Speaker 1: Well, hello, hello, and welcome back to another exciting episode
Speaker 1: of JavaScript Jabber. This is actually a continuation from the
Speaker 1: episode that you may have heard last week or I
Speaker 1: don't know how this is going to get cut, but
Speaker 1: this is actually we're still here together right now. I've
Speaker 1: got Kyle Simpson on the line, and while we were
Speaker 1: doing our warm up talk before the podcast, we got
Speaker 1: into something something spicy, and so we're gonna we're gonna
Speaker 1: cover that topic as well. So anyway, welcome back. I
Speaker 1: am a j o'nial, I am your host, and this
Speaker 1: yo yo yo coming at you live from the shed
Speaker 1: that stinks because of the flycatcher thing, my bob and
Speaker 1: uh Kyle, go ahead, and for for the for the
Speaker 1: audience that is going to be listening to this probably
Speaker 1: a week or two apart from the the last episode
Speaker 1: we just cut. Who are you? What do you do?
Speaker 1: Why are you famous? Why do you?
Speaker 2: I don't know Twitter handles, I don't know why. I
Speaker 2: don't know whether famous is the right word anymore. I
Speaker 2: think maybe more infamous infacts. In any case, I'm Kyle.
Speaker 2: A lot of people know me online as GATIFIVE been
Speaker 2: around now for most of the web. I've been doing
Speaker 2: this engineering thing for like twenty five years or more,
Speaker 2: so long time, and I'm most well known for the
Speaker 2: you Don't Know JS books and those were published in
Speaker 2: the last decade or so, two editions six books each,
Speaker 2: or six books in the first edition and then kind
Speaker 2: of like up in the air, how many books for
Speaker 2: the second edition. But anyway, the you Don't Know JS
Speaker 2: books are how most people know me. That's spun awful
Speaker 2: whole series of courses that I've done on front end masters,
Speaker 2: corporate trainings and conferences, so that's all a lot of
Speaker 2: people out there will probably know me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that you're one of the certainly one
Speaker 1: of the bigger names in the industry. So I think
Speaker 1: I think you're famous. You're famous.
Speaker 2: Well, I appreciate it, and.
Speaker 1: I always love, uh, you know, I've I've always loved
Speaker 1: when you give presentations or or I think we've had
Speaker 1: you on the podcast a couple of times. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: think I disagree with a lot of what you have
Speaker 1: to say, but I learn and sometimes I come around
Speaker 1: to your way of thinking. So I I just I
Speaker 1: think you have been a great educator and I hope
Speaker 1: you continue to do so. All right, So with that
Speaker 1: out of the way. So the spicy bit I I'm
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna say this plainly. I'm not gonna sugarcoat
Speaker 1: it because I think I think that between you and
Speaker 1: I and the people watching, I think that's gonna be right.
Speaker 1: I have noticed over probably the last six months your
Speaker 1: your tweets have gone from being things that were felt
Speaker 1: more positive, more energetic, to a lot of tweets coming
Speaker 1: through that have a really bitter tone to them. And
Speaker 1: I am curious as to what's going on. I was
Speaker 1: saying before, I think that some of it's resonating with
Speaker 1: an industry problem. It's not just like you're having a
Speaker 1: personal thing in your life and it's making you better,
Speaker 1: although I think that there might be something there, but
Speaker 1: there's some sort of industry problem that's going on that's
Speaker 1: reflected in this. So do you agree that, especially in
Speaker 1: the last six months, you have had become a little
Speaker 1: bit bitter and why.
Speaker 2: I very much agree, except for the timeframe I would
Speaker 2: say is longer than that. I would say it's at
Speaker 2: least twelve months, And if we really kind of zoomed out,
Speaker 2: we might say that the way that I've approached social
Speaker 2: media has really changed quite a bit over the last
Speaker 2: two to four years. But I'll say that in the
Speaker 2: most immediate sense, I am absolutely dealing with a significant
Speaker 2: amount of i'll call it personal enemus frustration. One of
Speaker 2: the biggest reasons for that is that I have now
Speaker 2: been unemployed for a full year. And it's not for
Speaker 2: lack of trying. I've done a lot of applying and
Speaker 2: some interviewing and a whole lot of effort. I have
Speaker 2: been able to find a place. And you know, there's
Speaker 2: going to be a lot of different reasons why that's
Speaker 2: the case. I'm not going to try to come on
Speaker 2: here and shift the blame onto everybody else. I own
Speaker 2: a lot of that with particular I with with particular
Speaker 2: respect to the tone I've had some i'll call it
Speaker 2: love hate relationship with social media for quite a while,
Speaker 2: going back at least several years. And part of the
Speaker 2: reason for that is because because of the success that
Speaker 2: I had in building a bit of a long tail
Speaker 2: following around my takes on JavaScript and trying to encourage
Speaker 2: people to learn it, and I am regularly seen as
Speaker 2: someone who kind of challenges the status quo and pushes
Speaker 2: back and asks more challenging questions, and I think that's
Speaker 2: resonated with quite a few folks. I hope that people
Speaker 2: have felt empowered to own why they feel a certain way.
Speaker 2: That's certainly always been my mission. But I didn't make
Speaker 2: a lot of friends along the way, is the point
Speaker 2: I'm trying to make. I've made a name for myself
Speaker 2: by being willing to be disagreeable and what I hope
Speaker 2: has still been productive ways. But I made a name
Speaker 2: for that by being a bit more divisive or churning,
Speaker 2: you know, stirring the pot, whatever kind of metaphor you
Speaker 2: want to use, and that I did not recognize and
Speaker 2: probably should have, but I did not recognize the cost
Speaker 2: of building my brand that way, and I didn't even
Speaker 2: think of it as building a brand at the time.
Speaker 2: But over the last fifteen or whatever years of my
Speaker 2: public persona, I built a brand around this guy who
Speaker 2: comes up with these hot takes on JavaScript and is,
Speaker 2: you know, challenging the status quo and is a little
Speaker 2: bit maybe cantankerous at times, and gray beard and old
Speaker 2: school and any of those other terms. And I also,
Speaker 2: because of that large following, because I'm a human and
Speaker 2: I have an ego, I enjoyed the fact that I
Speaker 2: had you know, eighty whatever thousand followers, and that when
Speaker 2: I had something to say, people listened. They didn't always agree,
Speaker 2: in fact, probably mostly didn't agree, but at least they listened.
Speaker 2: I had a megaphone that I could speak through, as
Speaker 2: opposed to if I just had a little personal Twitter
Speaker 2: account somewhere with you know, seven followers, and half of
Speaker 2: them were my family. That's not much of a megaphone
Speaker 2: to make, you know, a difference if I have a thought.
Speaker 2: So over the last several years, I increasingly started sharing
Speaker 2: thoughts at times that didn't have anything to do with
Speaker 2: my technological perspective, whether they were about politics or religion
Speaker 2: or their social issues. As a person, I was willing
Speaker 2: to kind of share my personal views on things, and
Speaker 2: I was doing so through this megaphone that had been
Speaker 2: built around the brand of JavaScript. You know, questioner, I'll
Speaker 2: call it. I didn't realize that that was going to
Speaker 2: be taken so poorly, and I pushed back a lot
Speaker 2: on people who would try to tone you know, they
Speaker 2: try to police what I'd say, and they'd say things like,
Speaker 2: you know, stick to the JavaScript. We don't want to
Speaker 2: hear what you have to say. About you know, politics
Speaker 2: or whatever, and I pushed back on that. I still
Speaker 2: feel like it should have been my right to be
Speaker 2: whoever I wanted to be with my own online persona.
Speaker 2: But what I didn't appreciate at the time is how
Speaker 2: many people had come along for the ride only because
Speaker 2: of what they liked about what I had to say
Speaker 2: with JavaScript and technology, and so I kind of I
Speaker 2: sort of broken unspoken contract in doing that by trying
Speaker 2: to become something more than the JavaScript guy and talk
Speaker 2: about other things. It really created some strong frustration in folks,
Speaker 2: and I didn't appreciate just how tangible that would be.
Speaker 2: So there were a couple of different instances over the
Speaker 2: last several years where I ended up creating a pretty
Speaker 2: significant storm of frustration and controversy over one of my
Speaker 2: over something that wouldn't necessarily have been about JavaScript. One
Speaker 2: of them was on my views on healthcare and health insurance.
Speaker 2: I have some very personal and real experiences with that
Speaker 2: that are difficult. And another one was on probably the
Speaker 2: most recent a year or two back, was on what
Speaker 2: I thought we should do to change how we onboard
Speaker 2: engineers into being new engineers on teams and into the industry.
Speaker 2: I had thoughts about that, and in both of those cases,
Speaker 2: I believe that I was significantly misunderstood in what I said.
Speaker 2: But I'm not here to defend myself because the damage
Speaker 2: has already been done. But there was a lot of
Speaker 2: people that got really mad at what I said. They
Speaker 2: took it in ways that were very much not what
Speaker 2: I intended, and went with it. The most recent round
Speaker 2: involved a significant push to boycott my courses and books,
Speaker 2: to try to tell people that I should never be
Speaker 2: employed in the industry again, and literal personal threats of
Speaker 2: harm and direct messages that other people have experienced I
Speaker 2: experienced it to And because of those periods of time
Speaker 2: and other smaller periods in between where I get really frustrated,
Speaker 2: I'll kind of like take a break from social media,
Speaker 2: hoping that I can kind of clear my head, and
Speaker 2: then I come back in a week or a month
Speaker 2: or sometimes much longer, and I try to pick up
Speaker 2: where I left off and maybe have a better reflection
Speaker 2: on how I've been. But one thing in this most
Speaker 2: recent in a most recent kind of kerfuffle, was somebody
Speaker 2: said to me on one of it was a LinkedIn post.
