In today's episode, they delve deep into cutting-edge tech trends and development methods. Steve and AJ are joined by special guest Kyle Simpson, an expert in JavaScript and a pioneer of the "Local First" development approach. Together, they explore groundbreaking topics such as the use of the Origin Private File System (OPFS) in modern browsers, techniques for interfacing main and worker threads, and the future potential of local-first applications.

They dive into the intricacies of data storage, from Kyle’s innovative storage library to AJ's insights into handling large CSV files. The discussion also spans the evolving landscape of cloud services, contrasting cloud-first models with the emerging local-first paradigm. Join us as we unpack the complexities of state management, evaluate database solutions like IndexedDB, and critically assess the growing role of decentralized technologies.

Additionally, this episode takes a closer look at WebRTC, GraphQL, and the implications of shifting server-side activities to client devices. Kyle also shares insights on the potential for reducing app complexity through local-first methods, while AJ highlights both the challenges and opportunities within this tech landscape.

Stay tuned for a wealth of knowledge on the frontier of web development, thoughtful debates, and even a few lighthearted "dad jokes of the week" to keep things entertaining. Whether you're a front-end developer, a backend engineer, or simply fascinated by the future of tech, this episode is packed with valuable insights and forward-thinking perspectives you won’t want to miss.

Socials

Well, hello hello and welcome back to another exciting episode of JavaScript Jabber. This is actually a continuation from the episode that you may have heard last week, or I don't know how this is gonna get cut, but this is act we're we're still here together right now. I've got Kyle Simpson on the line. And while we were doing our warm up talk before the podcast, we we got into something something spicy, and so we're gonna we're gonna cover that topic as well. So, anyway, welcome back.

I am AJ O'Neil. I am your host, and this yo yo yo coming at you live from the shed that stinks because of the fly catcher thing mabob. And, Kyle, go ahead. And for for the for the audience that is gonna be listening to this, probably a week or 2 apart from the the last episode we just cut, who are you? What do you do?

Why are you famous? And why do you want to keep Twitter handles? I don't I don't know why I I don't know whether famous is the right word anymore. I think maybe more infamous. Infos.

In any case, I'm Kyle. A lot of people know me online as Getify. Been around now, for most of the web. I've been doing this engineering thing for, like, 25 years or more so long time. And I'm most well known for the you don't know JS books.

And those were published in the last decade or so. 2 editions, 6 books each, or 6 books in the 1st edition, and then kind of, like, up in the air how many books for the 2nd edition. But, anyway, the You don't Know JS books are how most people know me. That spun off a whole series of courses that I've done on front end masters, corporate trainings, and conference ops. So that's how a lot of people out there will probably know me.

Yeah. I I think that you're one of the certainly one of the bigger names in the industry, so I I think I think you're famous. You're famous now. I appreciate it. And I and I always love, you know, I've I've always loved when you give presentations or or I I think we've had you on the podcast a couple of times.

Yeah. You think so? I I I disagree with a lot of what you have to say, but I learn. And sometimes I come around to your way of thinking, so I I just I think you have been a great educator, and, I hope you continue to to do so. Alright.

So with that out of the way, so the spicy bit, I I'm I'm just gonna say this plainly. I'm not gonna sugarcoat it because, I think I think that between you and I and the people watching, I think that's gonna be all right. I have noticed over probably the last 6 months, your your tweets have gone from being things that were felt more positive, more energetic to a lot of tweets coming through that have a really bitter tone to them. And I am curious as to what's going on. I was saying before, I think that some of it's resonating with an industry problem.

It's not just like you're having a personal thing in your life and it's making you better. Although I think that there might be something there, but there's some sort of industry problem that's going on. That's that's reflected in this. So. Do you agree that, especially in the last 6 months, you have had become a little bit bitter and why?

I, I very much agree except for the timeframe. I would say it's longer than that. I would say it's at least 12 months. And if we really kinda zoomed out, we might say that the way that I've approached social media has really changed quite a bit over the last 2 to 4 years. But I'll say that in the most immediate sense, I am absolutely dealing with, a significant amount of, I I'll call it personal animus, frustration.

One of the biggest reasons for that is that I have now been unemployed for a full year. And it's not for lack of trying. I've done a lot of applying and some interviewing and a whole lot of effort, haven't been able to find a place. And, you know, there's gonna be a lot of different reasons why that's the case. I'm not gonna try to come on here and and and shift the blame on to everybody else.

I own a lot of that. With particular respect Better man than I. With with particular respect to the tone, I've had some I'll I'll call it love hate relationship with social media for quite a while going back at least several years. And part of the reason for that is because because of the success that I had in building a bit of a a long tail following around my takes on JavaScript and trying to encourage people to learn it. And I I am regularly seen as someone who kind of challenges the status quo and pushes back and asks more challenging questions.

And I think that's resonated with quite a few folks. I hope that people have felt empowered to own why they feel a certain way. That's certainly always been my mission. But I didn't make a lot of friends along the way is the point I'm trying to make. I've, I've made a a name for myself by being willing to be disagreeable in what I hope is still been productive ways.

But I I made a name for that by being a bit more divisive or, churning, you know, stirring the pot, whatever kind of metaphor you wanna use. And that I did not recognize and probably should have, but I did not recognize the cost of building my brand that way. And I didn't even think of it as building a brand at the time. But over the last 15 or whatever years of my my public persona, I built a brand around this guy who comes up with these hot takes on JavaScript and is, you know, challenging the status quo and is a little bit maybe cantankerous at times and gray beard and old school and any of those other terms. And I also because of that large following, because I'm a human and I have an ego, I enjoyed the fact that I had, you know, 80 whatever 1,000 followers, and that when I had something to say, people listened.

They didn't always agree. In fact, probably mostly didn't agree, but at least they listened. I had a, a megaphone that I could speak through, as opposed to if I just had a little personal Twitter account somewhere with, you know, 7 followers and half of them were my family, that's not much of a megaphone to make, you know, a difference if I have a a thought. So over the last several years, I increasingly started sharing thoughts at times that didn't have anything to do with my technological perspective, whether they were about politics or religion or other social issues. As a person, I was willing to kind of share my personal views on things, and I was doing so through this megaphone that had been built around the brand of JavaScript, you know, questioner, I'll call it.

I didn't realize that that was gonna be taken so poorly. And I pushed back a lot on people who would try to tone you know, they try to police what I'd say, and they'd say things like, you know, stick to the JavaScript. We don't wanna hear what you have to say about, you know, politics or whatever. I pushed back on that, and I still feel like it should have been my right to be whoever I wanted to be with my own online persona. But what I didn't appreciate at the time is how many people had come along for the ride only because of what they liked about what I had to say with JavaScript and technology.

