WEBVTT 00:00:12.400 --> 00:00:16.320 Welcome to the Bike Shed Podcast, the show where we talk all things software engineering, 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:21.580 tier-ranked React frameworks built on top of the React framework, and argue over whether 00:00:21.760 --> 00:00:28.220 Dunkin' Donuts coffee legally qualifies as coffee. I'm your co-host, a titan of tautologies, 00:00:28.840 --> 00:00:31.080 champion of saying the same thing twice but differently, 00:00:31.700 --> 00:00:34.240 and a man who has already changed his NeoVim theme 00:00:34.660 --> 00:00:37.160 three times during this sentence, Scott Kaye 00:00:38.080 --> 00:00:39.720 Alongside me are my co-hosts. 00:00:40.340 --> 00:00:41.660 He built the shopping platform 00:00:41.720 --> 00:00:43.660 your mother spends all her free time browsing. 00:00:44.380 --> 00:00:46.200 His latest GitHub repo is a rewrite 00:00:46.220 --> 00:00:47.980 of the rewrite of his last rewrite. 00:00:48.660 --> 00:00:50.260 And if you have a problem, don't worry. 00:00:50.540 --> 00:00:52.480 He's already published an NPM package 00:00:52.580 --> 00:00:55.340 you'll discover six months from now, Matt Hamlin. 00:00:56.140 --> 00:00:57.000 And my other co-host. 00:00:57.540 --> 00:01:09.260 With takes so hot, he single-handedly caused the last cloud flare outage, took half the internet down, forced NASA to turn it off and on again, and still blamed Vercel while sipping his coffee like nothing happened. 00:01:10.000 --> 00:01:12.440 Dillon, spicy, take, curry. 00:01:13.360 --> 00:01:16.860 Matt, Dillon, what are we getting ourselves into today? 00:01:19.940 --> 00:01:22.340 I think we need to cover how I took down the internet. 00:01:23.800 --> 00:01:24.540 Half the internet. 00:01:25.420 --> 00:01:26.280 Only half. 00:01:27.159 --> 00:01:28.120 Those are rookie numbers. 00:01:28.300 --> 00:01:28.940 You got to get those up. 00:01:29.300 --> 00:01:30.620 I'm planning to take down the whole internet. 00:01:31.900 --> 00:01:33.720 Well, first of all, Happy New Year, guys. 00:01:34.420 --> 00:01:38.680 I mean, it's been a while since we've recorded one of these. 00:01:40.540 --> 00:01:41.300 Happy New Year, Matt. 00:01:43.360 --> 00:01:44.660 Are you excited for 2026? 00:01:46.120 --> 00:01:46.280 Yeah. 00:01:47.660 --> 00:01:49.300 I'm getting married this year, so that's exciting. 00:01:50.880 --> 00:01:51.600 Wow, congratulations. 00:01:53.620 --> 00:01:54.260 Hasn't happened yet. 00:01:55.580 --> 00:02:01.300 Well, I guess with the new year comes everyone's favorite thing at work, review season. 00:02:01.870 --> 00:02:05.180 I don't know about you guys, but I'm just absolutely hyped. 00:02:05.500 --> 00:02:09.740 I'm literally at this moment while I'm recording the sentence jumping up with joy that it's review season. 00:02:12.280 --> 00:02:12.800 Careful, Matt. 00:02:13.000 --> 00:02:14.240 You're going to break something in your house. 00:02:16.000 --> 00:02:16.680 I love it. 00:02:17.540 --> 00:02:18.040 I love it. 00:02:18.070 --> 00:02:18.720 I love reviews. 00:02:18.830 --> 00:02:24.520 I love sitting there and not writing code to think about what I'm going to say all week when I was told. 00:02:24.820 --> 00:02:25.660 You got 30 minutes. 00:02:25.810 --> 00:02:27.300 Just spend 30 minutes doing it. 00:02:27.420 --> 00:02:30.180 Try 30 weeks of time to cover. 00:02:31.340 --> 00:02:32.820 Yeah, it's a... 00:02:33.319 --> 00:02:34.960 Every time review season comes around, 00:02:35.130 --> 00:02:37.320 I sit there staring at my computer asking myself, 00:02:37.740 --> 00:02:39.900 what the f*** did I work on over the last year? 00:02:40.520 --> 00:02:44.880 And then it takes me like 99% of the available time 00:02:45.030 --> 00:02:47.020 to write that review, to remember that, 00:02:47.150 --> 00:02:49.960 and then the remaining 1% or less than 1% 00:02:50.040 --> 00:02:51.140 to like actually try to write it. 00:02:52.180 --> 00:02:53.420 Not this year for me, Matt. 00:02:54.640 --> 00:03:02.340 i asked claude to write to write up everything i did and compare it to the competencies just to get 00:03:02.520 --> 00:03:06.720 started because this year i actually i started a list of like all the things i was doing but i 00:03:07.120 --> 00:03:11.100 i i kept like three of them and they were really messy and i and i kind of fell off 00:03:11.720 --> 00:03:16.839 so i have a bunch of things i did do there and then i had claude write it up and i was like wow 00:03:16.860 --> 00:03:24.040 this is this is excellent also some folks at work like created with an mcp server like it just does 00:03:24.130 --> 00:03:30.000 the review for you you just i think it took like 15 minutes of like prompting it and and getting 00:03:30.200 --> 00:03:34.880 through it and eventually i just like wrote a review although i don't like feel good enough to 00:03:35.000 --> 00:03:39.640 just use it as is so i've been like going through and editing it it's the same way i feel about code 00:03:40.140 --> 00:03:46.820 i just always kind of put my mArc on it at the end of the day and don't just take it verbatim 00:03:47.360 --> 00:03:53.640 Well, the place I work has basically told us just use AI to write your reviews. 00:03:55.000 --> 00:03:55.580 It's pretty funny. 00:03:55.930 --> 00:03:57.360 And I did do that last year. 00:03:58.070 --> 00:04:08.780 So I made a joke before we started recording that I'll just wait like the day after reviews are due and turn them in and just apologize to my manager and it'll be fine. 00:04:09.260 --> 00:04:10.320 I actually did that last year. 00:04:11.060 --> 00:04:13.200 And I used AI to write my reviews in like 30 minutes. 00:04:14.260 --> 00:04:17.620 And I just like quickly proofread and submitted and everything was fine. 00:04:18.640 --> 00:04:19.540 Actually, that's a good point. 00:04:19.720 --> 00:04:24.700 I think the, uh, I think, um, at Wayfair, like the last review cycle, that's what I did. 00:04:24.920 --> 00:04:26.120 Like you and I were doing that Dillon. 00:04:26.180 --> 00:04:28.180 And I think that might be why I got laid off. 00:04:32.140 --> 00:04:39.260 Was there even, was there even like LLMs as a part of our like workflow at that point in time? 00:04:39.500 --> 00:04:45.860 No, you had to yeet your context into ChatGPT as a conversation more than anything. 00:04:46.220 --> 00:04:48.780 I remember, yeah, 2023 review season. 00:04:51.000 --> 00:04:52.960 Because it came out, if I remember correctly, 00:04:53.340 --> 00:04:56.260 because ChatGBT first came out in public in the end of 2022, 00:04:56.540 --> 00:04:57.440 like November or something. 00:04:58.140 --> 00:05:00.560 And so I remember a few of us joking around, 00:05:00.620 --> 00:05:01.740 jumping into it and saying, 00:05:01.880 --> 00:05:03.980 oh, let's see if we can write a review. 00:05:05.140 --> 00:05:08.720 But I think the problem that I was running into also, 00:05:09.160 --> 00:05:14.780 like obviously then and of course now is like yes i can ask something to write write it for me but 00:05:14.840 --> 00:05:20.380 like it doesn't have the context of all the work that i did um so i tried or at least this year 00:05:21.240 --> 00:05:26.260 like i've kept decent notes throughout the year and so i just like said okay scan this directory 00:05:26.480 --> 00:05:31.080 of all these notes like look for things within the last year categorize things that are tagged as work 00:05:31.860 --> 00:05:35.119 and create a summary of that for me so i'm going to try to use that to help me 00:05:35.440 --> 00:05:41.120 write my review but but we also do had a um there's a feature at work that does like a 00:05:41.620 --> 00:05:46.960 generated annual uh summary of all your things and it's like pretty intense in terms of like 00:05:47.440 --> 00:05:52.640 a lot of detail a lot of it's really wordy um i don't know if you guys run into this or if you've 00:05:52.640 --> 00:05:57.220 even noticed it yet but like so we use workday to submit and workday for us has like a limit of 00:05:57.920 --> 00:06:02.879 4 000 characters or something and so a lot of people on slack were talking and saying like 00:06:02.900 --> 00:06:08.200 I can't fit my self-review and it's like well one why are you writing a 4,000 plus character 00:06:09.030 --> 00:06:13.540 self-review that feels a little intensive and other people were joking like oh just like upload 00:06:13.570 --> 00:06:19.060 it to a paste which is like a github gist but an internal version of it and uh and just share the 00:06:19.180 --> 00:06:19.180 link in your in your in workday 00:06:19.181 --> 00:06:19.181 first I'm checking to see if we have that 4,000 character thing 00:06:25.300 --> 00:06:31.419 I'm pretty sure like your self-review has to be read by your manager and they have to be able to 00:06:31.440 --> 00:06:39.220 like spit back all these things you did so I mean I I'm guilty of building really big um reviews in 00:06:39.220 --> 00:06:45.440 the past but actually making it like more clear and concise like bullets is probably more ideal 00:06:45.740 --> 00:06:51.860 for someone who needs to know about like 10 engineers and what they did you know so the way 00:06:51.860 --> 00:06:59.619 you can like have concepts of like what you did is like short um understandings like did x migration 00:06:59.640 --> 00:07:05.760 you know built this uh feature and collaborated blah all that's like way more beneficial at the 00:07:05.760 --> 00:07:13.300 end of the day than a 4 000 worded paragraph that they're not going to retain anything 00:07:14.700 --> 00:07:19.820 yeah to me that almost feels like it's like kind of the rule of like a resume you don't usually 00:07:20.440 --> 00:07:25.799 turn in you don't give somebody a two-page resume so like it's the same thing with your review it 00:07:25.820 --> 00:07:33.140 should be short enough that it can be like easily like red and i don't know they can move on to their 00:07:33.540 --> 00:07:33.540 other 14 engineers like scott was saying 00:07:33.541 --> 00:07:33.541 yeah just like at least like ways to summarize it whether 00:07:40.880 --> 00:07:46.340 it's like titles of the things you did so it's easy to go back um i remember like there were 00:07:46.380 --> 00:07:49.520 some years where i wrote bullets for this and then there were some years where i wrote really long 00:07:49.720 --> 00:07:55.780 paragraphs of things i did um and i remember towards the end we had the competencies at 00:07:55.800 --> 00:08:01.880 fair and um that kind of made it easier to to bullet we do something similar here um but i was 00:08:02.180 --> 00:08:07.940 i we break down the review a little differently like maybe this is just work day but 00:08:09.600 --> 00:08:14.400 we have like different buckets that we need to explain like what are three it's like what are 00:08:14.450 --> 