Who Gets Hired, Fired, and Why?

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2024 and Tech Layoffs still continue...more than a headline; they're a wake-up call to evaluate the true resilience of our skills in an ever-changing industry. In this episode, we take on a tough subject to better understand the realities of job security, debunking the myth that exceptional programmers are safeguarded from the chopping block. 

We also challenge the notion of generalist vs. specialist and instead focus on the all important question of "what is the value delivered" and "what skills do you need to deliver that value."

Finally...we remind everyone... your self worth is not something that is defined by any company...you have value far and above your job.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Welcome back everybody Tricky bits with Rob
and PJ For today's episode.
We're going to tackle a subjectthat is front of mind for a lot
of people, and we'll talk aboutone stat off the top, which is
that we're at February 22ndright now 2024, and roughly
41,000 jobs have been turneddown effectively in the tech

(00:39):
sector.
We're not even two months intothe year at this point in time,
and we've seen a huge slew oflayoffs.
The subject we really wanted totalk about today, because I
think there's a lot ofmisconceptions out there, is who
gets laid off, who gets hiredand why does this stuff happen.
There's a lot of things thatsound right out there that are

(01:03):
actually wrong and inactionable,or naive at the very least.
And so, rob, you sent me a videorecently that claimed to
contain the brutal truth aboutlayoffs, and the points that
were highlighted in the videowere you know, if you're a good
programmer, you were not laidoff, which implies basically
that if you were laid off, youweren't good, and this is a

(01:25):
fairly common perception.
I think that exists.
The other points were thatspecialization is what caused
people to get laid off, and thatpeople should not look to get
overly specialized and shouldlearn some additional frameworks
.
And finally, there was this onelast point which I think really
put me over the top, which isthat programming jobs are

(01:47):
starting to pay the same as bluecollar work, and it really
carried this stigma that somehowthat we've seen before about
blue collar work not being asgood as white collar work.
So maybe we'll get to that oneat the end, but regardless, the
whole thing really got my goat.
And then I was like, I think,spamming you over text

(02:07):
effectively, of just why thisthing like really ticked me off.
That's why I sent it to you.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
I do think while there may be some rhyme and
reason to who gets hired or laidoff, I still think it's way
more random than any one personwould like to admit.
It's very difficult to getyourself into a position in a
corporate structure where you'reimmune to this sort of thing,

(03:21):
and I do agree with you thatit's not necessarily the worst
that get laid off.
A lot of it comes down to need.
Yeah, if your position is, ifyour division or your product or
whatever you're selling to theend consumer is moving away or
being contracted out, theysimply no longer need you.
So you could be the best thereis, and now there's simply not a

(03:45):
position for you, and maybehaving a broader skill set,
having those extra frameworksunder your belt, is something
that would keep you on if youwanted to stay.
The idea you can do that being asubject expert or want to do
that, is something else that'sup for debate.

(04:06):
So I think that's where a lotof good people get laid off.
Okay, you, and I think thatpoint you just said is what goes

(05:37):
back to the generalist point oflike, if you're really good and
you're really general, you canfind a job in these big tech
companies.
If you're good enough, they'llkeep you on, just so no one else
hires you and they'll findsomething for you to do.
I think the economics of thatmodel is now what's changed and
I agree I agree, being that widegeneralist who just kind of

(05:58):
fills in a gap wherever it maybe those positions are going
away.
Maybe being more specialized iswhere you want to be today.

Speaker 1 (06:06):
It goes to this, I think the value question I think
we're heavily refuting thatvideo at this point in time
about if you were toospecialized and obviously there
are certain specializedpositions that are over
specialized If you were toospecialized, you know that was
the reason you got let go,rather than and if you got let
go, you were somehow not good,rather than what we're saying,

(06:30):
which is that you could have avery specialized set of skills
like Liam Neeson.
But if the company doesn't needthat set of skills, even if
you're the very best you knowembedded systems programmer if
you're no longer on a project orif there is no project at that
company that uses embeddedsystems, you're not needed

(06:53):
anymore.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
Yeah, no, value is not good Are two completely
different things.

Speaker 1 (06:59):
Yes, your value to that company has gone down.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
Your value as a whole hasn't gone down.
It may have actually gone up,and I think that's where people
get all of this fuzzy of like Igot laid off there.
I'm not very good.
In reality, it's exactly whatwe just said.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
And sometimes it is because you're not good.
That's fine.
Being overly specialized to apoint of ridiculousness, where
in that video mentioned ohSnapchat, have a button,
engineer.
Why did you get yourself intothat position when all I can now
do is buttons in thisapplication and that's all I can
do, like what happened to therest of your skills.

(07:36):
Why are you not exercisingthose skills?
It's almost complacency at thispoint of like.
Oh well, I'll do buttonsbecause I keep my job.

Speaker 1 (07:43):
I think it's a really excellent point, and there's
two sides of the equation, whichis that that person likely did
not invent their own job ofbutton engineer.
That was probably crafted fromthe company of saying, hey,
we're going to have a whole slewof people who are button
engineers and we did thatbecause it's good for someone's

(08:03):
promotion packet as a manager.
So there's an aspect here whereit is the specialization is
coming about by virtue of thecompany deciding we're going to
collect these people into veryspecialized areas.
I mean this, this happened atI've seen this happen a lot of
places where it's like, hey,we're only going to have front
and engineers over here and backand engineers over here and

(08:26):
those your skill sets, andthat's how we as a company are
dividing this up.
But to your point, rob, if youaccept that situation, that is
your complacency of saying I'mjust going to be called a button
engineer at this point in timebecause it's more convenient for
me to stay at this company, andmaybe it's because you're

(08:47):
besting at that point in time,or whatever, rather than you
know, go someplace where I canhave a more expansive skill set.

Speaker 2 (08:54):
And I think it's also plays into short term versus
long term.
Yep, I've like, I've been abutton engineer.
In fact I met you and,insomniac, you were doing the UI
, I was doing the UI, I washelping you for the back end
support.
Yes, but it's temporary.
I've like can you just makethis work?
Yes, I can, and it's within myskill set.

(09:15):
That doesn't mean I want to doit permanently.

Speaker 1 (09:19):
And one of the things actually I think that's really
useful is when you can putyourself out of a job.
I mean to take that exampleexactly, I was doing basically
the UI, but the whole point ofit was to get the framework up
and running so that the artistscould be doing this directly,
the product people could bedoing this directly, rather than
having to have me go in andpoke around and see plus, plus,

(09:41):
like can they export assets andwrite some Lua code so that they
can be the ones that areactually doing this.
So I actually really like theidea of putting myself out of a
job, because that means I'veautomated something away, which
means that I then can go on anddo cooler stuff.

