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Speaker 1: And we're live for anyone who doesn't know. We also

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live stream this on LinkedIn, YouTube and twitch. At what

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time is it? It's uh what ten thirty Eastern time

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on Tuesday morning? It's two thirty pm UTC. If you're

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not in one of those time zones, you're gonna have

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to do the math yourself. But I love you for

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listening and watching the live stream. Meanwhile, what's up born?

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Speaker 2: Hey, thanks for turning that up. And I always get

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the time zones, you know, totally wrong living in Switzerland

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where at plus two UTC at Yeah, I mean some

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of those special ones in North America are quite challenging.

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Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. On my team currently, I'm in GMT minus six.

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I have a person in GMT mine three, one in

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GMT plus one, and one in GMT plus two.

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Speaker 2: So you know, I only is thickering here because we

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built a product a stand up bought called the stand

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Up and Prosper and it was part of an old

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product that we had built a long time ago, and

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very quickly we realized, you know, we may actually be

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one of those companies that now has to understand really

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lots of intricacies about how time zones work. Because like

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we have to send we'd send messages to people when

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it's eight pm or eight am in their time zone,

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and we try to rely on like the Slack time

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zone for that and it's not always valuable. And then

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we also have to display it an RUIS and also

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get it right on Slack display and trying to schedule

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in a different time zone is always such a challenge there.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I worked at a startup.

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Speaker 3: One time.

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Speaker 1: We did medical imaging for trauma hospitals on their trauma

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patients and they decided to rewrite the core application in Java.

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We're not going to go down that path, but that's

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what they did. Right the very next time that daylight

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savings time went into effect for the US, we had

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about two thousand trauma patients disappear from our system because

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they didn't account for daylight savings time. So that was

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a good time.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, there are definitely some things where we

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allow events in the future and then we try to

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hide them being displayed, just because prepopulation of data is

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so important for production scale applications because you don't want

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to wait until you know something actually happens before having

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those events in your database. So I can totally imagine

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that they're omitted in the future, so don't display them

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in any of the UIs to users because that would

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be confusing.

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Speaker 1: Right. But speaking time, it's that time of year that

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we're coming up on the end of year, the holiday season,

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which can have a lot of it can mean a

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lot of things depending on what industry you're in, how

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your company handles closing the books at your end, and

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so that's what this episode is all about, is just

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kind of I think it's kind of just us talking

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out loud as reminder to ourselves as well as a

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reminder to the listeners of our show that those things

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are coming and to start thinking about them, because we're

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going to be executing those tasks here before you know it.

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Speaker 2: You say that, and the first thing that comes to

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mind is when it hits to be cyber Monday, I guess,

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or you know, three weeks ahead of that, because realistically,

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that's when every year it just gets soon and sooner.

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And I remember working at so many companies where someone

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was telling me, you know, something's going to be different now,

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But as an engineer, I'm just like, I don't. I

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don't know what that means. I don't I don't know

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how to what do want to do that information right?

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Speaker 1: For me, the hardest part has always been getting that

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information out of marketing because they spend a lot of

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time and effort doing campaigns, marketing campaigns where this's ads,

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email blasts or whatever to build up these big sales events,

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And in doing this for three decades, I have never

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been successful in convincing someone from marketing that, hey, if

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you're gonna funnel an extra two million people to the site,

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did you ever think about giving someone an engineering like

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a heads up?

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Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean that's always the most ridiculous thing. I

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think it leads the conversation sometimes in an disappointing direction, though,

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because it goes from like, Okay, well we're going to

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sign out two million emails, but how many? How many

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of those are going to be opened? And then you

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realize by many marketing departments, the answer is we have

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no idea, and it's like, is that two million users

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coming to our site? Or is it two hundred thousand,

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is it twenty thousand? And so a lot of times

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that stuff happens and there's zero impact to the business,

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And the most effective thing you can do is, you know,

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just stop performing those experiments in that way unless you

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actually know what the click through rate is, what the

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conversions are going to be. And that's interesting you say

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that because when we build authors a while back, one

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of the most common concerns we heard from our customers

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that we're using our competitors is how they charge by

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monthly active users. And that means if you sign in,

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you get immediately dinged for a user count that then

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is amateurized through the whole month, which means you're basically

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paying for thirty days worth of your advertisement, which is

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a huge cost, especially when these marketing campaigns go out.

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But yeah, I mean yeah, engineering very rarely knows what

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to do there, and so we went to a pure

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charge by usage, so you know, if they only log

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in once, there's not a problem. But I still think

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most of those marketing organizations they have no idea how

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many users are going to actually come to your site. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I think the big takeaway from that is that I

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chose the wrong career profession. I chose one where my

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performance can be measured. That's my fault.

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Speaker 2: Oh you say that, and now I really wonder how

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are you? How are you being measured? Because performance measurement

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in selfware engineering, I think, like anything is, it's much

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more difficult than widget production, which is, you know, highly

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repetitive in which you can actually measure the throughput and

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you know, quality metrics of the individual machine that's that's

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manufacturing those widgets, whether it's human or automated.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, from my perspective, since I'm mostly infrastructure based, a

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good bit of my performance evaluation is based on uptime

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and ease of deployment and error rate and things like that.

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But I would I don't have any data to back

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this up, but I would say that a bigger part

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of my performance evaluation comes from perception of the teams

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that I support. Do they feel like they're being Do

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they feel like they're getting the level of support that

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they need? And that just comes down to customer service.

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Recently had a situation on that exact same topic where

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someone felt like they were not getting the level of

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support that they needed, And the only thing I changed

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was at the end of every meeting asking them, Hey,

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is there anything that you are blocked on because you're

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waiting on us to do something, and just doing that,

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just calling it out to attention, you know, was enough

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to change the perception of the performance.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think that was one of the

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biggest learnings I had from when I started professionally, is

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I thought that my deliverables as I coded them, as

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I architected them, was worth something. But I knew that

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there was this thing of No, you're judged by politics

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is the word I would use to describe it, which

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I really think is a misnomer honestly, because you aren't

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fairly or equality judged on what your outputs. You know,

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it is really about the perception. And talking with whoever

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is in charge of promoting you is really the first

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important step that everyone really needs to take on day

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one when they get a job. How am I actually

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going to be evaluated and over time whether the things

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you're working on are actually relevant to being promoted or

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even just staying in your job.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, that's the whole like social side of

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your career. Like your technical skills are only part of it.

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Speaker 2: I mean, if you can get by working like not

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writing any code every single day and just you know,

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saying like spitting a good game to your managers, you know,

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you can get really really far, so much so you laugh,

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but so much so that there's actually a name for this,

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and it's called effective managing up And you actually see

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a lot of not helpful, probably not good managers doing

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this and that's how they got to those positions that

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they're really effective. It commits other people that they're doing things.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's which goes back to your earlier comment that

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is very political in the US, that's the basis of

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our entire government. Without turning this into a political comment,

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let's not go there.

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Speaker 3: We shouldn't do. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: But so back on topic here, you're in what does

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what does your end look like for you or office?

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Speaker 2: Honestly, we don't really pay too much attention to it

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because we don't go through the marketing cycles. Uh, there

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is usually some amount of uptick that actually starts at

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the beginning of the year, especially for for two reasons.

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One for our products that deal more around the ASIC nature.

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So I mentioned we have a like number one or

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two slack bot for handling stand ups. And at the

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beginning towards the end of the year. Beginning of the year,

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there's a lot of vacations. You know, people aren't all

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in office. It's more remote work, and so figuring out

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how to manage your stand ups in an acinc way

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is usually valuable for authors, which you know, obviously is

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our main product. Budget comes in at the beginning of

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the year, and so that's when a lot of teams

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start thinking about more what's going on there, and towards

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the end of the year they're dealing with all of

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the tech debt, all of the mistakes they've made in

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the previous six to nine to eleven months before they

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get to that point. And I think one of the

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biggest ones is the marketing spam, you know, having actual

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users come on board. And I actually remember that earlier

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on in my career, I was working at a company

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that was had billions of dollars in revenue coming in

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every year at the cyber Monday, Black Friday, you know,

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huge deal days, right for getting in lots of users

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to the site, like not even having to ship out orders.

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I mean, the biggest problem is actually the manufacturing world

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having to then turn around and manufacture and then ship

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that stuff out when it's not just sitting on your shelves.

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So much so that I remember that frequently management quote unquote,

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I don't know who these people were, you know, you

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hear it through the grapevine, like it's coming. You know,

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there's going to be a massive wave. You need to prepare,

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prepare for that, so only really important software should be

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done at the end of the year. I feel like

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it's the even more ridiculous version of don't merge code

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on Friday afternoons. This is don't don't even think about

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code between now and after Christmas. And also there aren't

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any people there in the office, so maybe also you know,

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push that out to like, you know, January eighth, so

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from now until January eighth, everyone's on vacation. And that

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just always struck me as so utterly ridiculous that a

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software engineers could anyone really, but I'm gonna blame software

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engineers could determine the difference between like a critical thing

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that needs to get the production and like feature and

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something that's not because you're often driven by that perception

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of this needs to get done, and you're often not

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in the situation of being able to even make that decision.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, up until recently, I had never participated

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in the year end code freeze strategy. But at Polygon

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we actually have certain platforms where we do a year

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in code freeze, and it's frustrating to me because I'm like, no,

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just just just know. This is the part of the

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show where I could wish, where I wish.

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Speaker 3: It could cuss.

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Speaker 1: But but the truth is is where we have some

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very very early stage products and some we've built some

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things that, for all practical purposes, have never been done before.

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So when it comes to monitoring and alerting, we have

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room to improve on that because like, if you've never

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done this thing, how do you know when the thing

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is doing the thing that it's supposed to do and

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how are you going to alert on that? And there's

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there's certain stages where we don't We just kind of

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watch it until we get a like get the pulse

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of it, and then we can put monitoring on that.

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And so that's the I think that's a big reason

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why we're reluctant to do.

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Speaker 3: Your end releases.

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Speaker 1: And then also, you know, combined with that, like you mentioned,

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a lot of people are out taking vacation and then

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we're completely globally distributed to so we you know, async

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communications are very very async.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there's a platform thing there, right, Like

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if you write games as your company's product, there's a

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validation process, same with I mean similar to if you're

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in healthcare some other apps, if you're deploying a mobile

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app for iOS or Android, there's a turnaround time there.

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And so even if it's even if your company is

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absolutely perfect, we do live in a more just in

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time world, a more agile world where you are depending

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on third party partners. So even if you do the work,

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you know realistically it's not going to be actually able

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to get to production. So rather than having it stack

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up where you're creating a lot of waste there that

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someone still like, you don't want tons of merger requests

252
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sitting open waiting for someone to come and test and

253
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review your code. You want to get those production as

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soon as possible. There's no reason to start that work

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because you know it's going to be blocked somewhere. So

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I do totally get that, especially if you're depending on clients, right,

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you actually don't want to do any work unto your

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client already says why is it not delivered already? Right,

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Because if they're not already waiting on you for a chance,

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you're going to do the work and then have to

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wait on your client and then you're like, Wow, those

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three weeks to three months are longer. Unfortunately in some

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concern cases that I'm sure you've got well, that you

264
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could have been doing something more valuable in that time.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.