00:08:19.060 three or four things you did that are correct or like really your best accomplishments so you're 00:08:19.080 --> 00:08:24.580 able to like bucket it a little bit easier um and then i wrote up like all the things i did 00:08:25.300 --> 00:08:25.300 to meet like the expectations at levels and then the next level 00:08:25.300 --> 00:08:32.659 do we want to talk about a little 00:08:32.659 --> 00:08:37.740 bit about like how we structure reviews i i can like talk to it just because i think it's and when 00:08:37.860 --> 00:08:42.659 scott was mentioning it it's interesting like through my career i've shifted the way i structure 00:08:42.680 --> 00:08:50.680 them. I started very just like bullet points, not a lot of context, just trying to like get as many 00:08:51.720 --> 00:08:57.860 wins into my review as possible. And then in the last, I would say five years, it's gone into like, 00:08:58.420 --> 00:09:02.380 here's the three most impactful things I've done. And let me like tell you a story about 00:09:02.680 --> 00:09:07.199 why they're impactful. And that's kind of where I've like moved. And then I'll sometimes have 00:09:07.220 --> 00:09:14.360 like a miscellaneous bucket of like also did some other things but um less important or like 00:09:15.020 --> 00:09:21.060 not not so much less important but just don't show the same amount of value 00:09:22.720 --> 00:09:22.720 as those other things did 00:09:22.721 --> 00:09:22.721 i definitely think that's like a really great way to frame writing 00:09:28.080 --> 00:09:34.239 reviews is like write a story about your wins that that leans into or like answers the question 00:09:34.240 --> 00:09:39.460 for the expectations that you're looking at whether it's expectations for your current role or for 00:09:39.460 --> 00:09:45.020 your next role or like if you're looking for a promotion um yeah because that's like that's 00:09:45.200 --> 00:09:45.200 exactly what i assume someone is looking for and when they read your review 00:09:45.201 --> 00:09:45.201 yeah i've also tried to 00:09:52.500 --> 00:09:58.879 like take the principles of the role the current in the in the like upcoming and then just like 00:09:59.340 --> 00:10:05.320 speed that to ai and be like can you try to like build my story around hitting these different 00:10:06.340 --> 00:10:10.880 like threshold like things that are they're meant to be hit for that role or that like level 00:10:12.440 --> 00:10:12.440 so and then i have to group read and clean it up but yeah 00:10:12.441 --> 00:10:12.441 the other thing that they've really been 00:10:19.460 --> 00:10:19.460 accentuating over the past couple weeks months is like 00:10:19.461 --> 00:10:19.461 hi it's ai you're gonna say ai oh okay no 00:10:26.400 --> 00:10:35.580 no for for reviews it's like more useful to collect the links to the things that you did 00:10:36.120 --> 00:10:42.340 than it is to write a ton of words so it's like if you can share a link to a slack post or like a 00:10:42.520 --> 00:10:48.980 loom or uh you know something that like some artifact that you produced um that helps like 00:10:49.960 --> 00:10:54.759 you know provide data or provide you know backing for that story that you're you're basically framing 00:10:54.780 --> 00:11:00.760 for your review that's like 10 times more valuable than just writing a paragraph about it um because 00:11:00.880 --> 00:11:06.100 it's like more um i don't maybe tangible or easy for them to like understand and see not necessarily 00:11:06.200 --> 00:11:09.840 like i don't necessarily think they like you know look at a review and say okay there's no links 00:11:09.960 --> 00:11:16.220 here like that's no no value but it's like adding links immediately add like provides more credibility 00:11:16.380 --> 00:11:16.380 to the story you're framing 00:11:16.381 --> 00:11:16.381 clarity maybe like the can you give some examples do they want to see 00:11:22.140 --> 00:11:22.140 literal like the code that you wrote or do they want to see like blog post documentation 00:11:22.141 --> 00:11:22.141 all of 00:11:28.280 --> 00:11:32.780 the above like it could be yeah it could be like oh i you know did this gnarly refactor of this 00:11:32.940 --> 00:11:39.080 service and like link to the pr or like i ran this mission this like uh you know um you know 00:11:39.560 --> 00:11:44.200 company-wide migration and like you link off to the migration that was run and like all the prs 00:11:44.300 --> 00:11:48.359 that opened i mean not all the prs but like you know a way to see all the prs that were open for 00:11:48.380 --> 00:11:54.400 or whatnot or like i opened these 10 issues that we used for tracking this work over the past year 00:11:54.580 --> 00:11:58.940 and and like you know they're all finished or whatever so like linking off to all those 00:11:59.680 --> 00:12:04.000 artifacts i think is is what they're looking for it could be anything at least that's the framing 00:12:04.220 --> 00:12:04.220 i've heard 00:12:04.221 --> 00:12:04.221 that's an option for us and i mean i i'm have a lot of my self-review done but i was 00:12:10.720 --> 00:12:18.340 considering because i've been writing a lot of docs um i have i have to call out like you know i went 00:12:18.360 --> 00:12:22.440 I was able to go to like my customers and be like, here's a bunch of prototypes. 00:12:23.060 --> 00:12:25.360 Which one do you want us to build and why? 00:12:25.940 --> 00:12:27.240 Here's the effort each will take. 00:12:27.700 --> 00:12:28.660 So I have all these docs. 00:12:28.890 --> 00:12:30.340 I just, I know I'm not getting promoted. 00:12:31.580 --> 00:12:34.320 So I just don't know how much I want to be like linking to all these things. 00:12:34.600 --> 00:12:36.360 But I mean, if it helps, it helps. 00:12:36.890 --> 00:12:43.460 To me, it sounds like I'm back in college or high school and I'm like using MLA format 00:12:43.800 --> 00:12:44.680 and citing my sources. 00:12:45.640 --> 00:12:46.500 And that's kind of what. 00:12:47.000 --> 00:12:47.760 What it feels like. 00:12:49.299 --> 00:12:49.299 yeah good thing we learned that in school now we can use it at work yay 00:12:49.300 --> 00:12:49.300 yeah it's like i went to 00:12:54.940 --> 00:13:00.640 school to for art so i like i didn't have to do this kind of thing anymore and here i am 00:13:01.620 --> 00:13:07.440 doing all the things i didn't want to do except for coding coding's fantastic i i actually i was 00:13:07.580 --> 00:13:12.980 speaking to one of my uh teammates and we were i was talking about how like the last couple days i 00:13:13.020 --> 00:13:18.080 was like it's not really due for like another week or so but my manager wants to get ahead and write 00:13:18.100 --> 00:13:22.760 want to have mine done today. But we were kind of just talking to each other about, 00:13:23.380 --> 00:13:28.660 I can't allow myself to code until I'm done because I could just stop and write code all day. 00:13:29.319 --> 00:13:35.960 I get so excited about doing the actual work that our job has, but I do not want to write 00:13:36.700 --> 00:13:40.420 an essay. And it takes a lot longer because I don't do it all the time. 00:13:42.120 --> 00:13:45.500 So, I mean, if I was writing about code, it might be a little bit more exciting. I guess 00:13:45.520 --> 00:13:50.440 technically I am but when you're writing about what you did in the past 12 months uh yeah 12 00:13:50.640 --> 00:13:58.240 months I guess in my case 10 months or whatever um it's like it's a lot I I still think it's great 00:13:58.340 --> 00:14:03.900 to should have been better this year about keeping notes I have been in the recent past I still had 00:14:03.980 --> 00:14:10.040 some but it was really great that Claude could kind of spin up all the PR related stuff and I 00:14:09.960 --> 00:14:09.960 did take notes about non-code related things so 00:14:09.961 --> 00:14:09.961 part of me feels like manager your manager and 00:14:17.140 --> 00:14:23.300 your skip maybe not your skip but like other managers kind of already have an idea for like 00:14:23.620 --> 00:14:27.860 where they would put you without your review completely like based on what they've seen you do 00:14:28.420 --> 00:14:28.420 and maybe that's just how I feel 00:14:28.421 --> 00:14:28.421 I remember when we were all working together when I started like 00:14:33.960 --> 00:14:39.200 hearing that I thought that was like really screwed up and a symptom of where we worked and then I'm 00:14:39.220 --> 00:14:46.500 realizing that's like everywhere or in a lot of places at least uh and that's like pretty terrible 00:14:47.800 --> 00:14:55.820 um yeah in my opinion like it's kind of terrible like but i will say we're given a lot longer of 00:14:56.020 --> 00:15:01.480 time to write ours uh a longer window i remember that the windows used to get smaller when we 00:15:01.540 --> 00:15:07.200 worked together and that was not what people were asking for um so at least feels like the 00:15:07.220 --> 00:15:11.760 reflections matter at some level based on the time we're given to write them. 00:15:12.580 --> 00:15:14.860 Yeah. I'm not saying it doesn't matter at all. I think there's like a, 00:15:15.400 --> 00:15:18.300 there's a point in time when it does matter more. And it's probably when you're like, 00:15:18.620 --> 00:15:24.540 sure. You're sort of up for promotion and then they start to compare you to someone else who 00:15:24.680 --> 00:15:29.280 maybe is also up for promotion. And they're like, they maybe then they pull up the res or the 00:15:29.460 --> 00:15:36.240 reviews. I almost said resumes. That's basically your work resume. And they, they like sort of 00:15:36.260 --> 00:15:40.740 compare and see who provided more value at that point in time. I've never been in a calibration, 00:15:40.960 --> 00:15:44.120 so I don't know if it actually works that way, but I would assume it's something like that. 00:15:45.200 --> 00:15:45.200 Anyone here done calibrations before? 00:15:45.201 --> 00:15:45.201 I've like strayed away from management as much as I can 00:15:51.640 --> 00:15:51.640 my whole career. 