0:14

Welcome friends, you are

0:16

listening to the changelog. Conversations with

0:19

the hackers, the leaders, and the

0:21

innovators of the software world. I'm

0:24

Jared Santo. On this episode,

0:26

we are flipping the script and

0:28

sharing two interviews of us on

0:30

other people's podcasts. Yes, we are

0:32

down with OPP. Big

0:35

shout out to our partners

0:37

at fly.io, the home of

0:39

changelog.com. Launch

0:41

your app as close to your users

0:43

as possible all around the world for

0:45

peak performance. Fly makes it

0:47

easy. Learn how at fly.io. Hey friends, this

0:49

episode is brought

0:53

to you by

0:55

our friends at Sanadia.

1:03

Sanadia is helping teams take

1:05

NAS to the next level

1:07

via a global multi-cloud multi-geo,

1:09

an extensible service fully managed

1:11

by Sanadia. They take care

1:13

of all the infrastructure, management,

1:15

monitoring, and maintenance for you

1:17

so you can focus on

1:19

building exceptional distributed applications. And

1:21

I'm here with VP of Product and

1:24

Engineering, Byron Ruth, and David Gee, Director

1:26

of Product Strategy. So when you think

1:28

about connectivity being the first thing to

1:30

consider, someone push back on this and

1:33

say, we'll think about it later. What

1:35

competes with a mindshare of connectivity?

1:39

It's like an HTTP developer. You

1:42

actually just download and run the NAT

1:44

server. Whereas an HTTP developer, if you're

1:46

building an HTTP set of endpoints, you

1:48

typically have to implement or use

1:50

an HTTP library. And then whether it's

1:53

a Go standard library, Python, whatever it

1:55

is, and you're actually implementing endpoints that

1:57

register into the HTTP server. you

2:00

have to go deploy this HTTP server and ensure

2:02

that it's like performant. So it's a slightly different

2:04

model, but like you download the NAT server, it's

2:06

a standalone binary, it runs on the

2:09

majority of platforms. And then you

2:11

have a handful of client SDKs

2:14

across all the major languages. You

2:16

download that, and we even have

2:18

a higher level API that is

2:20

akin to what HTTP developers have

2:23

of like defining a handler, for

2:25

example. We just call it our

2:27

services API, and you basically

2:30

have a few boilerplate things that you

2:32

register your handler in the NATs context.

2:34

And out of the box, it actually

2:36

supports sort of a general request reply

2:38

setup. And then you get

2:41

all of these other benefits out

2:43

of the gate. But the experience

2:45

and like the onboarding is arguably

2:47

just as simple as any other

2:49

HTTP onboarding. With the exception that

2:51

you're technically deploying a client application

2:53

that implements these NAT services in

2:55

addition to the NAT server. But that's

2:58

where the CineCloud it's already managed in

3:00

since, and we even have the demo server for

3:02

you to just try it out. It's a public

3:04

endpoint that you can literally connect to. So you

3:06

can still build a simple client application, use the

3:08

demo server as the endpoint, and then you can

3:11

play with that and use that as sort of

3:13

the server deployment. Well, if we talk about it

3:15

just from, the central view

3:17

of applications, again, networking, all that kind of

3:19

packet based stuff, you were calling them HTTP

3:21

developers, which kind of stalk instead of API

3:23

devs. I mean, what do people do? They

3:25

glue it together at a primitive level. So

3:27

the primitive being HTTP, they move up the

3:29

stack in their mind's eye and they go,

3:31

oh, we're gonna do some gRPC, which is

3:33

kind of still point to point. So it's

3:35

a lot of point to point stuff versus

3:37

broker assisted connectivity, which is way simpler. You

3:39

know, you connect to an endpoint, you get

3:41

taught about other endpoints. It's like connecting to

3:43

a hive mind. You know, what we're

3:45

trying to do is move people away

3:47

from coordinated point to point connectivity to

3:50

easy connect to anything securely and connect

3:52

to your other stuff securely instead of

3:54

having to coordinate the whole, you know,

3:56

wraps nest of where to connect to

3:58

them. Then you've got to, Well, what

4:00

do we do then? Now we've got to go and

4:02

get the schema information and can we even connect to

4:04

this thing and does it even work? And you know,

4:06

what version is it and all this stuff. What we're

4:08

trying to do is transform that and flip that to

4:10

unify to make it much simpler. So I think we're

4:12

trying to go from a rat's nest of point to

4:14

point connectivity in the application space to making everything on

4:17

net. And it's like connecting to a

4:19

hive mind. And what we're kind of asking people to do

4:21

is think about applications the same way you would video conferencing.

4:23

So if me and Barb are going to have a chat,

4:25

we might do a huddle on Slack or jump on a

4:27

Zoom or something. But if we want a colleague to join,

4:30

we ask them to join the same course. We can

4:32

have a point to point conversation by the same medium

4:34

or we can have a party line by the same

4:36

medium. So you know, it's request, reply or pub sub,

4:38

but it's on the same platform. We don't care about

4:40

what Zoom server we connect to, we join, we connect

4:42

to the service and we coordinate our communications over the

4:44

fabric. There you go. Yes,

4:46

this tech is not cutting it.

4:48

NAT's powered by the global multi-cloud,

4:50

multi-geo and extensible service. Fully managed

4:52

by Sanadia is the way of

4:55

the future. Learn

4:57

more at sanadia.com/changelog.

5:00

That's

5:02

synadia.com/changelog.

5:30

First up, Adam and I

5:33

joined Catherine Druckmann on the Open

5:35

at Intel podcast. Catherine

5:37

was kind enough to invite us into their

5:39

snazzy recording booth at KubeCon North America last

5:42

fall. And we had a blast fielding all

5:44

of her questions about the early days of

5:46

podcasting, what interests each of us, how we

5:48

do what we do and more. Hey,

5:57

Adam and Jarrus, thank you for joining. Thank

6:00

you for taking a little time out of

6:02

KubeCon. Oh yeah. Because everyone's super

6:04

busy and there's too much to see here and do

6:07

and listen to. It's a circus out there. It is, there are

6:09

a lot of people. It is very people-y. We

6:11

wanted to see every booth, but then we saw how

6:13

many booths there are. Yeah, and how many clocks and

6:15

how many everything. That's a

6:17

challenge, yes. Yeah. So

6:20

tell me, what are y'all doing here? You're recording podcasts too,

6:22

right? This is very meta, this episode. It is. Yeah,

6:25

we're doing podcasts. Normally we get a booth and

6:27

we record from our booth, but we

6:30

are mobile this year and we

6:32

are walking around, talking

6:34

to people, seeing what's going on. Cool.

6:38

Getting a lay of the land, trying to win some

6:40

socks and some Lego. Trying

6:42

to win some Lego. Trying to

6:44

win her bucks. Couple PS5s, stuff like that.

6:46

So far I haven't won anything. Really, I

6:49

got coffee, but you know. Anyway,

6:53

for the people who are listening to

6:55

this someday, somewhere, tell us

6:58

a little bit about your podcast network

7:00

and I would really like to

7:02

know your story. I'd like to know how did

7:04

you get started in this crazy world that is

7:06

talking into microphones? How far back should we go? Go

7:09

all the way. All the way back. All the way.

7:11

Where were you born? A

7:14

small town in Pennsylvania. So

7:17

podcasting, I was working in

7:19

software on the front end and

7:23

was working with a couple

7:25

people that actually produced the podcast.

7:28

This is back in 2005. Early

7:30

days. Earliest days, yeah. And.

7:34

But a little RSSC, a little

7:36

enclosure tag. And you had to drag your files

7:38

out of iTunes. Did you? Oh

7:40

yeah, I mean early, early days, if you were

7:42

gonna do it actually pod casting, like on an

7:45

iPod, you had to actually drag the files into

7:47

iTunes, or no, I'm sorry, you had to sync

7:49

iTunes to your iPod. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You

7:52

had to like subscribe. Plug it in. Yeah, plug it in. Yeah, it

7:54

wasn't a drag and drop, but it was a drag. I

7:57

forget. Yeah. It's been a while.

7:59

It's been a while. better. Yeah but the

8:03

co-host of that show couldn't be

8:05

a host anymore and

8:08

so he's like hey I got an opening for a

8:10

host you want to work with me I'm like

8:13

sure and the

8:15

rest is history in a way. Eventually

8:18

we started a consultancy together

8:21

and that podcast

8:23

became an asset of the business and

8:25

through some change essentially he had to

8:28

leave the business and so the

8:30

asset stayed with me and I'm like well I gotta keep

8:32

doing this kept doing it and

8:35

eventually evolve the idea into

8:37

more things and so that show was called the web

8:39

2.0 show. Oh my gosh that

8:42

takes me back. That's how far back

8:44

it goes but you know we talked

8:46

to lots of people mint.com at the

8:48

earliest of days. So did I. But

8:50

not for a podcast or Linux Journal actually.