And so I kind of, you know, I sort of broke an unspoken contract in doing that. By trying to become something more than the JavaScript guy and talk about other things, it really created some some strong frustration in folks. And I didn't appreciate just how tangible that would be. So there were a couple of different instances over the last several years where I ended up creating a pretty significant storm of frustration and controversy over one of my you know, over something that wouldn't necessarily have been about JavaScript. One of them was on my views on health care and health insurance, and I have some very personal and real, experiences with that that are difficult.

And another one was on, probably the the the most recent a year or 2 back was on what I thought we should do to change how we onboard engineers into being new engineers on teams and into the industry. I had thoughts about that. And in both of those cases, I believe that I was significantly misunderstood in what I said. But I'm not here to defend myself, because the damage has already been done. But there was a lot of people that got really mad at what I said.

They took it in ways that were very much not what I intended and went with it. The most recent round involved a significant push to, boycott my courses and books to try to tell people that I should never be employed in the industry again and literal personal threats of harm and direct messages that other people have experienced, I experience it too. And because of those periods of time and other smaller periods in between where I get really frustrated, I'll kind of, like, take a break from social media hoping that I can kinda clear my head, and then I come back in a week or a month or sometimes much longer. And I try to pick up where I left off and maybe have a a a better reflection on how I've been. But one thing in this most recent in a most recent kind of, kerfuffle was somebody said to me on one of it was a a LinkedIn post.

Somebody said to me, you know, you you're very logical and you're defending your points well, and you're making your points well here. But what you're missing is that you're just not kind. And I took quite a bit of time to reflect upon that assertion, and I think that person is absolutely right. I don't think I'm very a very kind person. And I actually dug into this with my therapist.

I see a therapist, and I like normalizing those things. I think it's helpful for people. I see a therapist, and I've I've went to my therapist, and I talked with them about this. And what I can say is that because of some quirks of the way my personality works, kindness is not actually a priority of mine, which is why I'm not kind. There are things that I think are much more important, and one of those is the authenticity of being the same person in every situation and conversation.

Every person I interact with, I want for them to come away thinking that's the same guy as he was over here, and he was over here, and he was in his book, and he was in this conference. I wanna be that. That's one of my core psychological drivers. But it's really messy how this plays out in social media. So when you see my frustration around my lack of employment, see my frustration around decisions that I made along the way that I didn't realize were gonna box me in later.

When you see my frustration around how I'm so regularly mistaken, how there can be people that really believe in what I'm trying to do. And then there are other people out there, probably not listening to this episode, but there are other people out there who are really, really strong getify haters. They're really strong detractors. And I get web notifications or people tell me about threads that just randomly spin up on somewhere on a Reddit or there's dozens of them that I get screenshots of private Discord chats. And people just really like to talk a lot of crap about me.

And I've I've upset a lot of people. I never one one thing I would like to say in my defense is to say that I do not insult people. I do not make my points by way of trying to attack the person and, demean the person and condescend the person. I have some very strong opinions of what I feel, and I'm trying to avidly, portray what I feel when I'm in these conversations in social media or whatever. I'm I I I I I take up the case strongly and passionately.

But most people that I engage with in these negative fashions don't have that same line. They very quickly turn to attacking me as a person, attacking sick you know, calling me a troll, telling me that I'm, you know, a bad influence. I've been told many times you should be unemployed. You don't deserve to have a job. Right?

Oh, yes. That's tough. Right? And I own that I've created a lot of controversy around myself. I'm a lightning rod.

I own that. But I do think that you won't go back and you won't find examples of me saying things like hurtful things like that to other people. Because I'm just that's not in my nature to attack people. I disagree a lot and I have some strong feelings about some people, but it's not in my nature to go after people's personal ethics and morals in that way, the way that I've fielded a lot of that. So I guess this was a very long winded way of saying the increasingly negative tone you're hearing from me in a lot of social media, especially Twitter, but even it's crept into my LinkedIn and people have said it there too now.

That negativity is coming because I'm not really in a great place, if I'm being honest. I'm pretty frustrated about where the industry is, where it's headed. I'm frustrated personally about how it left me. I don't have a place really or I don't feel like I have a place. And, how I felt like I really spent my career trying to keep us from getting here, and we still got here.

And and then you mix in all the other stuff. Like, I'm just, it's difficult for me. I I consider being logical and rational to be the most respectful thing that I could ever do with somebody I engage with. That's that's the way that's part of how I'm wired. But I think most people experience that as meanness, as rudeness, as being too curt and too dismissive.

And so I know that there's a lot of people, and maybe a few of them are listening. I know there's a lot of people out there that feel like I've I've ruffled feathers over the years on that. And I just wanna say it was never ever my intention to personally, demean or attack a person. We've always tried to stick to the topic. Yeah.

I I hear you there. I'm not a kind person. I don't aspire to be a kind person. I think that, and, and there's, there's nuance to how to say this, but kindness is a form of manipulation as opposed to, or, or sorry. Not, I, I actually said that wrong.

I distinguish between nice and kind. Nice is a form of manipulation. Kind is a form of authenticity and the way that you were speaking, I was interpreting as people want you to be nice, but I think that it is in fact kind to confront. And I I feel very comfortable when like, this is this is a frustration I have. I will get into arguments with someone, a heated argument, and walk away thinking, you know, I don't like them as a person, but I respect them for their knowledge.

And when I have that problem, I want them on my team. And I wish that more people were that way. I have had frenemies become friends because we were arguing about something, and we could call each other d bags or whatever. You know? We could do a little bit of name calling and but we could walk away having learned, like, okay.

This person's actually really smart at this, and they've got some opinions I don't agree with. But but, yeah, I I want them on my team if I'm doing x because I can tell they know x. And there's there's I mean, it's not like hundreds of people, but there's a handful of people that over the course of my career that I have gone back to and, you know, the friendship like, first, it was the fighting or the argument, like the, you know, like the 2 cats that just, like something about you I don't like. Like, I don't even have a reason to. I just don't like it.

And then that turning into a that that turning into, but I respect you, and that turning into okay. Well, let's actually work together on this project where you're obviously better, and that turning into friendship. I and I wish that that was the norm. I think that was the whole idea behind, you know, if you can't beat them, join them. When when somebody's bested you, when they've defeated your arguments, when they've when they've made you look bad because you were wrong, to be able to go back and say, but dang, do I want to have you on my team for this project?

So I I don't know. Is that does that resonate with any of what you were saying or feeling? Yeah. Parts of it, for sure. The the cheesy way of saying it is to disagree without being disagreeable.

And I think that last part, I've got a lot of work that I could still improve on because I think that the intent that I have in what I'm saying versus the way that I'm experienced by others, there's a wide gap there. And I literally struggle with this, all day every day. Why is there such a wide gap? Why don't people experience me the way that I'm intending to come across? And so I believe that there's a a lot of people that have been turned off to what otherwise could have been, you know, useful disagreement and collaboration because they've been really unhappy with the disagreeable way of of me doing things, whether that's being too you know, me being too quick to respond to something.