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Speaker 1: That makes me think of doing mobile development and getting

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your app approved to go into the Apple App Store?

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Is that three days? Is that three months? Who knows?

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Speaker 3: Is it consistent?

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Speaker 2: Nope?

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Speaker 1: It could be one right after the other every single time,

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and that makes it really challenging to roll out new features.

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And then compounding that, just because you release a new

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version in the App Store doesn't mean people are going

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to update. I remember when I was active, we had

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a very very small group of people, I mean less

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than ten that hadn't updated their app in two years.

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They were running on a two year old version of

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the app and perfectly happy, but it was causing us

280
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some painful technical debt. And we finally had our marketing team.

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They did a marketing and customer service. They jumped through

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all kinds of hoops to actually figure out who these

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people were, and then I think they were able to

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contact them and ask them and send them a gift

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card or whatever to upgrade their app.

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Speaker 2: I got two great stories on that point. Actually, the

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first one is having built a very technical API. People

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talk about deprecating old stuff, but realistically, if you write it,

289
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you should just pretend it's never going to get removed.

290
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It's so much like the amount of churn challenge, complexity

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of trying to convince your customers, as you described, to

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make a change there where there's zero, like, there's negative

293
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value in making the change. Right, it's all work, it's

294
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working today. Why would they why would they realistically change?

295
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It's just not worth thinking about in most cases. And

296
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there are so many companies I've worked with who had

297
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this mindset of, oh, we'll get them to change, and

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so they then have like five or six versions, like

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one every couple of years. Every time there was a

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new engineering lead team you know, owner of that product

301
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roll out something new. And so we started having version

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numbers in our endpoints and things like that, and so

303
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you see all of them available in production. Still some

304
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of those companies I worked with, you know, they still

305
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have those oldest versions still there because they don't have

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that amount of pull within their organization with their customers.

307
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So actually, one of the things we did when we

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wrote Authoris is that we just completely discarded that notion,

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like there are no versions, it's will be like this

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forever likely. It's it's so totally unrealistic. Now, we do

311
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make some changes where we then like update our documentation,

312
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we may remove reference to fields that we still support,

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but we don't remove them because the amount of overhead

314
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it goes in it is really high. The other thing

315
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I'll say is I am totally that person that has

316
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old apps on their phone, like from multiple and I

317
00:19:07,799 --> 00:19:11,000
think there's sort of like a two sided extreme here

318
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where both of them are not great. It's there are

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tons of apps out there that every single time there's

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a new version, it's like you must update to use

321
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the app, and I hate it. And I'm gonna call

322
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out Signal in Google because they both do this. They

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tell me all the time, Hey, there's a new version Google.

324
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At least you can skip it. But the pop up

325
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always happens at the wrong time where I'm like, can

326
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you interact with me at the end of my workflow

327
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because then I'll accept the upgrade, and Signal just says no,

328
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I'm sorry, you can't look at your messages until you upgrade.

329
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And that's just an incredible pain and I totally get

330
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the other side where people are using the app multiple

331
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years later. I'm just so afraid of it breaking something

332
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or draining my battery life because I can't trust these

333
00:19:49,400 --> 00:19:51,960
apps and there's no way to stop them from interacting

334
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with the Google Play integrations to get battery hell or

335
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send messages, notifications, et cetera.

336
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Speaker 1: Sure that's the I'm the same way, Like as a developer,

337
00:20:04,920 --> 00:20:07,559
I'm like, why are these people not updating? But as

338
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a user, I'm like, I'm not updating that it's working

339
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just fine. There's no way I'm going to risk this

340
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thing breaking.

341
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Speaker 2: I'll tell you a secret. And maybe this is letting

342
00:20:19,039 --> 00:20:22,200
the cat out of the bag here. I upgrade apps

343
00:20:22,359 --> 00:20:25,720
when something looks like it doesn't work, and I won't

344
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know why it doesn't work. So you could, for sure

345
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if you had some way of feature flagging, like a

346
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couple buttons just breaking in a weird way, right, Like

347
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you know, I use Plex and if you hit the

348
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like you know, if I hit the play button and

349
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it like pauses it or you know, starts playing and

350
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it like does it weird jump in the video and

351
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it keeps like it just starts happening, I'll be like,

352
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oh man, I got an upgrade. So that's the secret

353
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for convincing your users to upgrade is really, you know,

354
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have something where they don't think is really your fault,

355
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that you would have done intentionally to get the benefit.

356
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Speaker 1: And now if you productize that as a service, you've

357
00:21:05,440 --> 00:21:08,440
got you next huge startup idea.

358
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Speaker 2: Yeah, graceful like non graceful degradation. And yeah, we like

359
00:21:18,759 --> 00:21:22,960
our core metric for our ICP would be like the

360
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number of broken apps we have in production at that moment,

361
00:21:27,720 --> 00:21:33,079
right our customers are currently destroyed the user experience of

362
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one million users that could.

363
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Speaker 3: Be that's funny, write that down right.

364
00:21:44,920 --> 00:21:49,240
Speaker 1: But meanwhile, back to your end, Yeah, because that was

365
00:21:49,279 --> 00:21:52,039
our chosen topic till we wandered off, I.

366
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Speaker 2: Think it's really challenging.

367
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Speaker 1: Yeah, So in my mind, there's a couple of different

368
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categories of things that you have that come up at

369
00:22:00,079 --> 00:22:02,720
your end. One of which you brought up that I

370
00:22:02,759 --> 00:22:06,039
hadn't remembered until you brought it up is budgeting for

371
00:22:06,079 --> 00:22:09,200
the next year. So you got to start campaigning for

372
00:22:09,279 --> 00:22:12,000
whatever it is you want to do and building a

373
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use case so that it makes it into the budget.

374
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And then like we already mentioned potentially depending on your industry,

375
00:22:23,319 --> 00:22:29,400
increase in traffic for your end sales and special and

376
00:22:30,359 --> 00:22:33,519
you know, for a lot of companies that's just largely

377
00:22:33,640 --> 00:22:37,279
a scaling issue, Like, yeah, I've got auto scaling, it's fine,

378
00:22:37,359 --> 00:22:40,160
but I always like to go ahead and just kind

379
00:22:40,160 --> 00:22:43,680
of cross check everything before we get to that point,

380
00:22:43,759 --> 00:22:48,200
because we've probably made a lot of changes throughout the

381
00:22:48,319 --> 00:22:50,920
years since we last tested this really hard, and so

382
00:22:50,920 --> 00:22:54,240
I just want to make sure that we didn't inadvertently

383
00:22:54,359 --> 00:22:57,319
turn something off that we were counting on or something

384
00:22:57,400 --> 00:23:02,359
like that. And then their category for me is like

385
00:23:02,799 --> 00:23:07,079
ye're in closing of the books, you know, which in

386
00:23:07,079 --> 00:23:10,240
my mind that's that's a financial thing, but I also

387
00:23:10,319 --> 00:23:12,440
think there's an infrastructure side of it too.

388
00:23:12,680 --> 00:23:15,920
Speaker 3: It's a good chance to.

389
00:23:15,119 --> 00:23:17,960
Speaker 1: Check all your backups and your data retention policy and

390
00:23:18,440 --> 00:23:22,319
you know, restore from backups into a dev network and

391
00:23:22,759 --> 00:23:24,799
validate those and just make sure that all of that

392
00:23:24,839 --> 00:23:26,119
stuff is working as well.

393
00:23:28,279 --> 00:23:31,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you don't want to be that Australian

394
00:23:31,920 --> 00:23:36,240
pension fund company where they lost all of all of

395
00:23:36,279 --> 00:23:41,720
their one hundred billion dollars worth of financial bookings for

396
00:23:41,880 --> 00:23:45,519
all of the citizens of the country because they were using.

397
00:23:45,400 --> 00:23:46,720
Speaker 3: One cloud platform that.

398
00:23:48,759 --> 00:23:51,960
Speaker 2: Decided to be extra helpful in setting up their environment

399
00:23:52,319 --> 00:23:56,759
one day. So I don't know if you know the

400
00:23:56,759 --> 00:23:59,920
story here, but apparently yeah, so apparently there was an

401
00:24:00,119 --> 00:24:03,759
internal So the first the first knit is that they

402
00:24:03,759 --> 00:24:08,359
were using VMware and on prem which I totally get,

403
00:24:08,839 --> 00:24:11,160
I've been there. But then they wanted to do a

404
00:24:11,200 --> 00:24:14,880
lift and shift, so they did it and were hoping

405
00:24:14,920 --> 00:24:17,519
that the cloud of choice we're going to offer them

406
00:24:17,640 --> 00:24:20,799
VMware as a service, and they did so they shifted

407
00:24:20,799 --> 00:24:25,000
to GCP and the problem was the configuration that GCP

408
00:24:25,319 --> 00:24:29,200
provided for VMware was not sufficient to meet their needs

409
00:24:29,640 --> 00:24:32,480
memory ram zpu, I don't know what it was, and

410
00:24:32,519 --> 00:24:34,640
so they filed the support ticket to ask for them

411
00:24:34,720 --> 00:24:41,599
to basically create a sphere cluster for them manually. And

412
00:24:42,519 --> 00:24:45,720
if you've ever built a technical product that has a

413
00:24:45,799 --> 00:24:49,319
high requirement on reliability or quality, you'll know that the

414
00:24:49,359 --> 00:24:51,319
thing that you really want to do is make sure

415
00:24:51,359 --> 00:24:53,960
you go through the public interfaces. And if the public

416
00:24:53,960 --> 00:24:57,680
interfaces don't support that, then you know that someone's going

417
00:24:57,720 --> 00:25:02,519
to have a bad day sometime future. And realistically, it's

418
00:25:02,559 --> 00:25:05,480
a it's a good reminder where requests from one team

419
00:25:05,519 --> 00:25:07,759
to another one like the support team to the ops

420
00:25:07,799 --> 00:25:11,480
team or product engineering team should be quick to resolve

421
00:25:11,559 --> 00:25:13,799
either know we're never going to do that, or support

422
00:25:13,839 --> 00:25:15,759
it or yeah, of course we'll get that in in

423
00:25:15,759 --> 00:25:19,000
this case updating whatever public API. They had to be

424
00:25:19,079 --> 00:25:21,920
able to utilize it to actually generate the cluster in

425
00:25:21,960 --> 00:25:24,519
a needed way. But instead of going through that in

426
00:25:24,599 --> 00:25:28,720
the good old fashion and we can do it ourselves strategy. Uh,

427
00:25:28,799 --> 00:25:32,119
this is the team responsible for solving this task for

428
00:25:32,640 --> 00:25:36,960
the pension fund. UH ran some scripts to dynamically generate

429
00:25:37,000 --> 00:25:40,759
a cluster using a tool that was built for non

430
00:25:40,799 --> 00:25:45,839
production environments to automatically self implode after a period of time.

431
00:25:46,400 --> 00:25:51,599
Uh that you the default was one year and uh,

432
00:25:51,640 --> 00:25:55,279
you know, probably to stop probably to stop development environments

433
00:25:55,359 --> 00:25:59,880
from consuming a lot of resources after they lost their value.