8:53

The GitHub founders were on that show three

8:56

months after GitHub's inception. We talked

8:58

to Tom Preston Warner and Chris

9:00

Wastraff in the offices of

9:02

Pivotal Labs. I want to say May

9:04

2008 and I think it

9:07

was incepted like January February maybe so

9:10

like legit right after GitHub was

9:12

GitHub. Wild. So but

9:15

you've evolved into how many shows do you have? How many

9:17

shows do you have Jared? Well we have the change

9:19

log. The change log is a big one right? That's

9:21

a big one and that has three flavors. So it's

9:24

one show but there's a news component on Mondays. There's

9:26

our interviews on Wednesdays and then on Friday we have

9:28

a talk show which is recurring

9:30

guests topical conversations and so that's all

9:32

that's three different flavors of that show.

9:35

Then we have other podcasts. I know you

9:37

have Practical AI. That's right. Practical AI is

9:39

a big hit. We have

9:41

JS party that's all about web development. We

9:44

have Go Time which is about the Go

9:46

programming language, systems programming, etc. We have

9:48

Founders Talk which is Adam's show. It's

9:50

one-on-one conversations with founders, CEOs and makers.

9:52

Is that all of them? We have

9:54

Ship It. Did

9:57

you say JS party? I said JS party. Ship It is a

9:59

is our Cloud DevOps getting things

10:01

in their production and seeing what

10:03

happens. Show. Is

10:06

that all of our shows? Request for commits is

10:09

on retired. Okay.

10:12

It was 20 episodes. Yeah.

10:14

Many episodes. Many series. Yeah, it kind

10:16

of like that. It had a plan for longer,

10:18

but it just, the hosts

10:21

were done with the topic, basically. Fair. And they wanted

10:23

to move on to new things. How many

10:25

hosts do you have under your umbrella? It's

10:27

not like you can't possibly all

10:29

do this. No. No. So

10:32

we have a couple of panel shows. So JS Party and GoTime are

10:34

both community oriented panel discussions. Okay.

10:36

Of which I'm one of the panelists on

10:38

JS Party, but neither one of us are

10:40

on GoTime. GoTime has

10:42

about six rotating hosts and

10:45

JS Party has eight. And

10:47

any show has anywhere between one and three

10:49

of those people on it with guests and

10:52

stuff. So there's a group

10:54

there. And then practically I, as Chris Benson and Daniel

10:56

White Knack, since day one

10:58

have been the practically I co-hosts. And

11:00

so we work with them to produce

11:02

that show. And Ship It was with

11:05

Gerhard Lazu. Now we're in the process.

11:07

We put that on hold because he got a very

11:10

busy life at Dagger. And we said,

11:12

okay, let's set that aside. Now

11:15

we're thinking about picking it back up again with a

11:17

new host. So there's one there. Who

11:19

else do we work with? That's it. That's our posse.

11:22

So probably like 12-ish. Awesome.

11:26

So people don't realize I think

11:28

sometimes how much work a

11:30

podcast is. Preach it, sister. People,

11:33

people, you know, a lot of, there's a

11:35

little bit of a trend in tech organizations.

11:37

Yes. Companies, hey, let's start a podcast. That

11:39

shouldn't be too difficult. But those

11:41

of us who have done it, even a little bit,

11:43

even for a handful of years like me, are

11:46

painfully aware that it is quite a bit

11:48

of work. There's a lot of research. There's

11:50

a lot of post-production. It's not just hanging

11:52

out and having conversations, right? Right. Tell

11:56

us a little bit. Tell the

11:58

world. For all of the people out there, if they... thinking they

12:00

want to start a podcast. How much

12:03

time would you say you spend researching topics,

12:07

recruiting guests and all of that? That's

12:09

a good question. I mean, we've had the

12:12

pleasure to be able

12:14

to turn it into a business. And so

12:16

it's easier now to do that work. Right,

12:18

support. We have support. We also don't

12:21

have other things to do. So we can put

12:23

a lot of work into it. Right, because your

12:25

actual job. But the answer is constant. I

12:27

mean, you're constantly scheduling, you're constantly trying to see

12:30

what's interesting. Because one of the things

12:32

that we do is we help

12:34

people realize and know what's interesting

12:36

right now and why. I mean, that's a lot

12:38

of why people come to us. And so we

12:40

have to keep up with all of that stuff.

12:43

It's a lot. It's a lot. I

12:45

don't know exact hours on research and scheduling. But

12:48

I mean, scheduling out a podcast is a constant

12:50

thing. When you have five podcasts a week, it's

12:53

just one of the things that you're

12:55

always doing. And you have to have a broad,

12:58

you don't have to have deep knowledge, but you have

13:00

to have incredibly broad knowledge. You have to know a

13:02

little bit about every single thing there is practically. And

13:05

that's a tough place to be. And I wonder, Hallie, how

13:07

do you pray? I mean, I assume you're always reading like

13:09

I am. Humbleness, honestly.

13:12

Is it humble to say you're humble? I

13:14

don't know. No. No. Because

13:17

we approach things in

13:20

the lens of being an imposter. So

13:22

we tend to be the imposter for our audience in a

13:24

way. Well, you're an audience proxy, yeah. And

13:27

because our show is so broad, we

13:29

can't know everything about everything, obviously. But

13:32

what we can do is we can use

13:34

our experience from here and

13:36

from there to understand areas where

13:38

we're not that deep. And

13:40

just ask questions, obviously. Learn their story. In

13:43

most cases, it's them sharing their story, not

13:45

us knowing what the story is. And

13:47

as they begin to share it, obvious patterns

13:49

begin to emerge that you can

13:51

pattern mesh towards and

13:54

apply to pretty much every conversation. No.

13:57

You pick a CEO out here or a lead dev or

13:59

a CTO. down the talk and we could

14:01

probably have a good conversation with pretty much anybody

14:03

here with almost no research. It helps that

14:05

open source people especially are very interesting.

14:07

They happen to be interesting people. Thankfully.

14:10

You're attracted to the culture in

14:13

a way, the culture's different

14:15

than non, than non-open

14:17

source tech. And so I

14:19

think it attracts an interesting group of people. So that

14:21

is, that's half the battle, right? Finding somebody who's interesting.

14:24

But yeah, I wonder also,

14:27

as you say, you

14:29

approach everything from the lens of an

14:31

imposter. Again, you talk to so

14:33

many people and I feel the same way. We're

14:36

in a privileged position that you

14:38

get to gather information constantly. You're

14:40

constantly talking about the next cool

14:42

thing and you get people

14:44

who are incredibly excited about their topics

14:46

and their areas of expertise. Does

14:50

that kind of influence what you get excited

14:52

about? It must

14:54

at some point narrow it down and

14:56

I'm curious to know what you're most

14:58

excited about given that you've had all

15:00

of these conversations. What's interesting to

15:02

you in the open source world right now? So

15:05

gosh, that's a big question.

15:08

I have asked myself this

15:10

over time, what is a

15:12

typical Jared interest? Because

15:15

a lot of times we're serving our audience. We're

15:18

listener first. We want to serve our audience. So

15:20

I'm often thinking like what does our

15:22

listener want to learn about, need to

15:24

know about, etc. Not so much what

15:26

I am. But what I

15:28

realized about myself at least personally over time is,

15:32

a, I really geek out on open source licensing

15:34

stuff. And

15:37

I think more so than our audience.

15:39

I just enjoy the thought processes that

15:41

go into it. Still being

15:43

a layman in the area, right? Still bringing on

15:45

the experts to talk to us. But I enjoy

15:47

those conversations because they just fascinate me. But then

15:51

specifically in the

15:53

craft of software, I don't really subscribe to the

15:55

craftsmanship movement because I know that was a proper

15:57

noun at one point. But I do really enjoy

15:59

it. enjoy discussing

16:01

with people who've been in the

16:03

trenches, writing code for many years,

16:06

like how they do what they do, and

16:09

the way they go about making

16:11

decisions, designing their

16:13

software, like that's really where I

16:16

end up camping out. So those kind of topics

16:18

myself. What about

16:20

you, Adam? Hmm. Well,

16:22

I wanna answer one question for Jared because there was many

16:24

times after a show, he would be like, I gotta play

16:26

with this right now. I feel excited and it was just

16:28

too real. Yeah, yeah. But I

16:31

would say for me, I like people.