I experience on a regular basis feeling like the rest of the world is going in slow motion compared to me. I don't know if anybody else feels that way. But in any sort of conversations or debates, I feel very much like because I spend so much time in my own head thinking about things, I already know exactly why I feel the way that I do. Right or wrong, I have lots of deep reasons behind it. And the rest of the world is just so slow motion compared to that and can't understand, and I can't even get them to listen to me long enough for me to articulate why I feel that way.

But I hear when, you know, that that old adage of, like, strong opinions loosely held or whatever. I've never understood or been able to to agree with that, Partly because if an opinion is loosely held, to me, that means that, one statement to the contrary might you might throw out the whole opinion. Right? Just like one new fact, and you might completely flop. And I'm not gonna share an opinion on something until I have a mountain of reasons for why I feel that way.

I've because I've already spent hours or days or weeks in my head about it. I don't even share opinions on things unless I've already spent that time. I do appreciate when somebody comes along with a mountain of counter evidence. I really enjoy that. And I have actually changed opinions.

I know there's people out there that are like, no, he's never changed an opinion. I have, but it's rare. I'll leave it. I've I I it's rare. I I rarely find people willing to defend their reasoning to the same level of rigor as I've got driving what I feel about something.

And so that creates a real imbalance, and I think that is where a lot of the static comes is this imbalance that I'm I'm coming to the fight already prepared with a bunch of stuff. This person feels that way, and I'm not invalidating that they that they feel the way they do. That's fine. You're you're entitled to your own opinion. But if you're gonna try to convince me, you've gotta bring the same amount of counter evidence.

That's how I've always taken. So I've I've I've probably missed out on a lot of what you've you know, what you were saying about the opportunities that you've had to kind of, in in retrospect, go back and rebuild a bridge and all of that. I've missed out on a lot of that. Well, for me, that's been in person. That's that hasn't been over Twitter.

That's been, you know, somebody that I went to school with, somebody that I lived in the same apartment complexes. You know, those have been situations where I've actually had real interaction with the person and some proximity to them. I've I don't think I've ever okay. So I think enough time has passed, and it's well established. I can I can talk about this?

So we had, Jake Archibald on, and I was not prepared. I did not know who he was. We we had we've switched meeting booking systems a a few times on JavaScript Jabber, and we had done that recently within the last month or 2. And it was still a problem where, like, the emails wouldn't get sent. And so it's like, okay.

I don't know what I'm doing this week. Chuck was out sick or something. I mean and and so we were having this conversation, and I was I thought and I didn't all I also didn't really understand British culture. It's, it's much more high context compared to American culture. Meaning that, like, you have to there's rules that you have to know that are beyond what the words that are said that come out of the mouth.

And, that that relationship, I don't I don't think I'll ever be able to salvage. And and I I still respect him hugely for, the work that he does. Like, I I've used some of his stuff. I read his blog articles. I'll retweet him.

You know, we we still, every once in a while, get into a little something. I I and even leave the like, because I'll I'll go on a thread that's, like, 6 years old for some web standard and just post an, you know, an admittedly inflammatory comment because I wanna get the conversation started again. It's like, okay. Like, this this has been 6 years now. And then there's other people you knew you could see, like, you know, 8 months ago or 15 months ago, you know, somebody did the same thing.

And, and I I didn't even he responded to something because apparently, he's part of some web standards body or whatever that I commented on, and I I even I even look at it. But, like, you know, so that that's that's my one big experience with somebody online where, like, I respect him. I I respect that he has knowledge that I don't have. I wish that it were the other way around as well. I think that I I my sense is that what he came away with was that that I have no idea what I'm talking about whatsoever and that my my opinions were completely invalid.

That's the that's the way it came around to me. Because I was I was like, you know, I was being aggressive in questioning and and pushing back on what he was saying. Because, you know, there's a lot of stuff people say, and it's like it's dogma. They say it because they say it. It's not because that they know the the truth behind it, or they're looking at it from one particular perspective.

You know? But but a lot of the stuff with the web standards committees in particular, I get so frustrated because these people are web developers, a lot of them. You know? They they spend their time in system programming languages, and they're making decisions on JavaScript, which, you know, huge props being smarter than the average JavaScript dev, but you you need to walk in our shoes for a little bit before you ratify that standard because, like, we have to live with those decisions. You know?

Yeah. So I've I've had I've had my ups and downs with Jake. I would say I'm in a similar place where I respect a lot of what he's built. I mean, I talked on the previous episode about I used one of the libraries that he built. I I respect him, and I appreciate the things that he's done.

He and I don't likely have a salvageable personal relationship for, a variety of reasons. But he's he's not the only one, so I don't wanna spend my time focusing on him. The experience that you just described with standards has largely tracked with my experience. Going back to the early 2000 when I was first trying to get my head around JavaScript and trying to carve out a space where that was not an accepted thing. There were not jobs for JavaScript experts at the time.

And I was trying to do so, and I naturally gravitated to trying to participate in TC 39 discussion emails, you know, email threads. Woah. And I was shot down so harshly so many times that part of the reason I actually ended up writing the you don't know JS books. And part of the reason for that title, it's, you know, it's a big complex layering of meaning behind that book and that that title. But part of it is because I was told so many times in both literal terms and, you know, implicitly figuratively, you don't know enough JavaScript to be here.

You don't know enough of our terms. You don't know enough enough of our, you're not up to the bar that we need. And I desperately wanted to be good enough to ask questions, to propose ideas. And to this day, I desperately wish that I was good enough to be taken seriously by anyone in TC 39 for that matter. I've I I think that's a lost cause, honestly.

I'm looking through the messages I've looked through. You can't. It's political. It's a 100% political. It's not technical.

It's not reason. It's not logic. Sorry. Sorry. I'm gonna cut you off here because this is one that just inflames me.

Regex. Escape. You read the message thread, and it's couched. It's couched so softly, like, due to the great respect that we have for so and so and owing to his experience, we have carefully considered and decided to pursue other avenues for the time being with you know? And it's like, no.

Cut the BS. Tell the dude, look. Look. I don't care that you're a 100 years old. I don't care that you're one of the best c plus plus developers that's ever lived.

You're wrong. Like, you're wrong. Like, everybody knows it. Everybody knows we need regex, not escape. There's somebody that people wanna please standing in the way, and nobody has the courage.

Everybody needs to be respectful. Nobody has the courage to say, look. This is a technical decision. Your emotions are getting in the way. It's 5 against 6 or 5 against 1, and we're we're putting this through.

But the other thing with that is I've been on another standards body very short lived. I only went to 2 sessions. I couldn't stomach it. It was an IoT standards body. And, and then the guy who was leading the thing, he took me aside, and he's like, look.

Because you're new here, I'm gonna school you on some things. This is so and so. He works for Cisco. His objective is that Cisco wants a patent on this. They're not gonna do anything unless their patent is represented in this standard.