Speaker 2: Somebody said to me, you know, you're very logical, and
Speaker 2: you're defending your points well, and you're making your points
Speaker 2: well here, but what you're missing is that you're just
Speaker 2: not kind. And I took quite a bit of time
Speaker 2: to reflect upon that assertion, and I think that person
Speaker 2: is absolutely right. I don't think I'm very a very
Speaker 2: kind person. And I actually dug into this with my therapist.
Speaker 2: I see a therapist, and I like normalizing those things.
Speaker 2: I think it's helpful for people. I see a therapist,
Speaker 2: and I went to my therapist and I talked with
Speaker 2: them about this, and what I can say is that
Speaker 2: because of some quirks of the way my personality works,
Speaker 2: kindness is not actually a priority of mine, which is
Speaker 2: why I'm not kind. There are things that I think
Speaker 2: are much more important. In one of those is the
Speaker 2: authenticity of being the same person in every situation in conversation,
Speaker 2: every person I interact with, I want for them to
Speaker 2: come away thinking that's the same guy as he was
Speaker 2: over here, and he was over here, and he was
Speaker 2: in his book and he was in this conference. I
Speaker 2: want to be that. That's one of my core psychological drivers.
Speaker 2: But it's really messy how this plays out in social media.
Speaker 2: So when you see my frustration around my lack of employment,
Speaker 2: see my frustration around decisions that I made along the
Speaker 2: way that I didn't realize We're going to box me
Speaker 2: in later, when you see my frustration around how I'm
Speaker 2: so regularly mistaken, how there can be people that really
Speaker 2: believe in what I'm trying to do, And then there
Speaker 2: are other people out there, probably not listening to this episode,
Speaker 2: but there are other people out there who are really
Speaker 2: really strong Getify haters, they're really strong detractors. And I
Speaker 2: get web notifications or people will tell me about threads
Speaker 2: that just randomly spin up on somewhere on a Reddit,
Speaker 2: or there's dozens of them that I get screenshots of
Speaker 2: private discord chats, and people just really like to talk
Speaker 2: a lot of crap about me, and I've upset a
Speaker 2: lot of people. I never One thing I would like
Speaker 2: to say in my defense is to say that I
Speaker 2: do not insult people. I do not make my points
Speaker 2: by way of trying to attack the person and demean
Speaker 2: the person and condescend the person. I have some very
Speaker 2: strong opinions of what I feel, and I'm trying to
Speaker 2: avidly portray what I feel when I'm in these conversations
Speaker 2: and social media or whatever. I take up the case
Speaker 2: strongly and passionately, but most people that I engage with
Speaker 2: in these negative fashions don't have that same line. They
Speaker 2: very quickly turn to attacking me as a person attacking,
Speaker 2: you know, calling a troll, telling me that I'm you know,
Speaker 2: a bad influence. I've been told many times you should
Speaker 2: be unemployed. You don't deserve to have a job.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Oh that's tough, right, And I own that. I've created
Speaker 2: a lot of controversy around myself. I'm a lightning rod.
Speaker 2: I own that. But I do think that you won't
Speaker 2: go back and you won't find examples of me saying
Speaker 2: things like hurtful things like that to other people, because
Speaker 2: I'm just that's not in my nature to attack people.
Speaker 2: I disagree a lot, and I have some strong feelings
Speaker 2: about some people, but it's not in my nature to
Speaker 2: go after people's personal ethics and morals in that way
Speaker 2: the way that I've feeled a lot of that. So
Speaker 2: I guess this was a very long winded way of
Speaker 2: saying the increasingly negative tone you're hearing from me and
Speaker 2: a lot of social media, especially Twitter, but even it's
Speaker 2: crept int LinkedIn and people have said it there too.
Speaker 2: Now that negativity is coming because I'm not really in
Speaker 2: a great place, if I'm being honest, I'm pretty frustrated
Speaker 2: about where the industry is, where it's headed. I'm frustrated
Speaker 2: personally about how it left me. I don't have a
Speaker 2: place really, or I don't feel like I have a place,
Speaker 2: and how I felt like I really spent my career
Speaker 2: trying to keep us from getting here, and we still
Speaker 2: got here, and then you mix in all the other stuff,
Speaker 2: Like I'm just it's difficult for me. I consider being
Speaker 2: logical and rational to be the most respectful thing that
Speaker 2: I could ever do with somebody I engage with. That's
Speaker 2: the way, That's part of how I'm wired. But I
Speaker 2: think most people experience that as meanness, as rudeness, as
Speaker 2: being too curt and too dismissive. And so I know
Speaker 2: that there's a lot of people, and maybe a few
Speaker 2: of them are listening. I know there's a lot of
Speaker 2: people out there that feel like I've ruffled feathers over
Speaker 2: the years on that, and I just want to say
Speaker 2: it was never ever my intention to personally demean or
Speaker 2: attack a person. I've always tried to stick to the topic.
Speaker 1: I hear you there. I'm not a kind person. I
Speaker 1: don't aspire to be a kind person. I think that
Speaker 1: there's nuance to how to say this, but kindness is
Speaker 1: a form of manipulation, as opposed to or sorry, I
Speaker 1: actually said that wrong. I distinguished between nice and kind.
Speaker 1: Nice is a form of manipulation. Kind is a form
Speaker 1: of authenticity. And the way that you were speaking, I
Speaker 1: was interpreting as people want you to be nice, but
Speaker 1: I think that it is in fact kind to confront
Speaker 1: and I feel very comfortab when like this is this
Speaker 1: is a frustration I have. I will get into arguments
Speaker 1: with someone, a heated argument, and walk away thinking, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't like them as a person, but I respect
Speaker 1: them for their knowledge, and when I have that problem,
Speaker 1: I want them on my team. And I wish that
Speaker 1: more people were that way. I have had frenemies become
Speaker 1: friends because we were arguing about something and we could
Speaker 1: call each other d bags or whatever. You know, we
Speaker 1: could do a little bit of name calling, and but
Speaker 1: we could walk away having learned like, Okay, this person's
Speaker 1: actually really smarter at this, and they've got some opinions.
Speaker 1: I don't agree with but but yeah, I want them
Speaker 1: on my team if I'm doing X, because I can
Speaker 1: tell they know X. And there's there's I mean, it's
Speaker 1: not like hundreds of people, but there's a handful of
Speaker 1: people that, over the course of my career that I
Speaker 1: have gone back to, and you know, the friendship. Like
Speaker 1: first it was the fighting or the argument, like the
Speaker 1: you know, like the two cats that just like something
Speaker 1: about you I don't like, Like I don't even have
Speaker 1: a reason to, I just don't like it. And then
Speaker 1: that turning into a that that turning into but I
Speaker 1: respect you, and that turning into Okay, well let's actually
Speaker 1: work together on this project where you're obviously better, and
Speaker 1: that turning into friendship. And I wish that that was
Speaker 1: the norm. I think that was the whole idea behind.
Speaker 1: You know, if you can't beat them, join them when
Speaker 1: when somebody's bested you, when they've defeated your arguments, when
Speaker 1: they've when they've made you look bad because you were wrong,
Speaker 1: to be able to go back and say, but dang,
Speaker 1: do I want to have you on my team for
Speaker 1: this project? So I don't know is that does that
Speaker 1: resonate with any of what you were saying or feeling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, parts of it, for sure. The the cheesy way
Speaker 2: of saying it is to disagree without being disagreeable. And
Speaker 2: I think that last part I've got a lot of
Speaker 2: work that I could still improve on, because I think
Speaker 2: that the intent that I have in what I'm saying
Speaker 2: versus the way that I'm experienced by others, there's a
Speaker 2: wide gap there. And I literally struggle with this all
Speaker 2: day every day. Why is there such a wide gap?
Speaker 2: Why don't people experience me the way that I'm intending
Speaker 2: to come across? And so I believe that there's a
Speaker 2: lot of people that have been turned off to what
Speaker 2: otherwise could have been, you know, useful disagreement and collaboration
Speaker 2: because they've been really unhappy with the disagreeable way of
Speaker 2: me doing things, whether that's being too you know, me
Speaker 2: being too quick to respond to something I experience on
Speaker 2: a regular basis, feeling like the rest of the world
Speaker 2: is going in slow motion compared to me. I don't
Speaker 2: know if anybody else feels that way, but in any
Speaker 2: sort of conversations or debates, I feel very much like
Speaker 2: because I spend so much time in my own head
Speaker 2: thinking about things, I already know exactly why I feel
Speaker 2: the way that I do right or wong. I have
Speaker 2: lots of deep reasons behind it, and the rest of
Speaker 2: the world is just so slow motion compared to that
Speaker 2: and can't understand. And I can't even get them to
Speaker 2: listen to me long enough for me to articulate why
Speaker 2: I feel that way. But I hear when you know
Speaker 2: that that old adage of like strong opinions loosely held
Speaker 2: or whatever. I've never understood or been able to agree
Speaker 2: with that, partly because if an opinion is loosely held
Speaker 2: to me, that means that one statement to the contrary
Speaker 2: might you might throw up the whole opinion right, just
Speaker 2: like one new fact, and you might completely flop. And
Speaker 2: I'm not going to share an opinion on something until
Speaker 2: I have a mountain of reasons for why I feel
Speaker 2: that way, because I've already spent hours or days or
Speaker 2: weeks in my head about it. I don't even share
Speaker 2: opinions on things unless I've already spent that time. I
Speaker 2: do appreciate when somebody comes along with a mountain of
Speaker 2: counter evidence. I really enjoy that, and I have actually
Speaker 2: changed opinions. I know there's people out there that are like, no,
Speaker 2: he's never changed an opinion I have. But it's rare, Believe,
Speaker 2: it's rare. I rarely find people willing to defend their
Speaker 2: reasoning to the same level of rigor as I've got
Speaker 2: driving what I feel about something, and so that creates
Speaker 2: a real imbalance, and I think that is where a
Speaker 2: lot of the static comes. Is this imbalance that I'm
Speaker 2: coming to the fight already prepared with a bunch of stuff.