Speaker 2 (10:00):
And I think all of these factors play together.
It's it's people get sucked in,whether you, like you said,
whether it's because they wantto vest for longer, or they're
sticking out until some otherproject comes online and they
don't quite make it, or simplycompany ones out of money, or
whatever it may be.
There's a lot of reasons whythis happens, and I think a lot

(10:22):
of people get themselves in thatsituation.

Speaker 1 (10:24):
I agree it's a very seductive place, especially if
you have a family and you'revesting like a lot of money or
like your effect will bedependent upon that income.
I get how people get themselvesstuck in that, but that doesn't
take away the fact that you'reright that this creates a risk
factor.
And this is an actionable steppeople can take is to really

(10:46):
recognize, like, how valuable amI to a company as a button
engineer, versus trying to craftsome new product that might
have a chance of actually beingsold and bringing value into the
company.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
Yeah, take a step back and ask why is there a
button engineer?
Why is this not a process andwhy can't I make this process?
Can I put myself out of a jobby managing a new process and or
creating that new process?
And I'm actually on the otherside of the fence.
I've let myself go from ahandful of companies where it's

(11:22):
like I'm not doing anythingthat's useful to me.
Yeah, it's like I am now just awarm body fill in a slot that
needs to get done and I can doit for a reason, but I can't do
it because it's my job.
Right, I like to do the lowlevel performance graphics
things and I'm not really doingthat.
I'm just helping out and Iwon't hire to help.

(11:45):
I was hired to do what I do andnow I'm not doing it.
So I've been on both sides ofthat coin and I think it's
fairly obvious when you're inthat position where it's like
I'm not doing what I was hiredto do, I'm doing this kind of
ridiculous thing.
You pay me a lot of money andit's like I'll just save you the
money.

Speaker 1 (12:05):
Yeah, I think it's a great, actually value set man.
I mean to say like, hey, thisisn't as valuable to me as Rob.
It is really not a value add tothe company, so let me go
someplace else.

Speaker 2 (12:19):
Yeah, or be a contractor or work part time or
something that gets the job donebut doesn't cost you as much as
it costs in you, and there aremore efficient, effective ways
of doing what I'm doing, andmaybe it's not me, maybe I train
someone else and I'll come backin six months when you have a
position for me, which is whyI've always tended towards the
contract workers.
You tend to be hired for thisand you do that and you move on.

(12:41):
It doesn't give the companythat opportunity of well, now we
have these really good guys andnothing to do with them, and we
don't want to be the higherfire company, but we have little
choice.

Speaker 1 (12:52):
I do think that organizations have this problem
which I call incrementality,where they actually get
increasingly risk averse tochanging processes at large and,
especially when the money isflowing in, they will opt to
just hire a new person ratherthan to make a new process, Even

(13:13):
though there is a hugeadvantage to actually like
crafting a new process, it'sactually just takes more than
they're willing to put in.
Have I ever told you my analogywith roundabouts and stoplights
before?
Nope, go for it Sweet.
So when you look at like afour-way stop light versus a

(13:35):
roundabout, in terms of thingslike safety and throughput and
like almost really any factor,the roundabout is more efficient
period.
It is, hands down, just theright answer.
But you have to make a veryconscious choice to put that
roundabout in at the beginning,when you're creating that road

(13:59):
or creating that intersection,and there is a cost to it, and
this might be a Europe versus USthing.
If I just had a single road andthen later on decided to add in
a new road as an intersection,the dead simplest thing for me
to do is to put in two stopsigns, not even four, just two,

(14:21):
because I know that thisexisting road has more traffic
to it, it's just the way it is.
And then later on oh well, nowboth roads get more traffic the
next dead simplest thing for meto do is to put in two more stop
signs.
So now I have a four-way, andthen after that, when there's
enough traffic, the next deadsimplest thing for me to do is

(14:44):
for me to put a four-way stoplight in there, and that
four-way is going to be a lotless efficient than the
roundabout would for the samejob, but incrementally it was
the cheapest option, even thoughI reached kind of a local
maxima, if you will, ofefficiency.
I think organizations work inthe same way.

(15:05):
It's that, hey, we don't wantto really redo a new process
because that's going to taketime and energy to rip out the
stop signs and put in aroundabout.
I'd rather just add anotherstop light and be done with it,
because that's the dead simplestthing for me to do.

Speaker 2 (15:22):
And it's a pretty good analogy as to how things
get to how they are.
Like if we had the hindsight ofknowing what was going to
happen, then we'd have done itdifferently in the first place,
and that roundabout is a perfectexample.
I think there's more analogiesthere too of the ongoing cost of
a stop sign.
You got there the cheapestincremental step, but now

(15:43):
there's an ongoing cost.
Where a roundabout has noongoing cost except physical
maintenance.
There's no electricity to pay.
There's also the upfront costof well.
A roundabout takes more room.
So once we've built on all fourcorners, we can't ever pull off
a real size roundabout.
You can put the European miniroundabouts in, especially in
American roads because they'reso big.

(16:03):
But yeah, that incrementalnesshas locked you into the future
path.
It's like you can't go back.

Speaker 1 (16:12):
And to me, this is how we get a button engineer.

Speaker 2 (16:14):
You start off as an engineer, you become a UI
engineer, then you become abutton engineer.
That's literally the steps.
How?
Why did you allow it to happento yourself?
Yeah, because you know a buttonengineer is not a thing in the
grand scheme of things.
If you're doing a job that hasno value to somebody else, you

(16:34):
have to think it has no value toyour co-employer, and probably
to you either.

Speaker 1 (16:39):
This value proposition is.
One of the big sins of Big Techfor me is that there has been
such a divorce between the valueto the company that any given
project will give and its costPeople will make careers out of,
effectively, you know, buildingup their teams to be something
huge, because they need to be acertain size to get to director

(17:01):
or vice president or whatever,and so they're like looking at
headcount rather than saying,hey, what is this division
actually doing to bring in valueagainst the cost of that
headcount?
And this is the equation, likeyou talked about earlier, that
is changing, which is now theyare scrutinizing and looking at

(17:22):
what is the cost of this stuffversus the value that it's
actually bringing me in.
And I think that's one of thereasons why we're saying you
know what, the cost of thesebutton engineers isn't worth it.