00:15:51.641 --> 00:15:51.641 Then you'll be doing AI like agent calibration. It's like, oh, agent Z over 00:15:58.380 --> 00:15:58.380 there just didn't turn out enough work. We got to cut them. 00:15:58.381 --> 00:15:58.381 Claude and I have like a nepotism 00:16:04.140 --> 00:16:09.260 like relationships so i i think i think claude's always going to be getting promoted 00:16:11.780 --> 00:16:16.640 i feel like this past year plus has been a little bit funky for me it's just like 00:16:17.000 --> 00:16:25.040 so i joined last year well well 2024 in december i didn't do a regular performance review at all 00:16:25.540 --> 00:16:29.320 last year so i've been at the company like over a year and haven't really done a performance review 00:16:29.380 --> 00:16:37.320 or like an official one um but then also like um my manager left right before performance reviews 00:16:37.500 --> 00:16:42.600 so it's like the new you know person that manages performance reviews for me is like 00:16:43.360 --> 00:16:46.860 you know was a teammate so knows a little bit of the work that i was doing but was only a teammate 00:16:47.020 --> 00:16:53.100 for half the year or so um so i don't know i'm in a just this like this kind of weird state where 00:16:53.220 --> 00:16:58.660 it's like my skip is new also it's like basically no one knows what work i did over the last year 00:16:58.680 --> 00:17:07.459 um not great uh in terms of like i hope that they understand that i was doing good work i'm not 00:17:07.600 --> 00:17:13.240 necessarily ecstatic about trying to sell myself a lot in the review as well just in the sense of 00:17:13.300 --> 00:17:17.680 like mainly thinking through the lens of like looking at promotion like i'm not too like from 00:17:17.740 --> 00:17:23.940 what i've heard and seen it's like that's a multi-year process from where i am now basically 00:17:24.720 --> 00:17:25.959 which is a little demotivating. 00:17:26.329 --> 00:17:29.540 I learned something recently when I was curious about getting promoted. 00:17:29.690 --> 00:17:34.620 And it was something like I started working at my company a year and a half ago. 00:17:34.950 --> 00:17:37.800 And I was like, oh, yeah, I think I'm ready to be promoted. 00:17:37.910 --> 00:17:39.360 And then I looked at their docs and it was like, 00:17:39.650 --> 00:17:42.780 you got to be at the company for two years before you can get promoted. 00:17:43.200 --> 00:17:43.960 I was like, what? 00:17:44.640 --> 00:17:45.120 It's a thing? 00:17:47.080 --> 00:17:47.960 That's crazy to me. 00:17:48.200 --> 00:17:48.600 It's crazy. 00:17:49.150 --> 00:17:49.260 Yeah. 00:17:49.400 --> 00:18:19.340 I feel like that's a like easy way out of saying like okay there's like less people we have to worry about trying to get promoted like it's it's a real I guess interesting problem I don't know I've I don't want to say like I soured on getting promoted but like I'm happy with like the responsibility I have it's funny like so I probably have mentioned this I'm technically like a lower position here but I do all the same things if not just as much or more than any job I've had. 00:18:19.400 --> 00:18:26.900 So like, I probably said this before, but like titles are different at different places and they mean different things. 00:18:27.300 --> 00:18:27.600 Definitely. 00:18:27.790 --> 00:18:35.940 Like I've noticed like a senior where we work together, I felt like was a much lower expectation than it is here. 00:18:36.770 --> 00:18:44.280 And what I've heard about staff here is you start to just like take projects from higher ups. 00:18:44.350 --> 00:18:45.780 You're like, hey, I want you to build this thing. 00:18:45.790 --> 00:18:46.640 How would you build it? 00:18:46.820 --> 00:18:51.740 whereas as a senior here i have the autonomy to just build what i think the problem is which 00:18:52.300 --> 00:18:58.980 feels a little backwards to me um but like i don't know i'm happy i mean i've always in my career was 00:18:59.080 --> 00:19:05.060 like wanted to grow to the top i think or i don't know grow to like being what might be considered 00:19:05.120 --> 00:19:10.360 a principal or an architect and maybe i still do but like i also have the best work-life balance now 00:19:11.060 --> 00:19:17.240 so like maybe i'm getting older and my priorities are shifting is where i'm getting at but i really 00:19:17.360 --> 00:19:22.920 enjoy being in the thick of owning a lot of the architectural work i feel like i'm an architect 00:19:23.460 --> 00:19:31.080 like i do own architectural level decisions the titles to me don't really make the most sense and 00:19:31.800 --> 00:19:38.280 honestly if you work with me i'm super happy with not always having the last say about what we build 00:19:38.280 --> 00:19:43.600 but rather i'd rather everyone who's a front end or doing the same job as me we all agree on how 00:19:43.740 --> 00:19:50.080 we're going to tackle a problem like that to me is fun so it's like i'll put up opinions and ideas 00:19:50.360 --> 00:19:55.240 but if someone has a real strong opinion on the way we we do something um i mean maybe now i'm 00:19:55.240 --> 00:20:02.280 just talking a little bit about my experience here where it's just like there isn't any really strong 00:20:02.460 --> 00:20:07.240 opinions in the room so it's very collaborative it's been a good change of pace for me 00:20:10.340 --> 00:20:16.320 i feel like we could have a whole episode about that we could like having people on a team that 00:20:16.320 --> 00:20:22.120 are like super opinionated and driving always like trying to drive the technical direction 00:20:22.690 --> 00:20:29.360 versus having a team of people that are all kind of on the sidelines and then it feels like there's 00:20:29.500 --> 00:20:29.500 not a lot of like work being done to the platform or something i don't know yeah 00:20:29.501 --> 00:20:29.501 i think like to your 00:20:37.240 --> 00:20:39.040 I think there's less here. 00:20:39.070 --> 00:20:41.780 I think there's just, everyone might have an opinion, 00:20:42.090 --> 00:20:45.340 but there's like less disagreement on the, like we all agree. 00:20:46.000 --> 00:20:48.160 Like basically what we're working on a project right now, 00:20:48.480 --> 00:20:52.680 where there's like a lot of different third-party packages that don't need to 00:20:52.740 --> 00:20:54.800 be there. Like Redux, I may have brought this up. 00:20:55.440 --> 00:20:57.360 And I just kind of put out there like, Hey, 00:20:57.410 --> 00:21:00.000 why don't we just like remove all the things we don't think we need here and 00:21:00.100 --> 00:21:02.860 see how big this app really is. And everyone's just like, yeah, 00:21:02.930 --> 00:21:05.200 that makes the most sense. Like we're all just like in agreement. 00:21:05.740 --> 00:21:10.200 And the one big thing we have to do is like, do we decide like, do we, do we build this 00:21:10.380 --> 00:21:12.760 app from scratch again, the front end app? 00:21:13.020 --> 00:21:18.420 And I guess like my argument was just, let's just like deduce and remove all the things 00:21:19.740 --> 00:21:23.500 we think don't need to be here and then see how big this app really is. 00:21:23.500 --> 00:21:27.880 And if we need to rebuild it and then like write a running list, because one person feels 00:21:28.020 --> 00:21:29.000 strongly about rebuilding it. 00:21:29.320 --> 00:21:30.920 And to be honest, I don't really care. 00:21:31.040 --> 00:21:32.780 I'm super happy to rebuild it. 00:21:33.380 --> 00:21:41.320 So both of these approaches, I guess we all agree that we may not yet agree on what is the approach when we go to rebuild it or if we do rebuild it. 00:21:41.440 --> 00:21:44.020 But we're all in the same camp is my point. 00:21:44.260 --> 00:21:45.880 So for the most part, align. 00:21:46.380 --> 00:21:49.860 There isn't just one strong opinion that it has to be done in X or Y way. 00:21:50.380 --> 00:21:53.440 But there's also not people on the team who don't have an opinion. 00:21:53.820 --> 00:21:58.300 I think it's been very good where everyone feels comfortable speaking up. 00:21:58.480 --> 00:22:00.980 And it's not just two people solve the problem. 00:22:01.400 --> 00:22:07.060 Sometimes people have like an opinion about something and they'll share it with the team and then they're left with crickets. 00:22:08.779 --> 00:22:25.400 And it's not because it kind of is because people don't care, but it's also because everyone else is so busy worrying about their own shit that when you ask them for an opinion on something, they're like, I don't have time to think about this like critically enough to give you like a good. 00:22:26.260 --> 00:22:35.100 Like you thought so critically about it and you spent the time so I can like quickly glance at this and try to look for some some opinions I can give. 00:22:35.180 --> 00:22:42.000 But like I feel like a lot of times they just don't give it enough time to give you a good like some good feedback. 00:22:43.360 --> 00:22:46.340 And that's maybe that's a culture problem within an org. 00:22:47.240 --> 00:22:49.060 I'm not saying your company has culture problems. 00:22:49.060 --> 00:22:50.440 We definitely get a little bit of that as well. 00:22:50.960 --> 00:22:51.200 Probably does. 00:22:53.060 --> 00:22:56.580 But yeah, it's very much like, guys, look at this. 00:22:56.600 --> 00:22:58.880 And everyone's like, looks good. 00:22:59.320 --> 00:23:01.800 They give the computer kid thumbs up emoji. 00:23:03.180 --> 00:23:07.500 And they just move on with their lives, which is kind of sad. 00:23:07.740 --> 00:23:08.880 Because you put that work in. 00:23:09.400 --> 00:23:13.820 And you want your peers to take some time and look at what you did. 00:23:15.580 --> 00:23:17.040 And poke holes in it. 00:23:17.120 --> 00:23:18.220 It actually helps you learn. 00:23:18.420 --> 00:23:20.840 And when people don't do that, you don't get that learning moment. 00:23:21.220 --> 00:23:25.180 You just kind of, you just move forward with your mistakes and you don't know what they are. 00:23:25.260 --> 00:23:28.140 And then they come back to bite you in the future and you have tech debt. 00:23:29.039 --> 00:23:44.100 Having a really solid team in terms of like people that are, that will provide good critical feedback, but then also not necessarily squash ideas that are too early is incredibly lucky to find and stumble upon, I think. 00:23:44.660 --> 00:23:50.360 And like, I think it is like a, you know, it's a blend of culture and of like the teammates that are making up the team. 00:23:50.980 --> 00:23:55.320 I don't know, I'm getting super meta, but it's like, as we're talking about this, it's like, 00:23:57.220 --> 00:24:04.400 I mean, I feel like my current team is not in that state because it's very difficult for us to 00:24:05.780 --> 00:24:13.000 talk about ideas and get alignment and ship it. And it's also, I don't know, it's just like, 00:24:13.410 --> 00:24:19.340 I feel like we're not in a healthy state as a team. And so it's, yeah, it's rough. 