Speaker 2: This person feels that way, and I'm not invalidating that
Speaker 2: they that they feel the way they do. That's you're
Speaker 2: You're entitled to your own opinion, but if you're going
Speaker 2: to try to convince me, you've got to bring the
Speaker 2: same amount of counter evidence. That's how I've always taken it.
Speaker 2: So I've probably missed out on a lot of what
Speaker 2: you've you know, what you were saying about, the opportunities
Speaker 2: that you've had to kind of in retrospect go back
Speaker 2: and rebuild a bridge and all of that. I've missed
Speaker 2: out on a lot of that.
Speaker 1: Well, for me, that's been in person. That's that hasn't
Speaker 1: been over Twitter. That's been you know, somebody that I
Speaker 1: went to school with, somebody that I lived in the
Speaker 1: same apartment complexes. You know that those have been situations
Speaker 1: where I've actually had real interaction with the person and
Speaker 1: some proximity to them. I've I don't think I've ever Okay,
Speaker 1: so I think enough time has passed and it's well established,
Speaker 1: I can I can talk about this. So we had
Speaker 1: Jake Archibald on and I was not prepared. I did
Speaker 1: not know who he was. Uh, we had We've switched
Speaker 1: meeting booking systems a few times on JavaScript jabber, and
Speaker 1: we had done that recently within the last month or two,
Speaker 1: and it was still a problem where like the emails
Speaker 1: wouldn't get sent, and so it's like, Okay, I don't
Speaker 1: know what I'm doing this week, Chuck was out sick
Speaker 1: or something, I mean, and and so we were having
Speaker 1: this conversation and I was I thought I didn't. I
Speaker 1: also didn't really understand British culture. It's much more high
Speaker 1: context compared to American culture, meaning that like you have
Speaker 1: to there's rules that you have to know that are
Speaker 1: beyond what the words that are said that come out
Speaker 1: of the mouth, and that that relationship. I don't I
Speaker 1: don't think I'll ever be able to salvage and and
Speaker 1: I still respect him hugely for the work that he does.
Speaker 1: Like I've used some of his stuff, I read his
Speaker 1: blog articles, I'll retweet him. You know. We still every
Speaker 1: once in a while get into a little something. I
Speaker 1: didn't even leave because I'll go on a thread that's
Speaker 1: like six years old for some web standard and just
Speaker 1: post and you know, and admittedly inflammatory comment because I
Speaker 1: want to get the conversation started again. It's like, okay,
Speaker 1: like this, this has been six years now. And then
Speaker 1: there's other people you knew, you could see, like you know,
Speaker 1: eight months ago or fifteen months ago, you know, somebody
Speaker 1: did the same thing, and uh, and I didn't even
Speaker 1: he responded to something because apparently he's part of some
Speaker 1: web standards body or whatever that I commented on, and
Speaker 1: I even I mean, look, I but like, you know,
Speaker 1: so that's that's my one big experience with somebody online
Speaker 1: where like I respect him, I respect that he has
Speaker 1: knowledge that I don't have. I wish that it were
Speaker 1: the other way around as well. I think that my
Speaker 1: senses that what he came away with was that that
Speaker 1: I have no idea what I'm talking about whatsoever, and
Speaker 1: that my my opinions were completely invalid. That's that's the
Speaker 1: way it came around to me because I was I
Speaker 1: was like, you know, I was being aggressive in questioning
Speaker 1: and pushing back on what he was saying, because you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of stuff people say and it's like
Speaker 1: it's dogma. They say it because they say it. It's
Speaker 1: not because that they know that the truth behind it,
Speaker 1: or they're looking at it from one particular perspective, you know.
Speaker 1: But a lot of the stuff with the Web Standers
Speaker 1: committees in particular, I get so frustrated because these people
Speaker 1: are web developers, a lot of them. You know, they
Speaker 1: spend their time in system programming languages, and they're making
Speaker 1: decisions on JavaScript, which you know, huge props being smarter
Speaker 1: than the average JavaScript dev. But you need to walk
Speaker 1: in our shoes for a little bit before you ratify
Speaker 1: that standard because like we have to live with those decisions,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I've had I've had my ups and downs
Speaker 2: with Jake. I would say I'm in a similar place
Speaker 2: where I respect a lot of what he's built. I
Speaker 2: mean I talked on the previous episode about I used
Speaker 2: one of the libraries that he built. I respect him
Speaker 2: and I appreciate the things that he's done. He and
Speaker 2: I don't likely have a salvageable personal relationship for a
Speaker 2: variety of reasons, but he's not the only ones I
Speaker 2: don't want to spend my time focusing on him. The
Speaker 2: experience that you just described with standards has largely largely
Speaker 2: tracked with my experience going back to the early two
Speaker 2: thousands when I was first starting to get my head
Speaker 2: around JavaScript and trying to carve out a space where
Speaker 2: that was not an accepted thing. There were not jobs
Speaker 2: for JavaScript experts at the time, and I was trying
Speaker 2: to do so, and I naturally gravitated to trying to
Speaker 2: participate in TC thirty nine discussion emails, you know, email threads,
Speaker 2: and I was shot down so harshly, so many times
Speaker 2: that part of the reason I actually ended up writing
Speaker 2: the you Don't Know JS books, And part of the
Speaker 2: reason for that title it's, you know, it's a big
Speaker 2: complex layer of meaning behind that book and that that title.
Speaker 2: But part of it is because I was told so
Speaker 2: many times in both literal terms, and you know, implicitly figuratively,
Speaker 2: you don't know enough JavaScript to be here, You don't
Speaker 2: know enough of our terms. You don't know if enough
Speaker 2: of our You're not up to the bar that we need.
Speaker 2: And I desperately wanted to be good enough to ask questions,
Speaker 2: to propose ideas, And to this day I desperately wish
Speaker 2: that I was good enough to be taken seriously by
Speaker 2: anyone in TC thirty nine for that matter.
Speaker 1: I've I think that's a lost cause. Honestly, look the
Speaker 1: message through. You can't. It's political. It's one hundred percent political.
Speaker 1: It's not technical, it's not reason, it's not logic. Sorry, sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna cut you off here because this is one
Speaker 1: that just inflames me. Rejex dot escape. You read the
Speaker 1: message thread and it's couched. It's couched. So so like
Speaker 1: due to the great respect that we have for so
Speaker 1: and so and owing to his experience, we have carefully
Speaker 1: considered and decided to pursue other avenues for the time
Speaker 1: being with you know, and it's like, no cut the BS.
Speaker 1: Tell the dude, look like I don't care that you're
Speaker 1: one hundred years old. I don't care that you're one
Speaker 1: of the best D plus plus developers has ever lived.
Speaker 1: You're wrong, like you're wrong, like everybody knows it everybody
Speaker 1: knows we need rejex dot escape. There's somebody that people
Speaker 1: want to please standing in the way, and nobody has
Speaker 1: the courage. Everybody needs to be respectful. Nobody has the
Speaker 1: courage to say, look, this is a technical decision. Your
Speaker 1: emotions are getting in the way. It's five against six
Speaker 1: or five against one, and we're we're putting this through.
Speaker 1: But the other thing with that is I've been on
Speaker 1: another standard's body, very short lived. I only went to
Speaker 1: two sessions. I couldn't stomach it. It was an IoT
Speaker 1: standards body. And uh, I mean the guy who was
Speaker 1: leading the thing, he took me aside and he's like, look,
Speaker 1: because you're new here, I'm going to school you on
Speaker 1: some things. This is so and so. He works for Cisco.
Speaker 1: His objective is that Cisco wants a patent on this.
Speaker 1: They're not going to do anything unless their patent is
Speaker 1: represented in this standard. This is so and so, and
Speaker 1: it may not have been Cisco, so don't don't. I'm
Speaker 1: just throwing some names out there, like you know, this
Speaker 1: is so and so. He's from the Google team, and
Speaker 1: his objective is that he doesn't want Cisco to have
Speaker 1: you know, any advancement whatsoever. He's going to try to
Speaker 1: block the patent being used whatsoever. And like here's so
Speaker 1: and so, and he kind of gave me the lay
Speaker 1: of land. Like we had this, you know, this this
Speaker 1: back room conversation where he gave me the lay of
Speaker 1: the land and basically explained why no progress was going
Speaker 1: to be made and that if any decisions were made,
Speaker 1: they weren't going to be the ones that benefited the
Speaker 1: people that the standard went to. Now, he didn't say
Speaker 1: like that because he was optimistic, because he had done
Speaker 1: this for years. He was good at politicking. He knew
Speaker 1: that the incremental gains, like just getting one good part
Speaker 1: of a standard through was worth the politicking. I can't
Speaker 1: stomach it. So sorry, sorry, sorry, not sorry for cutting
Speaker 1: off there, but like I just I can't give these
Speaker 1: TC thirty nine people any excuse because because I don't
Speaker 1: have that in my heart, I don't understand the politicking.