Speaker 2 (17:35):
So do you specialize or do you not specialize as an
actionable item?

Speaker 1 (17:39):
I think that this is.
It's actually the wrongquestion in my mind, because the
right question is hey, what arethe valuable problems that
people are willing to pay me for?
What are the things that weactually are trying to solve in
the world?
And we're trying to solve itwith technology, okay, great.
What are then the skills I needto go after to solve those

(18:02):
problems?
Could they be generalists?
Maybe could they be specialized?
Maybe the core valueproposition really isn't like do
I specialize or do I go general?
It's what's the shit I wannasolve?
What do I need to go to figureout and go solve it?
What is someone gonna pay?

Speaker 2 (18:17):
me to go.
Do I agree with that?
I also think it goes furtherback than where you are in the
workforce.
I think this all starts highschool college of I'm gonna be a
software guy, I'm gonna be ahardware guy, and then you kind
of stay on that path and take myown experience.
I'm technically a hardwareengineer, like I have a degree

(18:38):
in electronics and a master'sdegree in micro-projects.

Speaker 1 (18:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
But all the things I do are kind of related.
I do a lot of, I don't do muchhardware.
I do a lot of firmware and it'sobviously low level hardware
based programming.
The architecture and theelectronics fit in there.
I do a lot of graphics whichcame from that in the old days
hardware and consoles andgraphics and audio were all the

(19:02):
same thing.
But that hardware backgroundalthough I'm doing pure software
at this point is just how dataflows, how DMA works, just
general bandwidth and thingsthat you think about in a
hardware sense, like you don'tnecessarily think about in a
software sense.
So although I went for hardwareand now mostly do software,

(19:24):
it's all kind of related, evenif I ticked a bunch of boxes and
said, okay, technically onpaper I'm kind of a generalist.
I can do high level code, I cando level code, I can do
software, I can do hardware, Ican do graphics, I can audio, I
can do gameplay, I can do a bitof web stuff and all that.
So I tick a lot of boxes.
But which am I good at andwhich do I want to do?

(19:46):
I think comes back to thequestion of what you just said,
of what problems can I solve?

Speaker 1 (19:53):
Right, and what problems do you want to solve?
I mean you probably are notthrilled at the notion of hey, I
wanna write JavaScript in SQL,right?
I mean that probably would notbe something that you'd really
go after.
I know you'd do it if you hadto in a certain situation, but I
can't imagine that's somethingthat you would gravitate to.

Speaker 2 (20:12):
naturally, and I think that also is the point of
like do it because you want tolearn something new, right, and
it's completely out of yourcomfort zone.
Like web stuff to me is foreignas it gets, yeah, but I like to
tinker with it.
And what point does thetinkering become?
Another box you check ofsomething you can do or want to
do.
And is that making you ageneralist?

(20:35):
Because you have a broadknowledge and you've
experimented and played with abunch of different technologies?
I'm technically still aspecialist, like I do these
things and I can fix things overthere if I need to, and some
areas are never enough to bedangerous and it should keep me
away.
But I think a lot of people callthemselves generalists when
they really not.

(20:55):
It's making you better at whatyou do to see how other people
and other environments havesolved similar or even the same
problem.
And this comes back in hardwareall the time.
You'll look at like how alleight bit micros, the Amiga, the
consoles, all the differentcomputers we've had to get to
where we are A lot of what's oldis new again applies in

(21:15):
hardware too.
I've like oh, we used to do itlike this and then it kind of
went out of vogue for a whileand then now it's back doing it
kind of the same way, but in amore modern version.
So there's no harm inbroadening your knowledge base.
You've just got to be carefulhow general you interleave at

(21:36):
all and at some point you becomethis Uber generalist who can
kind of jack of all trades,master of none.
That's where you don't want tobe.

Speaker 1 (21:42):
This is why I take a lot of umbridge with the
generalist versus specialistterm.
I think a lot of it comes frombig tech, where there was this
mantra that came out my favoritecompany in the world, Google
where they espoused the notionthat we want to hire a whole
bunch of generalists.
Well, the idea that once youhave these sort of smart people,

(22:04):
generally you can stick themanywhere.
But it would lead to thesetropes, these memes that we'd
have internally.
We have people who got theirdoctorates, who are moving proto
buffs from one proto buff toanother.
So it'd be like your API protobuff versus your storage proto
buff and that, basically, istheir job and it's like, okay,
that might be the job that'svaluable to the company.

(22:26):
Again to your point, why notautomate it?
But it's not necessarily likethe right use of those folks'
skills.
And I know what happens atother companies where the right
person for the job isn'tnecessarily the one who's in
that job.
They're stuck somewhere elsebecause the politics of the
situation.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
Apple.
I've seen the two wrong peoplefor the two jobs working side by
side.
They should literally have justswitched positions and it would
have been way more efficient.
We got a math guy who's doingembedded systems and we have an
embedded guy who's doing math onAR type stuff and it's like you

(23:07):
should switch and then be likehe's good at that, let him do it
.
And again, it's politics orheadcount of team members.
I'm sure that one could havebeen resolved because the teams
work pretty close together, butthere was no need, there was no
impetus.
We need to switch these twopeople, which I think the big
tech versus the startupmentality is very different.

(23:29):
Like in the startup, those twopeople would have been switched
in a heartbeat of like you needto do the embedded stuff because
we need it done now.
We need it done by someone whoknows what they're doing, no
time to go learn this stuffRight, and the same the other
way around.

Speaker 1 (23:42):
But anyways, thanks a bunch.
The value equation still works.
It just works more efficientlythere, which is that, hey, we
have an existential threat toour company If we don't get out
this product as a startup, we'regoing to die.
So there's a huge amount ofvalue to switching those folks,
especially relative to theircost, because they're trying to

(24:05):
get that thing out into themarket right.
So in many ways, the lack ofmoney creates that efficiency
that needs to be there simplyfor survival.

Speaker 2 (24:18):
Yeah, so it just comes back to that original
point of not necessarily thebest or worst of the ones who
get fired.
It's what value do you, do youbring?
And I think it's just moreobvious in the startup, where
every dollar counts, where, ifyou had Google, it's every
billion dollar counts.

Speaker 1 (24:36):
I'm going to deliver Rob a very rare compliment to
Google at this point in time tohelp illustrate these points.
I know I know you probablythought it would never happen.

Speaker 2 (24:46):
I've never heard it before, so go for it.