16:33

I came for the software, but I stayed for the people. And

16:36

for me in many cases, like I just get so

16:38

excited about somebody else's story. Learning

16:41

about it, helping them realize where they could go

16:43

and should go. Sometimes dreaming with

16:45

them and giving them a path because

16:48

they're just so close to their problem set, they can't

16:50

quite see the holistic picture.

16:53

And I feel like that's kind of like a

16:56

skill I have. And

16:58

I enjoy hearing people's stories. So I think that's what brings

17:01

it to me. I like open

17:03

source licensing, of course. I love business.

17:06

I love the journey of zero to one,

17:08

what it takes to get there. And then

17:10

from one to two. Getting anything started is

17:12

hard. You know, how do you not only

17:14

have the idea, but incept it, build a

17:16

story around it, build a company around it,

17:19

build a team around it, get

17:21

people to invest into it, and

17:23

then actually provide product market fit and

17:25

value to customers. And then profit. I

17:28

like the profit side more than that. Like,

17:31

I'm all for startups and

17:33

what it takes to get to profit, but I

17:37

like sustainable things. Yeah. A lot of

17:39

respect for people who get there. What about you? What

17:41

do you get out of that? Oh yeah, so it's funny

17:43

you mentioned licensing because I really enjoy those conversations too.

17:46

I've been there, especially in the past several years, you

17:50

could say, there have been a lot of controversies

17:52

around software like this thing. And I love getting

17:54

into those conversations. I love hearing both

17:56

sides. You know, here we were in this tough spot and here's

17:58

the, we made this call. Maybe it was the

18:00

right one, maybe it was the wrong one, and those are very

18:02

interesting. I love hearing from experts on licensing. I work with several

18:05

of them, and that's really interesting too. But

18:07

I'm really excited about security, because

18:09

maybe I'm a little paranoid, but

18:12

right now, I'm the most excited about

18:15

how the open source community

18:17

is reacting to heightened scrutiny

18:19

on open source software in particular.

18:22

I also really like kind of along

18:24

the lines of what Adam was saying, not

18:28

so much the business side and the

18:30

profitability side, but I really enjoy observing

18:33

the life cycle of an open source project, what it

18:35

takes to create something, release it

18:37

into the world, which is a little bit of

18:40

a scary thing, and then build a community around

18:42

it and get people to actually contribute, get

18:45

people to actually want to help you build something and

18:47

make it better. That's

18:49

really cool. Getting

18:52

other people excited about what you're excited about is

18:55

also a skill, and I think that's really fun

18:57

to kind of watch and talk to people

19:00

about. I love hearing project maintainers talk

19:02

about how they get more people to

19:04

open those full requests, because

19:06

people are taking time out of their very

19:08

packed schedule, again, to write code

19:13

for you, and then our documentation, or tweet

19:16

for you, or whatever it is that people

19:18

are doing with any open source project. I think that's pretty

19:20

cool. Yeah, it's amazing how

19:22

some people have the ability to inspire

19:24

others. I'm

19:26

giving my labor away to

19:28

the world open source, and

19:32

what I'm doing is so valuable and interesting that

19:34

other people are like, you know what? I'm

19:37

going to give mine away too. I'm going to

19:39

actually make yours better, just give you this gift

19:41

on top of that other gift. What's

19:45

the fellow's name, Giorgi Gurgunov, the

19:47

llama.cpp? Just in

19:49

terms of people who just seem like they have that

19:51

ability, like if you watch his repos recently,

19:53

a lot of it's

19:55

like bringing ML Model

19:58

usage to the masses via open source.

20:00

source tooling. I. Mean. The.

20:03

Pr as he gets are like.

20:06

A Huge features. Really technical,

20:08

really interesting. He's just inspired

20:10

all these very smart. Skill.

20:14

Developers to work on projects with him

20:16

and that's just. Incredibly

20:19

fascinating. Yeah, And you know

20:21

it the you will you talk about that imposter which

20:23

in L A Oh well. It's real. Getting

20:25

people to contribute is not just about

20:27

getting them excited, it's also getting them

20:30

over that hurdle. Have been terrified. Open

20:32

all requests mouth because now we're. Being.

20:35

On the other end of any being somebody who

20:37

has over open many a those requests it took

20:39

me years to work up the courage to do

20:41

that because you're in the sense that will the

20:43

people who were maintaining you have x who you

20:46

know commit access well they they know they must

20:48

know way more than I do. array there those

20:50

are the experts I couldn't possibly have anything to

20:52

contribute their i'll leave that to people who know

20:54

as are doing but eventually work ethic or do

20:57

you? Oh wait, I actually do know something. I

20:59

can help think this issue and that issue and

21:01

yeah and it. but it takes a lot of

21:03

courage I think to get their. Kind

21:06

of as if I could segue a bit

21:08

like the current it takes to stand in

21:10

front of her microphone. And hit record

21:12

for has. Yet I

21:14

wondered. If you, if you could speak

21:17

to that like I got, you've been doing

21:19

this for so many years. it probably comes

21:21

pretty naturally to you but it doesn't necessarily

21:23

come naturally to your death and I wonder

21:25

how you help people through that hell is

21:27

again it it. It can be intimidating know

21:30

that if you talking to people who are

21:32

startup founders and they hit their idea to

21:34

me he sees in there are there may

21:36

be more comfortable speaking but. When

21:38

you have to developers and people who are

21:40

immersed in code and I'd either day they

21:42

don't necessarily have that level of confidence and

21:45

seating. And I wonder how how you

21:47

are healthy people along. Icily going

21:49

through logical. Were

21:51

just people Believe what? people. Really,

21:54

we. We'll treat them. With becomes

21:56

a conversation with when we talked about. the

21:59

pre conversations with us before, we're actually recording,

22:01

but it's prior to what will actually

22:03

be the show, we're like, this is the show, we're just

22:05

like this. And they're like,

22:07

oh cool, okay, that's cool. And they relax,

22:09

because it's not us throwing questions at them

22:12

and us grilling them on X, Y, or

22:14

Z, it's just the conversation between people who

22:16

are geeking out about software and what it

22:19

takes to create good software and good community

22:21

and to show up and to give and

22:23

to, I don't know, all the

22:25

things that are involved in open source

22:28

and being a maintainer, a contributor, a

22:30

community member, and we just have

22:32

a conversation. And that to me seems like a logical

22:34

answer, but not everybody's like, that should

22:36

be the answer, like it should be somehow different. I

22:39

think that that's true, and I know what

22:41

you're saying, but at a more practical

22:43

level, like we do have a process that we

22:45

take people through that's intentional, and then we take

22:47

it for granted now because we do it so

22:49

often. That's probably true. But like, it starts with,

22:51

we have a guest guide, Yeah, I'm

22:53

impressed. And we send that to them. And

22:56

we've written it and we've rewritten it, and we've

22:58

updated it. And it's very much

23:00

like setting expectations. So that's the first thing, is

23:02

like making sure they know exactly what to expect

23:05

and how they can prepare themselves if they're a person

23:07

who wants to be very prepared. Sometimes, Some people do.

23:10

Just being prepared is relaxing. For me,

23:12

I get more anxious the more prepared I get,

23:14

so I just don't. But for them, sometimes it

23:16

does. And so here's a way that you prepare.

23:19

And then, you know, when the conversation starts and

23:21

he's talking about, you know, we say certain things

23:23

to help relax them. Like, for instance, this

23:25

is not live. This is gonna be

23:28

professionally edited. Oh, not so bad. And

23:33

if you screw up, no big deal. You can start over.

23:36

Our editor's amazing. He listens to every word that we

23:38

say. You know, he takes good care of you. He's

23:40

gonna make all of us sound way smarter than we

23:42

are. And we say stuff like

23:44

that, which I think helps people relax and realize that they're

23:47

in good hands. And also, we are,

23:49

you know, like Adam says, we start talking

23:51

to them about things that have nothing to

23:53

do with the show. Usually

23:55

what you have for breakfast is where we start because

23:57

anybody can talk about that. And it's a good thing

23:59

to ask. for a sound check. It's a good ice breaker.

24:02

And then you can start talking about food. Now we're talking about food for a while.