Speaker 1: It's not something I'm good at. And when there's something
Speaker 1: that is so obviously the right thing to do, and
Speaker 1: somebody says, well, the Rejack escape function won't escape strings
Speaker 1: that haven't been escaped, so we can't have a Regick
Speaker 1: escape function, Instead, we're going to continue to have people
Speaker 1: download it from NPM or copy it from stack overflow.
Speaker 1: Like I just I can't do it. I don't have
Speaker 1: it in me. I'm not that good of a person.
Speaker 2: I could fill up many, many hours of the podcast
Speaker 2: talking about dozens and dozens of battles that I've gotten
Speaker 2: embroiled in on topics like that. I wasn't involved in
Speaker 2: Regick's escape, but there's dozens of others, from Global This
Speaker 2: to records and twop syntax to one hundred others. I
Speaker 2: will say, for anybody that's listening, I do believe there's
Speaker 2: quite a few people on TC thirty nine. It's not
Speaker 2: one body with one view, it's hundreds of people. And
Speaker 2: I do believe there's quite a few people on TC
Speaker 2: thirty nine that really do have the best interests of
Speaker 2: JavaScript and really don't like and don't want to devolve
Speaker 2: into all the politicking and pr battle. I think there's
Speaker 2: quite a few people there. Unfortunately, the body doesn't work
Speaker 2: according to that tone from my experience, because there are
Speaker 2: others who have been there a long time and who
Speaker 2: have a lot of influence in other ways. But we
Speaker 2: should be very careful. I think not to paint TC
Speaker 2: thirty nine as a whole, because there's hundreds of different
Speaker 2: people and they are on a spectrum of what they
Speaker 2: are bringing to the table and what their biases are
Speaker 2: and their backgrounds and all of that. I just personally
Speaker 2: wish that I had ever been seen as a peer
Speaker 2: among that group. Not that I was like literally like
Speaker 2: had a seed on TC thirty nine. I just wish
Speaker 2: that I had ever earned the right to be respected
Speaker 2: among that group. And the vast majority of my interactions
Speaker 2: have always treated me like I'm an outsider that's bringing
Speaker 2: an unwelcome amount of noise to what they would prefer
Speaker 2: to just be their own process. And I'm you know,
Speaker 2: I wish, But TC thirty nine is not the only
Speaker 2: standards body that I've had that kind of experience with.
Speaker 2: It just I've had more of that experience because I've
Speaker 2: cared about JavaScript for so long.
Speaker 1: And I apologize if I'm miss it sounds like I'm misrepresenting,
Speaker 1: but like, when I come into these issues, it's the
Speaker 1: same people, it's like the same user handles across the
Speaker 1: various issues that I'm seeing that are holding back progress,
Speaker 1: and so from my perspective, and then hearing when Douglas
Speaker 1: Crawford used to talk about it. You know, so just
Speaker 1: like my perspective is is just I'm I'm not I'm
Speaker 1: not seeing the heroes I'm seeing. Pardon my French. No,
Speaker 1: I'm not even gonna say that. You know what I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: But well you aren't. You may be not seeing them.
Speaker 2: But I just want to say I believe that they're there,
Speaker 2: but they aren't. I'm so little on the GitHub discussion threads.
Speaker 2: They aren't the ones who triange issues. They aren't the
Speaker 2: ones who try to who create ostensibly welcoming experiences from
Speaker 2: those not on the body. And I wish that were
Speaker 2: the case. I wish there was a tone that wanted that,
Speaker 2: but I think for many many reasons, I don't really
Speaker 2: think they want that as a body. I don't think
Speaker 2: they really want it. They operate on GitHub as if
Speaker 2: they want it, but I think they would really prefer
Speaker 2: to kind of do their thing themselves. So I've largely
Speaker 2: tried to step out of any discussion around TC thirty
Speaker 2: nine and around JavaScript, and I've stopped making my complaints
Speaker 2: about the language. And I mean even I even went
Speaker 2: so far as instead of I need to evolve to
Speaker 2: your point, instead of trying to change to change JavaScript,
Speaker 2: and instead of just complaining about JavaScript, I actually designed
Speaker 2: a whole programming language that has some of my ideas
Speaker 2: about what I wish, a programming language where, whether people
Speaker 2: like it or not, I just I wanted to be
Speaker 2: I wanted to do something productive instead of simply saying
Speaker 2: I don't like what JavaScript's doing. So I hope that
Speaker 2: you know, maybe somebody's listening and maybe they can find
Speaker 2: others that they can be more welcoming to. But my
Speaker 2: experience over fifteen or twenty years has not been very
Speaker 2: welcoming unfortunately.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: I don't know how you feel about these things, and
Speaker 1: we can we can have different opinions. But this is
Speaker 1: one of the reasons I hate COCs, because I learned
Speaker 1: very early on that a coc is not for inclusivity.
Speaker 1: It is for exclusivity. Coocs are to be able to
Speaker 1: use broad brushes to target wrong thinkers and silence them.
Speaker 1: They are not to help people have a better experience.
Speaker 1: And you know, simple programmer, I think he went through
Speaker 1: a similar experience as to some of what you were
Speaker 1: talking about earlier. But it seems like he came out
Speaker 1: on top like he had some books dropped from his
Speaker 1: publisher and and you know, Chuck had something similar happened,
Speaker 1: which I mean the Chuck situation. Chuck was an innocent bystander.
Speaker 1: He literally was just saying, Hey, I'll host the pod
Speaker 1: cast and let you to talk about it. And that
Speaker 1: got him like lost bunches of sponsors, bunches of people
Speaker 1: that were going to come on the show, and all
Speaker 1: the I mean, he did nothing in my view, and
Speaker 1: I tried to see because I'll be fair. If I
Speaker 1: think he did something wrong, I'll say it. But he
Speaker 1: had like the most generous take in the world of hey,
Speaker 1: I don't know what's going on. I would love to
Speaker 1: have both of you on a podcast to talk about it.
Speaker 1: And that got him banned from conferences, dropped advertisers. It
Speaker 1: was insane. That was the first time that that was
Speaker 1: before cancel culture was even the buzzword that it is today.
Speaker 1: It was it was still something where it's like, now
Speaker 1: that's not real or you know it's but yeah, it
Speaker 1: seems like when that happened, I I'm not sure why
Speaker 1: Amy didn't come back on the show. I know that
Speaker 1: some of it is because she's busy, but I have
Speaker 1: to wonder if some of it was not due to
Speaker 1: online harassment, because there was some that went on that
Speaker 1: was uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: And yeah, so I'll say, just since you brought up
Speaker 2: codes of conduct, I personally do feel like there is
Speaker 2: merit to codes of conduct, but the implementation of them
Speaker 2: and the enforcement of them is pretty flawed in my experience,
Speaker 2: and that I find frustrating. I think, on the whole,
Speaker 2: our industry is probably better with them than without them,
Speaker 2: but that doesn't that doesn't for clothes that I think
Speaker 2: there's some pretty strong flaws with them. I personally experienced
Speaker 2: the negative side of that code of conduct enforcement at
Speaker 2: a conference that I was supposed to be a speaker
Speaker 2: at and I had a talk that had that I
Speaker 2: had given it other conferences successfully, and I was scheduled
Speaker 2: to give that talk at that conference. One of the
Speaker 2: marketers for that conference wrote an ad that made an
Speaker 2: inappropriate joke about the title of my talk. That they
Speaker 2: made an inappropriate pun from the title of my talk.
Speaker 2: That was an outside marketer or advertiser or something. Nobody
Speaker 2: cleared it with me. I didn't know what was happening,
Speaker 2: but happened that ad offended a bunch of people, and
Speaker 2: those people got turned their attention to me in my
Speaker 2: talk title, and they made a claim that my talk
Speaker 2: title was a violation of the code of conduct because
Speaker 2: of what that market or advertiser did. The conference organizer
Speaker 2: and I had some long drawn out conversations about it.
Speaker 2: He was begging me to Chane change the talk title,
Speaker 2: and on principle, I really felt like I wasn't going
Speaker 2: to change it because I felt like that was not
Speaker 2: at all the intent of the talk title, and I
Speaker 2: didn't feel like it was fair to compromise on that.
Speaker 2: In the end, that conference I organizer basically dropped me
Speaker 2: as a speaker. He said, well, if you won't change
Speaker 2: the title, then we can't have you speak because one
Speaker 2: of our sponsor companies, a big sponsor company, is going
Speaker 2: to back out if you speak. So they dropped me
Speaker 2: from the program. And one of the things that frustrates
Speaker 2: me about that scenario, it's not like, oh man, I
Speaker 2: got deplatformed. I mean it was one conference. I've given
Speaker 2: hundreds of conference talks. But what frustrated me about that
Speaker 2: situation was literally hundred part I've literally given like over
Speaker 2: two hundred conference talks. Yeah, wow, had I did not
Speaker 2: realize I've done. I've been speaking forever. I've had plenty
Speaker 2: of opportunities on the stage, is my point. I'm not
Speaker 2: trying to brag or something, but I've had plenty of opportunities.
Speaker 2: It's not like I don't somehow like canceled or dy platforms.