Speaker 1 (24:48):
I think Google Stadia is actually a pretty good
example of something where itwas a huge product area of the
company.
It had a lot of greatprogrammers people that you and
I had worked with in the pastthat got hired over there.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
I'm going to disagree with it.
I'll let you finish first.

Speaker 1 (25:05):
Okay, all right, I'd love to dive into that, but they
were highly specialized andthey worked on the internal
studios or done Stadia.
Ultimately, google decided thatit wanted to shut Stadia down
as a whole product area, andthis is where I give them credit
that they made a choiceeffectively to shut down a

(25:26):
product area, and then they hadopportunities to say hey, if you
want to try and stay at Google,try and find another position,
otherwise go elsewhere.
So I do think that this iswhere the company said this
product area is not valuable tous anymore and even though there
are lots of people that couldbe good here, we're not going to

(25:47):
keep them.

Speaker 2 (25:48):
Okay, my turn.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
Your turn.
Bring it on.
I want to hear this.

Speaker 2 (25:52):
I think Stadia hired all the wrong people to begin
with.
They didn't hire good gameengineers.
They hired producers andmanagers who'd worked on good
games.
They had a name for themselves.
Those people without the teamthat made the game are useless,
and that's what Stadia showed.

(26:14):
They decided we're going tomake this new division, we need
specialists, we're going to gohire people from the game space.
They hired lots of high levelmanagers, lots of producer level
people, not that many actualgame engineers, not many
gameplay engineers, not manyaudio engineers, not many
graphics engineers.

(26:34):
They didn't go in poetry orfrom Epic, for example, or
Naughty Dog.
They had a very high level teamof people who think they know
how to make games but don't havethe staff to make the game,
which was the first mistake.
And then a lot of stuff getscontracted out and that's the
second mistake.

(26:55):
I think you have to have anin-house team to drive the
technology.
Epic have in-house games todrive the Unreal and without
that in-house content and thatdirect feedback as to how the
product works, you never reallyget that feedback.
And from there it's a slipperyslope and it just went downhill.
So, yes, they did lay off theteam and they did hire the team

(27:18):
for all the wrong reasons.
You need actual content, peoplewho can drive the content
forwards, people who can get theresult that you need.
We need to show how to do ahigh-performance game in this,
and that all got contracted outto Ubisoft and the third parties
who they worked with.

(27:39):
Blah, blah, blah.
There was no real directfeedback from the guys doing the
network architecture of theseserver boxes that were going to
stream games.
There was no one in-house tohammer on that and give them
direct feedback.
It was just kind of a test codeand then they'd send it out to
developers who'd be like no,that kind of works, and that's

(27:59):
the kind of feedback they wouldget.
They didn't have anyonein-house who was like, let's
re-architect how a game latencyworks, how a game updates and
things like that.
Because if we do, if we can getthis to be the new norm, we
have a much better platform thanwhat's ever existed before.
And none of that existed.

(28:20):
They didn't have the technicalpeople In this case, very
specialist people to solve veryspecific problems and again,
when that went away, they werenot needed.
Fine, get rid of them.
They went into it as aspecialist, knowing that that's
what it is Again.
Contractors would be good here,and none of that existed.
It was a bunch of high levelPhil Harrison type people who

(28:42):
can't make games without themassive amount of brilliant
engineers and artists andwhatnot behind them, and you
take them out of that positionand now they don't have that
team to lead.
And if you take the good guyfrom here and the good guy from
there and this person from overthere put them together, yes,
they were good, but it's theteam that makes good games, not

(29:03):
necessarily the skills of theindividuals on the team.
And Google failed all of thatbecause they applied big tech
mentality to something thatisn't yet big tech.
Even the big companies don'trun like big tech.

Speaker 1 (29:16):
You mean the big game companies.

Speaker 2 (29:17):
Don't run like big tech, the big game companies the
good media, the big mediacompanies too, and I think a lot
of people have struggled withthis.
I think Amazon have tried toget into games and the video
have tried, and Google obviouslytried multiple times and they
always fail.
And they fail for this exactreason.
They'll put out a press releaseof we hired this person.

(29:38):
So fucking wild.
What's he going to do byhimself?
He's going to make a whole newgame.
He didn't hire the team, don'tforget.
He ran the team, but he didn'thire that team.
He got put in the position, orshe to run this team, which
happened to make a brilliantgame.
They probably had a lot of sayin making that brilliant game,
but I think they overestimatethe dynamic of how they got

(30:01):
there and think they could do itagain.
In reality, that team was hiredorganically.
It was never put together.
A put together team has neverworked in games or media.
Even if it's a dream team, it'snever worked.

Speaker 1 (30:17):
I'm going to use a rare sports analogy like this
difference between a team thatreally is working together
versus like an all star team,where it's like an exhibition
game.
You pick out the best playersfrom each team and hope they're
going to play together well, andit's never as good as like the
teams that actually are likepracticing and playing together.
Yep.

Speaker 2 (30:38):
And I think Google hired people from the game space
.
They went there, but they hiredthe wrong people.
And I think they hired thewrong people because they didn't
know any better.
And I agree with you, they didlet the team go.
In the end, we shut thedivision down.
Like you said, find a new jobin Google or go somewhere else.
That's fine too.
It's a good example ofspecialists not being needed

(31:00):
anymore.
As we talked about earlier, Ithink Stadia is a glaring
blemish on the history of gaming.

Speaker 1 (31:08):
I think it's an important example because you
know to your point where it'slike, hey, we can acquire this
talent.
Maybe this talent is sort ofconsidered you know good or is
sort of famous.
But the difference between likeacquiring individual pieces of
talent and the value thatthey're going to bring versus
their costs, versus like whatyou see actual studios do, like

(31:32):
like what not studios you seeSony purchase entire studios.
You see Microsoft purchaseentire studios because they know
that team is going to be thething that matters, not the
individual players.

Speaker 2 (31:44):
Yep, it's the old star it's.
They went hired individuals.
They should have found acompany who was doing very good
streaming and started there.
Put Google's resources andGoogle's network behind them and
let them do it differently, orjust done it differently to
start with.
But they can't, because thenpeople won't use it.

(32:05):
The way you solve streaminggames to make them like flawless
isn't to use an existing gamethat runs as is on a PC.
There's a lot of things youcould do differently.
They knew these problemsexisted, but again, they didn't
hire the right people.
It was just more of a PR hireof like oh we got Phil House and
what does he actually do?

