Brian Hinton: [00:53:21] Oh yeah.
Yeah. Come here.

[00:53:27] Baskar Rao Dandlamudi: [00:53:27]
Who's next? So I'm just working behind the scenes. Uh, I know that we are not, we are slowly moving
towards in person events and, uh, we are trying to meet next month, uh, July, August, uh, for our
conference.

[00:53:44] So that's, uh, that stuff, which I'm working out, uh, currently
after a regular conference. And I'm hoping that, uh, things will go smoothly. So we need to see

[00:53:58] Frederick Weiss: [00:53:58] like,

[00:53:59] Santosh Hari: [00:53:59] So last
month. Yeah, last month, at the beginning of June, I spoke at in-person at a conference. So that was really
cool. Um, it's a really weird experience, you know, um, the conference in person event in, uh, people
are wearing masks and it's like a room, so practically empty, you know, it's like half people in
person have people who have the virtual.

[00:54:27] So yeah. Interesting experience. Um, I think that's what we'll
probably end up having for the next, uh, six to 12 months before we know. Yeah, we don't need holograms.
That's true. That'd be awesome. Like a Tupac hologram would be something like that would be awesome.
Oh my God. Yes. Yeah. But I'm looking forward to more in-person conferences.

[00:54:53] Uh, as you know, they were well organized.

[00:54:59] Stacy Devino: [00:54:59] Uh, I've
got a talk I'm giving on July 15th to women who code mobile. Uh, you can actually look up, uh, the
information directly on their Twitter. Uh, and it's all about career development. Uh, I kind of call the
talk, uh, get happy, get known, get paid, uh, in that order. And it's really about kind of the real
steps that you need to take as an individual to kind of get to your end game, whatever that means to you
seen

[00:55:36] Vincent Tang: [00:55:36] that

[00:55:36] Brian Hinton: [00:55:36] Montse
adopting

[00:55:46] Vincent Tang: [00:55:46] is actually
the first episode, the first shelter I went to. I didn't know what I wanted to think that actually, um,
Then when I first went over there and then this is when I was between jobs. I got laid off from my previous
job. And I was like, well, I got a lot of free time. I'll actually go cat searching now, soul searching
for a bit.

[00:56:07] And once like five or six different shelters. And they kind of got a feel
for different cats. And I'm like, oh God, I have to start a new job like next week. So, um, I ended up
postponing that and I found out that my entire team had cats. This was kind of telling me that I should
probably get a cat. And, uh, Matsu was the first cat I saw at the shelter.

[00:56:29] And I was like, if he's still there, this is the cat I wanna adopt.
And sure enough, he was still there three weeks later. So I adopted him and have been happy ever since.
Yeah, he eats a lot though. I'm like, anytime he wants to complain about something or. Like wanting
attention. He just yells at me. Like sometimes like, it's like, even when I'm in a zoom call, like a
lot of times we'll just Meow like a lot, but I'm kind of surprised he hasn't done that this
time, but yeah.

[00:57:00] Uh, other things that are new, I actually just did my first dance
performance. I'm on a dance performance team and I learned how to do like land style, the insane a
couple of months.

[00:57:17] Frederick Weiss: [00:57:17] Yeah,
let's see, I saw you doing this on Facebook and you're really good. All right.

[00:57:26] Don't give us

[00:57:30] video of me.

[00:57:34] Grab

[00:57:34] Jared Rhodes: [00:57:34] the
cat,

[00:57:38] Frederick Weiss: [00:57:38] put up
Brian dance. I'm not wearing cancer.

[00:57:47] Faisal Abid: [00:57:47] Although I
did learn.

[00:57:50] Vincent Tang: [00:57:50] I did learn
how to play guitar though and sing at the same.

[00:57:54] Frederick Weiss: [00:57:54]
You're

[00:57:54] Brian Hinton: [00:57:54] just digging
a hole for yourself. Now he's going to ask you to play

[00:57:57] Stacy Devino: [00:57:57] guitar.

[00:58:00] Frederick Weiss: [00:58:00] Okay.
Fine.

[00:58:04] Vincent Tang: [00:58:04] I'm
actually wearing pants by the

[00:58:05] Frederick Weiss: [00:58:05] way.

[00:58:06] Brian Hinton: [00:58:06] He lied.

[00:58:10] Jared Rhodes: [00:58:10] He
wasn't like that.

[00:58:12] Brian Hinton: [00:58:12] heart and
polka dot, uh, boxers

[00:58:15] Tessa: [00:58:15] says, pass might be
brighter than Stacy's keyboard.

[00:58:18] That's

[00:58:18] Vincent Tang: [00:58:18] true neon.
Sorry. You know,

[00:58:28] Frederick Weiss: [00:58:28] I need to
get my

[00:58:46] hotel, California?