434
00:26:00,039 --> 00:26:01,960
And it was used for this, and so a year

435
00:26:02,039 --> 00:26:06,720
later after creation of their environment, it disappeared, just as

436
00:26:07,720 --> 00:26:11,039
decided by the engineers of this internal tool.

437
00:26:12,559 --> 00:26:13,240
Speaker 3: Nice.

438
00:26:13,480 --> 00:26:18,880
Speaker 4: Yeah, so you know, if you may need to look

439
00:26:18,920 --> 00:26:21,160
all the way back to what happened last year at

440
00:26:21,160 --> 00:26:24,839
this time and use it as a metric for what

441
00:26:24,960 --> 00:26:26,359
could possibly be going wrong.

442
00:26:26,720 --> 00:26:28,920
Speaker 2: I remember one year at one of the companies I

443
00:26:28,960 --> 00:26:33,480
was working with. We had a production outage soon after holiday,

444
00:26:34,119 --> 00:26:37,799
and that's who we called it. And it was related

445
00:26:37,799 --> 00:26:40,200
to the fact we had a table called calendar table,

446
00:26:40,839 --> 00:26:43,519
and I kid you not, the calendar table ran out

447
00:26:43,559 --> 00:26:46,519
of days and so it crashed production for all of

448
00:26:46,559 --> 00:26:51,680
our one thousand windows services that we had running. And

449
00:26:52,680 --> 00:26:55,119
the calendar table, you know, may sound like it's a

450
00:26:55,160 --> 00:26:58,440
pretty clever thing, but I what it actually was is

451
00:26:58,640 --> 00:27:05,240
a day count number as the index, followed by the

452
00:27:05,319 --> 00:27:10,720
day of the week that that day was, and that

453
00:27:10,839 --> 00:27:13,519
was the whole table. And so if it didn't know

454
00:27:13,559 --> 00:27:15,079
what today was, it wouldn't know what the day a

455
00:27:15,079 --> 00:27:16,599
week it was, so it wouldn't be able to do

456
00:27:16,720 --> 00:27:20,400
planning to figure out how much actual planning, both on

457
00:27:20,400 --> 00:27:23,200
the manufacturing side but also planning how many people that

458
00:27:23,279 --> 00:27:26,400
needed to be in the office manufacturing plan in order

459
00:27:26,440 --> 00:27:28,799
to run the plan effectively. And so the fix, of

460
00:27:28,799 --> 00:27:30,759
course was to insert more dacent the table. And of

461
00:27:30,799 --> 00:27:33,920
course the fix was someone runs a sequel script that

462
00:27:34,079 --> 00:27:38,160
just inserts, you know, one hundred thousand more rows into

463
00:27:38,160 --> 00:27:40,319
the table and no one thinks about this problem. Ever.

464
00:27:40,359 --> 00:27:44,480
Speaker 1: Again, this sounds like mayan calendar as a service.

465
00:27:48,839 --> 00:27:51,039
Speaker 2: I guess I guess. You know, maybe the lesson learned

466
00:27:51,039 --> 00:27:52,880
here is that when it comes to the end of

467
00:27:52,880 --> 00:27:55,720
the year, things are going to break it away.

468
00:27:56,599 --> 00:28:03,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, because there's always always things like that where someone

469
00:28:03,880 --> 00:28:08,839
you know hard coded a year or didn't you know

470
00:28:08,880 --> 00:28:13,279
they're doing like math between months and then so whenever

471
00:28:13,359 --> 00:28:18,720
the month number decreases, it screws something up. And that's

472
00:28:18,720 --> 00:28:22,480
a really good point. Those are things too. I don't

473
00:28:22,480 --> 00:28:26,440
know that you can effectively look and identify those ahead

474
00:28:26,480 --> 00:28:30,920
of time without just a complete audit of every piece

475
00:28:30,960 --> 00:28:33,720
of code that you have, but it's something to keep

476
00:28:33,720 --> 00:28:38,559
in mind after the at the end of the year,

477
00:28:38,599 --> 00:28:40,640
when you go into the new year, when something starts

478
00:28:40,640 --> 00:28:43,880
acting really weird, don't rule those kinds of things out.

479
00:28:45,039 --> 00:28:49,079
Speaker 2: I wonder if there's a framework that could actually be

480
00:28:49,480 --> 00:28:53,240
used and executed here, like like the thing to do

481
00:28:53,400 --> 00:28:57,119
on January second is control shift F through your entire

482
00:28:57,160 --> 00:28:59,720
code base or grock or whatever you're using and search

483
00:28:59,759 --> 00:29:03,359
for like WTF or slash slash to do and see

484
00:29:03,359 --> 00:29:04,559
what actually comes up.

485
00:29:06,160 --> 00:29:07,240
Speaker 3: That's a great idea.

486
00:29:08,559 --> 00:29:11,279
Speaker 2: Just schedule a reminder, like every team could potentially do this.

487
00:29:12,279 --> 00:29:15,279
I mean, I hate these comments. They don't there's so

488
00:29:16,039 --> 00:29:18,839
completely worthless in a lot of ways because it's like

489
00:29:18,880 --> 00:29:21,000
there's something wrong with the code that I'm looking at,

490
00:29:21,039 --> 00:29:23,079
but I don't know, I'm too lazy to do something

491
00:29:23,119 --> 00:29:26,279
about it, or there's just a time bomb here waiting

492
00:29:26,319 --> 00:29:29,200
to go off. At least explain what the problem is, right,

493
00:29:29,279 --> 00:29:31,400
like what am I looking at? Why is this weird?

494
00:29:31,480 --> 00:29:35,599
Why is it confusing? And maybe twods are okay, but

495
00:29:35,799 --> 00:29:38,680
realistically I feel like either it's something you want to do,

496
00:29:38,960 --> 00:29:40,720
in which case you know, file a ticket, or be

497
00:29:40,759 --> 00:29:43,400
like this is intended behavior. And actually one of the

498
00:29:43,400 --> 00:29:46,640
things we do is we add an explicit log statement,

499
00:29:47,240 --> 00:29:49,480
so we don't actually implement those cases, but we do

500
00:29:49,599 --> 00:29:52,160
log whenever there's a weird thing that gets hit, so

501
00:29:52,200 --> 00:29:56,359
it doesn't instead of WTF, it's like WTF, like log

502
00:29:56,880 --> 00:29:59,920
track this message? Why is this even happening? And someone

503
00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:02,640
should investigate so that if we do hit that use case,

504
00:30:03,359 --> 00:30:04,960
we know to do something, and if we never hit it,

505
00:30:05,000 --> 00:30:05,400
no one.

506
00:30:05,279 --> 00:30:10,119
Speaker 3: Has to care. Yeah, for sure, I tend to.

507
00:30:12,240 --> 00:30:13,920
Speaker 1: You know, I can't say I've never created those, but

508
00:30:14,039 --> 00:30:17,559
I have gotten better over time at in the comments

509
00:30:17,599 --> 00:30:22,480
putting heywill or if you're reading this, so that it

510
00:30:22,559 --> 00:30:26,759
kind of stands out and then try to set the

511
00:30:26,759 --> 00:30:31,200
stage so that future me knows why past me screwed

512
00:30:31,240 --> 00:30:31,839
me over like.

513
00:30:31,839 --> 00:30:35,440
Speaker 2: This, Yeah, yeah, I totally hear you. I'm definitely Like

514
00:30:35,519 --> 00:30:40,559
there's lots of paragraphs related of content and comments in

515
00:30:40,640 --> 00:30:43,279
front of things that just aren't super obvious if you

516
00:30:43,319 --> 00:30:45,559
look at them, like why are we comparing this to

517
00:30:45,599 --> 00:30:49,359
the number seven, for instance, and like you don't want

518
00:30:49,359 --> 00:30:51,480
the comments like we compare this to the day of

519
00:30:51,519 --> 00:30:53,960
the week, Like that's not helpful, Like it's helpful when

520
00:30:54,000 --> 00:30:57,559
you explain why from a business standpoint or a product standpoint,

521
00:30:57,599 --> 00:31:00,519
this whole code section is split this way. Like if

522
00:31:00,559 --> 00:31:03,720
you're doing a like a merged sort or any sort

523
00:31:03,759 --> 00:31:06,839
of sort algorithm, or you're trying to find a maximum

524
00:31:06,920 --> 00:31:09,200
value or a minimum value or some arbitrary P value,

525
00:31:09,240 --> 00:31:11,000
Like don't say, oh, we try to find the P

526
00:31:11,240 --> 00:31:14,440
value of ninety nine, Say we want to find the

527
00:31:14,480 --> 00:31:16,480
P value of ninet ninety because and then fill that

528
00:31:16,559 --> 00:31:19,400
out so that you're actually explaining why the code is

529
00:31:19,440 --> 00:31:21,640
the way it is, because often that's not going to

530
00:31:21,680 --> 00:31:24,920
be included in the ticket. Maybe it is that generated,

531
00:31:24,960 --> 00:31:27,079
but usually not. And obviously you don't want it to

532
00:31:27,160 --> 00:31:31,279
jump to that or look at the code comment that's

533
00:31:31,400 --> 00:31:32,319
that's related there.

534
00:31:32,920 --> 00:31:34,839
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think it was Don Felker that had to

535
00:31:34,839 --> 00:31:40,599
tweet a really great tweet that said that comments should

536
00:31:40,599 --> 00:31:43,559
explain why you're doing something, not.

537
00:31:43,559 --> 00:31:44,240
Speaker 3: What you did.

538
00:31:44,519 --> 00:31:47,559
Speaker 1: The code itself tells you what you did, but the

539
00:31:47,599 --> 00:31:49,839
comment should tell you why you chose to do that.

540
00:31:50,839 --> 00:31:53,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, one hundred percent agree. But I don't

541
00:31:53,960 --> 00:31:58,240
think anyone's going to explain to my previous senior engineer

542
00:31:58,920 --> 00:32:01,519
who is working on a different team in a previous

543
00:32:01,559 --> 00:32:04,920
company at the end of the year, who at my

544
00:32:05,039 --> 00:32:09,640
request to not run production software on their own machine,

545
00:32:09,880 --> 00:32:12,720
decided to run production software for on their own machine

546
00:32:13,000 --> 00:32:16,319
for a critical piece of software for the entire company,

547
00:32:16,880 --> 00:32:21,799
And during a long vacation break in the company, the

548
00:32:21,960 --> 00:32:25,920
cleaning staff unplugged the machine and crushed the service. I

549
00:32:26,599 --> 00:32:31,000
kid you not. And the really ridiculous part about this

550
00:32:31,160 --> 00:32:34,880
story is it was actually right around a holiday. Like

551
00:32:35,000 --> 00:32:38,640
it was not not a good story. The ridiculous part

552
00:32:38,720 --> 00:32:41,720
is we were migrating to AWS at that time, and

553
00:32:41,799 --> 00:32:44,759
this particular engineer, who I actually think was a like

554
00:32:44,839 --> 00:32:47,359
a equivalent of a staff or senior staff right now,

555
00:32:49,079 --> 00:32:52,519
said I don't understand why we're going to aws. We

556
00:32:52,640 --> 00:32:57,440
have working software on prem in all of our data centers.