00:24:22.260 --> 00:24:26.580 yeah i want to piggyback on what you're both saying just a little bit so so i do agree there's 00:24:26.660 --> 00:24:33.360 a little bit of like some people don't speak up during things but we have the concept um of dris 00:24:33.420 --> 00:24:37.960 directly responsible individuals basically and like our manager would be like who wants to be 00:24:37.980 --> 00:24:44.820 the dri for this thing and basically it's like this like kind of semi-formal informal or semi-formal 00:24:45.720 --> 00:24:51.060 form of trust where like if you're starting to write solutions for it for the most part 00:24:52.240 --> 00:24:56.840 everyone on my team is like the same level so and everyone's like really good so they all just we 00:24:56.840 --> 00:25:03.020 just kind of like trust that the person can own it and after like they present something unless 00:25:03.220 --> 00:25:09.960 there's like any glaring like people usually call out good points um but there is that problem that 00:25:09.980 --> 00:25:12.500 It's like everyone has their own stuff to own. 00:25:12.640 --> 00:25:18.060 And it's like kind of hard to like, I don't want to babysit is like strong, but like babysit 00:25:18.140 --> 00:25:19.140 somebody else's like solution. 00:25:19.840 --> 00:25:22.820 But more so there's like, just, I just want to emphasize the trust part. 00:25:22.920 --> 00:25:26.120 There's like a lot of trust that it's like, you thought through this problem, you thought 00:25:26.220 --> 00:25:26.820 through that problem. 00:25:26.940 --> 00:25:30.740 Let me just bring up some things that could be potential problems, contextual problems 00:25:30.840 --> 00:25:31.660 you might not know about. 00:25:32.140 --> 00:25:34.620 And then we just like feel good and we let that person run with it. 00:25:34.680 --> 00:25:35.880 And it's, there's, there's that trust. 00:25:37.200 --> 00:25:38.820 I think we're really good about that. 00:25:38.900 --> 00:25:42.240 But at the same time, there is sometimes where like some of us are just kind of quiet. 00:25:44.020 --> 00:25:45.740 And I think it's just because we're in our own world. 00:25:45.800 --> 00:25:48.240 We haven't thought about the problem as thoroughly as the other person. 00:25:49.200 --> 00:25:54.140 But like, I don't want to bash like some other situations. 00:25:54.460 --> 00:25:56.420 There's definitely been situations where that is good. 00:25:56.440 --> 00:26:03.320 But I also feel like in the past when we've worked on some things, it's just been like there's no leeway to make suggestions. 00:26:04.360 --> 00:26:12.220 But here I feel like if you did have a strong opinion and I was like, oh, X, Y, Z, like people would listen to it or hear it out. 00:26:12.320 --> 00:26:24.500 Like I've seen I've been in some difficult arguments with some principal engineers here who have been like really challenging to a point where I wouldn't probably push that hard personally. 00:26:24.860 --> 00:26:30.480 But, yeah, I haven't I haven't also seen any glaring like reports on how we solve a problem. 00:26:31.100 --> 00:26:32.780 So it's a little bit different for me. 00:26:32.920 --> 00:26:36.980 But basically, I just feel like there's an overall large sense of trust 00:26:37.440 --> 00:26:38.540 that someone can solve a problem. 00:26:39.180 --> 00:26:43.660 I brought up an example of where I was able to bring to my customer a few solutions, 00:26:44.660 --> 00:26:47.540 and I was trying not to push them towards the really hard solution that took six months, 00:26:47.600 --> 00:26:51.500 but they picked it because obviously it was what the answer needed. 00:26:52.780 --> 00:26:56.080 But they trusted that it would take five or six months to build, 00:26:56.080 --> 00:26:57.100 and they were fine with it. 00:26:57.220 --> 00:26:59.960 So there is just a lot of cross-team corroboration. 00:27:00.780 --> 00:27:15.340 One thing I was thinking about yesterday, actually, and that I was hoping we'd end up talking about eventually is like, how do you guys handle sort of fighting to take on initiatives in your team? 00:27:15.900 --> 00:27:19.280 like if you have a team like you know let's say you think of a good project that your team 00:27:19.740 --> 00:27:22.880 that or that you think your team should tackle like how do you guys handle 00:27:24.320 --> 00:27:29.660 arguing that either like that you yourself should tackle it or like that the team should tackle as a 00:27:29.720 --> 00:27:34.980 whole and you want to help like define it i don't know like i don't know i feel like i'm struggling 00:27:35.100 --> 00:27:39.680 with that at the moment on our team and so it's i'm curious to hear from you guys like how you guys 00:27:39.860 --> 00:27:42.980 approach it and maybe it's not necessarily a struggle for you guys maybe like it might be 00:27:42.980 --> 00:27:46.560 easier for you to say i have this idea and then the team just says yeah go for it but 00:27:47.240 --> 00:27:48.860 yeah curious to hear your guys's take 00:27:51.100 --> 00:28:00.640 i have thoughts um i think this is like a org size problem potentially at least comparing my 00:28:00.780 --> 00:28:06.300 last job to my current job and there's i think it's where i currently work there's so few senior 00:28:07.060 --> 00:28:14.220 engineers with strong opinions like we were just talking about um that if i have an initiative i 00:28:14.420 --> 00:28:14.420 want to do no one's in my way which is kind of like a bad thing at some point right 00:28:14.421 --> 00:28:14.421 in what way 00:28:23.700 --> 00:28:27.680 it's kind of like you have a tech plan you get people and they just like they give you a thumbs 00:28:27.690 --> 00:28:34.179 up because they don't fully understand it gotcha um so you're not getting the proper like checks 00:28:34.720 --> 00:28:37.040 on your work before it gets implemented. 00:28:37.340 --> 00:28:39.500 I think as the company's growing, 00:28:39.800 --> 00:28:41.940 I'm seeing more standardization around like, 00:28:42.050 --> 00:28:43.380 okay, now you need an approval 00:28:43.470 --> 00:28:45.320 from the product security team 00:28:45.660 --> 00:28:48.700 and then the GDPR team or whatever. 00:28:50.500 --> 00:28:51.860 But still, we haven't gotten to that point 00:28:52.000 --> 00:28:55.040 where that actually always happens. 00:28:57.100 --> 00:28:59.500 So yeah, I've seen where I currently work. 00:29:00.480 --> 00:29:02.920 If I have an idea, I just fucking do it. 00:29:03.760 --> 00:29:05.320 At Wayfair, it was like, I have an idea. 00:29:06.460 --> 00:29:07.040 Nobody gives a shit. 00:29:08.880 --> 00:29:16.680 And then it fizzles out unless I bring it up every week with my manager for months, it feels like. 00:29:16.910 --> 00:29:18.440 And then maybe it happens. 00:29:20.140 --> 00:29:26.020 In terms of your Wayfair example, I feel like HubSpot at the moment, at least on my team, is the opposite. 00:29:26.290 --> 00:29:30.260 Where it's like you bring up an idea and everyone shoots it down. 00:29:31.620 --> 00:29:36.340 uh you know like says well wait like we need to do this way or or let's tackle this thing or 00:29:36.420 --> 00:29:42.600 whatever and it's like so it's just like so much friction along the way where it and then like 00:29:42.880 --> 00:29:48.520 you know i don't know i feel i feel like without getting too too into the weeds or or into too 00:29:48.620 --> 00:29:52.880 many details about the team it's like there's also like some dynamics where it's like okay you bring 00:29:52.900 --> 00:29:57.700 up an idea but then someone else actually does the work on it and which is like a little bit 00:29:57.720 --> 00:30:01.840 kind of unsatisfying for me like obviously like it makes sense like i'm not going to be able to do 00:30:01.860 --> 00:30:07.160 all the work that i want to do but um kind of you know it's like it kind of sucks to see like oh i 00:30:07.240 --> 00:30:11.620 like i've been talking about this thing for months and then this person just went ahead and did it 00:30:11.820 --> 00:30:11.820 and it's like oh 00:30:11.821 --> 00:30:11.821 dude i've gotten to this point where when that happens i'm like thank god i don't 00:30:19.840 --> 00:30:24.360 know why maybe i've like gotten to a point in my career where i'm just like when i come up with an 00:30:24.280 --> 00:30:29.980 idea and somebody else does it i'm like great i didn't have to do that um i don't know if i can 00:30:30.140 --> 00:30:37.360 still like take credit for the idea in some sense maybe i can um but yeah it's a weird place to be 00:30:37.360 --> 00:30:37.360 you know 00:30:37.361 --> 00:30:37.361 two things about that matt like first off if you're like you're coming up with ideas and 00:30:42.340 --> 00:30:46.840 other people are doing them you better write that in your performance review like that's like actually 00:30:47.060 --> 00:30:52.779 really big in my opinion like you're you actually created the inception of the concept and someone 00:30:52.800 --> 00:30:59.100 else ran with it that's showing your influence in my opinion uh but the other thing is like i feel 00:30:59.120 --> 00:31:03.480 like you should just do it then like like it sounds like you're coming up with ideas and 00:31:03.840 --> 00:31:08.020 and people are hand wavy a little bit about it and you should just be like oh i came up with this idea 00:31:08.120 --> 00:31:14.360 and i already like did it um i just not to get too into your situation but i feel like no one's 00:31:14.520 --> 00:31:20.719 telling you any direction like it's it's not cool um but i had a couple of i guess thoughts 00:31:22.940 --> 00:31:29.640 otherwise i i too like Dillon kind of felt like at at w influencing folks to make like 00:31:30.690 --> 00:31:34.460 large structural changes was just really difficult in comparison like you could 00:31:35.740 --> 00:31:41.560 i mean maybe i admittedly on my i probably could be better better of a not of a complainer but more 00:31:41.570 --> 00:31:47.360 of like a solutions person and maybe i should have just did it take my own advice that i just 00:31:47.300 --> 00:31:54.560 gave to matt here but um it was a little harder to get buy-in for things because we were we were 00:31:54.680 --> 00:32:00.380 told to do x thing and if anything didn't do what that was like re-platforming and you couldn't argue 00:32:00.540 --> 00:32:07.540 it up like it was not what we were doing um but i i don't know i i just think our ownership area 00:32:07.720 --> 00:32:13.379 maybe it's a little bit smaller um but i i can pick like whatever i want and basically speak my 00:32:13.400 --> 00:32:20.280 mind and just tell my team like i think we should do this and my manager is very like trusting he's 00:32:20.340 --> 00:32:26.640 like he wants to know what it is and how how it affects impact and value and as long as you explain 00:32:26.640 --> 00:32:32.560 it to him he's almost always on board unless he like counters with something better but like i 00:32:32.820 --> 00:32:32.820 don't know it just feels very collaborative and like there's a lot of trust 00:32:32.821 --> 00:32:32.821 jealous 00:32:32.822 --> 00:32:32.822 you made me 00:32:37.960 --> 00:32:44.360 think of like based on the maybe this is kind of how matt's thinking and maybe he can't say this 00:32:44.560 --> 00:32:50.220 out loud but like the more friction there is around your ideas the more likely um you're gonna like 00:32:51.140 --> 00:32:56.460 do one of two things potentially maybe more but one is you're just gonna do your own thing and not 00:32:56.620 --> 00:33:03.159 tell anyone like within the company and then just like try to make it work which we saw that at 00:33:03.640 --> 00:33:07.140 Wayfair with some tools and some certain people. 