This is so and so. He's and I and I it may not have been Cisco, so don't don't say I'm just throwing some names out there. Like, you know, this is so and so. He's from, you know, the the the Google team, and his objective is that he doesn't want Cisco to have, you know, any advancement whatsoever. He's gonna try to block the patent being used whatsoever.

And, like, here's so and so. And he kinda gave me the lay of land. Like, he we have this, you know, this this backroom conversation where he gave me the lay of the land and basically explained why no progress was gonna be made. And that if any decisions were made, they weren't gonna be the ones that benefited the people that the standard went to. Now he didn't say it like that because he was optimistic, because he had done this for years.

He was good at politicking. He knew that the incremental gains, like, just getting one good part of a standard through was worth the politicking. I can't stomach it. So sorry sorry sorry not sorry for cutting off there, but, like, I just I can't give these t c 39 people any excuse because because I don't have that in my heart. I don't understand the politicking.

It's not something I'm good at. And when there's something that is so obviously the right thing to do and somebody says, well, the reg check escape function won't escape strings that haven't been escaped, so we can't have a reg check escape function. Instead, we're gonna continue to have people download it from NPM or copy it from Stack Overflow. Like, I just I can't do it. I don't have it in me.

I'm not that good of a person. I could fill up, many, many hours of the podcast talking about dozens and dozens of battles that I've gotten embroiled in on topics like that. I wasn't involved in regex escape, but there's dozens of others from GlobalViz to records and tuples syntax to a 100 others. I I will say, for anybody that's listening, I do believe there's quite a few people on TC 39. It's not one body with one view.

It's hundreds of people, and I do believe there's quite a few people on TC 39 that really do have the best interest of JavaScript and really don't like and don't wanna devolve into all the the politicking and PR battle. I I think there's quite a few people there. Unfortunately, the body doesn't work according to that tone from my experience because there are others who have been there a long time and who have a lot of influence in in other ways. But I I we should be very careful, I think, not to paint TC 39 as a whole because there's hundreds of different people and they are on a spectrum of what they are bringing to the table and what their their biases are and their backgrounds and all of that. I just personally wish that I had ever been seen as a peer among that group.

Not that I was like literally like had a seat on TC 39. I just wish that I had ever earned the right to be respected among that group. And the vast majority of my interactions have always treated me like I'm an outsider that's bringing an unwelcome amount of noise to what they would prefer to just be their own process. And I'm you know, I wish. But but TC 39 is not the only standards body that I've had that kind of experience with.

It just I've had more of that experience because I've cared about JavaScript for so long. And and I apologize if I'm miss it sounds like I'm misrepresenting, but, like, when I come into these issues, it's the same people. It's like the same user handles across the various issues that I'm seeing that are holding back progress. And so from my perspective and and then hearing when Douglas Crockford used to talk about it. You know?

Mhmm. So Yeah. Just, like, my my perspective is is just I'm I'm not I'm not seeing the heroes. I'm seeing pardon my French. No.

I'm not even gonna say it. You know what I'm thinking. But Well, the you you aren't you you may be not seeing them, but I I just wanna say, I believe that they're there. But they aren't the ones that are local on the GitHub discussion threads. They aren't the ones who triage issues.

They aren't the ones who try to who who create ostensibly welcoming experiences from those not on the body. And I wish that were the case. I wish there was a tone that wanted that, but I think for many, many reasons, I don't really think they want that. As a body, I don't think they really want it. They operate on GitHub as if they want it, but I think they would really prefer to kind of do their thing themselves.

So I I've largely tried to to step out of any discussion around TC 39 and around JavaScript, and I've stopped making my complaints about the language. And, I mean, I even I even went so far as instead of trying to evolve to your point. Instead of trying to change to change JavaScript and instead of just complaining about JavaScript, I actually designed a whole programming language that has some of my ideas about what I wish a programming language were. Whether people like it or not, I just I I I wanted to be I wanted to do something productive instead of simply saying I don't like what JavaScript's doing. So I hope that, you know, maybe somebody's listening, maybe they can find others that they can be more welcoming to.

But my experience over 15 or 20 years has not been very welcoming, unfortunately. Yeah. I'm I so I don't know how you feel about these things, and we can we can have different opinions, but this is one of the reasons I hate COCs because I learned very early on that a COC is not for inclusivity. It is for exclusivity. C o COCs are to be able to use broad brushes to target wrong thinkers and silence them.

They are not to help people have a a better experience. And, you know, simple programmer, I think he went through a similar experience as to some of what you were talking about earlier, but it seems like he came out on top. Like, he had, some books dropped from his publisher, and and, you know, Chuck had something similar happen, which I mean, the Chuck situation Chuck was an innocent bystander. He literally was just saying, hey. I'll host the podcast and let you 2 talk about it.

And that got him, like, lost bunches of sponsors, bunches of people that were gonna come on the show, and all the I mean, he did nothing in in my view, and I I tried to see because I'll be fair. If I think he did something wrong, I'll say it. But he would have, like, the most generous take in the world of, hey. I don't know what's going on. I would love to have both of you on a podcast to talk about it.

And that got him banned from conferences, dropped advertisers. It was insane. That was the first time that that was before cancel culture was even the buzzword that it is today. It was it was still something where it's like, no, that's not real. Or, you know, it's but, yeah, it seems like and when that happened, I I'm not sure why Amy didn't come back on the show.

I know that some of it is because she's busy, but I I have to wonder if some of it was not due to online harassment because there was some that went on that was uncomfortable. And yeah. So I'll I'll say just since you brought up codes of conduct, I personally do feel like there is merit to codes of conduct, but the implementation of them and the enforcement of them is pretty flawed in my experience, and that I find frustrating. I think on the whole, our industry is probably better with them than without them, but that doesn't that doesn't foreclose that I I think there's some some pretty strong flaws with them. I personally experienced the negative side of that code of conduct enforcement at a conference that I was supposed to be a speaker at.

And I had a talk that had that I had given at other conferences successfully, and I was scheduled to give that talk at that conference. 1 of the marketers for that conference wrote an ad that made an inappropriate joke about the title of my talk that they made an inappropriate pun from the title of my talk. That was an outside marketer or advertiser or something. Nobody cleared it with me. I didn't know what's happening, but it happened.

That ad offended a bunch of people, and those people got turned their attention to me and my talk title. And they made a claim that my talk title was a violation of the code of conduct because of what that marketer advertiser did. The conference organizer and I had some long drawn out conversations about it. He was begging me to change the top title. And on principle, I really felt like I wasn't gonna change it because I felt like that was not at all the intent of the top title, and I didn't feel like it was, fair to compromise on that.

In the end, that conference site organizer basically dropped me as a speaker. He said, well, if you won't change the title, then we can't have you speak because one of our, sponsor companies, a big sponsor company, is gonna back out if you speak. So they dropped me from the program. And one of the things that frustrates me about that scenario, it's not like, oh, man. I got deplatformed.