24:05

And then we get into it, we ask them if

24:07

there's anything particular that they want to make sure that

24:09

we talk about, anything that's off-limit, just the standard

24:11

kind of stuff to make people feel at

24:13

ease and hopefully forget that they're

24:15

being recorded. That being said,

24:17

I mean, we've done this for many, many years and I'll

24:20

tell you oftentimes, and I haven't been able to

24:22

fix this, maybe you can give me advice, oftentimes

24:25

the second half of our show is better than

24:27

the first half. Always, not just often, almost

24:29

always. It's like, can I invert that somehow? You need to

24:31

get a warm it up. I don't know, it's a thing.

24:34

But there's so much foundation laid that you can't

24:36

just edit out the first half and start with

24:38

the second half. Struggle is really- But man, I'm

24:40

like, once we get rolling with somebody, it's like,

24:42

this is good, this is interesting. Yeah, like this

24:44

is the goal. Then you can clip out the teaser from the

24:46

second half right there. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah,

24:49

I find that exact, it's just human nature. That's

24:51

the way we are conversationally. So when we hit

24:54

record, it's the same. Ideally,

24:56

anyway. Yeah, it's funny, you talk

24:58

about breakfast. My

25:01

sound check intro is tell me

25:03

your worst travel story. Somebody gave

25:05

me that advice a while

25:08

ago about sound checks because people get

25:10

very animated when they're ranting about their

25:12

luggage being lost or something

25:14

like that. And so you can check different levels. Personally,

25:17

the way I speak and I struggle with this

25:19

editing myself, my volume

25:21

tends to vary tremendously, which

25:24

is irritating for that poor

25:26

editor, which is me. That

25:31

is true because you can get very upset.

25:33

I guess if I was being a psychologist

25:37

for a second, which I'm not on

25:40

that, is that breakfast is generally

25:42

positive, whereas travel stories can be

25:44

somewhat negative and it may switch

25:47

their psyche to be like- They

25:49

just get louder. Yeah. But

25:51

how do you get them out of that mode? Right. Now

25:54

I'm upset about this travel adventure going wrong. The

25:56

backfire on breakfast, there's lots of people who haven't

25:58

had it. or they're

26:00

in Berlin and so like I just had dinner, you know,

26:02

and they're not thinking about breakfast and so they're kind of

26:05

like, I knew that, but still. I don't

26:07

find that people get into a kind of

26:09

a negative or angry mindset. They actually, they usually

26:11

laugh about it because, you know, it

26:13

usually wasn't that recent. Well, to try that. I

26:15

think that's a good question. We should

26:18

give it a shot and see if... Because when people talk about,

26:20

again, we talk

26:22

to sick people and they're talking about projects

26:24

and they get really excited about whatever they're

26:26

working on or they're changing the world and

26:28

then, you know, again, the volume goes up

26:31

and that's the fun part, but you do

26:33

want to account for that, I think. Anyway,

26:37

it's a fun little anecdote. Yeah. Tell

26:39

me something else. I think we're kind of

26:41

running out of time here. Okay. But I

26:43

want to hear, what did you want to

26:46

share with me maybe that I didn't get

26:48

to? Keep doing it. Podcasting

26:50

is awesome. It's fun, right? Tell

26:52

stories, find stories, share them, get

26:55

people to listen, you know, do

26:57

what you can to, like, find somebody who is less

26:59

known and help them become more known or

27:02

has a story that can't quite articulate it and help

27:04

them articulate it. There's so much power

27:06

in that as indie media. I

27:08

suppose you work at Intel and that's less indie

27:10

than... The format is

27:12

still indie. We have a lot of power, right?

27:14

We don't have to ask for the permission to

27:17

publish to RSS feed.

27:19

Right. Yeah, yeah. That's why I said in the case

27:21

we do, right? It's absolutely empowering, though. Yeah, yeah. But

27:23

the process of producing a podcast or this kind of

27:26

thing is just like... You

27:29

have the power to help people find

27:31

new people across the globe. No. We

27:33

can connect anywhere and thanks

27:35

to CDNs and things like that, people

27:38

could download our show fast in Japan, you

27:40

know? Like, it's not somewhere in Lake Virginia, for

27:43

example. Yeah. You know, it's everywhere. Everywhere you

27:45

can listen to an English show, which is

27:47

the primary language we do. We

27:49

have transcripts. You probably should think

27:52

about transcribing to other languages, but we

27:54

haven't cracked that nut of like different languages. But keep

27:57

podcasting. Keep doing it. I

27:59

like it. Yeah,

28:02

I like it. It's open source. Well,

28:04

again, I'm completely focused on open source software,

28:06

but open source is about people, it's about community.

28:09

Podcasting is too. Get to know other podcasters,

28:11

grab a microphone, hit record, see what happens.

28:13

I like it. Yeah. Cool. Thank

28:16

you. Thank you. Thank you. Well

28:18

friends, April is here and

28:21

that means that Cloudflare's Developer

28:23

Week is also here, happening

28:33

April 1st through April 5th virtually. They

28:36

also have a meetup here in Austin

28:38

that I'll be at on Wednesday, April

28:40

3rd in their ATX office. Check for

28:42

a link in the show notes and

28:44

register for that. Spots are limited, so

28:46

secure your place right now. I'm here

28:49

with Matt Silverlach, Senior Director of Product

28:51

at Cloudflare. Matt, what is this week

28:53

for you, launching for developers, a

28:55

bunch of new tooling, a bunch of new

28:57

things that gets the next year or the

28:59

next several months revived and a resurgence for

29:01

new things happening? What is that? What is

29:04

that to you? Internally, we call them innovation

29:06

weeks, which is kind of the way we

29:08

think about it, which is how do we

29:10

ship a bunch of stuff that is meaning

29:12

to all the developers, getting

29:14

some things over the line, getting some early things out,

29:16

sharing some ideas, some things that maybe are actually fully

29:18

baked, but kind of getting that out there and talking

29:20

about it so that we get earlier feedback. But it

29:22

kind of comes back to like, how do we think

29:25

about innovating? And I think candidly, what's really, really helpful

29:27

is considering those deadlines, setting that week

29:29

to kind of rally the team and get things out,

29:31

actually helps us get things done, right? There's always that

29:33

tweaking for perfection, you know, another week here, another month

29:35

there. It's nice when you set an immutable date, you

29:38

get things out, get them to the bad of the

29:40

developers much faster. How do you then take

29:42

that kind of, I suppose, approach

29:44

and excitement to the bigger echelon

29:47

that has become Cloudflare? Because I

29:49

know DDoS, CDN, like pretty common

29:51

things that has been the building

29:53

blocks of the, you know, behemoth

29:55

that Cloudflare is today, but it's

29:57

gone beyond that. Can you expand

29:59

on like... the breadth and depth

30:01

of Cloudflare today and the excitement

30:03

happening. Yeah, I mean obviously we do

30:05

a tremendous amount and I think as you said most

30:07

folks really know us for what we

30:10

consider kind of the, you know, the act

30:12

one of Cloudflare which is CDN, DOS, DNS,

30:14

Web Security. Since then obviously we've

30:16

done a lot in terms of zero trust to protect

30:18

companies and networks and obviously the developer platform as well.

30:21

But you know although a lot of what I said

30:23

our teams work on is developer platform, there's still a

30:25

lot of the other things that the breadth of Cloudflare

30:27

works on like a web application file or like CDN.

30:29

Those are still developer products, right? You still need those

30:32

as a developer to go in front of your website

30:34

to protect what you're actually building. We're

30:37

diehard R2 users. We had an insane

30:39

S3 build that just sent us absolutely

30:41

on fire. It kept growing and growing and

30:44

I was like this can't happen anymore. We've

30:47

had an affinity and a love for Cloudflare,

30:49

you know, from afar and really a lot

30:51

of cases until we're like you know what?

30:53

R2 is pretty cool. We should use R2,

30:55

you know, and so we did and I

30:57

think I tweeted about it about a year

30:59

ago and then over time the relationship between

31:01

us and Cloudflare has budded which I'm excited

31:03

about. But you know why are developers, you

31:05

know, we're opting for it but for R2 in

31:07

those cases, but why are developers opting for Cloudflare

31:09

products over Amazon Web Services or other providers out

31:12

there? There's a lot of answers to this but

31:14

I think the one that I find kind of

31:16

connects a lot of folks is we're building a

31:18

platform that makes it easy to deploy reliable distributed

31:20

services without being a distributed systems engineer because it

31:23

turns out if I want to go and build

31:25

something really reliable on sort of an existing cloud,

31:27

I want to build it across regions. We're not

31:29

going to egress across regions, we're going to pay

31:32

for that. I need to make sure I'm spinning

31:34

up shadow resources, right? When you deploy to workers, for

31:36

example, we just call that Region Earth, right? We take

31:38

care of actually deploying all of those instances, keeping them

31:40

reliable, spinning them off where they need to be spun

31:43

up if you've got users in Australia and we spin

31:45

one up there for you without asking you to think

31:47

about it, without charging you extra to

31:49

kind of do that. That is to be really, really powerful.