557
00:32:57,599 --> 00:33:00,640
That's sufficient. We have you know, x or it's running

558
00:33:00,640 --> 00:33:06,480
these data centers. And well, I think that statement sort

559
00:33:06,480 --> 00:33:07,400
of stands for itself.

560
00:33:07,880 --> 00:33:11,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sure you've seen the meme of like the

561
00:33:11,359 --> 00:33:15,559
laptop where the lids partially closed with the sticky note

562
00:33:15,599 --> 00:33:16,160
on it that.

563
00:33:16,160 --> 00:33:19,039
Speaker 3: Says, this is a production server. Please don't close lid.

564
00:33:19,400 --> 00:33:21,759
Speaker 2: It's not a joke. Like I have seen that in

565
00:33:21,759 --> 00:33:25,559
my career like four or five times now, Like somewhere

566
00:33:25,599 --> 00:33:29,240
I am. That is a thing, And it's always in

567
00:33:29,319 --> 00:33:34,880
places that have a really experienced engineering division, and they

568
00:33:34,960 --> 00:33:39,200
have engineers in not experienced engineering divisions or staff that

569
00:33:39,240 --> 00:33:43,440
aren't it focused who were forced to install something and

570
00:33:43,519 --> 00:33:46,079
run that application themselves. So if you're on an OPS

571
00:33:46,079 --> 00:33:49,799
team and you tell one of your customers, hey, we're

572
00:33:49,799 --> 00:33:52,440
not going to do that for you because that's not

573
00:33:52,519 --> 00:33:55,079
our job, this is what they go and do. They

574
00:33:55,119 --> 00:33:59,279
go and install that production requirement that the marketing software

575
00:33:59,400 --> 00:34:01,759
that ends out all the emails to your customers on

576
00:34:01,799 --> 00:34:04,039
a single laptop somewhere and put a sticker on it

577
00:34:04,319 --> 00:34:07,039
and then actually find out about a problem. Like I

578
00:34:07,039 --> 00:34:09,719
would be sitting somewhere there'll be a laptop there and

579
00:34:09,760 --> 00:34:11,400
someone will go over and unplug it and I'll be like,

580
00:34:11,599 --> 00:34:13,599
you just turn that off? I have no idea why

581
00:34:13,639 --> 00:34:16,079
it was like that. It's weird, Like you should know

582
00:34:16,119 --> 00:34:17,840
that it was weird. Why did you do that? And

583
00:34:17,880 --> 00:34:20,000
then like two hours later, someone will randomly show and

584
00:34:20,119 --> 00:34:22,679
be like, hey, this laptop. Did you see what happened here?

585
00:34:23,239 --> 00:34:25,679
Did someone like turn it off? Like what happened? This

586
00:34:25,719 --> 00:34:28,119
has to stay on? And we're like, I don't know.

587
00:34:28,239 --> 00:34:32,199
Someone just came over and unplugged it and then laughed, right.

588
00:34:32,280 --> 00:34:36,480
Speaker 1: And my favorite part is when that happens is someone

589
00:34:36,519 --> 00:34:39,199
gets really mad that you had the audacity to turn

590
00:34:39,239 --> 00:34:42,719
off that laptop, like how dare you turn off a laptop?

591
00:34:43,320 --> 00:34:46,280
It's like, wait, no, why are you running production software

592
00:34:46,360 --> 00:34:49,360
on a laptop? That's the core issue here. It's not

593
00:34:49,440 --> 00:34:51,400
the fact that I turned it off, it's the fact

594
00:34:51,440 --> 00:34:54,440
that you're running production software on your laptop.

595
00:34:55,320 --> 00:34:57,159
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know. I try to think of it from

596
00:34:57,159 --> 00:35:00,320
a multiple perspectives. If there's a way to some how

597
00:35:00,519 --> 00:35:04,079
put myself in their shoes of they just don't have

598
00:35:04,119 --> 00:35:11,440
an understanding of what the criticalness is or the interim,

599
00:35:11,599 --> 00:35:15,760
the lack of flexibility, the likelihood of this causing a

600
00:35:15,840 --> 00:35:18,679
problem of the actions they're taking. I think human beings

601
00:35:18,719 --> 00:35:22,679
by nature are so myopically focused on short term and

602
00:35:22,719 --> 00:35:24,679
not deal it thinking about the long term. But also,

603
00:35:24,960 --> 00:35:28,000
I mean, we're the ones in the position of thinking

604
00:35:28,000 --> 00:35:30,960
about reliability and the operations of the software that's running

605
00:35:31,800 --> 00:35:33,840
and how to keep it reliable, and you've got to

606
00:35:33,880 --> 00:35:38,079
imagine that other people are not. Yeah.

607
00:35:38,360 --> 00:35:44,159
Speaker 1: Absolutely, it's so hard to look at things from other perspectives.

608
00:35:44,599 --> 00:35:48,639
Oh for sure, because like, whenever I'm doing infrastructure work,

609
00:35:49,159 --> 00:35:55,400
you know, I'm pretty tightly focused on you know, high availability,

610
00:35:55,440 --> 00:35:58,480
fault tolerance, redundancy, all of that kind of stuff.

611
00:36:00,039 --> 00:36:00,400
Speaker 3: But then.

612
00:36:01,920 --> 00:36:06,320
Speaker 1: Like the next day, I can be writing code and

613
00:36:06,360 --> 00:36:09,559
you can look at the code that I'm writing and

614
00:36:09,639 --> 00:36:12,360
be like, has this guy ever heard of high availability?

615
00:36:12,679 --> 00:36:15,440
Because you just get so focused on solving that problem

616
00:36:15,480 --> 00:36:18,760
and fail to step back and think, wait, what other

617
00:36:19,000 --> 00:36:21,599
what other pieces do I need to make this?

618
00:36:22,719 --> 00:36:24,360
Speaker 2: That sounds like there was a story there.

619
00:36:25,280 --> 00:36:27,679
Speaker 3: Oh, there's probably a lot of stories there.

620
00:36:31,119 --> 00:36:34,239
Speaker 2: And it's those that like at the time, you're just like,

621
00:36:34,280 --> 00:36:35,960
I'm all read in the face I'm like, I can't

622
00:36:35,960 --> 00:36:38,239
believe this is happening right now. I have to totally

623
00:36:38,320 --> 00:36:40,599
chill out. And they're the ones that make for the

624
00:36:40,639 --> 00:36:43,519
best laughs later. I mean, maybe it's a little cliche,

625
00:36:43,599 --> 00:36:48,199
but those really terrible experiences that you're you're gonna have

626
00:36:48,320 --> 00:36:50,960
between now and the end of the year, Uh, they're

627
00:36:51,039 --> 00:36:55,480
great stories. Like I got another one. We were the face.

628
00:36:55,679 --> 00:36:57,719
I was running a team that was the face for

629
00:36:57,840 --> 00:37:02,320
our customers U I and a bunch of back end services,

630
00:37:02,400 --> 00:37:06,519
and we didn't get any public praise. Is all about

631
00:37:06,519 --> 00:37:09,519
the perception like our stuff just ran no problem, And

632
00:37:09,559 --> 00:37:11,039
when it came time for the end of the year

633
00:37:11,280 --> 00:37:14,199
and increased load, we would often say, we don't need

634
00:37:14,239 --> 00:37:16,239
to do anything. We've looked at last year and the

635
00:37:16,280 --> 00:37:18,920
year before, and also what's happened in the last couple of months,

636
00:37:19,320 --> 00:37:21,360
and it looks like we have tons of capacity. What

637
00:37:21,440 --> 00:37:24,000
we're going to do, anyway, is just allocate twice as

638
00:37:24,039 --> 00:37:28,880
much capacity for no reason whatsoever and just run like that,

639
00:37:29,039 --> 00:37:33,000
because who cares. It's our infrastructure. We've done a lot

640
00:37:33,000 --> 00:37:35,800
of cost auto optimization, so we don't have to worry

641
00:37:35,800 --> 00:37:38,079
about if a couple of months or even a week

642
00:37:38,159 --> 00:37:41,360
or so we just bite the bullet there and it

643
00:37:41,360 --> 00:37:44,400
was always a good idea, but totally unnecessary in almost

644
00:37:44,400 --> 00:37:48,239
every situation. That's one team now we dependent on. The

645
00:37:48,280 --> 00:37:50,639
reason we were so we were so critical of the

646
00:37:50,679 --> 00:37:52,800
organization is because we depended on a lot of services

647
00:37:52,840 --> 00:37:56,400
from other teams who did not write such reliable software,

648
00:37:57,400 --> 00:38:01,039
who were not as concerned about soft were services that

649
00:38:01,039 --> 00:38:03,519
would never be interacted with directed by the customers. So

650
00:38:03,559 --> 00:38:05,119
we had a lot of things in our code like

651
00:38:05,159 --> 00:38:09,639
automatic retries, acing processing, pre caching, loading from cash like.

652
00:38:09,880 --> 00:38:12,199
We would call lots of services and they would fail,

653
00:38:12,280 --> 00:38:16,119
and then we would have really complex workfloths to figure out,

654
00:38:16,480 --> 00:38:19,039
like predict what the value was going to be in

655
00:38:19,119 --> 00:38:22,719
order to utilize it in most cases where we could.

656
00:38:22,760 --> 00:38:24,400
I mean, obviously you can't do it in every case,

657
00:38:24,400 --> 00:38:26,760
otherwise you wouldn't need the service. However, there was this

658
00:38:26,840 --> 00:38:32,119
other team who had problems. Every single week, there was something.

659
00:38:32,119 --> 00:38:34,280
It was always firefighting one hundred percent, and because it

660
00:38:34,320 --> 00:38:37,679
seemed like they were constantly under pressure, that means there

661
00:38:37,679 --> 00:38:40,840
were also constantly solving problems, which gave them a positive perception,

662
00:38:42,039 --> 00:38:44,519
and when it came to a huge load, their services

663
00:38:44,559 --> 00:38:53,000
would always get pounded into. So the moral of that

664
00:38:53,039 --> 00:38:54,920
story is actually two more teams had to be spun

665
00:38:55,000 --> 00:38:58,559
up just to support the load of when something went wrong.

666
00:38:58,639 --> 00:39:01,519
So a support to teams in a support organization to

667
00:39:01,559 --> 00:39:06,400
talk to customers and deal with integrations, because those software

668
00:39:06,440 --> 00:39:09,519
issues of having a service that's not reliable have real

669
00:39:09,800 --> 00:39:13,320
reaching impacts to customers, and they got rewarded for that,

670
00:39:13,360 --> 00:39:17,639
which has just always been not a thing I've looked

671
00:39:17,679 --> 00:39:22,960
kindly back in my career over but they would say

672
00:39:23,039 --> 00:39:25,360
the most ridiculous things ever where, Like on the surface

673
00:39:25,440 --> 00:39:28,280
may sound really intelligent, but if you dig down into it,

674
00:39:28,280 --> 00:39:33,400
it's like, so, here's one. We know that there should

675
00:39:33,400 --> 00:39:36,400
be high load all the time that we often can't handle,

676
00:39:37,039 --> 00:39:39,320
so when there's no load, in order to make up

677
00:39:39,400 --> 00:39:41,239
for it, we know that load is going to come later.