Speaker 1 (32:24):
This is a really important point generally,
though, about the appreciation,or lack thereof, of teams versus
individuals in big tech,because, again, what they they
have done as in a cultural sense, has really fed this notion
that if we hire you, you must begood as a almost a cache.

(32:48):
And then the cultures exist,like we've talked about before,
where it is about individualachievement, individual
leadership, individual impactand action, rather than what are
we as a team or a product area?
What is the value that we arebringing to the table?
Not necessarily like.

(33:08):
Is my individual piece?
Am I necessarily the bestbutton engineer in the world?
Doesn't matter.
Is our division actually likebringing value back in?
And are we doing that as a team, rather than you know what is
the sort of individual, all-starcharacteristics that are there?
And I would actually say that Ithink maybe that is the problem

(33:29):
with the specialization.
It becomes too much about theself and individual achievement
and how good am I looking Versuslike?
How are we doing well as a team?
How are we doing well as adivision?
How are we doing well as aproduct area so that we're
actually able to create avaluable economic story?

(33:50):
I agree, a lot of people, Ithink, focused for a long time
or continue to focus at thispoint in time, that all these
sins came about because of thezero interest rate era, meaning
that no one really looked atbottom line costs.
No one was looking atprofitability.
Everyone was looking at topline growth and maybe revenue at

(34:11):
that point in time, and I thinkthere's a lot of people that
blame effectively, like, zerointerest rates for this, and I
don't actually think that's true.
I think there's a lot of blameto be had on the VCs for this
one.
Vcs were very fundamentallyfocused on growth at all costs,
without any worry aboutprofitability.

Speaker 2 (34:29):
Yeah, and I think that's definitely biased.
A lot of smaller companies whorun like big companies because
of the VC funded.

Speaker 1 (34:39):
I agree.
And then a lot of divisionswithin big companies that
effectively got run in the sameway, but instead of VC money,
it's basically just whatever admoney that's coming in to
effectively fuel these productdivisions that are not making
money.
It's bad patterns.
I got put in for not looking atself-sustainability and

(34:59):
profitability.
Now people are looking at costsmore heavily and that's when
they're starting to look atthese employees.

Speaker 2 (35:08):
Yep, but I do think they should look more at the
team level and not theindividual level.
I still think open managementat tech companies is like we'll
take this person out of the team.
Maybe they were the person whoheld the team together, but on
paper they're not the best.
Maybe the rest of the teamsuffers because that person's

(35:29):
gone.
I think it'd be best if theyjust did it team by team,
product by product, instead ofyou're gonna move to this
unrelated team because weperceive you have value and
you're gonna get fired becausewe don't perceive you as having
any value, where in realitycould be the opposite.
As far as the team structure andthe contributions to the end

(35:51):
user product are concerned, yes,but that's never measured.
It's a non-tangible thing as tolike, what do you contribute to
the end product?
Yes, and that could be anythingfrom comic relief to being the
person who made it all work.
It could be anything in themiddle, and without either one

(36:13):
of them it's not going to work.
You can't eliminate the socialstructure of these teams and I
think that's where managers andcorporate cold bloodedly just go
.
You yes, you no, and you justdecimated the team.
The team now won't producebecause you've destroyed the
social dynamic.
You've took it from the sportsteam.
That places the team to theall-star team and you've decided

(36:37):
who has value and who doesn't.
That's not really how it works.
We're not AIs, we're humans,and the social side is
incredibly important, andmanagers don't give a shit.

Speaker 1 (36:48):
I want to tease this one apart, rob, because I think
this is actually a reallyinteresting balance point,
because I think you bring up areally important point about the
social dynamics, the socialstructures of teams that make
them more effective, and I thinkthat's not talked about as much
.
I think what is talked about isthe shitty term that you love

(37:12):
to hate which I hate as well iswhen people call companies
families but I do think it'sworthwhile to talk about the
positive side, about the socialdynamics that make teams
effective and how that doesn'talways translate into something
of individual achievement.

Speaker 2 (37:29):
It doesn't always translate into things that a
company likes Like you havethese team-building days, which
is supposed to be social.
It's like you shouldn't needthem.
They should just be going tohave a day off and do something
fun, not have these stupidexercises to try and get you to
mingle.
By this point, you've alreadypicked who you're going to
mingle with and who you're notgoing to mingle with.
You've been having a beer withthem in the pub, you've been on

(37:50):
vacation with them, you've beenhiking with them.
It's if you haven't done it yet, you're not going to do it
because somebody put you in somestupid situation that and now
you have to do it.
Like team-building days areridiculous.
It's just give them a day offand I'm going to do something
fun and let them pick it.
And again, it's corporate.
Everywhere they always forgetthe social side.

(38:11):
These people hang out afterwork, they talk after work.
They might be neighbors Godforbid.
They might be dating, butthat's a big no-no and it's like
we're humans.
The social side is incrediblyimportant.
Things will get decided outsideof the office.
If you'd like it or not, acceptthat, because that's the

(38:32):
reality and it's always going tobe the reality.

Speaker 1 (38:34):
Well, it's either going to happen or you're not
going to get that cohesivesocial structure that makes
teams better.

Speaker 2 (38:40):
Yeah, I mean, some of the guys I've worked, I've been
friends with at work in thepast, are still some of my best
friends and you're meant at work.
You don't really get that.
It's almost like you're trainedto be a robot from the day you
get the big tech of like you dothis, you don't talk to anybody
else, you talk outside of workand it's like nobody wants to go

(39:02):
in social life.
It's like, oh, I got to worklate, I've got to go home to my
family Both reasonable excuses,but when there isn't not much of
an excuse, there's not muchdynamic to get you to know each
other to.
It's almost like corporate'savoiding it.
And if you're the one, I thinkyou're putting yourself out for

(39:22):
HR management to notice.
If you are the social one, thatis true it's like it's another.
It's almost a red flag of likeoh well, fire him first because
he's gonna cause trouble.
Without defining it, I'm justlike oh, it's, it's different to
the others, he's, she'sdifferent to the others, she
hangs out with him, can't havethem on the same team.

Speaker 1 (39:43):
It's risk aversion at that point in time it's
absolutely risk aversion.

Speaker 2 (39:47):
It's like trying to avoid as much, avoid humans
being human and and trial apigeonhole everything and
everybody into their own littleslots, because if they could
keep your pigeonhole it's easierto manage you.
When you step outside thatpigeonhole, they don't know what
to do with you.
What did that be?
Technical, social?
It's easy to be like.