I mean, it was one conference. I've given hundreds of conference talks. But what frustrated me about that situation was Literally 100? I've I've literally given, like, over 200 conference talks. Yeah.

Woah. I had I did not realize. I've done I've been speaking forever. I've had plenty of opportunities on the stage is my point. I'm not trying to brag or something, but I've had plenty of opportunities.

It's not like I was No. I get it. Somehow, like, canceled or deplatform. But the code of conduct is supposed to protect everybody equally. But in its implementation, it ends up unequally protecting some folks at the disadvantage of other folks.

That's unfortunate. I should have been just as protected from an unfair claim against me as the people who had every legitimate right to feel their complaint about my top title and feeling offended by my top title. We both should have been equally protected. But in that case, basically the sponsor dollars won. That organizer said, I gotta take the sponsor dollars and I gotta kick you out.

That sucks. And and, and so I've I've seen, codes of conduct go well, and I've seen them go poorly. And I think that's a a case where they went poorly and was unfortunate. I don't think I've ever seen them go well. I I much prefer if you act like a douche, then you just lose respect, and people don't they don't take you as seriously.

Maybe you won't get invited back. I I think that just natural consequences because the whole idea of the COC is, okay, we're gonna we're gonna point out, draw attention to, and have a formal process to not call you a douche. Like, just let somebody call him a douche. You know? Just just let the name calling be done and let people get over it.

And if, you know, I I guess it's like if you don't know how to act like an adult and you don't know your audience, you're going to find out that the idea that there was a formal process to pick apart something you've said or done to hold a kangaroo court, it that's that's all that's all I see it as. I I've I've I'm I think I heard a one instance where somebody made an inappropriate joke, and they they COC them, and it was, like, a warning. But most of what I hear and but that you would do anyway. Like, you don't need a COC to say, hey, man. That joke was a little inappropriate, especially for this audience and the professionalism that we're trying to have.

We will not invite you back if you you know? Like, have that. Sure. But to COC somebody and then make an announcement. Okay.

There was an inappropriate joke in track 3 at 12 PM by someone, and we have this part of our COC that those kinds of inappropriate jokes are not okay. So we just want everybody to feel safe. The person has been dealt with. So there's there's I'll I'll just say, you know, you and I do see a little see this a bit differently, but I'm not I'm not saying I I have the the right perspective on this. But I think, code of conducts do serve a valuable purpose in that they call to our attention what I wish was already important to people, which is the we need to have more empathy in how we deal with other people.

That is missing, and I think it's trying to litigate empathy instead of inspire empathy. And that's where I think a lot of it goes wrong is we really wish that people were just, you know, better at understanding how their intentional or unintentional actions were, you know, making somebody feel unwelcome or unsafe. We really wish people just had that perspective and that we could just kind of, like, have a quick little conversation with them, and they would totally get it and say, you're right. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done it.

But a lot of people don't. A lot of people don't feel that way. And so we've gotta litigate this empathy into the situation. I think that's Yeah. Where a lot of people think that's pull them aside and say, Hey, Hey, you're we're not gonna we're, you know, do you do you see what was done there?

No. We're not gonna we're not gonna invite you back if you, you know, or say, like, we'd like you to apologize. You know, I had put the responsibility back on the person if that's what needs to be done. If they can't they can't take the responsibility, but to make a spectacle of it, you know, it's just Yeah. I I I think you would performative aspect for sure, but I think part of the reason for the performative aspect is because this is still not the norm for people to take the personal accountability.

And so they kinda have to overcompensate. I'm not saying the overcompensation is good, but there is an overcompensation because we're making up for the fact that this is not yet the norm, and I don't know how long it'll be until it is the norm. But everybody really should be acting, I think, with that empathy that at the instant that somebody points out, hey, that thing that you just said or did was like, it was over the line or it bothered me or it made me feel uncomfortable. That the instant reaction should have been like, that wasn't my intent. I'm sorry.

I'll I'll fix that joke. I won't do that in the that wasn't my intent, and I'm really sorry. Like, we could we could resolve so many problems if people really genuinely cared to be empathetic like that. And there there will be people who have malicious intent, who don't who who who are gonna say things, and they're not gonna feel contrite. Those people definitely do need the the the litigious part of a coat of conduct, but it's sort of this one size fits all paintbrush that all interactions need that same performative aspect, and they don't.

It's really hard to know in advance whether a person is gonna be, like, really receptive and understanding or whether they're gonna make a big stink about, no. No. No. I have the right to say whatever kind of joke I wanna say. So I think it's really hard for me to imagine us being more successful without them, but I don't think that we've figured out the right way to to position these yet.

Well, I I will I I don't wanna drag on with this, but I just wanna bring up one more thing. So I did a bad thing once. I gave a talk at a PHP track, and my talk was getting started with PHP. And as you might imagine, my first slide was the word don't. And and and I would say it like and I made fun of PHP the whole time.

I did try to give, like, useful information. I said something like, you know, don't use PHP because it's overly complicated. The way that it handles objects are terrible. You know? And and this was PHP 5 or so.

But if you do, here's how to overcome that pitfall. Never run a PHP server standalone. But if you do, here's how to overcome that pitfall with a reverse proxy instead. Never use WordPress because your server's gonna get hacked. But if you do, here's how to install the security plugins.

Or you know? So it was very much a you know, I don't like PHP, and I hope that you don't use it. But if you choose to use PHP anyway, here are some things that I've encountered that mitigate the problems. But it was, you know, it was, in bad faith in the sense that I was, you know, I was trolling for my own personal ego and the conference organizer pulled me aside and, you know, just gave me a disappointed look. And he said, that's not cool, man.

I'm gonna need you to apologize. You know, what you did was wrong. You know, it it that shouldn't have gone that way. And I'm embarrassed that that, you know, you did that to our community. And so, you know, I I made a public apology and I came back the next year and I spoke, and I didn't do something stupid like that.

But, you know and I I think that that is that's the right way to handle it is to pull people aside to deal with it man to man or woman to woman or what you know, man to woman, whatever it is. But, you know, in the idiom, man to man. And and to, you know, to take that personal responsibility in both respects. And if I had said no, he probably would have said, you are welcome to leave. You know?

And that would have been the right thing to do. And so I I agree that we should have standards, you know, and I and I agree with a lot of what you're saying. I just, yeah, I'll I'll leave it at that. I agree with a lot of what you're saying. I I think that we actually have a lot in common.

I think we have more in common on this point than we than we disagree on, but there's some some definitely some details we disagree on. Since you brought up your story, I will flavor the conversation with my story that has some similarities, some strong similarities. A little over a year ago, I was asked to keynote a React conference. I don't know why I was asked to keynote a React conference, but I was. And I struggled with, what am I gonna say to a react crowd?