678
00:39:41,639 --> 00:39:46,079
So whenever we experience a drop in volume, we scale

679
00:39:46,199 --> 00:39:49,119
up all of our services as much as we can

680
00:39:49,480 --> 00:39:54,239
to prepare for that waterfall that's coming next. And on

681
00:39:54,280 --> 00:39:56,039
the surface, it's like, well, that's actually kind of clever.

682
00:39:56,159 --> 00:39:58,800
You know, if you expect one hundred requests per second

683
00:39:59,000 --> 00:40:02,079
and you don't get any or ten seconds, well where

684
00:40:02,119 --> 00:40:05,320
did those thousand requests go? Someone was maybe hoarding them

685
00:40:05,320 --> 00:40:07,239
for that period of time. I mean, that's at least

686
00:40:07,280 --> 00:40:11,719
the thought. However, you also realize, well, like that's not

687
00:40:11,760 --> 00:40:15,559
really a good sustainable scaling strategy. You might as well

688
00:40:15,599 --> 00:40:18,119
just figure out how to deal with the burst load

689
00:40:18,159 --> 00:40:20,480
when it comes in, you know, figure out use asynchronous

690
00:40:20,519 --> 00:40:23,360
software to use services that will actually allow you to

691
00:40:23,360 --> 00:40:26,519
support pulling or pushing that load off and so you

692
00:40:26,519 --> 00:40:29,639
can actually normalize the curve over time. Don't rely on

693
00:40:30,639 --> 00:40:34,639
superstition or tradition to determine what your scaling policy should be.

694
00:40:37,000 --> 00:40:39,199
Speaker 3: Seems reasonable, you know.

695
00:40:39,239 --> 00:40:41,760
Speaker 1: That type of scenario makes me think, and I think

696
00:40:41,800 --> 00:40:45,599
this is specific to the topic of today, of your

697
00:40:45,800 --> 00:40:52,199
end preparation, where you have a lot of different pieces

698
00:40:52,440 --> 00:40:56,480
coming together. There can be certain scenarios where it's useful

699
00:40:57,119 --> 00:41:01,440
to create a temporary team and pull in people from

700
00:41:01,440 --> 00:41:06,800
different disciplines, different teams that are just focused on that

701
00:41:06,880 --> 00:41:10,480
temporary problem. You know, like say, okay, we know that

702
00:41:11,159 --> 00:41:16,559
we're going to have a massive increase in traffic because

703
00:41:16,559 --> 00:41:19,679
of the holiday sales this year, and that's going to

704
00:41:19,760 --> 00:41:23,679
impact that's going to be driven by marketing, but also

705
00:41:23,920 --> 00:41:26,639
it's going to affect the mobile app team and the

706
00:41:27,199 --> 00:41:30,719
back end API team and the infrastructure team bears the

707
00:41:30,719 --> 00:41:35,719
brunt of that. So rather than try to manage all

708
00:41:35,719 --> 00:41:39,440
of those separately, it's often a good good time to

709
00:41:39,559 --> 00:41:43,000
just pull key people from those teams into a temporary

710
00:41:43,039 --> 00:41:46,599
team and set their scope. Your scope is to manage

711
00:41:46,639 --> 00:41:51,000
this incoming load and make sure that we're successful at

712
00:41:52,239 --> 00:41:55,760
handling it from our customer's perspective. And then after that

713
00:41:55,880 --> 00:41:58,199
event's passed, the team disbands and goes back to their

714
00:41:58,199 --> 00:41:58,719
normal job.

715
00:41:59,639 --> 00:42:01,960
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I think a product a project team in

716
00:42:01,960 --> 00:42:04,760
that regard, in that situation is like the one time

717
00:42:04,840 --> 00:42:06,840
where it actually makes sense. And as long as they're

718
00:42:06,840 --> 00:42:09,360
not they're not building anything. They're actually trying to prevent

719
00:42:09,760 --> 00:42:14,440
problems by using only what's already available. And because there's

720
00:42:14,480 --> 00:42:19,519
no long term output really from that process, you don't

721
00:42:19,519 --> 00:42:22,039
have to worry about disbanding. And at the end, like

722
00:42:22,159 --> 00:42:23,239
that's a really good idea.

723
00:42:24,480 --> 00:42:28,199
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think one of the reasons it's successful

724
00:42:28,360 --> 00:42:32,280
is because you clearly define the scope. And when I

725
00:42:32,320 --> 00:42:36,440
talk about defining the scope, I'm talking about not only saying, hey,

726
00:42:36,480 --> 00:42:39,360
this is what you're going to be focused on, but

727
00:42:39,480 --> 00:42:43,880
you have full authority to say no to everything. That

728
00:42:44,000 --> 00:42:46,559
is not that thing, which is really important. I've seen

729
00:42:46,599 --> 00:42:49,320
that a lot throughout my career. We say yes to

730
00:42:49,400 --> 00:42:54,039
things almost with like this hidden assumption that there's always

731
00:42:54,079 --> 00:42:57,760
more bandwidth available, So we'll do everything that we were

732
00:42:57,880 --> 00:43:00,920
doing plus this new thing. And at some point you

733
00:43:01,000 --> 00:43:03,920
reach critical mass where you in order to say one

734
00:43:03,960 --> 00:43:08,079
more yes, you have to say one more no to

735
00:43:08,159 --> 00:43:09,840
something else that you're not going to be doing.

736
00:43:10,440 --> 00:43:12,920
Speaker 2: I actually put it stronger. Everyone should be at that

737
00:43:13,000 --> 00:43:15,519
point already right now, whether you think you are or not.

738
00:43:15,679 --> 00:43:17,599
Like if you like, even if you think you have

739
00:43:17,639 --> 00:43:21,239
three pre capacity, you probably don't. I know it may

740
00:43:21,280 --> 00:43:24,800
feel like that, but realistically, I know as individuals we're

741
00:43:24,880 --> 00:43:28,199
very bad at evaluating our own free capacity and be

742
00:43:28,199 --> 00:43:30,280
able to do things. And if you actually had free

743
00:43:30,320 --> 00:43:34,920
capacity to do extra things, do the thing you're doing

744
00:43:35,400 --> 00:43:38,000
more like faster, like why is it just not already

745
00:43:38,039 --> 00:43:41,119
getting done? There's no reason to put something else in

746
00:43:41,159 --> 00:43:44,679
that spot. So I think realistically, everything you do something

747
00:43:44,719 --> 00:43:48,599
next like I would always use this, especially for inexperienced

748
00:43:49,119 --> 00:43:51,239
engineers at the beginning of their career. You know, we

749
00:43:51,239 --> 00:43:53,239
should solve this, we should fix this problem, we should

750
00:43:53,440 --> 00:43:57,000
refactor this code, we should switch to. Now it's Rust,

751
00:43:57,039 --> 00:43:58,719
which I can finally get behind. But it used to

752
00:43:58,760 --> 00:44:02,119
be you know, have assembly, or we should switch to

753
00:44:03,000 --> 00:44:06,679
whatever fancy new version of React that's out there. I'm

754
00:44:06,679 --> 00:44:12,119
so happy we don't use React office for so many reasons.

755
00:44:12,679 --> 00:44:16,719
There are so many better alternatives. And I'd always say

756
00:44:16,719 --> 00:44:18,760
the same thing, like, you know, great, we can absolutely

757
00:44:18,760 --> 00:44:21,239
do that. Which thing that you're working on right now?

758
00:44:21,920 --> 00:44:24,280
Do you want to stop working on so that you

759
00:44:24,320 --> 00:44:27,559
can work on that instead? And really having that priority

760
00:44:27,559 --> 00:44:30,880
first conversation, because well, most of the time of the

761
00:44:30,960 --> 00:44:33,360
year may actually be practiced, it doesn't matter if they

762
00:44:33,360 --> 00:44:35,760
pick up this extra thing. It really helps to think

763
00:44:35,800 --> 00:44:38,840
about the priority order. So when huge important events come up,

764
00:44:38,960 --> 00:44:40,960
like the end of the year closing or whenever you're

765
00:44:41,039 --> 00:44:42,440
end of the year closing in, or if you have

766
00:44:42,440 --> 00:44:44,880
a big marketing event, whenever that happens, whether you can

767
00:44:44,920 --> 00:44:49,840
know or not, it really is the production version of

768
00:44:49,960 --> 00:44:51,360
can I prioritize effectively?

769
00:44:52,880 --> 00:44:53,360
Speaker 1: Yeah?

770
00:44:53,440 --> 00:44:53,920
Speaker 2: For sure.

771
00:44:54,599 --> 00:44:55,159
Speaker 3: So that's a.

772
00:44:57,679 --> 00:45:02,280
Speaker 1: That's a it's sort of along the same topic here.

773
00:45:02,280 --> 00:45:05,920
You talked about, you know, Rust, and a lot of

774
00:45:05,960 --> 00:45:09,000
times as we talk about end of year and we're

775
00:45:09,039 --> 00:45:14,559
looking at projects for the coming year, and there a

776
00:45:14,599 --> 00:45:16,280
lot of times there is a topic, you know, like

777
00:45:16,360 --> 00:45:20,519
oh we should we should rewrite this in rust, or

778
00:45:20,559 --> 00:45:23,599
we should rewrite this in you know whatever.

779
00:45:24,280 --> 00:45:25,360
Speaker 3: You know, you can pick whatever.

780
00:45:26,159 --> 00:45:31,920
Speaker 1: How do you go about making the case for that, Like,

781
00:45:32,000 --> 00:45:35,039
if you're campaigning for time and budget for the coming year,

782
00:45:35,440 --> 00:45:37,880
how are you going to structure that campaign?

783
00:45:38,360 --> 00:45:40,639
Speaker 2: I mean I get to make those decisions, So I

784
00:45:40,639 --> 00:45:42,719
guess I should. I'll I'll put this maybe in the

785
00:45:42,719 --> 00:45:45,400
flip side of like what I'm looking for when someone

786
00:45:45,480 --> 00:45:50,039
comes and excellent point to create this whatever that change is.

787
00:45:50,719 --> 00:45:53,480
I mean, I don't feel like I go out and

788
00:45:53,559 --> 00:45:56,840
hire engineers, Like that's sort of like a skill capability

789
00:45:56,880 --> 00:46:01,079
you have. Maybe you're systems thinker, like you're able to

790
00:46:01,159 --> 00:46:04,559
understand how doing one thing impacts doing another thing. Yeah,

791
00:46:04,559 --> 00:46:06,079
for sure, you can write in some a couple of

792
00:46:06,119 --> 00:46:09,079
different languages, But realistically, the teams exist to solve some

793
00:46:09,119 --> 00:46:12,320
business problem. That's why they're there. And so looking at

794
00:46:12,320 --> 00:46:15,079
the business problem short, medium, and long term is what

795
00:46:15,119 --> 00:46:17,119
I care about. So you know, tell me a story

796
00:46:17,199 --> 00:46:19,920
that solves short, medium and long term problems. So maybe

797
00:46:19,920 --> 00:46:22,920
there's a problem today and it needs to get resolved,

798
00:46:22,960 --> 00:46:27,079
and so you know, you want to deliver quick little

799
00:46:27,119 --> 00:46:29,880
improvements today, you know, what does that look like to

800
00:46:29,960 --> 00:46:31,880
solve that? And then medium you want to do you know,

801
00:46:31,920 --> 00:46:34,000
a bigger project to make sure that we never have

802
00:46:34,000 --> 00:46:35,840
to worry about that again. And long term, like why

803
00:46:35,840 --> 00:46:38,000
are we even discussing this problem? Like this problem is

804
00:46:38,039 --> 00:46:40,639
too small scale for us. It should get automatically solved

805
00:46:40,920 --> 00:46:43,400
by what we have, by our infrastructure, by a single

806
00:46:43,480 --> 00:46:47,599
new feature ticket. And so think about conveying those things

807
00:46:47,960 --> 00:46:50,639
when discussing potential ideas of what to work on. So

808
00:46:51,199 --> 00:46:53,920
the change to rust, talk to me about error budget,

809
00:46:54,000 --> 00:46:58,280
Talk to me about speed of delivery for new features.