[00:58:51] Vincent Tang: [00:58:51] stairway

[00:58:51] Frederick Weiss: [00:58:51] to
heaven. We're all just putting out songs. You play what you want, buddy. I'm going to do

[00:58:56] Vincent Tang: [00:58:56] the Beatles,
let it be. And every time I do this in front of an audience, it's awkward. And this year's terrible.
That actually did it on.

[00:59:10] Tessa: [00:59:10] We had to play in
front of

[00:59:11] Vincent Tang: [00:59:11] you,
right?

[00:59:12] Yeah.

[00:59:35] Self in times of stress.

[00:59:43] Frederick Weiss: [00:59:43]
Okay.

[01:00:12] Brian Hinton: [01:00:12] Oh,

[01:00:13] Vincent Tang: [01:00:13] that is

[01:00:16] Frederick Weiss: [01:00:16] that
it

[01:00:25] Jared Rhodes: [01:00:25] was,
um,

[01:00:34] Faisal Abid: [01:00:34] can we do the
whole thing?

[01:00:42] Frederick Weiss: [01:00:42] How
appropriate that song is and the serendipity of the situation, because, uh, words of wisdom. And that's
what we have provided here, I believe through the last hour. And we'll let it be at that because we are
at the end of the show unless anybody else has any final words before we sign off? Uh, well,

[01:01:02] Stacy Devino: [01:01:02] I

[01:01:02] Tessa: [01:01:02] don't have
anything new to pitch, but if you're looking for a podcast about view or front end development, check
out, enjoy the view,

[01:01:09] Frederick Weiss: [01:01:09]
That's enjoy the view.io IO.

[01:01:13] Thank you. Anybody else?

[01:01:15] Vincent Tang: [01:01:15] Oh, I have a podcast

[01:01:17] Vincent Tang: [01:01:17] too.
It's a restaurant theme of podcasts . My best buddy talked about pretty much all tested development and
how it got started into front end development and back in development, as well as civic topics on, for
instance, how a TV device works or.

[01:01:35] If you're versed in DevOps, we've got something for everybody.
It's more like for people that are kind of in the mindset of trying to learn new things. So, um,
I'll put them in the

[01:01:45] Frederick Weiss: [01:01:45] show
notes somewhere. I, I, we got a link. Don't worry about it. I, I listen to you. Thanks so much.

[01:01:53] Brian Hinton: [01:01:53] Cool. Thank
you. Hey everyone.

[01:01:55] Thanks for joining us. It's always great to talk with you all.
It's a joy.

[01:02:00] Frederick Weiss: [01:02:00] Oh yeah.
And before we jumped out, I just wanted to, if anybody else had a chance or wanted to say anything at the
end here,

[01:02:07] Jared Rhodes: [01:02:07] I got a
podcast to

[01:02:11] Frederick Weiss: [01:02:11] what you
got.

[01:02:13] Jared Rhodes: [01:02:13] It's
called the front end nerdery podcast. It's also on YouTube and it's also on your, uh, your favorite
podcast platform,

[01:02:22] Faisal Abid: [01:02:22] device of
choice.

[01:02:24] Frederick Weiss: [01:02:24] Nice.
Anybody else? Uh,

[01:02:29] Jared Rhodes: [01:02:29] we're
going to be having the Atlanta code camp this year, um, on October 9th. So if anyone's looking to speak
or sponsor a, will we have any Atlanta code camp? So Atlanta code, camp.com.

[01:02:42] Frederick Weiss: [01:02:42] Thank you
very much, Jared. Hey, you know what? Speaking of friends and friends, the code bass card, you got on
anything to promote,

[01:02:49] Faisal Abid: [01:02:49] um, the apart

[01:02:52] Baskar Rao Dandlamudi: [01:02:52]
from our conference, uh, which is the Cooper friends.

[01:02:56] Uh, so that's what we do. And, uh, we do monthly meetups and a annual

[01:03:03] conference.

[01:03:04] Frederick Weiss: [01:03:04] Nice.
Anyone else? Anyone else eats more lobster, eats more, less. I think that is the perfect word to exit this
show with. Remember everybody eating more lobster? Watch the thunder nerds. Thank every one of you for
joining us. Um, it's been a pleasure and, uh, I hope you all join us again next year when we do this, my
deepest of thanks.

[01:03:30] Thank you so much, Brian. Do you have anything? Nope.

[01:03:34] Brian Hinton: [01:03:34] Under nerds,
subscribe.

[01:03:35] Faisal Abid: [01:03:35] Subscribe.

[01:03:37] Frederick Weiss: [01:03:37] Thanks
everybody. Take care. Really appreciate it. We'll see you next time.

If you have questions, or suggestions to modify the transcript, PLEASE let us know at
[email protected]
...more
1h 6min

FAQs about Thunder Nerds:

How many episodes does Thunder Nerds have?

The podcast currently has 288 episodes available.