And I eventually decided that what I wanted to do, which I knew would ruffle feathers, but what I wanted to do in an attempt to be productive is to give a talk that points out all of the frustrations that I have as somebody trying to come in to react from the outside and learn and do something, and specifically, the frustrations I have because I can't do what I need with only React. Why is React so deficient in the following ways that the only solutions are all these external libraries and frameworks? Shouldn't this be something that is is prioritized by React? So the talk was effectively from that frame of reference. Here's what I was trying to do.

Here's my bad code, but here's why I think this is it's frustrating because on the box, React should offer me a solution, and it doesn't or whatever. So, anyway, that was my talk, and it was it was it was not well received by the majority of the audience, I guess, we should say. There were some people that really appreciated it, and they were like, it's really good to point out that there are some flaws that we're kinda missing because we're so engrossed in what React is, but the outsiders don't understand it, whatever. But I think the the majority of people were like, man, screw that guy. And, I didn't get invited back.

I doubt I'll get invited back. I doubt I'll be ever I'll ever be invited to speak at a React conference again. So I've got the same I've got a similar experience. I get it. I it it it sounds like I mean, I don't know what it was like.

I actually wanna look up the the talk now. What was the did they post it online or did you get cut? No. It was posted online. The the talk was actually framed around the topic of declarative coding versus it's called weathering the storm declarative versus imperative weathering the storm.

So you should be able to find the video for that. Alright. I'll watch that today or listen to it. Okay. Yeah.

I'd I'll be interested to see what my take is. I'll let you know. But, you know, if I if I feel like you came across as a bit too trolly or if you came across as sincere because I I know in my presentation, I did have good intentions. I mean, I there there were I I I was trolling. I was ego ing, but I also did honestly you know, it's like, this was really frustrating to me, and this is how you can solve it.

But every slide was don't use PHP, but if you do, which obviously that was the wrong format. If I had inverted that to saying, you know, there's a lot of things I like about x, y, and z, and I think that if you use these, there's a lot of pitfalls you avoid. And so it actually encourage you to investigate those as you're on your journey. But talking about PHP, I I could have done it in a way that was much more productive. So I'll I'll I'll take a listen to that talk and, I'll I'll, I'll I'll message you and and and give you my my take if if if you would be interested in that.

I'd Oh, yeah. Myself up on a No. Sure. You know, a high horse or anything. Alright.

Okay. So this is this has been interesting. It it definitely started off and has continued in a direction that I didn't expect. And I want to I wanna circle back around. Actually, is there anything else that's on your mind right now that you wanna that you wanna, dig into?

I I started off by saying that part of my frustration is my personal journey has included a year of unemployment, which has been tremendously difficult financially and otherwise for my family and all of that. Offshoot from that, not to say again that I don't own any of the responsibility for why some employers might not wanna hire me, but I do think there are some macro level things that I believe to be true about our industry now that have changed and changed rather rapidly. And I wanna call them out because I think they're a bad direction that we've gone, and I I don't know if there's any dialing it back, but I just wanna call this out. So when I joined as an engineer, when I started as an engineer back in the mid to late nineties, that's kinda when I got my feet wet with software engineering. And when I was joining, the industry was full of a number of extremely highly regarded founding fathers and mothers of the industry.

There were people that had been already in the industry by for 30 year 40 years at that point, and they were still active and involved in, various parts of technology and Internet, web, and all of that. And and they were in these highly regarded positions at the big companies, whether they're the Googles or whatever. Like, they, know, they held these, like, distinguished positions in these companies. And I joined as this brand new engineer, and, of course, I immediately, like, I I I so looked up to them. Right?

Like, I wanna be like them. I wanna I wanna do something important and impactful for the world, and I wanna be like them. And I'm and that's not gonna happen overnight. So I literally have intentionally spent a lot of my effort. I've it's it's something that I've regularly gone back to in my career over the last 25 years to try to pay my dues and to try to pay it forward and to try to give back more to this industry than I've taken because I wanted to follow in those footsteps, and I wanted to be that type of engineer for this industry.

What I think has happened over the last and I don't think it's been long. I think it's been maybe 2 or 3 years at most. It's not been long. But I think what's happened is we've we've the industry has basically decided that having people like that as part of the conversation is not important anymore. And in fact, not only is it not really all that important, it's actually more of a liability.

I think what we've decided the way I would describe this is I think what used to be the variance of the engineering ladder going from, you know, you just started to you've got 10 or 12 or more years. Right? Above 12, 15 years, etcetera. Like, that was the the, the variance of the engineering ladder. And there were companies that would always believe it was important to to hire people near the top of that ladder.

Now I think we've shrunk that ladder so much, where from the beginning of your engineering career to when you're like a seasoned staff or principal engineer, where that used to be 12, 15, 20 years, it's now like 4 to 6 years. I literally stopped job posting. I saw a job posting just the other day for a staff level engineer, and they said 5 years JavaScript experience for a staff level position. And that was unheard of. That would have been unheard of back in the day, but that's that's the new reality.

I'm not saying it's not a reality, which just need to embrace, but it is the reality. And so because things are changing so quickly and because companies are not really valuing those those longer longer lived and more experienced voices in the conversation, I think we've seen a lot of these factors kind of, reducing both the pay that is available in the industry. And, really, it's become where we don't hire people anymore. We hire roles. We don't hire people and tailor what we have them do based upon what their experience and their skill level is.

We just hire into roles. And if you fit in the role grain and if you don't fit in the role, we just don't hire you. Right? That like, that's that's a big change where we we now have more supply than demand. And I've looked at a whole bunch of jobs that and applied to many of them, that are well below my level of experience at 25 years and pay well below what I was making before.

And I've tried to apply to those jobs, and I don't even get callbacks. I don't even get, like, interview. And part of the reason for that Are you submitting with Microsoft Word? Serious question. No.

I'm not submitting with Microsoft. That is a problem because the AI based parsers will only elevate Microsoft Word documents. Well, that's there's a whole other conversation, but let let me just finish my point before I get shared to Garfield. But Sorry. But those companies look, I think, whether they're doing it through automatic filtering or whether it's a person, I think they look at someone like me and they say, man, we're never going to have the budget to pay him what he's probably previously paid, and we're never gonna have the job role to take advantage of this 25 years experience.

So we're not going to hire him into this lower role because he won't be happy and we won't be happy. And so it's not simply that in my opinion, it's not simply that, you know, that there's a a quote unquote more qualified candidate. At this point, the what I'm seeing, and I'm not the only one, what I'm seeing is that the more senior you are, the harder it is to find any jobs out there because they're kind of just being sunsetted. They're not firing super top level, you know, 20 year experienced people, but they're not hiring them anymore. They're just not, and they don't want to.

And I I feel this is really troublesome. It creates friction. It creates friction because you've got a bunch of young kids that have, you know, that are senior engineers after 3 years of Right. Experience. Right.

And you go into a room where you're challenging the prevailing wisdom, you're not seen as, oh, this person has the wisdom of the ancients. You're seen as this person doesn't know what he's talking about. What a hack. Right. I mean, I I could be right.