810
00:46:58,440 --> 00:47:00,599
Talk to me about maybe they're all ability of what

811
00:47:00,639 --> 00:47:02,800
we have, the quality of what we have, the ability

812
00:47:02,800 --> 00:47:07,119
to deliver new things based on the frameworks that are available, etc. Etc. Right,

813
00:47:07,639 --> 00:47:12,159
the actual impact of doing that and nothing comes for free? Right?

814
00:47:12,199 --> 00:47:13,920
You know, I want to know the cost of if

815
00:47:13,920 --> 00:47:15,559
we make this switch, how long are we going to

816
00:47:15,639 --> 00:47:18,360
pay paying the cost? Short term, medium term, long term?

817
00:47:18,440 --> 00:47:20,719
And I got to see some benefit there. Now. I

818
00:47:20,719 --> 00:47:27,159
don't expect a perfect financially planned strategy for every single

819
00:47:27,239 --> 00:47:30,440
part of the process, but some thought has to have

820
00:47:30,480 --> 00:47:34,599
gone into it. Right, how many engineers know about this

821
00:47:34,639 --> 00:47:37,639
programming languages? How many of them want to know hiring

822
00:47:37,679 --> 00:47:38,440
in the market is.

823
00:47:38,400 --> 00:47:39,119
Speaker 3: A challenge there?

824
00:47:39,199 --> 00:47:39,400
Speaker 1: Right?

825
00:47:39,519 --> 00:47:43,079
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe not? Do we have big projects coming up

826
00:47:43,119 --> 00:47:46,800
where we already started with something we have and now

827
00:47:46,840 --> 00:47:48,719
we need to potentially put that on hold in order

828
00:47:48,719 --> 00:47:50,599
to do the switch, or we'd have to write it twice. Right,

829
00:47:50,599 --> 00:47:54,719
So they's throwaway work, and an understanding of that tells

830
00:47:54,800 --> 00:47:58,599
me that you've thought enough about this problem that I

831
00:47:58,639 --> 00:48:00,559
could let you go and run with it, can delegate

832
00:48:00,599 --> 00:48:03,360
it to you effectively. Otherwise you're basically saying I want

833
00:48:03,440 --> 00:48:05,400
someone else to solve this problem. Right when you come

834
00:48:05,440 --> 00:48:07,519
up with a problem and you share with someone else, Hey,

835
00:48:08,440 --> 00:48:10,679
we should do this thing, try to figure out what

836
00:48:10,679 --> 00:48:13,440
you're doing. Right. Are you complaining about it I don't

837
00:48:13,519 --> 00:48:16,079
like X, or are you saying I want you to

838
00:48:16,199 --> 00:48:19,719
fix why? Or are you saying I want to do this?

839
00:48:19,719 --> 00:48:21,519
This is what it will look like. This is the

840
00:48:21,559 --> 00:48:23,599
impact to the team and the organization, and then I'll

841
00:48:23,599 --> 00:48:27,840
say great, sounds good, or if it's a bigger impact

842
00:48:27,880 --> 00:48:29,920
of the business and some way, it'll probably get into

843
00:48:29,960 --> 00:48:33,039
our initiatives for the next quarter and our quarterly planning

844
00:48:33,559 --> 00:48:35,920
and they will just show up there and someone who

845
00:48:36,079 --> 00:48:38,639
is most relevant to be working on that at that

846
00:48:38,679 --> 00:48:40,280
moment may or may not be you. Right, you know,

847
00:48:40,440 --> 00:48:41,920
just because you came up with a good idea doesn't

848
00:48:41,960 --> 00:48:43,440
mean that it makes sense for your team to work

849
00:48:43,480 --> 00:48:45,480
on it. We'll take over and start running with it.

850
00:48:46,800 --> 00:48:49,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, for me, the starting point of all of those

851
00:48:49,320 --> 00:48:53,320
conversations has to be one of two things. How does

852
00:48:53,360 --> 00:48:56,920
this increase revenue for the company or how does it

853
00:48:57,079 --> 00:48:59,159
decrease operating costs for the company?

854
00:49:00,400 --> 00:49:02,960
Speaker 2: I think you're maybe being a little bit too unfair there.

855
00:49:03,039 --> 00:49:05,199
I mean, I totally agree that should be the actual

856
00:49:05,239 --> 00:49:06,639
impact at the end of the day, Like, it has

857
00:49:06,679 --> 00:49:08,880
to be one of those two things realistically. I mean

858
00:49:08,920 --> 00:49:11,119
there's also social capital as well, right, Like, maybe you're

859
00:49:11,119 --> 00:49:14,320
scaling up longer term and hiring additional people is important.

860
00:49:14,360 --> 00:49:17,119
So you know, maybe you've got PHP or Ruby you're

861
00:49:17,199 --> 00:49:19,920
using and you want to sell it's difficult for us

862
00:49:19,960 --> 00:49:22,039
to get engineers. It's difficult for us, you know, two

863
00:49:22,159 --> 00:49:23,559
or three years down the line, we're going to have

864
00:49:23,559 --> 00:49:25,280
to make this switch at some point. It has nothing

865
00:49:25,320 --> 00:49:27,679
to do with the operating cost today or making future

866
00:49:27,880 --> 00:49:30,280
making revenue right now, but longer term there's a lot

867
00:49:30,280 --> 00:49:34,280
of trade offs. I it needs to be thought about,

868
00:49:34,400 --> 00:49:36,159
but like you don't have to come to the table

869
00:49:36,199 --> 00:49:38,280
with like this is the number of dollars that we're

870
00:49:38,280 --> 00:49:40,679
going to say now maybe, I mean, will your boss apparently,

871
00:49:43,320 --> 00:49:44,559
I mean it's much better, right, you know, if you

872
00:49:44,599 --> 00:49:46,880
could actually do some sort of analysis, you know, feel

873
00:49:46,880 --> 00:49:48,559
free to take that. But it's sort of the thing

874
00:49:48,599 --> 00:49:52,760
where like a pull request on architecture, you don't need

875
00:49:52,760 --> 00:49:56,440
to come with the code perfect all written for the

876
00:49:56,480 --> 00:49:59,199
whole feature. You know, I have some idea. Should I

877
00:49:59,239 --> 00:50:01,639
even start thinking about what the next step is here?

878
00:50:01,800 --> 00:50:05,079
Or should I forget about it? Like, you know, give

879
00:50:05,119 --> 00:50:06,559
me some feedback because this is a good idea to

880
00:50:06,639 --> 00:50:08,599
switching to RUSS maybe a good idea. And I will say,

881
00:50:08,920 --> 00:50:11,159
could be maybe you know, tell me about it. And

882
00:50:11,199 --> 00:50:13,880
then you say, I actually don't know, let me go

883
00:50:14,320 --> 00:50:16,760
do some investigation. I'll be like, okay, sounds good.

884
00:50:17,159 --> 00:50:22,239
Speaker 3: Yeah. Now I'm still stuck on those two I think.

885
00:50:22,400 --> 00:50:23,960
Speaker 2: You know, for a long time I was as well.

886
00:50:24,679 --> 00:50:28,159
The thing that broke me was companies that focus on

887
00:50:28,199 --> 00:50:31,840
some sort of social good which is neither necessarily cost

888
00:50:31,880 --> 00:50:35,360
reduction or revenue generation. So if there's a tragedy of

889
00:50:35,360 --> 00:50:37,960
a common situation where you want to get out from

890
00:50:38,039 --> 00:50:39,760
under it, you know, take the climate crisis, right, we

891
00:50:39,800 --> 00:50:43,239
have a thing that's neither revenue nor cost. I mean,

892
00:50:43,280 --> 00:50:46,880
of course, you can model the the criticalness of our

893
00:50:47,039 --> 00:50:49,960
direness of our human society at this moment, it's a

894
00:50:50,039 --> 00:50:55,840
huge problem. You could measure the rate of temperature asmospheric

895
00:50:55,880 --> 00:50:59,880
increase or oceanic temperature increase as your metric they're going after. So,

896
00:51:00,159 --> 00:51:02,119
I mean, whatever it is for your business, right, you know,

897
00:51:02,119 --> 00:51:04,679
if you're making money, then for sure, I'll say profit,

898
00:51:04,760 --> 00:51:07,159
not necessarily revenue. Both of them are bad metrics for

899
00:51:07,199 --> 00:51:11,360
different reasons, depending on how you're abusing them, right, And

900
00:51:12,000 --> 00:51:15,199
you're right startups care about revenue, not profit, and real

901
00:51:15,199 --> 00:51:19,679
companies care about profit and not revenue. But you could

902
00:51:19,719 --> 00:51:22,079
just be making a lot of money a return on

903
00:51:22,119 --> 00:51:23,719
investment that really isn't worth it. So you know, what

904
00:51:23,800 --> 00:51:26,480
is the important thing for your company? I totally agree with.

905
00:51:26,400 --> 00:51:31,840
Speaker 1: You, will, yeah, for sure. And that's probably something that

906
00:51:31,960 --> 00:51:36,239
happens in my mind that I don't express enough is

907
00:51:36,719 --> 00:51:41,760
whenever I talk about currency, it's not always dollars. It's

908
00:51:42,239 --> 00:51:46,360
the product itself. Like if you're an open source company,

909
00:51:46,719 --> 00:51:51,840
you don't sell your software, but you still have a currency.

910
00:51:51,880 --> 00:51:54,840
The currency is the number of people who download and

911
00:51:54,920 --> 00:51:58,000
use your software and build on top of it. So

912
00:51:58,800 --> 00:52:01,920
when you talk about increasing when I talk about increasing revenue,

913
00:52:02,159 --> 00:52:05,719
it may not be US dollars or euros, it's whatever

914
00:52:05,920 --> 00:52:08,320
currency measures the success of your product.

915
00:52:09,960 --> 00:52:12,119
Speaker 2: So Solona or Ethereum.

916
00:52:12,280 --> 00:52:17,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, or Polygon, you have your you have your own

917
00:52:17,039 --> 00:52:23,679
toke gun we do yeah, Matic okay, yeah, yeah.

918
00:52:22,599 --> 00:52:26,239
Speaker 4: So yeah, that one, that's that's that's the most.