31:51

You get your compute closer to users, you know, to think

31:53

about that kind of coordination. In practice, this

31:56

is really, really hard to do that on existing providers. So

31:58

we find a lot of teams coming up. to us so they can

32:01

build applications at scale like that. There

32:03

you go. Celebrate live in Austin

32:05

with us on Wednesday, April 3rd.

32:08

Again, check for a link in

32:10

the show notes for registering to

32:12

that spot. Are limited and I'll

32:14

be there. Otherwise enjoy Cloudflare's Developer

32:16

Week all week long from April

32:18

1st through April 5th. Go

32:21

to cloudflare.com/developer week.

32:24

Again cloudflare.com/developer week.

32:36

Next up, this is me being

32:39

interviewed by Den Stellamarski for his

32:41

work item podcast. The work item

32:43

is conversations on careers in tech

32:46

and tech adjacent fields. So this

32:48

one is more personal to me,

32:50

how I got here, my priorities,

32:53

the business of podcasting, not going

32:55

viral, community building, stuff like that.

32:58

I also give some career advice at the end

33:00

that I think is pretty good, but of course

33:02

I do. That's why it's my advice.

33:13

Jared Santer, welcome to the work item. Great chatting

33:15

with you. Hey, Den. Thanks for

33:17

having me. I want to right off

33:19

the bat start with changelog because you're

33:22

the co-founder of changelog and I myself

33:24

ran into changelog. I

33:26

want to say 2021 when one

33:29

of my blog posts on user

33:31

hostile software got aggregated

33:33

on changelog at the time.

33:36

And I looked at my refers and I was like,

33:38

what the heck is changelog? And then I started digging

33:40

through them. Then I went down the rabbit hole of

33:42

a bunch of podcasts and posts.

33:45

And I saw that this

33:48

guy, Jared, was running a bunch of things

33:50

and was popping up on all these podcasts

33:52

and shows. So tell us

33:54

more. What is changelog and how did you start it? Cool.

33:58

So changelog is... I guess we

34:00

call it a media company now. It's

34:02

a network. We have a portfolio of

34:05

weekly developer focus shows that we do. And

34:08

there's a news component, uh, which

34:10

we call changelog news. And so we are

34:12

all about software world, helping

34:15

people keep up, find interesting things,

34:17

talk about interesting things and

34:20

talk to interesting people about hopefully

34:22

interesting things. We've been doing that

34:25

for a long time. I am a

34:27

co-owner of the business, not a

34:29

little trivia, not actual co-founder because

34:32

I joined, I've been with changelog for over

34:34

10 years now. My business partner,

34:36

Adams de Koveak founded it back in 2009

34:38

with another guy

34:40

named Win Netherland. Win

34:42

went on to get a job at get him. And

34:44

of course back then it was podcasting was just a

34:46

hobby for everybody. So it was not a business then.

34:49

And I was a freelance consultant

34:51

doing software development under

34:54

my own business name and loved

34:57

listening to the show, loved reading the blog.

35:00

Keeping up with open source software through it,

35:02

saw it start to fade a

35:05

little bit and thought I could help out as I

35:07

was a business owner. So I had free time that

35:09

I could just allocate towards getting involved.

35:11

And I began blogging for changelog and

35:14

about a year later began co-hosting the show with

35:16

Adam. And then eventually it grew

35:18

into what it was. It's the two of

35:20

us. So very much a co-owner,

35:22

just not a co-founder. So it was very much

35:24

a serendipitous kind of transition

35:27

to becoming the co-owner. It's not just

35:29

out of nowhere. That's right. So I

35:31

definitely saw value in it early

35:33

on because I was a consumer that

35:36

a lot of people didn't see and Adam,

35:38

my partner had a really

35:40

hard time getting other people to see

35:42

the vision that he saw of how valuable

35:44

this could be for people. But

35:46

I saw it because I was one of those

35:49

people who was like, I loved listening and hearing

35:51

the lives of software developers, their decision-making

35:53

processes, what they invest their time in,

35:55

and then also just keeping up with

35:57

new tools and techniques as a. a

36:00

developer who was really out on an island

36:02

in Nebraska, working by myself

36:04

for small clients, felt very

36:06

much out on my own. It

36:09

really made me feel connected to a larger

36:11

community. And so I decided

36:14

to invest in small ways over time. And

36:16

I could see some value that I guess

36:18

other people couldn't see, Adam saw it obviously.

36:21

And I guess that proved out to be good

36:24

because over time it's grown, grown, grown. And

36:27

eventually he began to go full

36:29

time. And then eventually I began to go full

36:31

time as we scaled down my

36:33

consulting business. So yeah, it's gone

36:36

really well. It's been kind of organic and slow and

36:38

steady. That's one of our monikers. But

36:41

we enjoy it. And thankfully other folks

36:43

seem to enjoy it as well. Yeah.

36:45

And you had a blog post recently

36:47

that was talking about this, the changelog

36:50

has never gone viral. And

36:52

I think that kind of resonated

36:54

with me because you were talking

36:56

about how, if you think about

36:58

your common podcast and shows, the

37:00

virality factor of it comes from,

37:02

as you call that on the blog post, somebody coming

37:04

in like, Jeff Bezos is going to be talking on the show

37:06

and everybody wants to share that. But

37:08

that's one in a

37:10

million. And then all the other podcasts

37:12

and blogs and communities have to kind

37:14

of do this steady

37:17

long game. And I think that's uncommon because a

37:19

lot of folks nowadays in the

37:22

age of TikTok

37:24

and YouTube and everybody wants to have like

37:26

the one viral video that's going to propel

37:28

me to fame. And then that rarely works.

37:30

And you're taking the approach of saying, you

37:32

know what? The long game is what it's

37:34

all about. We're going to take the steady stream

37:36

of high quality content and go

37:38

from there. So talk to me

37:40

more about the motivations that you have for that. Yeah.

37:43

So, you know, I'll be lying if

37:45

I would, if I said I wouldn't take the

37:47

viral moments as well, of course I would be

37:49

happy to. We've had some viral moments with some

37:52

of our content. It's just not our podcast content.

37:54

Some clips, some blog posts have

37:56

gotten very popular from time to

37:58

time. It's sort of kind of like when

38:01

you close your eyes and swing the bat and then you happen

38:03

to just crack a home run and

38:05

then you think, well, that was awesome, but it's not

38:07

a strategy. I can't just close my eyes and swing

38:09

the bat every time. I'm not gonna hit a home

38:11

run again. And so chasing

38:14

that is kind of in vain. But

38:17

again, going back to being a listener

38:19

of podcasts and a person who has

38:21

been profoundly impacted by other people's podcasts,

38:24

I know that there is a intimacy

38:26

and a conversation. There's a

38:28

trust that you gain over time

38:31

with people and you

38:33

can rely upon independent podcasters,

38:35

I've found, to really

38:38

have deep impacts, maybe

38:40

with a much smaller audience than what

38:42

you're gonna find on TikTok. But

38:45

what kind of impact do you wanna make? Do you wanna

38:48

make a broad impact or a deep impact? Or maybe both.

38:50

Of course, we would all take both if we could. But

38:53

given the choice, I will take the deep impact. And

38:55

that's kind of what that post was about. It wasn't

38:57

complaining that we've never gone viral. It's just kind of

38:59

factual and saying, actually, it's

39:01

okay because here we are. We

39:04

are both happy people who

39:06

can raise our families and do work

39:08

that we're enjoying and we can

39:10

have an impact on people. And it may not be

39:12

a million people all

39:15

at once, but maybe it's a few thousand

39:17

people in a deep way. And

39:19

I think that podcasting really does

39:21

afford that because of the medium, but

39:24

it's hard and it takes time. And

39:27

there's no shortcuts really, unless you already

39:29

have an established audience or some other

39:32

medium. And so because of that,

39:34

it's toil. Like, you know, you're doing podcasts now. Like,

39:37

you just gotta show up and put out a show every

39:39

week or whatever your cadence is and you gotta edit it

39:41

and you gotta name it and you gotta promote it and

39:43

you gotta just keep on doing that

39:45

hamster wheel of content creation as we

39:48

come to know it by. And it's hard

39:50

to do that over the long term where you don't have any sort of

39:53

positive feedback loops. So in

39:55

your case, you are running quite a few shows.