I don't know if that's your experience. I think no. I I'm I'm saying that's exactly what I'm what I'm seeing. I had a Like, we've we're this is the Jonathan Blow thing. This is the Jonathan this is the collapse of civilization talk by Jonathan Blow.

The people who are in the currently held positions are so far removed from the original knowledge that in many cases, they are no longer able to connect it to the current knowledge. Right. Like, the the the this is this I appreciate it. Yeah. It it's like the it it's kinda like the the inverse of the sufficient sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from from magic.

Like, you you sound like a soothsayer when you come in and say you know? I I mean, a few years ago, it would have been if you came on and then said, hey. We should use the SQL database. You know? Like, a few years ago, that would have been like, what what what are you out of the loop?

It's like, no. Not only am I out of the loop, I'm ahead of it again. Alright. So I think I think what I see happening, there's a lot of people that are claiming that the advent of AI is going to get rid of the junior engineer positions, and I actually think the reverse has happened. I think the advent of AI has been significantly improved the position of those entering because they are not coming into this with any prior experience about or conceptions about what engineering should be.

And they're excited to use whatever tools they can, and they're excited that they get a lot of visible bang for the buck, if you will, quickly. Those people are way easier for companies to imagine employing right now than people who have been doing engineering the, quote, unquote, old school way for so long and, are more willing to call out the flaws. Right? I'm just not as employable because I'm not on the bandwagon of we need all of our code to be generated by AI. And the entrance into this industry are are by far more interested in that or more willing to approach that as the way to do engineering.

I was told in a recent job I I I love it, but but I don't know how anybody who's a junior could be effective with it. Oh, I Because the you your BS meter has to go off. The BS meter has to go off. If the BS meter has I mean, how are you gonna get it? Because it Because they don't need it to be quality for it to ship.

That's the difference. But it's gotta work. Like, it's gotta accept the form input, and it's gotta post it. You know? Like like, it has to at the bare minimum level, the code has to work.

Now I I will say You and I disagree with this where that bar is anymore. I don't think that the bare minimum bar is the same place today as it was 5 years ago. You're right. Because there are plenty of websites Barely working. It doesn't That's enough.

But, anyway, I I I just think I think that they actually have an advantage. People entering the industry right now have this advantage because we did not have tools like that when I joined the industry or all along that would have so rapidly accelerated our ability to get something out regardless of its quality, regardless of how fit it is for the task. They are just much faster at achieving any result than a a more traditional engineering approach would. And I had interesting. You know, there was a very recent experience where I had gone through a very prolonged job interviewing process.

Really thought I was gonna get it. I was down at the end final interviews and then got told that we've decided not to move forward. And the feedback they gave me was literally, we think you're too rigorous of an engineer. You're too concerned with solving the problem in the most complete way, and you're not interested in just shipping something quickly, and that you won't fit here because of that. I see that.

That's just a reality. That's the that's the way our industries change. And I'm not gonna say that there's no benefit to it because there are reasons why our industries change that way. But I don't think we've really come to terms with the cost of that quite yet. I think Well, the cost have a lot of cost down the road.

That's that's like a quadruple in Tundra right now because I don't know how tapped in you are with the the political space and how that has an impact on us, but interest rates are what are are a large part of what is driving the need to make changes, not necessarily the motivation, because, you know, people like like, in normal in normal human interaction, you feel upset. Someone says what's wrong. You say the first thing that comes to mind. You don't, well, maybe you personally, Kyle Simpson, you may do this from the way you're speaking, but the average person doesn't doesn't recognize what's wrong. They don't know why they're angry or why they're upset.

They're upset. They know they're upset. You ask them, oh, you seem like something's bugging you. What's bothering you? And they're just gonna spit off the first thing that comes to mind, which is typically the most recent thing that happened.

Like, they were upset. They were having a bad day. They stubbed their toe. So you say, why are you upset? Ugh.

I stubbed my toe. You know? But, no, that's not the reason you were upset. That's just the most recent thing that happened that put an impression negatively on your emotions. And I think that that's kinda what's happening in the industry, in regards to this AI thing.

Interest rates are the problem. Money is drying up. AI is an excuse, which, you know, paradoxically then causes more of the economic issue because then people believe that AI is the solution. Like, people are not firing their employees because AI is picking up the slack. That's I I somebody come at me with the data that shows that that's what's happening, but I think that everyone who's done marketing for an AI company has had their article refuted on that basis.

Mhmm. People are losing employees and and tightening the belt because the interest rates have gone up. When the interest rates go up, that means that for the investors to take out the money in the first place, they actually have to have a plan to pay back the money. Because when the interest rates are low, then you don't really have to pay back the money every month. You could just float on it.

Like, imagine that, you know, if you could get a 1% interest rate on like, you had a big project you wanted to do, and you were not being really conservative with your money. If interest rates were 1%, you could take out $50,000 and then you could sit on that $50,000 for the next 10 years and use the money to pay back the loan and only use 10,000 of it to do whatever you wanted to do. So if interest rates are sufficiently low and you're financially savvy, you're gonna take out way more money than you need, and you're gonna use the extra money as a buffer. And I say financially savvy, I don't not necessarily from a moral perspective. I'm not saying that's the right thing to do, but I'm saying it's a trick you can use.

You take out more money than you need. You use you use the money as a buffer to pay off the interest rates. That's what the whole I mean and a lot of people, I think, are truly evil. They get people to do this with their home equity loans to, you know, take some blockchain course or some real estate course or I I've got I've got a friend, like, my heart just hurts for him because he's gotten suckered in. And I'm telling him.

I'm like, dude, you are getting suckered. Like, please stop. This is gonna be so bad for your family. This is gonna be so bad for you. Just please, please just hear me out.

Like, you are the sucker. Like but nobody wants to hear that. You know? Any anyway, sorry. That's that's a tangent.

No. No. I I I don't I don't actually think it's super tangential. I think the zero interest rates of the last 20 years are a big, big contributing macroeconomic factor, and they allowed a kind of arbitrage like you're describing that really enabled probably 50% or more of this industry to exist. Many of the companies Yeah.

That currently exist today should have failed but didn't fail because they had a business model that was propped up only by that macroeconomic condition. And the And I don't think that's coming back in my in my lifetime. I don't think it's coming back. So And the double negative on this is that what that meant was and this is actually illegal. It is illegal to well, I mean, it I guess it depends on the state and at the federal level.

But in general, it is illegal it's considered an illegal unfair business practice to put your products and services at a loss in order to extinguish competition. But that's effectively what these zero interest rates did because the profitable the profitable businesses went out of business because they had to pay their costs that month. Mhmm. The businesses that had the zero interest rate loans funneled through investors, they did not have to pay their costs that month. Yeah.

And so the businesses that were profitable went out of business, and the businesses that were unprofitable had an unfair advantage. And this is I mean, this goes into a whole ball of wax, but, I mean, like, that's the fed. It funnels into tech. Why why do these tech companies from the last 20 years why do they all pair it the same message? Why is there not a single publicly traded company that has a different opinion?