00:33:08.260 --> 00:33:11.160 And then the other thing is very vague. 00:33:13.150 --> 00:33:22.440 The other thing is you're probably just going to leave and try to find some place where you can have more control over the technical direction of things. 00:33:24.440 --> 00:33:29.360 I remember like bringing up to someone we used to work with that I was like super frustrated 00:33:30.440 --> 00:33:36.560 doing a project when like I wanted to work on basically Matt's heard me talk about this the 00:33:36.780 --> 00:33:42.180 way I've said it was like why am I the sucker who's doing the tickets on the board in the way 00:33:42.180 --> 00:33:48.919 we agreed to them when a really interesting problem just came up and other engineers are 00:33:48.940 --> 00:33:53.880 just like solving that problem that would be good for me to solve for my career. 00:33:54.860 --> 00:33:59.520 And then being told like, like basically advocating, there's got to be a better way to do this or make 00:33:59.620 --> 00:34:05.640 sure that like, if I have interest, I'm involved. And the answer was just like, well, sometimes 00:34:05.920 --> 00:34:10.840 things come up that are pressing and we have to be good engineers and know when to like do those 00:34:11.120 --> 00:34:16.060 things. And I was like, this is just like not acceptable because I'm telling you that I would 00:34:16.060 --> 00:34:22.700 have done that and also like we're talking we were like also saying pretty pretty um strongly 00:34:23.460 --> 00:34:28.020 that we need to stick to what's on the board to deliver on this thing so it was like very 00:34:28.740 --> 00:34:35.460 like out of both ends and and i like agree that with the premise like sometimes we need to shift 00:34:35.960 --> 00:34:41.700 but like we if someone's working on like non-career growth non-interesting problems 00:34:44.220 --> 00:34:49.540 and like we should be like communicating ways to like share that work better right that that's a 00:34:49.820 --> 00:34:49.820 that's a problem 00:34:49.821 --> 00:34:49.821 i've been in the sort of like a tech lead role in the past and i'm not currently 00:34:55.780 --> 00:35:03.080 but uh i feel like it's difficult to balance all the like um you know it's like if you're on a team 00:35:03.110 --> 00:35:09.020 of i don't know five or something each of those five individuals wants you know has some work that 00:35:09.040 --> 00:35:13.020 they they should tackle that stretches them a little bit like pushes them towards like 00:35:13.560 --> 00:35:21.340 further growth um but it's probably pretty likely that there's going to be some overlap there um 00:35:21.820 --> 00:35:27.980 yeah i think this is like maybe what the intent of like some of the more recent wayfair layoffs 00:35:28.140 --> 00:35:32.220 were was like trying to get to a state where teams aren't like that where the teams are a little bit 00:35:32.220 --> 00:35:36.580 more stretched out in terms of experience and level and so that they the things that they're 00:35:36.560 --> 00:35:40.800 trying to go for in terms of growth and and things like that aren't overlapping as much 00:35:41.720 --> 00:35:46.960 i don't think that necessarily it was like a reasonable like i mean it it's like i don't think 00:35:47.040 --> 00:35:52.860 that's a uh something that's easy to accomplish um or like that doing a layoff is the right way to 00:35:52.880 --> 00:35:58.840 do it um but i think it eventually you end up in a state where like people need to compete for some 00:35:58.940 --> 00:36:03.340 of those opportunities because the team like everything obviously everything that you do is 00:36:03.360 --> 00:36:09.260 not going to be exciting fun work right there's going to be some unfun work and sometimes that's 00:36:09.360 --> 00:36:13.780 still valuable but in terms of like career growth but other times it's like there's just going to be 00:36:13.840 --> 00:36:18.800 stuff that you know you forget about three weeks later because it's not important or whatever i 00:36:18.860 --> 00:36:24.360 don't know so it's very hard i think very hard to like try to balance making sure everyone on the 00:36:24.480 --> 00:36:28.980 team can can reach those goals but i think it's like a it is a little bit of a balancing act of 00:36:28.900 --> 00:36:34.400 like okay yes the past three months so-and-so has been doing you know all this like sort of 00:36:34.580 --> 00:36:39.880 dreary drudge work but there's this opportunity coming up that maybe someone else is trying to 00:36:39.920 --> 00:36:39.920 gear for but actually it's so-and-so's opportunity like time to seize the moment 00:36:39.921 --> 00:36:39.921 i think this is 00:36:46.180 --> 00:36:52.060 where i differ from people i feel like i've been doing this shit long enough where every time my 00:36:52.180 --> 00:36:58.340 manager asks me like what are you interested in and i'm like just do what we like what we need to 00:36:58.360 --> 00:37:05.520 do for the customer and the product like and that's enough like I'll just do that and if it's 00:37:06.000 --> 00:37:12.200 dredge work or whatever you I don't even know what that word is but um or like if it's fun work to 00:37:12.280 --> 00:37:18.220 someone else it's like oh great either way a lot of times I'll just take on the work no one wants 00:37:18.350 --> 00:37:18.350 to do for that that reason too um it's dredge work not dredge work 00:37:18.351 --> 00:37:18.351 I kind of wish we got back to like 00:37:27.740 --> 00:37:31.900 doing the right thing for the customer more. But I guess like my take on a tech lead, 00:37:32.480 --> 00:37:36.760 like my opinion has evolved a lot that I feel like all they should have to do is like, 00:37:37.860 --> 00:37:40.900 they don't need to dictate the technical solutions. They should, I mean, they should 00:37:41.020 --> 00:37:44.880 have an understanding of direction, but they should be able to delegate to like a high level 00:37:45.120 --> 00:37:51.440 team and let them try to solve the problem, be there to help them. Um, if they get stuck or have 00:37:51.480 --> 00:37:56.540 an opinion on like how you might solve it ahead of time, just in case they are stuck. So basically 00:37:56.560 --> 00:38:03.100 show the trust in the engineering folks on the team let them be the light and just you know help 00:38:03.320 --> 00:38:07.920 come up to bat for the solutions when they come up with them so i i feel like that happens a lot 00:38:08.000 --> 00:38:13.140 here we had one like full stack tech lead and on the front of me like don't really have one and if 00:38:13.820 --> 00:38:19.540 even if we did like i think we're all like capable of being it i would i i just like this by committee 00:38:19.780 --> 00:38:25.960 where everyone's kind of uh trusting each other just feels more correct and you know i don't want 00:38:25.860 --> 00:38:30.920 of like push this i feel like there's like a bunch of tech leads on matt's team i don't know who they 00:38:31.020 --> 00:38:34.760 are i haven't worked with them but i feel like there's all these tech leads on the team and 00:38:34.820 --> 00:38:39.320 they're all vying for like tech leadability and it's like leading to these outcomes where 00:38:39.840 --> 00:38:45.640 everyone's fighting for work when in reality they should just be like owning a subset and working 00:38:45.800 --> 00:38:45.800 towards the same common goal 00:38:45.801 --> 00:38:45.801 yeah our team is all uh SSWE II so senior software engineer 2 which 00:38:52.200 --> 00:38:58.880 is like a level right below staff but then there's senior software engineer one so like we're yeah 00:38:59.440 --> 00:39:06.140 you know again like it's sort of we're all in the same area in terms of trying to accomplish the same 00:39:06.860 --> 00:39:12.340 expectations of our level and so it's like we're you know at some point we're just going to end up 00:39:13.020 --> 00:39:13.020 like competing a little bit with each other 00:39:13.021 --> 00:39:13.021 haven't they ever heard of atomic teams matt 00:39:19.860 --> 00:39:27.120 maybe not i'll need to there is like there is some value in having like a team structured around 00:39:28.240 --> 00:39:35.900 levels in some capacity so you're not like overloaded with too many seniors and too many 00:39:36.060 --> 00:39:42.120 juniors and like and there's like a good size where there's not too many people and like 00:39:42.560 --> 00:39:54.980 Yeah. And that like definitely shapes your how like productive your team can be also because the more seniors you have, the more potential you're going to like slow down development, I think. 00:39:55.040 --> 00:39:59.620 so it's it's interesting my team is just like matt's we don't have senior twos we just have 00:39:59.720 --> 00:40:05.500 seniors and staffs uh we're all like very top heavy but i i don't know maybe we just like break 00:40:05.640 --> 00:40:11.740 down the work in such a way that that like everyone feels like they own something and everyone's like 00:40:11.740 --> 00:40:17.020 an integral part of the team i don't know it's interesting to me though there's like two radical 00:40:17.220 --> 00:40:23.680 different dichotomies here i i like matt's team it's like everyone has a strong opinion my team 00:40:23.700 --> 00:40:28.820 is like everyone can like do the work but the opinions aren't like overwhelmingly strong and 00:40:28.820 --> 00:40:34.260 if someone has a strong opinion like there's just like a lot of trust on it we're not doing 00:40:34.460 --> 00:40:38.700 groundbreaking work i guess we're not we're not building the framework for like 500 other engineers 00:40:39.020 --> 00:40:43.640 so maybe that maybe that has something to do with it whereas we're building it for like maybe 00:40:43.990 --> 00:40:43.990 a couple hundred 00:40:43.991 --> 00:40:43.991 this is just an aside thought but like most of the like lower level engineers i work 00:40:52.100 --> 00:40:57.740 with i think i think they're like better engineers than some of like the seniors that i know at my 00:40:57.860 --> 00:40:57.860 company hopefully they don't listen to this episode for another 00:40:57.861 --> 00:40:57.861 oh my god dude that's such a spicy take 00:41:03.240 --> 00:41:03.240 the intro is now validated 00:41:03.241 --> 00:41:03.241 uh yeah that's crazy to say that but just insulted half we just hired 00:41:10.800 --> 00:41:17.300 some people that are we we've hired like one person from just like a really good school and 00:41:18.100 --> 00:41:20.120 And I think he went through a really good CS program. 