(40:08):
Well, get rid of him first.

Speaker 1 (40:09):
It's fascinating because you know that now that
we're talking about thepigeonholing, that brings us
back to the button engineerright when it's like, hey, if we
can just isolate these folks,specialize them, you know, not
be part of the broader pictureof like solving the product, but
just be solving this one littlething.
It's like, yeah, maybe you'llget along with the other button
engineers, maybe you won't, butyou're not looking at

(40:32):
holistically.

Speaker 2 (40:33):
It's the cog in the machine.
Yeah, you are.
Now you are the button cog,right.
You are no different to say andI need a this type of coil on
an engine or I need this type offuel injection.
It's like it's a part.
It's a part of a bigger machineand you're part of it, right,
and that's just big tech.
If you were generalist andyou're all over the place or a

(40:55):
specialist with generalknowledge, then you Can't be
pigeonhole so easily and theydon't really know what to do
with you, which is kind of whythey didn't go down that path.
If we need four buttonengineers, we need a UI engineer
to manage the button engineers,and they literally just design
it as if you're building up likea Lego set of like oh we need
four red blocks and we needthese big blocks over here, and

(41:17):
it's literally the same thing oflike this is what we need, this
is what each of them will do,this is what they will cost.
This is what the project willcost, yes or no when it gets to
the top.
There's no holistic thinking incorporate management higher in
and fire.

Speaker 1 (41:31):
What I think is fascinating is that and we see
this in big tech a lot when wehave effectively these cogs in
the machine that have beencreated, but then they've tried
to artificially then layer on asocial structure.
And this goes back to hey,we're a company, we're a big
family to try and effectivelyseduce folks into this kind of

(41:54):
non-organic social structureEffectively to have them work
longer hours and that's beenadmitted by many people in the
past is, you know, craft allthese baubles effectively to
make them want to be therelonger.

Speaker 2 (42:10):
We'll provide lunch of like.
Right everywhere I've been thatprovides lunch.
People tend to get lunch.
Go eat at the desk.
If you suggest like, oh, let'sgo out and have lunch or, god
forbid, I've a beer at noon aBritish, for God's sake Then you
like some weird, almost aliencreature that showed up of like
well, you're gonna leave thepremises, the a this free food

(42:30):
and you're gonna leave and buyfood.

Speaker 1 (42:33):
I'll never be a damn right I am so in the lack of
basically these organicExperiences where it's like, hey
, I'm gonna go to the pub withmy teammates and let's talk
about this, maybe a few beers inwe're gonna solve the problem,
we have, in many ways,regimented fun we have.
These are the, the lanes youcan operate in, and then we

(42:57):
still want you to develop anemotional connection to it so
you can work longer and You'restill just a cog in the machine
though at the end of the day.

Speaker 2 (43:06):
Oh yeah, I mean the and they corporate Team building
exercise days are just provingthe point that you're a car in
the machine.
Yeah, and I second it all fitsinto the everyone gets a medal
mentality too, which I'm notreally into of, like, some
people might be really good aswe might be really bad, and
that's not a good team dynamicat that point.
But that's the world we'reliving and that's also teams

(43:27):
really good engineers.
Some people are really badengineers, but you bring
something else to the table.
We're all have to be good atthe same things, right?
And I think the way that HRManagement higher and fire, like
I said, it's very different towhat the team actually needs,
right?
They look at it as black andwhite of like we need one of
these and one of those and wedon't have one, so we'll hire

(43:50):
one, and then we don't need them, so we'll fire them where, in
reality, teams need all of thissocial support and we don't need
team building days, because weshould be social as a team,
right, making our own plans,doing our own thing, paying for
it ourselves too.
We don't need the company topay for it.
If you have that team dynamic,it's much easier for that team
to work because you can dependon people like you know what.

(44:10):
Can you just do this for me?
So I've got to finish this, orI'm not in today and this needs
to get done.
Can you take care of it?
It's much easier To treat themas almost.
Like says that this is wherethe family mentality in
corporate comes from.
Of Years ago, teams were veryfamily-like.
It's like some of your bestfriends are there, right, you'll
do anything for them.

(44:31):
And then that got corporatizedand Now it's these little robots
that go sit in a cubicle allday.
And that's not our family, butit isn't no.
No, and again, this all fitsinto the higher and firing thing
and it's also why HR hates me.

Speaker 1 (44:48):
That's all right, rob .
People hate people that Tellthe truth, and that's what you
just call it out, oh.

Speaker 2 (44:56):
I call it to her face because you you call this place
a family to my face and you'regonna have a whole Regret, a
whole list of regrets of likeyou shouldn't probably said that
, but they're allowed to saythat.
But I'm not allowed to questionwhy they say that from their
standpoint.

Speaker 1 (45:10):
They're doing it effectively to Craft an
emotional bond and there's a lotof people, especially those who
you know have come up after us,who buy into it.
You know, there's some peoplewho only worked in big tech and
that was their whole identityand now, effectively, as they
get fired and they realize that,oh, this is a company Like it's

(45:32):
, this is just business, this isjust the way it works.

Speaker 2 (45:35):
It's a hundred percent business.
That's why I will never let youCall it a family.
Yeah, I mean family standbehind you mostly at the time,
no matter whatever you do right.
Like you do something, you go tojail.
Your family will probably standbehind you.
You get divorced and all thingslike that.
Or you do you become a drugaddict and you get fixed and
your family stands behind you.
It's none of that would bestood behind by corporate.

(45:57):
It's like a best.
They'll be like oh, you havingproblems, you see your work
stats have gone down or you'restruggling somewhere.
Let's get you a therapist, likefuck off.

Speaker 1 (46:06):
That's, that is it.
I mean it.
And it comes back to thatequation Are you more valuable
to the company than your costs?
That's, that's fundamentally it.
And you know, because part ofthose part of the cost really is
like it's actually very hard tofire someone when it's not
layoffs.
You know you have to build up awhole body of Documentation,
you have to have given theperformance improvement plans.

(46:29):
You've have to done all thisstuff.
During layoffs it's relativelyeasy because it's just somewhat,
you know, a Course at thatpoint in time.
But to your point earlier, youDecimate teams that way because
you destroy the social structure, you destroy the morale and
you're not necessarily puttingpeople into the right spot For
those teams to succeed.