919
00:52:26,000 --> 00:52:29,480
Speaker 2: Important currency to to actually own, so to measure everything

920
00:52:30,239 --> 00:52:33,000
in madic and then you'll know whether your idea is

921
00:52:33,000 --> 00:52:33,960
a good one.

922
00:52:34,280 --> 00:52:37,199
Speaker 1: But that's that's a really good point because as we're

923
00:52:37,239 --> 00:52:43,360
an open source company. Yeah, and so for us, the

924
00:52:43,519 --> 00:52:48,559
currency is getting people to build on the Polygon network.

925
00:52:49,159 --> 00:52:49,519
Speaker 3: Matic.

926
00:52:49,840 --> 00:52:53,880
Speaker 1: The token itself is actually a byproduct of that. That's

927
00:52:54,000 --> 00:52:58,480
just a an exchange ticket that all of these people

928
00:52:58,480 --> 00:53:03,920
who build on top of our network use used for transactions.

929
00:53:04,480 --> 00:53:09,840
The success of Polygon itself is building a network that

930
00:53:10,199 --> 00:53:15,440
enables people to do that. So for us, revenue is

931
00:53:15,480 --> 00:53:19,039
the number of people adopting the Polygon network as their

932
00:53:19,320 --> 00:53:21,519
blockchain framework or blockchain.

933
00:53:22,079 --> 00:53:23,960
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean it is money in a way.

934
00:53:24,440 --> 00:53:29,039
Each transaction that happens is you're getting the revenue out

935
00:53:29,079 --> 00:53:33,599
of that that the number of transactions can be your revenue, right.

936
00:53:33,679 --> 00:53:37,760
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, And the actual ematic monetary mattic associated with

937
00:53:37,800 --> 00:53:43,360
that goes to the validators who Polygon is some of

938
00:53:43,400 --> 00:53:47,360
those right now, but mostly is other people. So we're

939
00:53:47,559 --> 00:53:52,280
we're even only partially affected by that, with the longer

940
00:53:52,400 --> 00:53:54,960
term goal of not having anything to do with that.

941
00:53:56,119 --> 00:53:58,519
Speaker 2: I mean, arguably it's not even necessarily relevant for you.

942
00:53:58,599 --> 00:54:01,800
I mean, that's happening outside. You're a contributor in some way,

943
00:54:01,920 --> 00:54:05,320
and so whatever that is is more important than what's

944
00:54:05,400 --> 00:54:07,519
necessarily happening in the network. I mean, well, the network

945
00:54:07,559 --> 00:54:10,840
is super critical and important for success, it may not

946
00:54:10,880 --> 00:54:13,920
be something you can directly affect, right.

947
00:54:16,960 --> 00:54:22,880
Speaker 1: Cool, So all right, closing thoughts on your end.

948
00:54:25,360 --> 00:54:28,639
Speaker 2: You know, I never met an engineering team where if

949
00:54:28,679 --> 00:54:31,800
I said, like, you know, today, you've got to do

950
00:54:31,840 --> 00:54:36,599
everything differently because it's a particular set of numbers on

951
00:54:36,639 --> 00:54:40,679
the calendar, and then actually went and made some fundamental

952
00:54:40,719 --> 00:54:44,119
changes in their process. I don't think it really works

953
00:54:44,119 --> 00:54:47,159
that way. Unfortunately, like you it's not like you change

954
00:54:47,159 --> 00:54:48,920
how you're doing code reviews. You're not all of a

955
00:54:48,960 --> 00:54:52,920
sudden more secure. You don't automatically change what you're doing,

956
00:54:53,039 --> 00:54:55,840
or maybe you add extra reviewers. You don't change the

957
00:54:56,000 --> 00:54:59,159
values of your team, the identity, or your processes just

958
00:54:59,199 --> 00:55:03,360
like that. I think preparing for this is a cultural chef.

959
00:55:03,559 --> 00:55:06,000
It's what happened throughout the whole year that got you,

960
00:55:06,280 --> 00:55:08,760
that makes you prepared for situations like this. As well

961
00:55:08,800 --> 00:55:12,199
said testing your backups, other out of band processes that

962
00:55:12,239 --> 00:55:15,199
you want to validate, or potentially building specific teams that

963
00:55:15,440 --> 00:55:19,000
have an identity that matches the execution you want. But yeah,

964
00:55:19,079 --> 00:55:22,119
telling software developers to you know, don't commit as much

965
00:55:22,159 --> 00:55:25,480
code it doesn't doesn't whole lot of water.

966
00:55:26,000 --> 00:55:27,239
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would agree with that.

967
00:55:27,719 --> 00:55:30,679
Speaker 1: I think for me, the big takeaway is it's a

968
00:55:30,679 --> 00:55:35,840
good time of year to pause, think about it, figure

969
00:55:35,840 --> 00:55:42,079
out how it applies to your situation, and then take

970
00:55:42,119 --> 00:55:44,360
action away from that may have an impact, it may

971
00:55:44,400 --> 00:55:47,000
not have an impact, but I think it's worth taking

972
00:55:47,679 --> 00:55:50,519
a moment to just stop and think about it because

973
00:55:50,519 --> 00:55:53,480
we get, you know, so focused in the day to day,

974
00:55:53,639 --> 00:55:57,559
like today, I'm focused on these tickets and here's the thing,

975
00:55:57,719 --> 00:56:00,440
And so I think the big takeawy for me is just.

976
00:56:00,519 --> 00:56:02,199
Speaker 3: The call out.

977
00:56:02,239 --> 00:56:04,440
Speaker 1: Today's ticket is to take a step back and look

978
00:56:04,480 --> 00:56:08,719
at things from an entire organizational perspective.

979
00:56:10,679 --> 00:56:12,519
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that's a really good point that

980
00:56:13,000 --> 00:56:17,159
is lost. I was reading a paper about improving based

981
00:56:17,159 --> 00:56:22,000
on training and the tickets. The standard work is sort

982
00:56:22,000 --> 00:56:25,199
of your production mode. You're doing the work, you're delivering it.

983
00:56:25,559 --> 00:56:28,280
In order to become better or even sustain yourself, you

984
00:56:28,360 --> 00:56:30,679
need a practice mode. You need to go where there's

985
00:56:31,239 --> 00:56:35,079
it's safer to learn new things even and when do

986
00:56:35,119 --> 00:56:37,519
you actually deliberately go and do that. If you don't,

987
00:56:37,559 --> 00:56:40,239
then you're going to just you're burning your ability to

988
00:56:40,280 --> 00:56:43,000
deliver effectively. And could be a good reminder that at

989
00:56:43,039 --> 00:56:45,000
the end of the year it's time to start doing

990
00:56:45,039 --> 00:56:48,800
some things deliberately that's different than your standard strategy. Actually

991
00:56:48,800 --> 00:56:50,840
thinking about how you do that work or what it is,

992
00:56:50,880 --> 00:56:54,840
and even a simple thing like validating some of your

993
00:56:54,880 --> 00:56:56,719
processes huge benefit.

994
00:56:57,519 --> 00:57:03,519
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, even if you're Yeah, maybe especially if

995
00:57:03,559 --> 00:57:07,119
you're junior in your career. It's a good training exercise

996
00:57:07,360 --> 00:57:10,280
because as you advance in your career, these things are

997
00:57:10,280 --> 00:57:13,800
going to be more relevant to your role. So it's

998
00:57:13,800 --> 00:57:17,159
a good chance to think about that and then have

999
00:57:17,239 --> 00:57:20,800
that conversation with your manager or your boss and start

1000
00:57:20,840 --> 00:57:23,360
gaining some perspective that way to help yourself.

1001
00:57:23,079 --> 00:57:24,000
Speaker 3: Later on in your career.

1002
00:57:26,880 --> 00:57:28,119
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.

1003
00:57:30,559 --> 00:57:33,280
Speaker 3: Cool. Should we do some picks?

1004
00:57:33,719 --> 00:57:34,039
Speaker 2: Yeah?

1005
00:57:34,880 --> 00:57:35,719
Speaker 3: All right? Which good?

1006
00:57:36,559 --> 00:57:39,559
Speaker 2: So I've been playing a lot of one particular game

1007
00:57:39,679 --> 00:57:43,320
since the summer Steams sale. I bought a couple, and

1008
00:57:45,239 --> 00:57:47,480
I mean, I am I just like keeping old apps

1009
00:57:47,480 --> 00:57:50,679
on my phone. I'm playing games from years ago because

1010
00:57:50,679 --> 00:57:54,159
they're cheaper, and I don't mind playing out of date content.

1011
00:57:55,000 --> 00:57:57,519
It's like thirty more years and I'll probably play Breath

1012
00:57:57,559 --> 00:58:01,480
to the Wild. Okay, So my my pick this time

1013
00:58:01,519 --> 00:58:04,440
is actually a game called frost Punk. It's the best

1014
00:58:04,440 --> 00:58:09,159
way I can describe it is it's a rts against

1015
00:58:09,440 --> 00:58:14,679
the cold weather climate, and you, instead of trying to

1016
00:58:14,719 --> 00:58:19,719
defeat an alien race or some other civilizations that are

1017
00:58:19,719 --> 00:58:21,920
out to attack you, you need to deal with the

1018
00:58:22,400 --> 00:58:27,199
temperature rapidly decreasing in a ridiculous scenario, and so as

1019
00:58:27,239 --> 00:58:30,000
a resource collection and et cetera. Except but you know,

1020
00:58:30,119 --> 00:58:32,760
civilization building, it's not not that you like you link

1021
00:58:32,760 --> 00:58:35,599
get to like six hundred people or something so good

1022
00:58:35,679 --> 00:58:38,960
number And it's not technically an RTS, but I think

1023
00:58:39,039 --> 00:58:42,079
RTS against the weather as how I'll categorize it right

1024
00:58:42,119 --> 00:58:46,760
on cool, it's good, it's really stressful. I'll say, like

1025
00:58:46,800 --> 00:58:49,199
I I will go at like actually during the day

1026
00:58:49,280 --> 00:58:51,360
because I played it into the night, you know, And

1027
00:58:51,400 --> 00:58:53,519
I'm not signed kind of person that gets stressed over things.

1028
00:58:53,559 --> 00:58:56,119
But if you ever, like worked, and you said something

1029
00:58:56,199 --> 00:58:58,400
that you felt like was stupid to your manager, and

1030
00:58:58,559 --> 00:59:00,119
or you didn't you didn't think it was stupid, but

1031
00:59:00,159 --> 00:59:02,239
then your manager said something it made you feel like

1032
00:59:02,360 --> 00:59:04,400
what you said was stupid, and then you think about

1033
00:59:04,400 --> 00:59:06,079
it all the way into the night and while you're

1034
00:59:06,079 --> 00:59:07,719
sleeping on it. Like, that's what happens to me with

1035
00:59:07,760 --> 00:59:08,280
this game.

1036
00:59:10,199 --> 00:59:11,440
Speaker 3: Gotcha, I am.