00:41:20.400 --> 00:41:22.940 And he's just really good. 00:41:24.480 --> 00:41:27.080 And I feel like he's much smarter than me in a lot of ways. 00:41:28.080 --> 00:41:29.300 And he's only SE1. 00:41:30.260 --> 00:41:32.020 And so I defer to him on a lot of things. 00:41:32.120 --> 00:41:32.800 It's just kind of crazy. 00:41:33.960 --> 00:41:37.400 But there are things that with experience I can give a lot of guidance. 00:41:37.720 --> 00:41:39.080 But it's interesting. 00:41:39.720 --> 00:41:43.340 I feel like seniors fall into this pit of... 00:41:43.980 --> 00:41:49.060 they see they think what senior engineering is is like stepping away from the code and like 00:41:50.080 --> 00:41:55.400 whiteboarding heavy architect like over discussing things writing rfcs adrs or whatever instead of 00:41:55.940 --> 00:42:02.000 like just solving problems um and so i feel like a lot of seniors fall into that trap a little bit 00:42:02.080 --> 00:42:07.100 and then you know the good seniors or whatever are like make their way out of that trap and and like 00:42:07.180 --> 00:42:10.961 see that okay there's a light at the end of the tunnel like you need to ship something you can't 00:42:10.980 --> 00:42:18.420 just you can't just theory on whiteboards all day every day um i say this as like a a recovering 00:42:18.790 --> 00:42:25.300 uh senior from from being in that gap i had definitely had a a long period of time where 00:42:25.300 --> 00:42:29.140 it was like oh i can't i shouldn't be writing code i should be like telling others how to write code 00:42:29.230 --> 00:42:33.120 or like you know i don't know doing all this other stuff where it's just like that's not valuable 00:42:34.060 --> 00:42:39.481 is that a problem of like working somewhere that doesn't have like strict deadlines on things 00:42:39.920 --> 00:42:49.600 sort of uh uh i don't think so but could be i i mean i think that was like very very it became a 00:42:49.600 --> 00:42:55.540 thing at wayfair i think um you know it's i think it's i think i think you'd be seen probably at 00:42:55.640 --> 00:43:01.500 most places is my guess but i think for sure at a smaller company it's less likely to happen 00:43:02.010 --> 00:43:02.010 for sure because there's like a lot more pressure to like just get shit done but 00:43:02.011 --> 00:43:02.011 i felt like that was 00:43:09.160 --> 00:43:09.640 basically 00:43:14.040 --> 00:43:14.900 the circumstances 00:43:15.120 --> 00:43:16.420 you were in to get to the next level, 00:43:17.320 --> 00:43:18.840 I feel like that's what the company 00:43:18.860 --> 00:43:19.880 was pushing you to do. 00:43:22.180 --> 00:43:22.320 Yeah. 00:43:22.840 --> 00:43:24.820 The competencies are framed in such a way that 00:43:25.220 --> 00:43:26.820 it's like, oh, this person needs to 00:43:27.960 --> 00:43:28.820 prove that they're 00:43:29.140 --> 00:43:29.740 driving architecture. 00:43:30.300 --> 00:43:32.860 The way that that's interpreted or trickled down to the individual 00:43:33.040 --> 00:43:34.940 is that you shouldn't 00:43:34.920 --> 00:43:36.920 be writing as much code anymore because you're doing 00:43:37.060 --> 00:43:38.860 this other stuff. Yeah, it's sort of 00:43:39.000 --> 00:43:40.760 like a negative feedback cycle of sorts 00:43:40.770 --> 00:43:42.280 of like, or like the telephone 00:43:42.980 --> 00:43:44.880 game of like, you know, someone 00:43:44.890 --> 00:43:46.560 in leadership wrote the competencies 00:43:47.080 --> 00:43:48.800 with some better 00:43:49.040 --> 00:43:50.760 idea of what it means and not 00:43:50.920 --> 00:43:52.780 necessarily, and then like people interpret it in different ways 00:43:53.140 --> 00:43:54.600 as it reaches the individual contributor 00:43:55.330 --> 00:43:56.880 and then they end 00:43:56.880 --> 00:43:58.780 up like sort of changing how they approach 00:43:59.280 --> 00:44:00.160 their day-to-day or whatever. 00:44:00.940 --> 00:44:02.300 Yeah, this is the problem of like 00:44:02.780 --> 00:44:04.880 are you working to like 00:44:05.020 --> 00:44:09.520 do things for the company? Are you working to just like tick off the boxes so you can get promoted? 00:44:09.840 --> 00:44:17.620 And I've seen, I've seen both sides of that. I've like done, like tried to hit the boxes before. 00:44:18.640 --> 00:44:24.300 But I've also seen people like go extreme into like hitting those boxes and step on other people. 00:44:25.280 --> 00:44:33.880 There's a specific person. I won't name him or her. But yeah, yeah. It's just like, 00:44:33.960 --> 00:44:37.800 it's something you can fall into or you start to play the game it's like a game now right 00:44:39.140 --> 00:44:39.140 and less about like just trying to do the right thing 00:44:39.141 --> 00:44:39.141 kind of related to that i think i feel like 00:44:43.180 --> 00:44:48.920 a very common recommendation from a lot of people has been to like maintain something like a career 00:44:49.240 --> 00:44:57.180 doc or like a wins doc in a sense and i i kind of think that that is actually a useful abstraction 00:44:57.400 --> 00:45:02.140 it's something i haven't really done in the past but i think it's useful abstraction in the sense 00:45:02.080 --> 00:45:06.300 So framing it from your own lens instead of from what your current company expects of you. 00:45:06.840 --> 00:45:07.980 Yes, that should tie in. 00:45:08.420 --> 00:45:12.980 So the way I'm approaching writing one now is what goals do I want to set for myself? 00:45:13.360 --> 00:45:17.200 It's like, okay, start with those and then also look at expectations from my level, 00:45:17.440 --> 00:45:19.220 expectations from the next level at the current company. 00:45:19.940 --> 00:45:22.380 See where there's going to be some overlap, hopefully. 00:45:25.260 --> 00:45:26.640 And then try to layer that in. 00:45:26.780 --> 00:45:31.640 But frame it originally just starting from my own perspective rather than what the company expects. 00:45:31.780 --> 00:45:37.500 And that way it's like, yes, it's a little bit like checkboxes in a sense, but it's like self-defined checkboxes, right? 00:45:37.600 --> 00:45:40.880 It's like, what are the things I'm setting for myself versus what the company is setting for me? 00:45:41.460 --> 00:45:45.180 And that way, hopefully it like keeps me maybe more, I don't know, balanced. 00:45:45.800 --> 00:45:56.360 One of the things I've tried to do, but I haven't really thought about it recently, but I used to think about it more in the past is in this current moment, how hireable am I based on what I've been doing in the last like six months? 00:45:59.280 --> 00:45:59.380 Yeah. 00:45:59.800 --> 00:46:04.340 And now I'm like saying it out loud now and I'm like, man, I need to like really consider that again. 00:46:05.280 --> 00:46:11.500 But that's like how I've always tried to, I don't know, steer my goals based on that. 00:46:11.710 --> 00:46:17.080 Like, am I going to be working on things that I think is going to give me a good chance if I have to go into an interview tomorrow? 00:46:18.980 --> 00:46:20.640 That's just my way of looking at it. 00:46:21.740 --> 00:46:22.460 That's a good point. 00:46:22.550 --> 00:46:25.180 Like, aside from like lately, I've been using like a lot of AI. 00:46:25.370 --> 00:46:26.340 I feel like everyone has. 00:46:27.500 --> 00:46:32.660 I actually still feel like really strongly about my skill set and I don't really know what changed. 00:46:32.800 --> 00:46:39.600 I would always kind of be down on myself, but I feel way more strong about my ability to just get in and solve a problem than ever. 00:46:40.920 --> 00:46:43.200 I don't know. Maybe it's how I'm seen here. 00:46:44.760 --> 00:46:51.480 And I wrote this note here, but like based on kind of what you're saying, like, yeah, I want to be like a better communicator. 00:46:51.560 --> 00:46:53.200 There are like side things like that. 00:46:53.240 --> 00:46:55.280 and I want to be like a good team player, 00:46:55.390 --> 00:46:57.940 but I always want to be somebody other people want to work with. 00:46:58.500 --> 00:46:59.780 I mean, I'll admittedly here, 00:46:59.790 --> 00:47:03.160 I don't feel like I've built my network as strongly as maybe I had at Wayfair. 00:47:03.220 --> 00:47:05.120 Maybe I was even more friendly there. 00:47:05.360 --> 00:47:09.520 And maybe that's always going to be where some of my best connections came from. 00:47:10.180 --> 00:47:14.720 But like, to me, it's just like being in the code is so important 00:47:15.200 --> 00:47:18.300 that you just want to keep doing things that you haven't done before. 00:47:18.920 --> 00:47:21.000 You're not, you can't remember everything you've even done. 00:47:21.320 --> 00:47:25.000 It's like you constantly struggle to remember what I did last week. 00:47:25.350 --> 00:47:32.680 But the best thing you can literally do is just continue to get the skills and feel confident doing and solving problems. 00:47:33.720 --> 00:47:42.580 And I guess like a silver lining of AI is sometimes like I just want to go and start, but AI could like get me started a little quicker. 00:47:42.840 --> 00:47:44.380 Like it knows where that starting point is. 00:47:44.530 --> 00:47:47.680 Sometimes we don't always build brand new applications from the ground up, right? 00:47:48.440 --> 00:47:49.660 Maybe if you're a startup, you might. 00:47:50.080 --> 00:47:51.160 So you might not remember how to do that. 00:47:51.310 --> 00:47:54.940 And AI can like give you that boilerplate and then you can just go. 00:47:55.160 --> 00:48:00.940 So it's, you have more confidence, I guess, sometimes just having the ability to know what 00:48:02.340 --> 00:48:04.640 more about doing more little things like that. 00:48:04.850 --> 00:48:08.340 And also I use the AI to like prompt it and try to learn in that moment when I don't know 00:48:08.480 --> 00:48:08.640 something. 00:48:09.150 --> 00:48:11.140 So maybe that's why I feel a little bit more strong about my skills. 00:48:11.380 --> 00:48:15.320 But I just, I just think no matter what you can do, it's continuing to continue to own 00:48:15.370 --> 00:48:17.640 your skillset and growing the set. 00:48:18.980 --> 00:48:21.800 I want to transition a little bit into stand-up update, 00:48:21.870 --> 00:48:25.460 but I want to take a little spin because it is our New Year's episode. 00:48:27.110 --> 00:48:28.440 So as we go through a stand-up update, 00:48:29.870 --> 00:48:34.440 does anyone have any goals or resolutions for the year coming 00:48:35.540 --> 00:48:37.040 that they think are interesting? 00:48:38.620 --> 00:48:39.540 If you don't, that's fine. 00:48:40.940 --> 00:48:42.480 I usually don't do New Year's resolutions. 