39:57

Like, I'm the most familiar with JS Party, but

40:00

you have a few others in the network.

40:03

How do you scale it in a way

40:05

that doesn't burn you

40:07

out? Because you're an active participant in a lot

40:10

of them. You're not just somebody that sits on

40:12

the sidelines and says, you know what, I'm just

40:14

the manager of it. I arrange things and you

40:16

all go and tell me, you actually do this.

40:18

Yeah, that's a hard question. And that's one that

40:21

we've tried to do and failed

40:23

and tried other things. How do we scale

40:25

it? Well, the first question is, do we

40:27

scale it? And that's

40:29

the first thing that we had to talk to ourselves.

40:31

Like, OK, do we want to scale it? Because bigger

40:34

isn't always better. What kind of lifestyle

40:36

do we want to have? And

40:38

how much do we want to work? And how much stress

40:40

do we want to have? And so we

40:43

did at some point decide that the change log,

40:45

which is the oldest show, it's our main show.

40:48

It's what the network's named after. Didn't

40:50

have enough, I don't

40:52

know, inventory for what we liked. You know

40:54

what you think about? You got 50 shows

40:56

a year with a weekly interview.

40:58

Take a couple weeks off. That's 50 interviews

41:00

a year. And we had

41:02

listeners who wanted a bunch of different types

41:05

of content that that show

41:07

just could not serve. And

41:09

so we did want to scale beyond one show.

41:11

And so how do we scale it? Well, first

41:14

of all, scale the voices. We don't want to

41:16

just be the two of us

41:18

on every podcast. Because A, that's pretty boring to

41:20

have the same two voices all the time. B,

41:23

we're not experts in many arenas. So

41:25

we can be curious, but we can't have really

41:27

good takes. And

41:29

C, we get burnt out. And so

41:32

we decided to go out and find

41:34

like-minded people who are interesting and want

41:36

a podcast, but don't have all

41:38

of the infrastructure and all of the stuff

41:40

figured out, the workflows that we've just developed

41:42

over time, and enable them

41:45

to do shows that we then

41:47

produce. I do participate in a lot of

41:49

those just because I enjoy it. Adam

41:51

does as well. And so we end up being on those

41:54

shows like JS Party. I'm a regular on there. But

41:56

there's a whole bunch of people involved. And then you

41:58

just scale things the way you scale. business thing.

42:00

You hire editors, you figure

42:03

out more productive ways of doing the same

42:05

thing. So you're spending 30 minutes versus 4 hours,

42:08

that kind of stuff. And then at a

42:10

certain point, we stopped. We are pretty much

42:12

maxed out right now. We do 5

42:14

or 6 weekly podcasts.

42:18

And I could not add a 7th right now without

42:20

significantly impacting my life, which I don't

42:22

really want to do. So it sounds

42:25

like you're taking the approach that I

42:27

think Rob Walling coined the term of

42:29

start small, stay small. Intentionally so. There

42:31

is not every company and business needs

42:33

to be that billion dollar

42:36

massive. You can reach a point of

42:39

this is actually good enough in

42:41

both terms of revenue and both

42:43

terms of the balance with the

42:45

rest of your life. Yeah, you have to decide

42:47

what you want in life. And if you find

42:49

yourself in a privileged position to be able to

42:51

make those kind of choices, then you decide what

42:53

matters most. And if more

42:56

money and more power and more fame or

42:58

whatever comes out of building the business bigger

43:01

is what you want, then that's what you go after. But

43:03

I've always desired freedom and

43:06

liberty more than money. And

43:08

so I could make more money

43:10

with this, but I would be giving up freedom and

43:12

liberty and time to do other

43:14

things. And Adam feels the same way. So

43:17

we're both on the same page there. Of

43:19

course, we have shiny object syndrome.

43:21

And we have moments where you're like, here's a

43:23

huge opportunity. Should we seize it? And we have

43:25

to talk to each other and make

43:27

those decisions. But ultimately, we've always come back

43:29

to. We're really happy to

43:31

do this work. And it's

43:34

satisfying work. And we just

43:36

haven't decided to go ahead and scale

43:38

it to the hilt and chase the

43:41

dollars. I think that's

43:43

paid off. There's been times where of course, opportunities come by

43:45

and you think, maybe we took some investment,

43:47

we could hire more people, we could do more. There's so

43:49

much we could be doing that we aren't. And

43:51

that's really the problem is like, we

43:53

could have a whole news wing. We could have

43:55

way more written content. We've always wanted to have

43:57

more of those posts like the one I wrote

43:59

about. the change dog not going viral, like our whole

44:01

written side of our business, it's pretty weak.

44:04

And I know we could just make that

44:06

better with money and people. But

44:10

ultimately we've chosen freedom and lifestyle

44:12

so far. And

44:15

I think it's been pretty good

44:17

decision for where we are. Was

44:20

there any point in your life

44:22

where the kind of pivotal light

44:25

bulb went off about the choice of

44:27

freedom and liberty versus money? Because I'm

44:29

listening to you talk about this. And

44:31

again, it's a very uncommon

44:33

kind of mental model because

44:35

if you talk to folks that are starting off

44:38

in their careers in tech or entrepreneurs, a

44:40

lot of them are motivated, but like I want to grab just

44:42

as much money as I can, as fast as I can. Yes,

44:46

so my first

44:48

boss out of college

44:50

also happened to be a pastor

44:53

at my church. So we had a very

44:55

close relationship and I'm a Christian guy

44:57

and I read the Bible and stuff. And the

44:59

Bible says like, if you can achieve

45:01

liberty, seek liberty, I think one of the

45:04

principles is like, be happy where you

45:06

are, but if you can be more free, take

45:08

more free. And he impressed that upon

45:10

me at a young age. And I

45:12

thought, yeah, that sounds about right. And then I started

45:14

trying to live by that just a little bit in

45:16

certain ways. And I found it very satisfying to

45:19

trade that for other things.

45:22

And a lot of times that's money. Often

45:24

it's time, it's commitments.

45:27

And then I've had times where I went and chased

45:29

the money. And then I've asked myself, like, am I

45:31

better off now? Cause I've got the money, but now

45:33

I've got less freedom. Or

45:35

less time and more responsibilities. And I'm

45:37

always like, actually, because

45:40

I'm taken care of financially,

45:43

my base needs, my family's base needs, this

45:45

extra money isn't adding that much and

45:48

I traded in something that was worth more. And so I think

45:50

it just kind of proved itself out to be true a few

45:52

times. And so that's when I

45:54

really started doubling down and saying, okay, I

45:56

got to be very careful about saying yes to

45:59

things that... reduce my

46:01

freedom. Yeah. And that's

46:03

a very intentional decision that it

46:06

sounds like also it did not come out

46:09

of nowhere. Like it's not one of those things that it's like,

46:11

Oh, you know, it's good enough. It's a, like there's

46:13

a mental shift coming with it. Yeah, absolutely.

46:16

And so far I think it's proven itself to be

46:18

true and I'm sticking

46:20

with it at least for now. Yeah.

46:22

As if it any part of life, you

46:24

know, the, it comes in waves. So things

46:27

can change, but I find that an admirable

46:29

mental model. Now in

46:31

terms of the community

46:33

that you're running, change log is, is

46:36

pretty big. And I

46:38

see a lot of focus on JavaScript,

46:40

which is arguably or JavaScript

46:42

and the web. I'll put it this

46:44

way, which is arguably a very fast

46:46

evolving space. Like the meme

46:48

about there's a new JS framework coming out every

46:50

day on Hacker News somewhere. Like it's happening here.

46:53

How do you keep up with things that are

46:55

truly important for developers to know that

46:57

you bring up on your shows versus the noise? Cause

46:59

there's a lot of noise. Right. Okay.

47:01

So that's a hard question because you

47:04

spend years and years developing

47:06

what I'll just call taste because I can't

47:08

have a better word for it. And

47:11

then you have some taste and you're not sure

47:13

why you have it, but just cause

47:15

you put the time in and then someone says, like, how

47:17

did you develop that taste? And it's like, I just spent

47:19

a lot of time looking at projects.