Speaker 2 (46:50):
Yeah, and a lot of the people making the decisions
have never had that familyconnection in a corporate world
where it's genuine family, likeyour best friends, right and and
it.
They've never had that, so theydon't feel the need to sustain
it and so it's easy for they go.
Okay, you get fired, you getmoved, the rest of you are Gonna

(47:11):
stay poor and the rest of thestate poor.
Or they get someone new of likehe replaced him or she replaced
her, and Now the dynamicsdifferent and everyone starts
drop.
Now the end user productsuffers, right, which is kind of
.
Most of these teams are so farremoved from what they're
actually making hundred percentyou can't even measure your own

(47:32):
impact on the end productExactly.

Speaker 1 (47:36):
There's been such a divorce to that end user value.
You don't know what it is that.

Speaker 2 (47:42):
Anything that you do, it matters and you don't even
know the metrics.
They measure in you against,because they don't know what
matters.

Speaker 1 (47:49):
Exactly, it's turtles all the way down.
Everyone has crafted basicallythese structures that really
come down to how much headcountdo I have so I can get to the
next promotion, rather than whatis the value of this team?
How is this team actuallymaking this product better for
this end user?

Speaker 2 (48:06):
What can we do to make the team function better.
We don't need a new person, weneed the bonding of the team to
be better and you can't forcethat.
It has to happen naturally.
And all the products that getmade that are groundbreaking
games, hardware products,software products, whatever they
may be always tend to have thisteam addition in there of they

(48:31):
did something called and thenothers try to copy it.
It happens for individualpieces of IP, it happens for
entire products of entire games.
I've like, oh well, thesepeople got really good at making
mobile games, so now EA stepsin and starts making corporate
mobile games because they weresuccessful, so therefore will be
successful.
All these managers really thatstupid that they just look at it

(48:53):
black and white like that?
I mean, really someone call meand tell me like you're a
manager, a big company.
Are you a fucking idiot or not?
I think yes is the answer.
They'll never admit it, but yes,yeah, they're like ultra, ultra
idiots to think that's how theworld works.
I've like, really, my teenagedaughter can tell you that
that's not how the world works.
They had a good product forthem.

(49:14):
Is it like?
Analyze it Like is it what madeit good?
How did they get there?
Just to assume that we can doit in a corporate way and get
the same result is just ultraridiculousness.
But it's kind of me to feelbeing left out of like oh no,
they're going this way and againyou do get the whole Microsoft
mission mobile result if you'renot careful.

(49:37):
But this is a much smallerscale.
This is a team scale thing,Like this team did well by being
a team and made something cool,and then they want to replicate
the result without replicatingthe structure.

Speaker 1 (49:50):
Let's compare back with Stadia versus Xbox.
I mean, you've mentioned in thepast how Xbox operated as this
little startup inside ofMicrosoft.
It was a team that had adedicated vision.
It was doing somethinginnovative, which is making a
console out of PC parts at thatpoint in time, and they stuck
with it.
It took Microsoft seven yearsbefore Xbox became profitable.

(50:13):
Stadia operated as thecorporate let's bring in like
just pick out all the people wethink are all stars, kind of
toss them together, not make anychanges.
You know, keep it within thecorporate structure and that
thing gets shut down.
So I think there's a hugeamount here of having that

(50:34):
vision, having that team beingable to understand that value,
even if, like, not everyonelooks the same, not everyone is
operating on the same axes, likeeveryone's bringing something
different to the table, which isimportant.

Speaker 2 (50:49):
It's hard to quantify some of the human elements that
make a team work.
It's much easier for a managerto look black and white of like
metrics yes, no, you go, youstay, and that's how a lot of
people get hired and fired.
And in the non-layoff world, inthe layoff world, it's a whole

(51:10):
different thing.
The idea of the button engineeryou must know when you're in
head, at some point you're goingto get laid off because they're
not going to need buttonsanymore.
We're going to go to somethingcompletely different.
Or they have all the buttonsthat could possibly ever want.
And again, where is that backof your head?
Thought of like I shouldautomate this.

Speaker 1 (51:30):
I think this does take us back to the actionable
stuff we talked about earlier,which is, instead of trying to
answer this question ofgeneralized or specialized which
I still think is a BS questionthat got invented by big tech
Look at the problems that needto be solved.
Look at the technologies youwant to go after.

(51:51):
Look for teams that you getalong well with, like.
Find the people that you wantto be in the shit with when
stuff's going wrong.
Find the visions that actuallymatter.
Find the things that actuallyget you going and go after that.
Don't basically try to re-plugyourself into some corporate

(52:15):
structure that calls you afamily and your value is tied up
, basically, in your identity asbeing a part of that company.
Your self-worth has nothing todo with the company.

Speaker 2 (52:26):
I 100% agree with everything you just said.
Find a team where you can beyourself and be most productive
in the contributing to the endusers product not necessarily
contributing to the metric thatsome team artificially put there
that you have to hit whichmeans nothing at the end product

(52:48):
level and ask questions of like.
This needs to be x% better bythis date.
Why Is it affecting the endproduct Of like.
Can't we do something moreproductive by fixing A, b or C,
which are far more important?
But the team from the top downhas been told to fix this and

(53:11):
ask questions, although, if youwant to keep your job, don't ask
questions.

Speaker 1 (53:15):
No, a really good point, man.
If you're at a place where youcan't ask questions, you can't
ask why you can't get to thebottom, for why something is
important, that's a huge redflag.
That's a signal that says that,hey, this place might not be
interested in doing the rightthings or is focusing in on the

(53:35):
wrong things.

Speaker 2 (53:36):
That's all big tech, though I mean you can't ask
questions in big tech.
You'll just get told it's theway it is, or it's 10 layers of
viewing management, and youcan't really go email that guy
directly.
Well, again.

Speaker 1 (53:48):
This is how you get stuck into some like backwater
team at that point in time.

Speaker 2 (53:52):
You've got to stand up for yourself in a lot of
cases and it might mean failinga few times.
You might get let go becauseyou're told you're not a team
player, because you don't playin the team by the same rules as
everybody else does.
For me personally, I've alwaysbeen like I'm going to be who I
am and I like to be on teamsthat are super social and do

(54:13):
things out of work and again,we've been on vacation with
people who I have worked with.
It's ultimately a better team.
If I can't do that, I'm notreally interested in working for
you.
Even if it's a great product ora great position or great pay
or great stock or whatever, itis Not really interested.
I'd rather just be who I needto be and not be pigeonholed by

(54:35):
somebody who doesn't know me.