Speaker 2: But the Code of Conduct is supposed to protect everybody equally,
Speaker 2: but in its implementation it ends up unequally protecting some
Speaker 2: folks at the disadvantage of other folks. That's unfortunate. I
Speaker 2: should have been just as protected from an unfair claim
Speaker 2: against me as the people who had every legitimate right
Speaker 2: to feel their complaint about my talk title and feeling
Speaker 2: offended by my top title. We both should have been
Speaker 2: equally protected. But in that case, basically the sponsor dollars
Speaker 2: one that organizer said, I got to take the sponsor
Speaker 2: dollars and I got to kick you out.
Speaker 1: That sucks.
Speaker 2: And so I've seen codes of conduct go well, and
Speaker 2: I've seen them go poorly, and I think that's a
Speaker 2: case where they went poorly and was unfortunate.
Speaker 1: I don't think i've ever seen them go well. I
Speaker 1: much prefer if you act like a douche. Then you
Speaker 1: just lose respect and people don't don't take you as seriously,
Speaker 1: maybe you won't get invited back. I think that just
Speaker 1: natural consequences, because the whole idea of the COC is, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're going to point out, draw attention to
Speaker 1: and have a formal process to not call you a douche.
Speaker 1: Like just let somebody call them a douche, you know,
Speaker 1: just just let the name calling be done and let
Speaker 1: people get over it. And it's you know, I guess
Speaker 1: it's like if you don't know how to act like
Speaker 1: an adult and you don't know your audience, you're going
Speaker 1: to find out that the idea that there was a
Speaker 1: formal process to pick apart something you've said or done,
Speaker 1: to hold a kangaroo court, that's that's all. That's all
Speaker 1: I see it as i've I'm I think I heard
Speaker 1: it one instance where somebody made an inappropriate joke and
Speaker 1: they they coced him and it was like a warning.
Speaker 1: But most of what I hear and but that you
Speaker 1: would do anyway, Like you don't need a COC to say,
Speaker 1: hey man, that joke was a little inappropriate, especially for
Speaker 1: this audience and the professionalism that we're trying to have.
Speaker 1: We will not invite you back if you you know,
Speaker 1: like have that sure, but to co see somebody and
Speaker 1: then make an announcement, Okay, there was an inappropriate joke
Speaker 1: in track three at twelve pm by someone, and we
Speaker 1: have this part of our COC that those kinds of
Speaker 1: inappropriate jokes are not okay. So we just want everybody
Speaker 1: to feel safe. The person has been dealt with. So
Speaker 1: there's there's I'll.
Speaker 2: Just say, you know, you and I do see a
Speaker 2: little see this a bit different. But I'm not saying
Speaker 2: I have the right perspective on this. But I think
Speaker 2: Code of conducts do serve a valuable purpose in that
Speaker 2: they call to our attention what I wish was already
Speaker 2: important to people, which is the we need to have
Speaker 2: more empathy in how we deal with other people. That
Speaker 2: is missing, and I think it's trying to litigate empathy
Speaker 2: instead of inspire empathy. And that's where I think a
Speaker 2: lot of it goes wrong. Is we really wish that
Speaker 2: people were just you know, better at understanding how their
Speaker 2: intentional or unintentional actions were, you know, making somebody feel
Speaker 2: unwelcome or unsafe. We really wish people just had that
Speaker 2: perspective and that we could just kind of like have
Speaker 2: a quick little conversation with them and they would totally
Speaker 2: get it and say, you're right, I'm sorry, I shouldn't
Speaker 2: have done it. But a lot of people don't a
Speaker 2: lot of people don't feel that way, and so we've
Speaker 2: got to litigate the empathy into the situation.
Speaker 1: I think that's where a lot of it. I think
Speaker 1: you just pull them aside and say, hey, hey, we're
Speaker 1: we're not gonna you know, do you do you see
Speaker 1: what was done there, We're not gonna We're not going
Speaker 1: to invite you back if you know, or say like
Speaker 1: we'd like you to apologize. You know, I had to
Speaker 1: put the responsibility back on the person. If that's what
Speaker 1: needs to be done. They can't they can't take the responsibility,
Speaker 1: but to make a spectacle of it, you know, it's.
Speaker 2: Just a formative aspect for sure. But I think part
Speaker 2: of the reason for the performative aspect is because this
Speaker 2: is still not the norm for people to take the
Speaker 2: personal accountability, and so they kind of have to overcompensate.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying the overcompensation is good, but there is
Speaker 2: an over compensation because we're making up for the fact
Speaker 2: that this is not yet the norm, and I don't
Speaker 2: know how long it'll be until it is the norm.
Speaker 2: But everybody really should be acting I think with that
Speaker 2: empathy that at the instant that somebody points out, hey,
Speaker 2: that thing that you just said or did was like
Speaker 2: it was over the line, or it bothered me, or
Speaker 2: it made me feel uncomfortable, that the instant reaction should
Speaker 2: have been like, that wasn't my intent. I'm sorry, I'll
Speaker 2: fix that joke, I won't do that in the field.
Speaker 2: That wasn't my intent, and I'm really sorry. We could
Speaker 2: resolve so many problems if people really genuinely cared to
Speaker 2: be empathetic like that. And there there will be people
Speaker 2: who have malicious intent who don't who who are going
Speaker 2: to say things and they're not going to feel contrite.
Speaker 2: Those people definitely do need the litigious part of a
Speaker 2: code of Kunda, but it's sort of this one size
Speaker 2: fits all paintbrush that all interactions need that same performative
Speaker 2: aspect and they don't. It's really hard to know in
Speaker 2: advance whether a person is going to be like really
Speaker 2: receptive and understanding or whether they're going to make a
Speaker 2: big stink about no, no, no. I have the right
Speaker 2: to say whatever kind of joke I want to say.
Speaker 2: So I think it's really hard for me to imagine
Speaker 2: us being more successful without them. But I don't think
Speaker 2: that we've figured out the right way to position these yet.
Speaker 1: Well, I I will. I don't want to drag on
Speaker 1: with this, but I just want to bring up one
Speaker 1: more thing. So I did a bad thing once. I
Speaker 1: gave a talk at a PHP track and my talk
Speaker 1: was getting started with PHP, and as you might imagine,
Speaker 1: my first slide was the word don't and I would
Speaker 1: say like, and I made fun of PHP the whole time.
Speaker 1: I did try to give like useful information. I said
Speaker 1: something like, you know, don't use PHP because it's overly complicated.
Speaker 1: The way that it handles objects are terrible, you know.
Speaker 1: And this was PHP five or so. But if you do,
Speaker 1: here's how to overcome that pitfall. Never run a PHP
Speaker 1: server standalone, but if you do, here's how to overcome
Speaker 1: that pitfall with a reverse proxy instead. Never use WordPress
Speaker 1: because your server is going to get hacked. But if
Speaker 1: you do, here's how to install the security plug or
Speaker 1: you know. So it was very much. A you know,
Speaker 1: I don't like PHP, and I hope that you don't
Speaker 1: use it. But if you choose to use PHP anyway,
Speaker 1: here's some things that I've encountered that mitigate the problems.
Speaker 1: But it was, you know, it was in bad faith
Speaker 1: in the sense that I was, you know, I was
Speaker 1: trolling for my own personal ego, and the conference organizer
Speaker 1: pulled me aside and you know, just gave me a
Speaker 1: disappointed look and he said, that's not cool. Man, I'm
Speaker 1: going to need you to apologize. You know, what you
Speaker 1: did was wrong, you know it that shouldn't have gone
Speaker 1: that way. And I'm embarrassed that that, you know, you
Speaker 1: did that to our community. And so you know, I
Speaker 1: made a public apology and I came back the next
Speaker 1: year and I spoke and I didn't do something stupid
Speaker 1: like that. But you know, and I think that that
Speaker 1: is that's the right way to handle it, is to
Speaker 1: pull people aside a deal that man and man or
Speaker 1: woman a woman or what you know, man, whatever it is.
Speaker 1: But you know, in the idiom man the man and
Speaker 1: and to you know, to take that personal responsibility in
Speaker 1: both respects. And if I had said no, he probably
Speaker 1: would have said you are welcome to leave, you know,
Speaker 1: and that would have been the right thing to do.
Speaker 1: And so I I agree that we should have standards,
Speaker 1: you know, and I agree with a lot of what
Speaker 1: you're saying. I just yeah, I'll leave it at that.
Speaker 1: I agree with a lot of what you're saying. I
Speaker 1: think that we actually have a lot in common. I
Speaker 1: think we have more in common on this point than
Speaker 1: we than we disagree on. But there's some some definitely
Speaker 1: some details we disagree on.
Speaker 2: Since you brought up your story, I will flavor the
Speaker 2: conversation with my story that has some similarities, some strong similarities.
Speaker 2: A little over a year ago, I was asked to
Speaker 2: keynote a REACT conferent. Oh, I was asked to keynote
Speaker 2: a REACT conference, but I was and I struggled with
Speaker 2: what am I going to say to a REACT crowd?
Speaker 2: And I eventually decided that what I wanted to do,
Speaker 2: which I knew would ruffle feathers, but what I wanted
Speaker 2: to do in an attempt to be productive, is to
Speaker 2: give a talk that points out all of the frustrations
Speaker 2: that I have as somebody trying to come in to
Speaker 2: react from the outside and learn and do something and
Speaker 2: specifically the frustrations I have because I can't do what
Speaker 2: I need with only React. Why is React so deficient
Speaker 2: in the following ways that the only solutions are all
Speaker 2: these external vibras and frameworks. Shouldn't this be something that
Speaker 2: is prioritized by reacts? So the talk was effectively from
Speaker 2: that frame of reference. Here's what I was trying to do,
Speaker 2: here's my bad code.