00:48:42.630 --> 00:48:46.420 I usually do ones that start on my birthday and go for the next year. 00:48:46.980 --> 00:48:47.500 But anyway. 00:48:49.059 --> 00:48:50.280 Scott what's up with you 00:48:50.620 --> 00:48:51.380 what's your stand up update 00:48:52.460 --> 00:48:54.480 I guess I've been looking a little bit into resolutions 00:48:54.860 --> 00:48:56.040 I don't necessarily do that 00:48:56.090 --> 00:48:58.460 I just try to look at it as like are there some new habits 00:48:58.610 --> 00:48:59.100 I could build 00:48:59.740 --> 00:49:02.820 one of the habits I was going to try to build is be a little bit more of a minimalist 00:49:03.200 --> 00:49:04.780 I actually have been watching things 00:49:04.830 --> 00:49:05.500 and being a minimalist 00:49:05.840 --> 00:49:06.560 I'm not a minimalist 00:49:07.799 --> 00:49:09.320 I have a lot of too many things 00:49:10.360 --> 00:49:12.340 but I want to just have healthier habits 00:49:13.160 --> 00:49:15.100 I have a good habit of just cleaning things up 00:49:15.100 --> 00:49:17.520 at night so in the morning things aren't a mess 00:49:17.720 --> 00:49:22.480 And I've been looking to like expand those kinds of habits and like be better about just like not having stuff in the house. 00:49:22.630 --> 00:49:25.360 One of the things I want to do is like just have a box. 00:49:25.780 --> 00:49:29.120 And I've actually been pretty good about this lately with like getting rid of old clothes I don't wear. 00:49:29.490 --> 00:49:31.840 But just like always having a box of things that go out of the house. 00:49:31.980 --> 00:49:34.700 It's like not being used because the house fills up fast. 00:49:35.979 --> 00:49:44.340 So minimalism in life in the sense I don't want to just try not to consume a bunch of crap all the time. 00:49:44.920 --> 00:49:47.520 But also just building healthier habits. 00:49:47.840 --> 00:49:48.580 So that's one thing. 00:49:49.140 --> 00:49:52.860 I did use Claude max subscription a bit over break. 00:49:53.580 --> 00:49:56.460 Sad note is we're not continuing this into the new year. 00:49:56.540 --> 00:50:00.260 So I have to determine by January 19th 00:50:00.700 --> 00:50:02.380 if I'm going to pay $100 a month 00:50:02.380 --> 00:50:04.000 or I'm going to downgrade to Matt's subscriptions 00:50:04.280 --> 00:50:09.160 since I hardly used like 8% or something. 00:50:09.620 --> 00:50:11.180 And I was cooking with it. 00:50:11.240 --> 00:50:13.460 I did a lot of projects that I haven't launched. 00:50:14.040 --> 00:50:20.460 all the things formally um basically on my break i started like doing a ton of work and then i 00:50:20.720 --> 00:50:24.860 started playing video games and it was over and i just like really needed the break i realized so 00:50:25.040 --> 00:50:30.160 i'm gonna try to continue to write some of this stuff and and get some stuff out but um i don't 00:50:30.220 --> 00:50:36.140 know tldr if i'm gonna continue paying for claude max i don't i don't think i use it enough to 00:50:36.400 --> 00:50:41.400 justify it yet so i might downgrade see how much i use there um and then make the justification 00:50:41.400 --> 00:50:50.840 then but the big thing is doing performance reviews I had realized like what I needed to be 00:50:51.000 --> 00:50:55.780 at staff level and like one of the big things I said I was missing was like writing blog posts 00:50:56.040 --> 00:51:04.200 and I remember we used to have this at Wayfair or it maybe wasn't a must-have but I did write that 00:51:04.740 --> 00:51:09.099 giant visual diff project that I talked about forever and it's like a really great opportunity 00:51:09.120 --> 00:51:13.380 to write a blog post outside of work and i haven't written a blog post this year so i'd actually like 00:51:13.420 --> 00:51:18.660 to try to write more uh and i had been looking at some other i don't call myself a design engineer 00:51:18.760 --> 00:51:23.880 i definitely find design engineering really fun but i have been looking at uh others who kind of 00:51:24.000 --> 00:51:27.860 like write little blog posts about like cool little things that they built i want to try to get back 00:51:27.860 --> 00:51:32.800 in the habit of even if it doesn't take me as long if i build something just getting it in a blog 00:51:33.000 --> 00:51:37.780 format as fast as possible uh how can i i'm going to be better at that so i guess those are my 00:51:37.680 --> 00:51:44.260 resolutions that's what i've been doing um someone chimed in and i want that person to go next i was 00:51:44.300 --> 00:51:44.300 not sure if it was Dillon or it was matt 00:51:44.301 --> 00:51:44.301 i think it was me i was going to ask you what claude max is 00:51:48.820 --> 00:51:48.820 because i just use like some models on the api through an api token at work 00:51:48.821 --> 00:51:48.821 yeah claude max is 00:51:55.880 --> 00:52:01.900 the subscription service you can use opus 4.5 and sonnet um but basically max is just like 00:52:01.940 --> 00:52:07.580 the amount of tokens you get and it's a lot um versus like their other plans so they're just 00:52:07.720 --> 00:52:11.540 subscription plans that's all it is i might downgrade to the lower tier it's the one matt 00:52:11.760 --> 00:52:17.260 maxes out all the time and it sounds like it sounds like you like for you'll max i'm gonna 00:52:17.400 --> 00:52:22.660 probably max out the four hours like that but i mean i don't like i'm literally not even coming 00:52:22.920 --> 00:52:28.640 close and you know it like i'm using claude i'm asking claude questions all day just to try to 00:52:28.560 --> 00:52:33.120 use it i'm sending it photos and stuff like things that are just like i would never have done but 00:52:33.420 --> 00:52:39.920 i'm trying to max out my usage because i have it so like i actually think there needs to be a tier 00:52:40.010 --> 00:52:45.700 in between the one matt has which i think is pro and max that like is half the usage because that's 00:52:45.820 --> 00:52:50.740 probably the sweet spot and they probably know that but they you know want to maximize value so 00:52:51.980 --> 00:52:58.240 yeah i don't think i have max because mine is always like come it's like compiling your 00:52:58.480 --> 00:53:02.780 conversation into a smaller conversation or like smaller context and i get i'm just like all right 00:53:02.840 --> 00:53:07.240 i'm done with this i'm gonna use cursor i'm not waiting on this and then i try to give it images 00:53:07.420 --> 00:53:07.420 and it's like those are too big and i'm like 00:53:07.421 --> 00:53:07.421 we might not be renewing our cursor subscription 00:53:12.340 --> 00:53:17.440 and so we're pushing everyone to move to cloud code plus vs code if they want vs code or just 00:53:17.460 --> 00:53:21.880 cloud code straight up and so a lot of people a lot of front-end engineers heavily adopted cursor 00:53:22.220 --> 00:53:26.320 that was originally like the the paved path for front-end engineering was to use cursor instead of 00:53:26.620 --> 00:53:32.760 cloud code um and so there's been a i'd say a decent amount of pushback verbal pushback about 00:53:32.810 --> 00:53:38.560 like cursor's great like we don't want to lose it but i like i can understand it like a little 00:53:38.700 --> 00:53:38.700 cost-cutting measures to maybe to save some money on uh our ai spend 00:53:38.701 --> 00:53:38.701 i think Claude is generally 00:53:45.120 --> 00:53:51.120 generally like superior i i don't i don't want to talk about it for too long it's better but but it 00:53:51.180 --> 00:53:57.060 also like you can use it in all the same ways like you don't need a clone of vs code to to be that 00:53:57.380 --> 00:53:57.380 it's just better in all ways and their models are better 00:53:57.381 --> 00:53:57.381 Dillon's the one with the uh the opposite 00:54:03.540 --> 00:54:10.700 take of us here i think on what on like cursor being better than vs code or sorry cursor being 00:54:10.720 --> 00:54:10.720 better than cloud code 00:54:10.721 --> 00:54:10.721 I don't i don't think i can't really tell the difference to be honest 00:54:17.840 --> 00:54:25.060 um i can go into my update really quick um i got a couple things here i keep referencing these 00:54:25.960 --> 00:54:32.220 snippets from this blog post it's probably driving Matt insane um like literally during the episode 00:54:33.450 --> 00:54:39.340 um addy addy osmani i think that's how you say his name he wrote a post very clickbait title 00:54:39.420 --> 00:54:46.160 title 21 lessons I learned at while working 14 years at Google. Um, and it's not really long, 00:54:46.480 --> 00:54:52.540 but there's like tidbits and like, just like things he learned. None of it's like groundbreaking, 00:54:53.040 --> 00:54:58.380 but, um, I think there's a lot of good hidden gems in there. And I kind of, I was referencing 00:54:58.580 --> 00:55:03.380 it for different points we were making and there was, it's, it's pretty cool. Recommend checking it 00:55:03.380 --> 00:55:09.320 out. Maybe we can add it to the show notes. Um, and then I thought of some resolutions cause you 00:55:09.340 --> 00:55:16.400 that up for me it's like kind of boring like one of them is just continued consistency with work 00:55:17.360 --> 00:55:22.460 like working hard but not putting in too much effort and then uh just fitness just like staying 00:55:22.660 --> 00:55:29.260 consistent um everyone's always like what's your goals for fitness and i'm like just to get it done 00:55:29.380 --> 00:55:34.820 every week and that like i think that like pisses them off or something not actually pisses them off 00:55:34.820 --> 00:55:39.300 but they seem disappointed they're like wait you're not going to run like an ultra marathon 00:55:39.320 --> 00:55:44.500 like something but nope I'm not going to do that and then my other resolution is just to 00:55:45.860 --> 00:55:50.640 see more extended family like I feel like there's been many years have passed and I haven't seen 00:55:51.420 --> 00:55:57.000 certain like cousins and aunts and uncles and stuff so we want to be better about that this year 00:55:58.340 --> 00:56:06.000 and then beyond resolutions this is kind of a joke but I retired from Arc Raiders in a previous 00:56:06.020 --> 00:56:11.460 episode i was talking about like it's the best game ever but then i just i burned myself out 00:56:13.220 --> 00:56:19.400 i burned myself out and put too many uh hours into it and then i'm just like giving them giving it a 00:56:19.560 --> 00:56:25.340 break and now it's like i quit right when matt and scott got into it so they're looking at me like 00:56:25.620 --> 00:56:25.620 dude what the hell 00:56:25.621 --> 00:56:25.621 arc readers if people haven't played it i was i was slow to adopt it Dillon sold 00:56:31.680 --> 00:56:38.080 me on it of course he sold me on it right after he stops playing but um it's a great