47:21

I mean, I've been doing software development for

47:24

20 years. I've been in

47:26

the open source world for a very

47:28

long time. I've seen so many things come and go

47:30

as I've seen things come and stay. And

47:33

I just, I don't want to

47:35

say I have a knack for it. I just think

47:37

I have a trained sense of

47:39

what's good and what's maybe not so good. What's

47:42

worth paying attention to and what

47:44

you can probably skip that I

47:46

just use that knack because

47:49

I've just developed it over time. Also,

47:51

of course, we have feedback loops. We have

47:53

other people who are smart, you know, what your friends

47:55

are into. Yeah. JS party is a good example. That's

47:57

a show with eight people on it. I'm just one

47:59

of the. And I have

48:01

a very specific purview of the world.

48:04

I have my own tastes. I have what interests me.

48:06

And they all have that exact same thing. And

48:09

so I listen to them and I say, what's interesting

48:11

to you right now? Or I'll take a link and

48:13

I'll send them over to Nick Nesey and say, hey,

48:15

is this something that you think is worth us talking

48:17

about on the show? And he may

48:19

be like, yeah, let's get him on the show. And so that's

48:21

like a positive reinforcement of, okay, this was

48:23

a good decision. Or he'd be like, maybe,

48:26

maybe not. And you're like, okay, maybe that's

48:28

not so interesting. So it's being plugged into

48:30

other people who are doing the same thing,

48:32

caring. And then just

48:35

also just putting the time in and

48:37

trying a lot of stuff. I mean,

48:39

I've played with so many software projects

48:41

over the course of my career that

48:43

I just have developed the skill of

48:45

kind of spotting what's worth

48:48

paying attention to and what's not. And of course, I

48:50

still screw it up sometimes. And I

48:52

chase a shiny object. And then it's like,

48:54

no, it turns out that wasn't sustainable or something

48:56

like that. That's as

48:58

best as I can explain it.

49:00

Yeah, you're still actively developing. Like,

49:03

you're an angel all around. It's not

49:05

just you reading the news. You're actually

49:07

using things. Absolutely. And that's

49:09

really been another principle of

49:11

mine is like, I

49:14

cannot simply become a talking head. I

49:16

had a teacher in college who was

49:19

an adjunct professor and he taught databases.

49:22

And it was a night class because during the

49:25

day, he worked on databases. And

49:27

he was my best teacher in college. And

49:30

he was an adjunct professor who was just doing it

49:32

as his day job. And the full time

49:34

professors who like their entire job was just to teach

49:37

C++ or whatever. They were

49:39

very unplugged. They were behind the times. They didn't

49:41

teach me very much. And so

49:43

that guy was a good example of me of like, you

49:46

know what, learn from people who are still doing it because

49:48

they just have the real world experience. And so

49:51

I always want to be still doing it and

49:53

not just talking about it, not just teaching it.

49:56

I always want to be a guy actively write code as

49:58

often as I possibly can. play

50:00

with the things myself and get

50:02

my hands into the mud. What

50:19

you're about to hear are real reactions

50:21

from PagerDuty users in response to seeing

50:23

signals from Fire hydrant for the first

50:26

time. PagerDuty, I don't

50:28

want to say they're evil, but they're

50:30

an evil that we've had to maintain.

50:32

I know all of our engineering teams

50:34

as well as myself are interested in

50:36

getting this moving the correct direction. As

50:39

right now, just managing and maintaining

50:41

our user seats has become problematic.

50:44

That's really good actually. This is

50:46

a consistent problem for us and

50:48

teams is that covering these sorts

50:50

of ad hoc timeframes is very

50:52

difficult. Putting in

50:55

overrides and specific days and

50:57

different new shifts is quite

50:59

onerous. You did the most

51:01

important piece, which is didn't tie them together.

51:04

That's half the problem with PagerDuty, right?

51:07

I get all these alerts and then

51:09

I get an incident per alert. Generally

51:12

speaking, when you go sideways, you get

51:14

lots of alerts because lots

51:16

of things are broken, but you only have

51:18

one incident. I'm

51:20

super impressed with that because being able

51:22

to assign to different teams is an

51:25

issue for us because the one

51:27

alert fires for one team and then it seems like

51:29

they have to bounce around and it never does. Which

51:32

then means that we have tons of

51:34

communication issues because people aren't updated.

51:37

No, I mean, to be

51:39

open and honest, when can we switch?

51:43

You're probably tired of alerting tools that feel more like

51:45

a headache than a solution, right? Well,

51:48

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51:50

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51:53

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51:55

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51:58

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52:02

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52:04

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52:07

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52:09

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52:11

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52:14

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52:16

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52:46

How do you find the time for all this

52:48

as a podcast host, entrepreneur, an engineer? Like that

52:50

sounds like it's a lot. It would eat like

52:52

out of 24 hours on a given day like

52:54

easily 23 hours. Well

52:57

that's a good question. I guess on top

52:59

of that I also have six children that

53:01

we homeschool and other things going on. So

53:03

I coach basketball at night. I got lots

53:06

lots of things. So not much time. I

53:09

don't really have a great answer of how I do it.

53:11

I have to be judicious with where I

53:13

invest my time. I have to not

53:15

do things that waste my time. I have

53:18

to set aside time for certain things right.

53:20

But I'm always prioritizing like what has to happen today.

53:22

What has to happen right now. Like

53:25

there's a show that goes out by 5 p.m. Like

53:27

that's got to happen. And then after that I can

53:29

do those other things. And so it's just a constant

53:31

battle. But just like always asking

53:33

yourself what's the most important thing right now. And

53:36

realizing that actually trying the

53:38

stuff, coding the stuff, building

53:40

stuff has to be in that

53:42

list of most important things and

53:45

keeping it there. That's probably the best way I

53:47

can say that. And once again

53:49

the theme of being very intentional about

53:51

how you spend your time. Yeah.

53:53

It's also hard to prioritize

53:55

things. Because I'm assuming if you're running that

53:58

many pockets. I'm sure the business evolves. quickly

54:00

as well and you need to catch up with a lot

54:03

of things and jumping in between

54:05

kind of business mode versus software engineer

54:07

mode versus I'm a father, I have

54:09

to deal with this. It's a lot

54:11

of context switching. It is, have you

54:13

heard of Paul Graham's maker schedule, manager

54:16

schedule? Very classic post. That really did

54:18

help me be able to know

54:20

what mode I'm in. So as a small business owner, both

54:23

a maker and a manager. And

54:25

as a podcaster and an editor,

54:28

I'm constantly in communications with

54:31

people about scheduling and rescheduling

54:34

and when does this have to happen and this goes

54:36

out this day. And so like there's very much this

54:38

manager scheduler thing where I'm like emailing, I'm calendaring, I'm

54:40

doing all these things. And then

54:42

I have to be able to also just like sit

54:45

down and edit and master

54:47

and produce a show which could take three

54:49

hours or add a feature to our website

54:52

which could take four hours. And

54:54

so you really have to switch into

54:56

maker schedule and just like go

54:59

deep work focus mode and be

55:01

able to block those times. And that's

55:03

a struggle too because one thing can pull you out of

55:05

maker mode and back into manager mode.

55:08

And I struggle to keep those things

55:11

away from me but I try my

55:13

best, you know, it's tough. Yeah and

55:15

especially in the tech space where you

55:18

kind of have to jump between a calendar

55:21

invite, you have a meeting and then after meeting you have

55:23

half an hour empty before the next meeting. How

55:25

do you fill that half hour? Like do you actually

55:27

kind of jump into the Zen focus mode because that's

55:30

hard. I don't know if half an hour is enough.

55:32

I don't know, it's not for me. Yeah, I don't

55:34

think so. If it's not two hours, I'm pretty much

55:37

gotta stay in manager mode. Yeah.

55:40

I do follow the, I don't even know, this is

55:42

embarrassing. I don't even know if this is actually in

55:44

the GTD book but somebody else who

55:46

read the GTD book told me this and so I

55:48

assume it's in there which is if you

55:50

can get it done in two minutes, just do it right now. Yeah. And

55:53

I think that's in there but I have never actually confirmed it

55:55

myself but I don't wanna spread it. I think it is. I

55:57

read it a long time ago. I think it is, yeah. It's

55:59

basically get. You gotta get it done now. I use

56:01

that constantly. Is it less than two minutes? Just do it.