Speaker 1: But here's why I think this is.
Speaker 2: It's frustrating because on the box, React should offer me
Speaker 2: a solution and it doesn't or whatever. So anyway, that
Speaker 2: was my talk, and it was it was. It was
Speaker 2: not well received by the majority of the audience. I
Speaker 2: guess we should say there were some people that really
Speaker 2: appreciated it, and they were like, it's really good to
Speaker 2: point out that there are some flaws that were kind
Speaker 2: of missing because we're so engrossed and what React is,
Speaker 2: but the outsiders don't understand it. Whatever. But I think
Speaker 2: the majority of people were like, man, screw that guy.
Speaker 2: And I didn't get invited back. I doubt I'll get
Speaker 2: invited back. I doubt i'll be ever I'll ever be
Speaker 2: invited to speak at a React conference again. So I've
Speaker 2: got the same I've got a similar experience. I get it.
Speaker 1: It sounds like, I mean, I don't know what it
Speaker 1: was like. I actually want to look up the the talk.
Speaker 1: Now what was the Did they post it online or
Speaker 1: did you get cut?
Speaker 2: Now? I was posted online. The talk was actually framed
Speaker 2: around the topic of declarative coding versus It's called weathering
Speaker 2: the storm, declarative versus imperative weathering the storm. So you
Speaker 2: should be able to find the video for that. All right,
Speaker 2: I'll watch that today or listen to it. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: I would be interested to see what my take is.
Speaker 2: I'll let you know.
Speaker 1: But you know, if I feel like you came across
Speaker 1: as a bit too TROLLI er if you came across
Speaker 1: the sincere, because I know in my presentation I did
Speaker 1: have good intentions. I mean I there were I was trolling,
Speaker 1: I was egoing, but I also did honestly. You know,
Speaker 1: It's like this was really frustrating to me, and this
Speaker 1: is how you can solve it. But every slide was
Speaker 1: don't use PHP, but if you do, which obviously that
Speaker 1: was the wrong format. If I had inverted that to saying,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of things I like about X, Y,
Speaker 1: and Z, and I think that if you use these
Speaker 1: there's a lot of pitfalls you avoid, and so i'd
Speaker 1: actually encourage you to investigate those as you're on your journey.
Speaker 1: But talking about PHPD, I could have done it in
Speaker 1: a way that was much more productive. So I'll take
Speaker 1: a list of that talk and i'll i'll I'll message
Speaker 1: you and and and give you my my take if, if,
Speaker 1: if you would be interested in that, I put myself
Speaker 1: up on a you know, a high horse or anything.
Speaker 1: All right, Okay, so this is this has been interesting.
Speaker 1: It definitely started off and has continued in a direction
Speaker 1: that I didn't expect, and I want to I want
Speaker 1: to circle back around. Actually, is there anything else that's
Speaker 1: on your mind right now that you wanna that you
Speaker 1: want to dig into.
Speaker 2: I I started off by saying that part of my
Speaker 2: frustration is my personal journey has included a year of unemployment,
Speaker 2: which has been tremendously difficult financially and otherwise for my family,
Speaker 2: and all of that offshoot from that. Not to say
Speaker 2: again that I don't own any of the responsibility for
Speaker 2: why some players might want to hire me, but I
Speaker 2: do think there are some macro level things that I
Speaker 2: believe to be true about our industry now that have
Speaker 2: changed and changed rather rapidly, and I want to call
Speaker 2: them out because I think they're a bad direction that
Speaker 2: we've gone. And I don't know if there's any dialing
Speaker 2: it back, but I just want to call this out.
Speaker 2: So when I joined as an engineer, when I started
Speaker 2: as an engineer back in the mid to late nineties,
Speaker 2: that's kind of when I got my feet wet with
Speaker 2: software engineering. And when I was joining, the industry was
Speaker 2: full of a number of extremely highly regarded founding fathers
Speaker 2: and mothers of the industry. There were people that had
Speaker 2: been already in the industry by for thirty or forty
Speaker 2: years at that point, and they were still active and
Speaker 2: involved in various parts of technology and internet, web and
Speaker 2: all of that, and they were in these highly regarded
Speaker 2: positions at the big companies, whether they're the Googles or whatever,
Speaker 2: like they you know, they held these like distinguished physicians
Speaker 2: in these companies. And I joined as this brand new engineer,
Speaker 2: and of course I immediately, like I so looked up to them,
Speaker 2: right like I want to be like them. I want
Speaker 2: to I want to do something important and impactful for
Speaker 2: the world, and I want to be like them, and
Speaker 2: that's not going to happen overnight. So I literally have
Speaker 2: intentionally spent a lot of my effort. I've it's something
Speaker 2: that I've regularly gone back to in my career over
Speaker 2: the last twenty five years to try to pay my
Speaker 2: dues and to try to pay it for it, and
Speaker 2: to try to give back more to this industry than
Speaker 2: I've taken because I wanted to follow in those footsteps
Speaker 2: and I wanted to be that type of engineer for
Speaker 2: this industry. What I think has happened over the last
Speaker 2: and I don't think it's been long. I think it's
Speaker 2: been maybe two or three years at most. It's not
Speaker 2: been But I think what's happened is we've the industry
Speaker 2: is basically decided that having people like that as part
Speaker 2: of the conversation is not important anymore, and in fact,
Speaker 2: not only is it not really all that important, it's
Speaker 2: actually more of a liability. I think what we've decided.
Speaker 2: The way I would describe this is, I think what
Speaker 2: used to be the variance of the engineering ladder going
Speaker 2: from you know you just started to you've got ten
Speaker 2: or twelve or more years right above twelve fifteen years,
Speaker 2: et cetera. Like that was the the variance of the
Speaker 2: engineering ladder, and there were companies that would always believe
Speaker 2: it was important to hire people near the top of
Speaker 2: that ladder. Now I think we've shrunked that ladder so much.
Speaker 2: Where from the beginning of your engineering career to when
Speaker 2: you're like a season staffer principal engineer, where that used
Speaker 2: to be twelve fifteen, twenty years, it's now like four
Speaker 2: to six years. I literally see a job in my mind.
Speaker 2: I saw job posting just the other day for a
Speaker 2: staff level engineer and they said five years JavaScript experience
Speaker 2: for a staff level position, and that was unheard of.
Speaker 2: That would have been unheard of back in the day.
Speaker 2: But that's that's the new reality. I'm not saying it's
Speaker 2: not a reality, which just need to embrace that. It
Speaker 2: is the reality. And so because things are changing so quickly,
Speaker 2: and because companies are not really valuing those those longer,
Speaker 2: longer lived, and more experienced voices in the conversation, I
Speaker 2: think we've seen a lot of these factors kind of
Speaker 2: reducing both the pay that is available in the industry
Speaker 2: and really it's become where we don't hire people anymore.
Speaker 2: We hire roles. We don't hire people and Taylor what
Speaker 2: we have them do based upon what their experience and
Speaker 2: their skill level is. We just hire into roles and
Speaker 2: if you fit in the role, grain and if you
Speaker 2: don't fit in the role, we just don't hire you. Right,
Speaker 2: that's a big change where we now have more supply
Speaker 2: than demand. And I've looked at a whole bunch of
Speaker 2: jobs that and applied to many of them that are
Speaker 2: well below my level of experience at twenty five years
Speaker 2: and pay well below what I was making before. And
Speaker 2: I've tried to apply to those jobs and I don't
Speaker 2: even get callbacks. I don't even get like interview and
Speaker 2: part of you.
Speaker 1: And for that, are you submitting with Microsoft word? Serious question?
Speaker 2: No, I'm not submitting with that is.
Speaker 1: A problem because the AI based parsers will only elevate
Speaker 1: microsoftware documents.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's there's a whole conversation. But let me just
Speaker 2: finish my point before I get shitfield. Sorry, but those
Speaker 2: companies look I think, whether they're doing it through automatic
Speaker 2: filtering or whether it's a person, I think they look
Speaker 2: at someone like me and they say, man, we're never
Speaker 2: going to have the budget to pay him what he's
Speaker 2: probably previously paid, and we're never going to have the
Speaker 2: job role to take advantage of this twenty five years experience.
Speaker 2: So we're not going to hire him into this lower
Speaker 2: role because he won't be happy and we won't be happy.
Speaker 2: And so it's not simply that, in my opinion, it's
Speaker 2: not simply that you know that there's a quote unquote
Speaker 2: more qualified candidate at this point. What I'm seeing, and
Speaker 2: I'm not the only one, what I'm seeing is that
Speaker 2: the more senior you are, the harder it is to
Speaker 2: find any jobs out there because they're kind of just
Speaker 2: being sunseted. They're not firing super top level you know,
Speaker 2: year experienced people, but they're not hiring them anymore. They're
Speaker 2: just not and they don't want to. And I feel
Speaker 2: this is really troublesome.
Speaker 1: It creates friction. It creates friction because you've got a
Speaker 1: bunch of young kids that have you know, that are
Speaker 1: senior engineers after three years of experience, right, and you
Speaker 1: go into a room where you're challenging the prevailing wisdom.
Speaker 1: You're not seen as, oh, this person has the wisdom
Speaker 1: of the ancients. You're seen as this person doesn't know
Speaker 1: what he's talking about. What a hack?
Speaker 2: Right, I mean, I could be I don't know if
Speaker 2: that's your experience, I think no, I'm saying that's exactly
Speaker 2: what I'm what I'm seeing.