1037
00:59:12,320 --> 00:59:15,840
Speaker 1: I don't hardly play games anymore, and I do miss

1038
00:59:15,880 --> 00:59:18,519
it because I used to love playing games. But the

1039
00:59:18,599 --> 00:59:22,039
few times I've gone back to play games, like, my

1040
00:59:22,159 --> 00:59:24,599
skills are so rusty. I just suck so bad that

1041
00:59:24,639 --> 00:59:30,880
it's not even fun. The exception to that, I'll have

1042
00:59:30,960 --> 00:59:33,679
to actually make this my pick. Did you ever play

1043
00:59:33,679 --> 00:59:34,639
the half Life series?

1044
00:59:36,119 --> 00:59:37,320
Speaker 2: I did not.

1045
00:59:38,920 --> 00:59:41,199
Speaker 3: I loved the half Life series.

1046
00:59:41,320 --> 00:59:44,400
Speaker 1: That was just such a great game for me, and

1047
00:59:44,440 --> 00:59:50,239
I've got the Oculus VR headset, and so there's a

1048
00:59:50,280 --> 00:59:53,639
new relatively new this game is several years old.

1049
00:59:53,719 --> 00:59:55,760
Speaker 3: Now. There's a new addition to.

1050
00:59:55,719 --> 01:00:01,039
Speaker 1: The series called Alex that's in VR, and the game

1051
01:00:01,079 --> 01:00:04,800
mechanics of it are just so well done. When you

1052
01:00:04,840 --> 01:00:07,960
put on the headset, whenever you pick something up, you know,

1053
01:00:08,000 --> 01:00:10,599
you get the little vibration slap in there, and it's

1054
01:00:10,719 --> 01:00:13,079
very intuitive, you know, you put the headset on and

1055
01:00:13,119 --> 01:00:18,880
within like thirty seconds top, you're completely immersed in this world,

1056
01:00:19,440 --> 01:00:22,360
having tuned out the real world that it's just that

1057
01:00:22,440 --> 01:00:25,519
well done. So, wow, that was a cool game.

1058
01:00:25,960 --> 01:00:31,559
Speaker 2: So no Half Life three, but there's a subset for VR.

1059
01:00:31,719 --> 01:00:36,199
I mean, that's gotta be the biggest joke of them all.

1060
01:00:36,719 --> 01:00:40,119
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no half Life three, but there's four add

1061
01:00:40,119 --> 01:00:43,440
on expansions for Half Life two and the side quest

1062
01:00:43,559 --> 01:00:44,639
half Life Alex.

1063
01:00:45,840 --> 01:00:49,559
Speaker 2: Wow, that's that's a very ridiculous.

1064
01:00:49,880 --> 01:00:50,039
Speaker 1: You know.

1065
01:00:50,400 --> 01:00:53,800
Speaker 2: I used to play all sorts of games, many different kinds,

1066
01:00:53,840 --> 01:00:55,360
and I never really figured out what time of gamer

1067
01:00:55,400 --> 01:00:58,880
I was, And over time I realized there are certain

1068
01:00:58,920 --> 01:01:01,679
things I just don't want to feel like work, and

1069
01:01:01,719 --> 01:01:03,480
so like a lot of games I realized just became

1070
01:01:03,559 --> 01:01:08,000
work like like RPGs that are the JRPG style just

1071
01:01:08,039 --> 01:01:12,480
felt like like boss grinding, just so much work. Lots

1072
01:01:12,519 --> 01:01:15,760
of games just ended become like resource management games, just

1073
01:01:15,800 --> 01:01:17,599
like a lot of extra Like I just spent all

1074
01:01:17,679 --> 01:01:20,760
day thinking about architectures and software and then I go

1075
01:01:20,840 --> 01:01:24,480
home and I'm playing basically a game where I have

1076
01:01:24,519 --> 01:01:27,079
to do something. It's just a huge nightmare. And so

1077
01:01:27,239 --> 01:01:29,599
like trying to really narrow down the types of games

1078
01:01:29,639 --> 01:01:34,639
I play. I did play fps IS for quite a

1079
01:01:34,639 --> 01:01:36,199
long period of my life. Though.

1080
01:01:36,800 --> 01:01:40,920
Speaker 3: Yeah, I hear what you're saying on that.

1081
01:01:41,079 --> 01:01:42,880
Speaker 1: I'm the same way, Like I don't want to be

1082
01:01:43,079 --> 01:01:46,079
challenged in the game. I'm not here to level up.

1083
01:01:46,639 --> 01:01:50,159
I'm looking for more of like an interactive movie. No interesting,

1084
01:01:50,519 --> 01:01:53,000
that's my gaming style. I want to be entertained.

1085
01:01:53,679 --> 01:01:58,480
Speaker 2: If there's no plot to the game, that's like immediately

1086
01:01:58,519 --> 01:02:00,559
I don't know why I'm playing this as well be

1087
01:02:00,800 --> 01:02:03,840
playing with a fidget toy. So that's for sure number

1088
01:02:03,840 --> 01:02:06,760
one requirement. The second one is it's gotta like I

1089
01:02:06,800 --> 01:02:09,760
almost don't like combat, honestly, like it just it feels

1090
01:02:09,760 --> 01:02:13,960
so as like an extra chore. Puzzles, I like, I

1091
01:02:14,079 --> 01:02:16,239
like puzzles in a game, so like those two things

1092
01:02:16,239 --> 01:02:18,960
super important for me. But most of the other things,

1093
01:02:19,000 --> 01:02:21,320
like if I got to do the same thing over

1094
01:02:21,360 --> 01:02:24,239
and over again, I'm just it's not for me. So

1095
01:02:25,159 --> 01:02:26,559
it sort of eliminates a lot of things, like I

1096
01:02:26,559 --> 01:02:29,400
don't know how people do the rogue like games like

1097
01:02:29,440 --> 01:02:31,760
The Diabolos, which you just go into the dungeon and

1098
01:02:32,559 --> 01:02:34,639
murder a bunch of things over and over again.

1099
01:02:34,440 --> 01:02:36,280
Speaker 3: For hours time Slaughterfest.

1100
01:02:36,599 --> 01:02:38,719
Speaker 2: I mean, I've done it. You know, it's sort of

1101
01:02:38,719 --> 01:02:41,760
interesting the first couple of times, but after that, it's

1102
01:02:41,800 --> 01:02:44,840
like I've seen the story, I played the game, is there?

1103
01:02:45,400 --> 01:02:47,400
I mean, maybe this is a second ending somewhere. You know,

1104
01:02:47,480 --> 01:02:49,760
it's got to be something at the end that you get.

1105
01:02:50,519 --> 01:02:53,079
I used to be achievements driven, but after I realized, yeah,

1106
01:02:53,079 --> 01:02:54,480
it's pretty much just extra work.

1107
01:02:54,719 --> 01:02:55,840
Speaker 3: I don't get anything for it.

1108
01:02:55,920 --> 01:02:59,119
Speaker 2: Then. I mean, if a game pulled me, if I

1109
01:02:59,119 --> 01:03:02,199
get through all the achieved, they would give me like

1110
01:03:02,199 --> 01:03:05,199
like a tenth of my money back. I would totally

1111
01:03:05,239 --> 01:03:07,719
do that. I would play the game longer. I would

1112
01:03:07,719 --> 01:03:09,400
definitely play all the game through for sure.

1113
01:03:10,159 --> 01:03:11,519
Speaker 3: Yeah, would you do it?

1114
01:03:11,559 --> 01:03:19,320
Speaker 1: For like social validation achievements like you get this, you

1115
01:03:19,360 --> 01:03:23,599
get this special icon on LinkedIn or whatever.

1116
01:03:24,360 --> 01:03:28,639
Speaker 2: I did the Xbox achievements way back, a long time ago.

1117
01:03:29,519 --> 01:03:32,000
I did. I tried to do all of them. I

1118
01:03:32,079 --> 01:03:36,280
used to be a completionist, and the game that broke

1119
01:03:36,360 --> 01:03:40,280
me was Assassin's Creed. I absolutely love the game. I

1120
01:03:40,280 --> 01:03:43,639
know everyone's going to telp me. If you've ever played, oh,

1121
01:03:44,159 --> 01:03:46,639
two and three or three and four, whatever, you know,

1122
01:03:46,679 --> 01:03:49,559
the ones with scot artillery are so much better than

1123
01:03:50,000 --> 01:03:55,239
then what was his name, Desmond playing al Tayer, But

1124
01:03:55,360 --> 01:03:59,719
I'll say that much better. But there were a thousand

1125
01:03:59,800 --> 01:04:02,119
of these flags in the game. We had to go

1126
01:04:02,199 --> 01:04:04,079
around and find all of them, and there's no indication

1127
01:04:04,199 --> 01:04:07,119
of where they are or which ones you've gone. So

1128
01:04:07,360 --> 01:04:09,280
even if you know where all the flags are, you

1129
01:04:09,519 --> 01:04:11,679
have to go to every single location in this giant

1130
01:04:11,719 --> 01:04:14,119
open world in order to actually find them. And I

1131
01:04:14,320 --> 01:04:16,440
just like, after the third time of going through literally

1132
01:04:16,519 --> 01:04:18,800
the whole game, in every single place where every flag is,

1133
01:04:19,039 --> 01:04:22,280
and I still couldn't find some, I'm just like, that's it.

1134
01:04:22,880 --> 01:04:26,000
I'm done. And I realized, like, who is looking at

1135
01:04:26,039 --> 01:04:28,599
these achievements like they're a sort of for me, like,

1136
01:04:28,719 --> 01:04:30,519
I don't have like tons of friends who are like,

1137
01:04:30,960 --> 01:04:33,800
oh wow, Warren has all the achievements for all of

1138
01:04:33,880 --> 01:04:37,719
these games like social validation. I mean, what is that so.

1139
01:04:39,480 --> 01:04:43,400
Speaker 1: Supermodel sliding into your DMS? Hey, I saw your achievement there.

1140
01:04:47,079 --> 01:04:50,280
Speaker 2: I mean, if that happened, I think I'd be a

1141
01:04:50,320 --> 01:04:53,320
different person today. But so I guess it's safe to

1142
01:04:53,360 --> 01:04:55,159
say that never happened. I mean I don't know, you know,

1143
01:04:55,199 --> 01:04:57,800
I guess I wish I had lived your life will

1144
01:04:58,159 --> 01:05:00,199
where you know, that was something to look forward too.

1145
01:05:05,000 --> 01:05:06,800
Speaker 3: That keeps the voices in my head entertained.

1146
01:05:06,880 --> 01:05:09,960
Speaker 2: So that's what's important, right, Well, there are all there

1147
01:05:09,960 --> 01:05:11,079
are all all the voices.

1148
01:05:10,800 --> 01:05:19,840
Speaker 1: In your head. Sure, yeah, go with that, all right, cool, Warren,

1149
01:05:19,920 --> 01:05:22,679
thank you Free Time. It's great with you today, and

1150
01:05:23,880 --> 01:05:26,519
thank you for listening to this episode. And we'll be

1151
01:05:26,679 --> 01:05:30,440
back next week. I don't actually know what next.

1152
01:05:30,360 --> 01:05:34,719
Speaker 3: Week's topic is. I have no idea, but uh, you

1153
01:05:34,920 --> 01:05:35,840
will all be surprised.

1154
01:05:36,400 --> 01:05:39,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, thanks everyone, We'll see y'all.