Why is it only privately owned companies, like 37 signals, that have a different opinion? When the money flows that way, it is the the ideology, the philosophy, the ethics, everything about it, where the money comes from is tainted. When you've got a profitable business, your relationship is to your customer. When you have a growth opportunity, your relationship is literally to the US government. Yeah.

You are getting your money from the Fed. That is where, you know, that's where it all goes back to. Now I you may have a different opinion on that or or whatever, and I don't I don't wanna push that any further, but that's No. I I I think I think the the point is well made. I don't have much more to say about the employment industry, but I just hope that people are thinking more about, like, the both the literal and the figurative costs here.

Yeah. And I'm personally just gonna have to keep trying to find a way to invent a job because I don't think there I'm gonna find the job is kinda the the reality that I've come up up against. I I need to wrap probably here, but I I do think that this is a conversation that I hope maybe you'll have with even other people on this podcast, bring people on and ask them their perspectives on these things because it might be different than mine. Yeah. I mean, it I I think because I because I've had, you know, even some real world interactions with you over the years, it's a lot easier for for me to to have some real talk with you.

Yeah. You know, a lot of the people that we have on the show, that that real talk is not and and and yeah. And and it's and it's hard it's hard to navigate, yeah, because people have some people are high-tech communicators and some people are low context communicators. You and I, we're low context communicators, and that makes it a good pairing. That is a very bad pairing when I get on with a high context communicator because I'm not intuitive, and, I take things at face value.

I don't read signals. You know? So so this anyway, yeah, I don't I don't wanna I don't wanna monopolize your actually, I just wanna do you wanna monopolize your time. I absolutely do. But I've I've appreciated the conversations today.

Today was was was really engaging. I hope I hope it puts some thoughts in people that that they'll chew on as they listen to this episode. Alright. Well, thanks very much for coming on and and sharing about that. Like I said, it it took a different direction than I was thinking.

Some of the directions loop back around to what I some of the things I thought we were gonna talk about. I thought we were gonna be talking more about industry issues, but, you know, kinda seeing how it all comes together, like the personal, development and culture and and ethos and and, you know, the way of interacting and seeing the world, plus the change and shift in culture and all that kind of culminating. Yeah. So thanks for coming on. I guess we'll go ahead and and move on to pics then.

And, I'll I'll go first. So I I I know so many people right now. This is this is what's blowing my mind. It makes me really worried because, you know, I myself am at risk. I I work independently.

I work for a few different companies, but it it would be as the economic situation changes, I'm at risk. And I I could be in a unfavorable position my myself. And I know so many people that are highly qualified people that if I were hiring, I would hire them. I met this guy in a meetup. He is, you know, there's probably, like, the 10 smartest people I've ever met.

And this guy is so weird now because now there's nobody except the Internet that I'm talking to. It's a totally different vibe. But there's and what he's probably one of the 10 smartest people I've ever met just in terms of, like, the way that he can reason about things. I mean, not just his knowledge, but, like, his ability to intuit patterns and connect the dots. Right?

And he works at an Amazon warehouse, and he also works on a compiler. And he is struggling to get a job for some of the same reasons that Kyle was mentioning, where he's overqualified and yet has no industry experience. Like, the things that he can solve, the things that he can work on, he's overqualified for the positions that he's applying for and under, under experienced in terms of what could be shown on a resume. So it's just like this weird limbo, and and he's not the only one. And I'm gonna share some of his, his work.

He for fun for fun, Walmart had released a paper about their search algorithm, and he noticed some technical issues with it. And he created one of the most masterful presentations I've ever seen. It it showing how applying different techniques would yield significant benefits. And this is actually significant because it's Walmart and it searched for their auto complete, so it's not it's not like a I mean, it's a significant problem. You know, it's anyway, he he just one of the most amazing things I've I've ever seen, and I'm I'm gonna post some links to that.

His handle is, validark. But this is a guy that if I were if I were hiring, I would totally want him on my team. I wouldn't be able to use him to his full capacity, but totally want him on a on a team. And I've I've done a little bit of work with him on a on a side project and was and was very satisfied. But, anyway, and I know other people like this.

I know several other people that do not have jobs right now that are top tier engineers. They they are on the top shelf. They are the people that I would want to hire, and they cannot find work, and this is the strangest thing in the world to me. So, anyway, I was the the pick there was more than anything else is that the Walmart paper and then oh, whoops. I actually didn't link to the correct the let me let me see if I can link to this correctly.

Go link to this. Okay. There we are. That's the correct link for the other piece there. And then, also, you know, since we're, since we're all alone now and it's just me and no one else can be blamed, my my other pick is gonna be I I don't know.

I, like, I kinda wanna couch this. I kinda wanna don't. I I don't know. But I I don't I don't know if this is gonna come out before the election. I think it will.

I I don't think our lead times on the episodes are that long right now. I have to go back and check. But I would encourage everybody to reconsider what you think you know. I like and no. I don't even want you to reconsider what you think you know.

What I want what I want for people to do, what would what would make me so incredibly happy is if, you know, just one person goes out there and looks up actual source videos. Take the person that your hate is targeted towards. Go look up the source videos and see what that person actually says for the whole sentence. Because I've seen some I don't know if it's AI generated or what, but I've seen some content that's not parody content. That's actual content that's being put out there that is removing words like not from the video, and and and then being, you know, recycled into I think a lot of people have some very wrong misconceptions about particular events and particular things that have been said and particular, like, a lot of the particulars are very, very skewed.

So whatever your greatest bias is against or for your candidate, Go just watch the video and watch, like, the whole 60 second clip, the 30 seconds before, the 30 seconds after of what they're actually saying, and see if it lines up with what you believe that you have been taught that they are saying. Because I guarantee you, for many of you, if you do that, no matter which side you're on, you are gonna have your eyes opened and it might open up enough to cause some reconsideration. I do think that this election is very strange. I think there's a lot of anomalies that have led up to it. I think that something is wrong in in the US system right now.

I think it's dangerously wrong. And, you know, and if you wanna make a quick buck, Elon has announced a program on Twitter where you can make money by registering people to vote. And as far as I know, I don't think that there's a stipulation on that they have to be for a particular candidacy. The position is a freedom of speech position, but, I don't I don't believe that you have to subscribe to a particular candidate in order to take advantage of that offer. So, basically, $47,000,000 is up for grabs.

That's $47 per registration is up for grabs for anybody who, goes through goes through whatever online tool they have, inviting it becomes the referral for the registration, something like that. I don't know all the details, but I think it's anyway. So I put that out there. So with that all said, thanks for tuning in. I hope that this was a good episode.

I hope that, that this has a positive impact overall. I know I did a little bit of ranting there and whatnot. I hope this is a positive impact overall, and y'all have a good one. I'll catch you later. Adios.