Speaker 1: I had a like we've worked. This is the Jonathan
Speaker 1: Blow thing. This is the Jonathan this is the collapse
Speaker 1: of civilization talk by Jonathan Blow. The people who are
Speaker 1: in the currently held positions are so far removed from
Speaker 1: the original knowledge that in many cases they are no
Speaker 1: longer able to connect it to the current knowledge, right, Like.
Speaker 2: This is this, appreciate it.
Speaker 1: It's like it's kind of like the inverse of the
Speaker 1: sufficient sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from from magic. Like
Speaker 1: you you sound like a soothsayer when you come in
Speaker 1: and say, you know, I mean a few years ago,
Speaker 1: it would have been if you came in and said, hey,
Speaker 1: we should use a SQL database, you know, like a
Speaker 1: few years ago, that would have been like, what, what
Speaker 1: are you? Out of the loop. It's like, no, not
Speaker 1: only out of the loop, I'm ahead of it again.
Speaker 2: Right, So I think I think what I see happening.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of people that are claiming that the
Speaker 2: advent of AI is going to get rid of the
Speaker 2: junior engineer positions, and I actually think the reverse has happened.
Speaker 2: I think the advent of AI has been significantly improved
Speaker 2: the position of those entering because they are not coming
Speaker 2: into this with any prior experience about or conceptions about
Speaker 2: what engineering should be, and they're excited to use whatever
Speaker 2: tools they can, and they're excited that they get a
Speaker 2: lot of visible bang for the buck if you will quickly.
Speaker 2: Those people are way easier for companies to imagine employing
Speaker 2: right now than people who have been doing engineering the
Speaker 2: quote unquote old school way for so long and are
Speaker 2: more willing to call out the flaws.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: I'm just not as employable because I'm not on the
Speaker 2: bandwagon of we need all of our code to be
Speaker 2: generated by AI, and the entrance into this industry are
Speaker 2: by far more interested in that, are more willing to
Speaker 2: approach that as the way to do engineering. I was
Speaker 2: told in a research.
Speaker 1: I I don't, but I don't know how anybody who's
Speaker 1: a junior could be effective with it. I guess yours
Speaker 1: has to go. The BS meter has to go off.
Speaker 1: If the BS meter has I mean, how are you
Speaker 1: going to get it because.
Speaker 2: Because they don't need it to be quality for it
Speaker 2: to ship. That's the different.
Speaker 1: But it's gotta work, like it's got to accept the
Speaker 1: form input and it's got to post it, you know,
Speaker 1: like like it has to at the bare minimum level.
Speaker 1: The code has to work now.
Speaker 2: But I will say you and I disagree with is
Speaker 2: where that bar is anymore. I don't think that the
Speaker 2: bare minimum bar is the same place today as it
Speaker 2: was five years ago.
Speaker 1: You're right, because there are plenty of website work. It
Speaker 1: doesn't that's enough.
Speaker 2: But anyway, I just think I think that they actually
Speaker 2: have an advantage. People entering the industry right now have
Speaker 2: this advantage because we did not have tools like that
Speaker 2: when I joined the industry or all along that would
Speaker 2: have so rapidly accelerated our ability to get something out,
Speaker 2: regardless of its quality, regardless of how fit it is
Speaker 2: for the task. They are just much faster at achieving
Speaker 2: any result than a more traditional engineering approach would. And
Speaker 2: I had interesting you know, there was a very recent
Speaker 2: experience where I had gone through a very prolonged job
Speaker 2: interviewing process, really thought I was going to get it.
Speaker 2: I was down at the end final interviews, and then
Speaker 2: got told that we've decided not to move forward, and
Speaker 2: the feedback they gave me was literally, we think you're
Speaker 2: too rigorous of an engineer, you're too concerned with solving
Speaker 2: the problem in the most complete way, and you're not
Speaker 2: interested in just shipping something quickly, and that you won't
Speaker 2: fit here because of that. I sat that that's just
Speaker 2: a reality. That's that's the way our industries change. And
Speaker 2: I'm not going to say that there's no benefit to it,
Speaker 2: because there are reasons why our industries changed that way.
Speaker 2: But I don't think we've really come to terms with
Speaker 2: the cost of that quite yet. I think I have
Speaker 2: a lot of costs down the road.
Speaker 1: That's that's like a quote Drupele on Tundra right now,
Speaker 1: because I don't know how tapped in you are with
Speaker 1: the political space and how that has an impact on us.
Speaker 1: But interest rates are what are a large part of
Speaker 1: what is driving the need to make changes, not necessarily
Speaker 1: the motivation, because you know, people like normal human interaction.
Speaker 1: You feel upset, someone says what's wrong, you say the
Speaker 1: first thing that comes to mind. You don't. Well, maybe
Speaker 1: you personally, Kyle Simpson, you may do this from the
Speaker 1: way you're speaking, but the average person doesn't doesn't recognize
Speaker 1: what's wrong. They don't know why they're angry or why
Speaker 1: they're upset. They're upset, they know they're upset. You ask them, oh,
Speaker 1: you seem like something's bugging you, what's bothering you? And
Speaker 1: they're just gonna spit off the first thing that comes
Speaker 1: to mind, which is typically the most recent thing that happened.
Speaker 1: Like they were upset, they're having a bad day. They
Speaker 1: stub their toe, So you say, why are you upset? Ugh,
Speaker 1: I stubbed my toe, you know. But no, that's not
Speaker 1: the reason you were upset. That's just the most recent
Speaker 1: thing that happened that put an impression negatively on your emotions.
Speaker 1: And I think that that's kind of what's happening in
Speaker 1: the industry in regards to this AI thing. Interest rates
Speaker 1: are the problem. Money is drying up. AI is an excuse,
Speaker 1: which paradoxically then causes more of the economic issue because
Speaker 1: then people believe that AI is the solution, Like people
Speaker 1: are not firing their employees because AI is picking up
Speaker 1: the slack. That's somebody come at me with the data
Speaker 1: that shows that that's what's happening. But I think that
Speaker 1: everyone who's done marketing for an AI company has had
Speaker 1: their article refuted on that basis. People are losing employees
Speaker 1: and tightening the belt because the interest rates have gone up.
Speaker 1: When the interest rates go up, that means that for
Speaker 1: the investors to take out the money in the first place,
Speaker 1: they actually have to have a plan to pay back
Speaker 1: the money, because when the interest rates are low, then
Speaker 1: you don't really have to pay back the money every month.
Speaker 1: You could just float on it. Like imagine that. You know,
Speaker 1: if you could get a one percent interest rate on,
Speaker 1: like you had a big project you wanted to do
Speaker 1: and you were not being really conservative with your money,
Speaker 1: interest rates were one percent, you could take out fifty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars and then you could sit on that fifty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars for the next ten years and use the
Speaker 1: money to pay back the loan and only use ten
Speaker 1: thousand of it to do whatever you wanted to do. So,
Speaker 1: if interest rates are sufficiently low and you're financially savvy,
Speaker 1: you're going to take out way more money than you
Speaker 1: need and you're going to use the extra money as
Speaker 1: a buffer. And I say financially savvy, I don't not
Speaker 1: necessarily from a moral perspective, I'm not saying that's the
Speaker 1: right thing to do, but I'm saying it's a trick
Speaker 1: you can use. You take out more money than you need,
Speaker 1: you use, you use the money as a buffer to
Speaker 1: pay off the interest rate. That's what the whole I mean.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people I think are truly evil.
Speaker 1: They get people to do this with their home equity
Speaker 1: loans to you know, take some blockchain course or some
Speaker 1: real estate course or I've got I've got a friend,
Speaker 1: Like my heart just hurts for him because he's gotten
Speaker 1: suckered in, and I'm telling him, I'm like, dude, you
Speaker 1: are getting suckered like, please stop. This is going to
Speaker 1: be so bad for your family, This is going to
Speaker 1: be so bad for you. Just please please just hear
Speaker 1: me out like you are the sucker. Like, but nobody
Speaker 1: wants to hear that, you know. Anyway, Sorry, that's a tangent,
Speaker 1: but I.
Speaker 2: Don't actually think it's super tangential. I think the zero
Speaker 2: interest rates of the last twenty years are a big,
Speaker 2: big contributing macroeconomic factor, and they allowed a kind of
Speaker 2: arbitrage like you're describing that really enabled probably fifty percent
Speaker 2: or more of this industry to exist. Many of the
Speaker 2: companies yeah that currently exist today should have failed, but
Speaker 2: didn't fail because they had a business model that was
Speaker 2: propped up only by that macroeconomic condition. And I don't
Speaker 2: think it's coming back in my lifetime. I don't think
Speaker 2: it's coming back.
Speaker 1: And the double negative on this is that what that
Speaker 1: meant was and this is actually illegal. It is illegal
Speaker 1: to well, I mean, I guess it depends on the
Speaker 1: state and at the federal level, but in general, it
Speaker 1: is illegal. It's considered an illegal, unfair business practice to
Speaker 1: put your products and services at a loss in order
Speaker 1: to extinguish competition. But that's effectively what the zero interest
Speaker 1: rates did because the profitable, the profitable businesses went out
Speaker 1: of business because they had to pay their costs that month.
Speaker 1: The businesses that had the zero interest rate loans funneled
Speaker 1: through investors, they did not have to pay their costs
Speaker 1: that month. Yeah, And so the businesses that were profitable
Speaker 1: went out of business, and the businesses that were unprofitable
Speaker 1: had an unfair advantage. And this is I mean, this
Speaker 1: goes into a whole ball of wax, but I mean,
Speaker 1: like that's the fed. It funnels into tech. Why do
Speaker 1: these tech companies from the last twenty years, why do
Speaker 1: they all parent the same message? Why is there not
Speaker 1: a single publicly traded company that has a different opinion.