game i think 00:56:38.980 --> 00:56:38.980 anyway 00:56:38.981 --> 00:56:38.981 i think it's good it's a little buggy but like i'm gonna be honest with you like 00:56:44.580 --> 00:56:51.620 i'm kind of over these games that are just like forever you're doing objectives and not really 00:56:51.900 --> 00:56:51.900 getting anywhere it's fun 00:56:51.901 --> 00:56:51.901 are you saying arc creators is that 00:56:51.902 --> 00:56:51.902 yeah it's like war zone or 00:56:57.900 --> 00:57:03.620 whatever every month is a new season it's just like it's like a new like gaming philosophies 00:57:03.630 --> 00:57:07.700 of these games they just never end and they just take your attention i don't feel accomplished 00:57:08.380 --> 00:57:11.840 and i'm only bringing this up because i was playing cyberpunk and like there's a lot that can happen 00:57:12.720 --> 00:57:18.980 and it's like way more fun like it's just there's some story i don't know i i guess i'm like they 00:57:19.200 --> 00:57:24.760 try to get you to spend as much money as possible is and the dopamine hits and it's don't get me 00:57:24.680 --> 00:57:29.640 wrong Arc Raiders is wicked fun to play if you got people to play it with uh it's a great time but i 00:57:29.640 --> 00:57:29.640 just don't feel like i make any progress it's just a game to play 00:57:29.641 --> 00:57:29.641 yeah yeah you spend like 45 minutes 00:57:37.320 --> 00:57:41.840 getting quite a bit of goop out i think that's the term that all the kids are using and then 00:57:42.200 --> 00:57:46.580 and then you go in with a decent kit and then you die within like the first three minutes 00:57:46.880 --> 00:57:46.880 you have to reset 00:57:46.881 --> 00:57:46.881 my my hot take is that the game's more fun alone but that's just me i don't know if 00:57:53.660 --> 00:57:53.660 guys that played solo 00:57:53.661 --> 00:57:53.661 i i definitely get into the more peaceful lobbies when i'm playing 00:57:53.662 --> 00:57:53.662 i had the 00:57:59.760 --> 00:57:59.760 same experience 00:57:59.761 --> 00:57:59.761 but when i play with yeah when i play with like one of our other friends taylor 00:58:04.860 --> 00:58:08.520 like for some reason we're always in lobbies that all the other raiders want to kill you're 00:58:08.660 --> 00:58:08.660 the sweatiest player of all time i don't know how you up that's why 00:58:08.661 --> 00:58:08.661 well no no because no because 00:58:13.920 --> 00:58:18.480 in the playing solo i get into peaceful lobbies so taylor must be the one that's killing every 00:58:18.500 --> 00:58:18.500 other readers 00:58:18.501 --> 00:58:18.501 i do too like when i play when i play solo people like they just run right by you 00:58:24.020 --> 00:58:29.500 they don't even like care yeah but when we're playing trios there's like three teams just out 00:58:29.700 --> 00:58:29.700 to get us we're in we spawn mid-match half dead it's like unbelievable s**t 00:58:29.701 --> 00:58:29.701 we have to start like a 00:58:36.820 --> 00:58:43.540 second podcast for video games at this point all right and the last thing on my stand-up update 00:58:44.120 --> 00:58:45.620 I'm still giving it by the way 00:58:46.620 --> 00:58:48.120 is I got back into watching 00:58:48.480 --> 00:58:49.220 Welcome to Wrexham 00:58:49.760 --> 00:58:51.600 which is a documentary 00:58:51.880 --> 00:58:53.020 about an English football team 00:58:53.220 --> 00:58:55.380 that some famous people bought 00:58:57.300 --> 00:58:58.240 and I've just been like 00:58:58.640 --> 00:58:59.960 watching, keeping up with the team 00:59:00.480 --> 00:59:02.020 which is super random 00:59:02.460 --> 00:59:03.840 to just be a big fan 00:59:03.870 --> 00:59:04.600 of this random team 00:59:04.710 --> 00:59:06.140 but documentary is cool 00:59:08.380 --> 00:59:09.820 and keeping track of that team 00:59:09.820 --> 00:59:10.440 has been interesting 00:59:10.800 --> 00:59:12.000 now they're in the championship 00:59:12.150 --> 00:59:12.920 of English football 00:59:12.940 --> 00:59:15.580 and they're like kind of close to the top of the table, 00:59:15.710 --> 00:59:19.840 which is crazy because their first season there at like ever, I think. 00:59:20.000 --> 00:59:21.720 So yeah, it's been fun. 00:59:23.120 --> 00:59:23.280 Yeah. 00:59:23.860 --> 00:59:26.140 And I don't even watch like any American sports anymore. 00:59:26.230 --> 00:59:29.360 I just like watch highlights on English football and stuff. 00:59:29.500 --> 00:59:29.860 It's crazy. 00:59:30.380 --> 00:59:30.640 I don't know. 00:59:30.640 --> 00:59:31.500 I don't know what happened to me. 00:59:34.460 --> 00:59:35.060 That's it for me. 00:59:37.960 --> 00:59:40.560 I feel like I covered most of my standup update. 00:59:40.750 --> 00:59:41.940 Yeah, playing a ton of Arc Raiders. 00:59:42.440 --> 00:59:43.080 Really enjoyed it. 00:59:43.840 --> 00:59:46.960 I actually, I was playing a ton of Battlefield before this, Battlefield 6. 00:59:48.460 --> 00:59:54.620 But I basically completely jumped over to Arc and haven't actually touched Battlefield in a while. 00:59:54.680 --> 00:59:59.380 So I need to, I don't know, reevaluate if I want to keep playing that or not. 01:00:01.200 --> 01:00:05.600 The other big stand-up update, people might have noticed, maybe not have noticed. 01:00:05.720 --> 01:00:06.140 I don't know. 01:00:06.340 --> 01:00:08.560 I got a new mic, which is pretty exciting. 01:00:09.380 --> 01:00:10.100 Actually, I got two mics. 01:00:11.320 --> 01:00:11.920 One from Scott. 01:00:12.540 --> 01:00:19.940 and one from my fiance and uh apparently this one's better i guess um so who knows 01:00:24.260 --> 01:00:28.680 the one from katie apparently or at least scott said it was better i don't know i haven't tested 01:00:28.720 --> 01:00:34.320 the other one they're both so maybe i'll i'll hand i'll return the mic to scott maybe or or 01:00:34.400 --> 01:00:34.400 give it to Dillon 01:00:34.401 --> 01:00:34.401 the good thing about uh the the two mics that you currently have matter like if we 01:00:39.460 --> 01:00:45.740 ever do a live podcast they're very um portable and easy to use and they're good for that so um 01:00:46.820 --> 01:00:52.060 well i don't think that you should keep that um yeti mic portable you should 01:00:52.900 --> 01:00:57.740 boom arm it and and make it part of your workflow but yeah that's great 01:01:00.000 --> 01:01:04.220 yeah i think the yeah the like where it goes from here yeah it's like a boom arm from my 01:01:04.450 --> 01:01:08.040 from my desk and then one that like sits on the ground so it's stabilized against the keyboard 01:01:08.060 --> 01:01:13.840 typing and then i need studio lighting and yes well pretty soon it'll be it's basically a whole 01:01:14.100 --> 01:01:21.800 podcast studio um and then let's see i think that's my stand-up update i resolutions i didn't 01:01:21.860 --> 01:01:28.840 like concretely land on this but i feel like i'm leaning towards it just after a week and a half of 01:01:28.960 --> 01:01:33.780 the new year is like i want to try to connect more with other engineers at hubspot but then also like 01:01:33.820 --> 01:01:35.380 people that I've worked with in the past. 01:01:36.400 --> 01:01:37.520 I feel like I don't 01:01:38.000 --> 01:01:39.960 keep that network up. I want to just put more 01:01:40.000 --> 01:01:40.600 effort into it. 01:01:42.200 --> 01:01:43.660 So I might be, I don't know, might be 01:01:44.020 --> 01:01:45.960 trying to connect for more coffee chats and virtual 01:01:46.100 --> 01:01:48.040 coffee chats and physical coffee chats and whatnot. 01:01:50.020 --> 01:01:51.540 Speaking of which, Dillon, I feel like we need to 01:01:52.320 --> 01:01:53.620 get another beer at Trident. 01:01:54.520 --> 01:01:55.960 Trident? Trillium. 01:01:56.700 --> 01:01:57.100 Not Trident. 01:02:01.500 --> 01:02:01.960 You can. 01:02:02.260 --> 01:02:04.060 I'm pretty sure. I mean, they have a full restaurant. 01:02:04.700 --> 01:02:05.320 I don't know. 01:02:06.200 --> 01:02:07.620 Can you even buy a beer there? 01:02:07.620 --> 01:02:12.020 Maybe we could do that because that's like a little bit more like a sort of halfway between your office. 01:02:13.640 --> 01:02:14.140 Well, I'm good. 01:02:14.660 --> 01:02:14.740 Yeah. 01:02:15.119 --> 01:02:17.180 I feel like I went there somewhere once. 01:02:18.460 --> 01:02:18.820 Spencer. 01:02:20.160 --> 01:02:20.740 Spencer G. 01:02:21.440 --> 01:02:22.840 Oh, there's another one that we play ARC with. 01:02:24.920 --> 01:02:25.520 Oh, no. 01:02:26.080 --> 01:02:27.000 Spencer G is near there. 01:02:28.420 --> 01:02:28.780 Okay. 01:02:29.320 --> 01:02:31.620 I thought he was like added to the initial because I was like, 01:02:32.080 --> 01:02:32.780 it's got to be different. 01:02:35.720 --> 01:02:36.600 Spencer GR. 01:02:37.200 --> 01:02:37.420 All right. 01:02:38.160 --> 01:02:38.300 Cool. 01:02:38.740 --> 01:02:40.520 Any last thoughts, you guys? 01:02:42.440 --> 01:02:45.040 Can we talk about the Tailwind drama? 01:02:46.040 --> 01:02:46.320 I don't know. 01:02:46.460 --> 01:02:49.280 Maybe we need to do a React and Retro episode on that. 01:02:50.460 --> 01:02:50.740 All right. 01:02:51.070 --> 01:02:51.760 We'll save it for that. 01:02:53.000 --> 01:02:55.360 Dillon's over there like, what Tailwind drama? 01:02:55.530 --> 01:02:56.120 I have no idea. 01:02:56.160 --> 01:02:59.260 Yeah, maybe we do a React And Retro episode on that. 01:02:59.860 --> 01:03:00.540 I think that would be good. 01:03:01.140 --> 01:03:01.620 I have no idea. 01:03:02.680 --> 01:03:08.520 We need a whole segment that's just like Matt and Scott tell Dillon the news because he doesn't read it. 01:03:09.200 --> 01:03:10.060 Or he doesn't read the news. 01:03:11.060 --> 01:03:12.160 Thanks everyone for tuning in. 01:03:12.630 --> 01:03:13.100 Happy New Year. 01:03:13.500 --> 01:03:15.340 I hope you guys keep listening to us. 01:03:15.840 --> 01:03:17.040 We were a little bit slow over the holidays. 01:03:17.320 --> 01:03:18.400 Hopefully we pick back up the pace. 01:03:18.530 --> 01:03:21.600 I always say that every episode, that we pick up back up the pace and get back to our schedule. 01:03:22.140 --> 01:03:24.540 I think our schedule is just random at this point, so who knows. 01:03:25.060 --> 01:03:26.700 But if you like this episode, share it with people. 01:03:27.100 --> 01:03:27.560 Leave a comment. 01:03:28.060 --> 01:03:28.720 Leave us a review. 01:03:29.520 --> 01:03:31.080 Six out of seven stars. 01:03:31.900 --> 01:03:32.520 Like and subscribe. 01:03:33.260 --> 01:03:33.760 Join our Discord. 01:03:35.000 --> 01:03:35.500 Chime off. 01:03:35.680 --> 01:03:36.780 There's a pretty active community there. 01:03:37.220 --> 01:03:37.920 We want to keep it growing. 01:03:39.180 --> 01:03:40.220 Thanks and peace out. 01:03:42.640 --> 01:03:42.820 Later.