Speaker 1 (54:36):
My experience thus far has been I've never gotten
pulled aside and said I wasn't ateam player for asking
questions.
I have more gotten frustratedat the fact that it seemed like
nothing I was asking, eventhough I felt like it mattered.
It mattered to anyone else.
So typically I would end upleaving teams effectively when I
found out that I was justspinning my own wheel.

Speaker 2 (54:58):
To be a corporate player today.
You've got to just spin yourwheels.
I don't think they want peoplewho want to ask the hard
questions Again.
They want three-buttonengineers and a UI manager to
manage them.
They're building it likethey're building a physical
device.
They build a team like they'rebuilding a hardware product.
We need ten of these, one ofthese, six of these.
That's how they build teams,because that's how they can

(55:19):
manage it, because then there'smetrics they can use.
But they forget these peopleare human.

Speaker 1 (55:23):
I think you're going a little overboard in thinking
that there's always metricsthere.
I think the metric that theyput on most of the time is
headcount how big is my team?

Speaker 2 (55:31):
No, I mean metrics of performance, of, like, how do
you measure performance of abutton engineer?
I mean, I'd like to know theanswers to that question.
If anyone knows, send us anemail and I'm like yeah, what is
it?
Who makes these metrics up?
Are they known metrics?
Are they just kind of like,made upon the fly for
performance review reasons?
How do you rank somebody if,like, are you doing a good job
or are you not doing a good job?
Did you make buttons?

(55:52):
Did you not make buttons?

Speaker 1 (55:53):
So this was a perennial problem that we
actually had back when I was thefront-end manager or one of the
front-end managers on GoogleDrive, because a lot of the
back-end engineers would producemetrics effectively for, okay,
I made this system faster, thatsystem faster, and there needed
to be a UI for the feature we'reproducing.

(56:15):
But it might not have been likethe most complex thing in the
world, but the way that Googlehad structured the teams there
was a front-end team and aback-end team and the front-end
team would often just getfrustrated by the fact that
their careers couldn't advanceBecause it was really hard to
measure, like what the impactwas going to be, or try to,

(56:38):
versus what should have happened, which is to have full-stack
engineers, because, quitefrankly, even the back-end
engineering metrics didn'tmatter.
Next to, is this producing uservalue?
It's like, oh, I spun up allthese queries and I launched all
these servers.
Great, does it matter?
Did it sell more units?

(56:59):
Did it do anything?
And the bias here, basically,was that one side could come up
with cool graphs.
The other side could not.
Neither side really mattered,and that's actually the thing is
that there's this biasingfunction that occurs based on
what the company can measure orlook at or value, and it doesn't

(57:20):
necessarily mean that any of itis valuable.
Next to is this actuallyimpacting some user's life in a
positive way?

Speaker 2 (57:27):
Yep, all that is completely true, but I think
action of items for people to dodon't get pigeonholed, is what
I would say, because it may behard to find another pigeonhole
for you to fit in.

Speaker 1 (57:37):
Yeah, work on a shit that's valuable and figure out
the skills you need to solvethose problems and then find
teams where you want to be thereand working with those folks to
solve great problems.

Speaker 2 (57:50):
Yep.
So I want to bring up the pointwe made earlier of
blue-collared workers versuswhat we perceive programmers to
be, white-collar workers.
And it's interesting that theblue-collar workers that we call
blue-collar workers tend to bea more socially interactive
group.
You've got a bunch of plumbersthat'll go on vacation together,

(58:13):
they'll go to pub together,they'll just basically, they'll
become really good buddhists.
Yes, that doesn't happen somuch in the white-collar work.
It's always like oh, we'refriends because we both bought
expensive cars or things likethat, but you're not true
friends.
And I think programmingbecoming more of a blue-collar
job is actually a good thing.

Speaker 1 (58:33):
Oh, I 100% agree.

Speaker 2 (58:34):
It makes it more acceptable in society.
It makes it a more requiredthing and potentially get paid
more.
I know plumbers who earned waymore than a programmer could
ever earn.

Speaker 1 (58:45):
I think this comparison that was used at the
end part of the reason it pissedme off so hard was one it
speaks to this like classismthat has been built in I don't
know if it's everywhere, but atleast in the US between
blue-collar work is kind ofcrappy work to do and
white-collar work is this sortof awesome stuff.

(59:06):
And then programming,especially, got really
hoity-toity for a very long timeof people loving the fact they
could do their big-o notationsand it's like you know what.
Everyone needs to haveelectricity coming up to their
home.
Everyone needs to be able toflush their toilet.
These are essential things thatare here.
Like I want to be able to frameout my basement.

(59:26):
It's essential to have theright skill set for that, and we
demonized the trades, at leastin the US, for decades.

Speaker 2 (59:36):
The irony is, programming has become one of
those trades.

Speaker 1 (59:39):
Yeah, I think the other side of it is that it is
not so much that programming hasfallen in terms of like people
saying, oh, the compensationisn't as good.
There has been a severe lack ofpeople in the trades for
decades.
This is a supply and demandproblem.
Demand has stayed the same orgone up.

(01:00:00):
Supply of good electricians,contractors, plumbers, name it
has gone down.
So this is just supply anddemand.
Salaries are going to go up forfolks in the trades.

Speaker 2 (01:00:12):
Like I said, programmers it's becoming one of
them because the demand isthere but the market is fully
saturated with programmers nowof all sorts.
There's a point where we havebutton engineers, so it's just a
big equalization.
But it's interesting how, justwhile I said that the social
side just plays better in theblue collar side, I'd like to

(01:00:34):
see programming just become anormal job.
It's not a hoity-toity tech job, it's just programmer whatever
Shit needs to get programmed,Just like toilets need to flush.

Speaker 1 (01:00:43):
I think you put it best in our text thread, which
is that all of these are jobswhere it's like I need to
connect point A to point B, andwhether that's just electrical
line, whether it's a plumbingpipe, or whether it's
effectively like I need to gofrom pin G10 to pin G6.
Like I need to do something inbetween there.

(01:01:05):
They're all about justconnecting shit together.

Speaker 2 (01:01:09):
Yep and programming is the same.
This function connects to thatfunction something up in the
middle and it is basically assimple as that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:17):
Yeah, maybe folks basically in the tech industry
should get off their high horsesa bit and just kind of realize
like, look, there's no job youcan do, that is, whether it's
front end, back end or whateverthat's you're above.
Just go figure out the problemsyou want to solve, figure out
that basement you want to frame,figure out the skills you need

(01:01:39):
to go do it and make it happen.