Speaker 1: Why is it only privately owned companies like thirty seven
Speaker 1: Signals that have a different opinion. When the money flows
Speaker 1: that way, it is the ideology, the philosophy, the ethics,
Speaker 1: everything about it. Where the money comes from is tainted.
Speaker 1: When you've got a profitable, profitable business, your relationship is
Speaker 1: to your customer. When you have a growth opportunity, your
Speaker 1: relationship is literally to the US government. You were getting
Speaker 1: your money from the FED. That is where you know,
Speaker 1: that's where it all goes back to. You may have
Speaker 1: a different opinion on that or whatever, and I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't want to push that any.
Speaker 2: Further, but that's no I think I think the point
Speaker 2: is well made. I don't have much more to say
Speaker 2: about the employment industry, but I just hope that people
Speaker 2: are thinking more about like the both the literal and
Speaker 2: the figurative costs here. Yeah, And I'm personally just going
Speaker 2: to have to keep trying to find a way to
Speaker 2: invent a job because I don't think that I'm going
Speaker 2: to find the job. It's kind of the reality that
Speaker 2: I've come up up against. I need to wrap probably here.
Speaker 2: But I do think that this is a conversation that
Speaker 2: I hope maybe you'll have with even other people on
Speaker 2: this podcast. Bring people on and ask them their perspectives
Speaker 2: on these things. Is it might be different than mine?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think because because I've had, you know,
Speaker 1: even some real world interactions with you over the years. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's a lot easier for for me to to have
Speaker 1: some real talk with you. You know a lot of
Speaker 1: the people that we have on the show that that
Speaker 1: real talk is not and and and yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: and it's hard. It's hard to navigate because people have
Speaker 1: Some people are high text communicators and some people are
Speaker 1: low context communicators. You and I were low context communicators,
Speaker 1: and that makes it a good pairing. That is a
Speaker 1: very bad pairing when I get on with a high
Speaker 1: context communicator because I'm not intuitive and I take things
Speaker 1: that's face value. I don't read signals, you know, so
Speaker 1: so this anyway, Yeah, I don't, I don't wanna. I
Speaker 1: don't wanna monopolize your Actually, no time, I absolutely do.
Speaker 2: But I've appreciated that conversations today today was was was
Speaker 2: really engaging. I hope, I hope it put some thoughts
Speaker 2: in people that that they'll chew on as they listen
Speaker 2: to this episode.
Speaker 1: All right, well, uh, thanks very much for coming on
Speaker 1: and sharing about that. Like I said, it took a
Speaker 1: different direction than I was thinking. Some of the directions
Speaker 1: loop back around to what I some things I thought
Speaker 1: we would talk about. I thought were going to be
Speaker 1: talking more about industry issues by day, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of seeing how it all comes together, like the personal
Speaker 1: development and culture and ethos and and you know the
Speaker 1: way of interacting and seeing with the world, plus the
Speaker 1: change and shift and culture and all that kind of culminating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so thanks for coming on. I guess we'll go ahead
Speaker 1: and move on to picks then, and I'll go first.
Speaker 1: So I know so many people right now, This is
Speaker 1: this is what's blowing my mind. It makes me really
Speaker 1: worried because you know, I myself am at risk. I
Speaker 1: work independently. I work for a few different companies, but
Speaker 1: it would be as the economic situation changes, I'm at
Speaker 1: risk and I could be in an unfavorable position myself.
Speaker 1: And I know so many people that are highly qualified
Speaker 1: people that if I were hiring, I would hire them.
Speaker 1: I met this guy to meet up. He is, you know,
Speaker 1: there's probably like the ten smartest people I've ever met.
Speaker 1: And this guy is so weird now because now there's
Speaker 1: nobody except the Internet that I'm talking to. It's totally
Speaker 1: different vibe. But there's he's probably one of the ten
Speaker 1: smartest people I've ever met, just in terms of like
Speaker 1: the way that he can reason about things. I mean
Speaker 1: not just his knowledge, but like his ability to intuit
Speaker 1: patterns and connect the dots right. And he works at
Speaker 1: an Amazon warehouse and he also works on a compiler,
Speaker 1: and he is struggling to get a job for some
Speaker 1: of the same reasons that Kyle was mentioning, where he's
Speaker 1: overqualified and yet has no industry experience, like the things
Speaker 1: that he can the things that he can work on.
Speaker 1: He's overqualified for the positions that he's applying for and
Speaker 1: under under experience in terms of what could be shown
Speaker 1: on a resume. So it's just like this weird limbo
Speaker 1: and he's not the only one. And I'm going to
Speaker 1: share some of his his work for fun. For fun,
Speaker 1: Walmart had released a paper about their search algorithm and
Speaker 1: he noticed some technical issues with it, and he created
Speaker 1: one of the most masterful presentations I've ever seen showing
Speaker 1: how applying different techniques would yield significant benefits. And this
Speaker 1: is actually significant because it's Walmart and it's search for
Speaker 1: their autocomplete, so it's not it's not like a I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a significant problem, you know, it's Anyway, he just
Speaker 1: one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. And
Speaker 1: I'm going to post some links to that. His handle
Speaker 1: is valid Ark. But this is a guy that if
Speaker 1: I were, if I were hiring, I would totally want
Speaker 1: him on my team. I wouldn't be able to use
Speaker 1: him to his full capacity, but totally want them on
Speaker 1: on the team. And I've I've done a little bit
Speaker 1: of work with him on a on a side project
Speaker 1: and is very satisfied. Anyway, And I know other people
Speaker 1: like this. I know several other people that do not
Speaker 1: have jobs right now that are top tier engineers. They
Speaker 1: are on the top shelf. They are the people that
Speaker 1: I would want to hire, and they cannot find work.
Speaker 1: And this is the strangest thing in the world to me.
Speaker 1: So anyway, I was the pick. There was more than
Speaker 1: anything else is that the Walmart paper and then oh, whoops,
Speaker 1: I actually didn't link to the correct the Let me
Speaker 1: let me see I can link to this correctly, the
Speaker 1: link to this. Okay, there we are, that's the correct
Speaker 1: link for the other piece there. And then also, uh uh,
Speaker 1: you know, since we're since we're all alone now and
Speaker 1: it's just me and no one else can be blamed.
Speaker 1: My my other pick is going to be I don't
Speaker 1: like I kind of want to couch this. I kind
Speaker 1: of want to don't. I don't know, but I I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is going to come out
Speaker 1: before the election. I think it will. I don't think
Speaker 1: our lead times on the episodes are that long right now,
Speaker 1: I have to go back and check. But I would
Speaker 1: encourage everybody to reconsider what you think you know. I like, No,
Speaker 1: I don't even want you to reconsider what you think
Speaker 1: you know. What I want, what I want for people
Speaker 1: to do. What would what would make me so incredibly
Speaker 1: happy is if you know, just one person goes out
Speaker 1: there and looks up actual source videos. Take the person
Speaker 1: that your hate is targeted towards, go look up the
Speaker 1: source videos, and see what that person actually says. For
Speaker 1: the whole sentence, because I've seen some I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's AI generated or what, but I've seen some
Speaker 1: content that it's not parody content, that's actual content. It's
Speaker 1: being put out there that is removing words like not
Speaker 1: from the video and and and then being you know,
Speaker 1: recycled into I think a lot of people have some
Speaker 1: very wrong misconceptions about particular events and particular things that
Speaker 1: have been said in particular like a lot of the
Speaker 1: particulars are very very skewed. So whatever your greatest bias
Speaker 1: is against or four your candidate, go just watch the
Speaker 1: video and watch like the whole sixty second clip, the
Speaker 1: thirty seconds before, the thirty seconds after of what they're
Speaker 1: actually saying, and see if it lines up with what
Speaker 1: you believe that you have been taught that they are saying.
Speaker 1: Because I guarantee you, for many of you, if you
Speaker 1: do the at no matter which side you're on, you
Speaker 1: are going to have your eyes opened, and it might
Speaker 1: open up enough to cause some reconsideration. I do think
Speaker 1: that this election is very strange. I think there's a
Speaker 1: lot of anomalies that have led up to it. I
Speaker 1: think that something is wrong in the US system right now.
Speaker 1: I think it's dangerously wrong. And you know, and if
Speaker 1: you want to make a quick buck, Elon has announced
Speaker 1: a program on Twitter where you can make money by
Speaker 1: registering people to vote. And as far as I know,
Speaker 1: I don't think that there's a stipulation on that they
Speaker 1: have to be for a particular candidacy. The position is
Speaker 1: a freedom of speech position, but I don't believe that
Speaker 1: you have to subscribe to a particular candidate in order
Speaker 1: to take advantage of that offer. So basically, forty seven
Speaker 1: million dollars is up for grabs. That's forty seven dollars
Speaker 1: per registration is up for grabs for anybody who goes
Speaker 1: through whatever online tool they have inviting it becomes the
Speaker 1: referral for the registration something like that. I don't know
Speaker 1: all the details, but I think it's anyway, So I
Speaker 1: put that out there. So with that all said, thanks
Speaker 1: for tuning in. I hope that this was a good episode.
Speaker 1: I hope that that this has a positive impact overall.
Speaker 1: I know I did a little bit of ranting there
Speaker 1: and whatnot, but I hope this is a positive impact overall.
Speaker 1: And y'all have a good one. I'll catch you later.
Speaker 1: Audios