56:04

And especially when I have a half an hour. Because

56:06

think about how much you can get done

56:08

on the manager mode in a half

56:10

an hour if you're like, okay, what are all the things I can

56:13

just get done right now? Mostly it's

56:15

emails, it's calendaring. It's

56:17

a few decisions here or there. Maybe

56:20

it's fix the bug real quick. But

56:23

if you don't have two hours, what can you really get

56:25

done that's intense? Yeah. Especially

56:27

the calendar slice in 30 to

56:30

15 minutes slices, not very efficient

56:32

for anyone. In

56:34

terms of building developer communities, so

56:36

arguably you've built a very successful community

56:38

with a podcast network around it. What

56:42

do you think sets ChangeLog

56:45

and the work that you've done apart from

56:47

the myriad of other developer communities that also

56:50

might have a podcast or two? It

56:53

seems to be the yearly trend where new

56:55

things are popping up. ChangeLog has stood the

56:57

test of time. What sets

56:59

it apart? You might have to ask our community

57:01

for that. I think from

57:03

my perspective, we really do

57:05

care. And I think a lot

57:07

of people are community building, but they're doing it

57:10

because they want to have a community. And a

57:12

community is not like a toy that you have

57:14

or a thing that you acquire. You'd

57:16

buy a car. It's a

57:18

bunch of people that enjoy the

57:21

same things or rally around a

57:23

common cause. And again, some

57:25

of it goes back to the time. We've just been doing

57:27

this a very long time. And how do you build a

57:29

community while you do the same stuff over and over and

57:31

over again? And then people see you doing

57:33

that stuff. And they're like, hey, I like that stuff too. And

57:35

then you're like, all right, come do it with us. Come hang

57:37

out. And so I think we have a...

57:40

There's a sincerity. We really do care

57:42

about the people that we talk to

57:44

and talk with and hang

57:47

out with in our community. We've

57:49

also... We don't have a huge community. The

57:51

bigger ones out there, but we've just

57:53

kind of like, again, slow and steady

57:56

rolling down the road together. You just pick

57:58

up people and then they become... There's

58:00

people in our Slack community that have been hanging out

58:03

with me for years. And

58:05

we know them very well, just because that's what

58:07

happens over time. So a little bit of sincerity,

58:09

a little bit of just sticking to it and

58:12

providing the place that people

58:14

actually want to hang out. Are there any

58:17

aspects of the community building

58:19

process that you're undertaking that

58:22

you'd say are unique to changelog?

58:24

Because you kind of alluded to the

58:26

fact of like the community in Slack and there's so many

58:28

of them that keep popping up and I get

58:31

invites and then like all the times like, Oh,

58:33

join this product manager community. The Slack with like

58:35

12 people. And there's

58:37

just a lot of them. And it

58:39

all at some point devolves into community

58:42

members sharing, you know, links to

58:44

blog spam and blog posts. And it just becomes like, all

58:46

right, this is not a community. This is just like a,

58:48

like a link aggregation service that is kind of. Yeah.

58:52

And we've definitely had people that pop in and want to

58:54

use our community like that. And that's

58:57

been the main moderation move. I mean, because we

58:59

have, I don't even count, you know, there's thousands

59:01

of people that hang out together,

59:04

but probably like regulars that are like regularly chatting,

59:06

it's probably like a hundred of us, you know,

59:09

with thousands lurking, which is totally cool. Cause

59:11

I also lurk in other communities as

59:13

well. But the main moderation I've had to

59:15

do is like, Hey, you know, don't come

59:18

here and just spam us with your stuff

59:20

because people want to use communities for exactly

59:22

that, like act like they've

59:24

been here for a while and like, Hey, I'm just.

59:27

You know, running the survey. It's like, you can't just come

59:29

in here and pop your survey and sorry. So we

59:31

are pretty quick on the delete button for

59:33

that kind of stuff. I don't

59:36

think there's anything, and I don't think I have any

59:38

tips or tricks or anything unique to us. You

59:41

know, we've been putting out shows for a long time. So

59:43

people that like our shows like to

59:45

hang out together. And that's kind of just the way

59:47

it is. Were there any moments

59:49

in some kind of, you started working

59:51

on a change log that kind of

59:53

looking back, you'd say are your biggest

59:56

lessons. It sounds a little cliche, but

59:58

effectively maybe things that you'd say. Like, wow,

1:00:01

that was a teaching

1:00:03

moment. Like

1:00:05

a moment that I learned something or a

1:00:07

moment that I probably for you. Yeah. Yeah.

1:00:10

So this wasn't a moment, but I

1:00:12

think that it's taken time, but it

1:00:14

has been profound to me, learning

1:00:17

the, the power of just

1:00:19

consistently showing up, like just the

1:00:21

consistency and how compounding

1:00:24

consistency is when

1:00:27

you're building something. I think that

1:00:29

we've had times where we've been less consistent

1:00:31

with it, even with just production. So

1:00:33

I don't know if you listen to podcasts like I do,

1:00:35

but I'm also a podcast listener to this day. And

1:00:38

I have podcasts that I love and

1:00:41

they become a part of my life. I integrate them into my

1:00:44

life and you know, I expect them

1:00:46

to be there for me at certain times, you know?

1:00:48

So if a show like if

1:00:51

the show that usually publishes on a Friday

1:00:53

morning doesn't publish that week or it's like

1:00:55

Saturday afternoon, maybe I've just moved on and

1:00:57

it's not, it doesn't fit anymore. So like

1:00:59

podcast listeners, they're hard to find and acquire

1:01:01

as like somebody who's going to be there,

1:01:03

but once they listen, like if you give

1:01:05

them good stuff consistently, they're going

1:01:07

to listen for years and I'm one of

1:01:09

them. I will listen to a show for years. Um,

1:01:12

but it has to like fit into where I

1:01:14

fit it into my life. And so that habitual listener,

1:01:16

which I don't think many people think about, um,

1:01:19

but we definitely think about is the

1:01:21

one who can't wait for your show to drop

1:01:23

because they're used to it dropping at this

1:01:25

time or day, and it's already, it's their

1:01:27

Friday afternoon jog, you know, or it's

1:01:29

their commute on Monday morning or whatever it is. And

1:01:33

during times of inconsistency, we had a

1:01:35

really hard time building anything, even though

1:01:38

I think the quality was there of

1:01:40

our shows and we're putting

1:01:42

all the effort in, but we were just

1:01:44

inconsistent and those shows just stagnate. But

1:01:46

just the consistency, whatever cadence you decide,

1:01:48

whether it's weekly, daily, biweekly, monthly, and

1:01:51

I think weekly is the best balance

1:01:53

of all of that, which is why

1:01:55

most of our shows are our

1:01:57

weekly just staying consistent.

1:02:00

and just like being there for people is

1:02:02

really something I learned. It's just

1:02:05

very effective and it

1:02:07

makes things grow. And

1:02:09

that took a while. That took a while to

1:02:11

figure out. What's interesting about this

1:02:13

is specifically into kind

1:02:15

of the domain of podcasts. I think

1:02:17

that consistency is

1:02:19

especially discouraging to newer

1:02:21

entrants because podcasts

1:02:24

kind of blew up. You know, we saw like a

1:02:26

few years back, like Spotify got into it and

1:02:29

there's this kind of flood of new people coming

1:02:31

in and saying, I will have a podcast too.

1:02:34

And then two episodes in four

1:02:36

episodes and five episodes in, they still

1:02:38

don't see like the thousands of followers

1:02:41

coming in. People just kind

1:02:43

of like, ah, you know what, like I'll skip this week.

1:02:45

I'll skip next week. Oh, we'll do it next month. And

1:02:48

it just never grows. And it kind of struck

1:02:50

me that there was some stat

1:02:52

shared recently. Uh, there was

1:02:55

like the median podcast length is seven episodes

1:02:57

after which people just drop off. They're like,

1:02:59

they just completely lose desire to continue as

1:03:01

a cousin. It's like, wow. And

1:03:03

then the podcasts that do survive like

1:03:05

J.S. Party, like podcasts and new network are

1:03:08

the ones that kind of keep on pushing

1:03:10

despite the fact that like, maybe the growth

1:03:12

is not as astronomical initially as you hoped

1:03:14

it would be. Yeah, that rings true. I

1:03:17

definitely, we've been doing it long

1:03:19

enough that we've seen so many people come in and

1:03:21

start their own podcasts and some are scary, you

1:03:23

know, for them like, okay, they're going to take some

1:03:25

of our audience away, you know, or

1:03:28

their big names or they have a big

1:03:30

budgets and large organizations behind them.

1:03:32

Of course, at a certain point, all enterprises

1:03:34

need to have a podcast. And

1:03:36

you know, we're sitting here thinking like, is anybody going to have

1:03:38

time to listen to our shows when they're going to be listening

1:03:41

to, you know, some fang

1:03:43

members show some large entity that

1:03:45

has a huge budget and can put out

1:03:48

all this stuff and you know, most

1:03:50

of those are gone now. I mean, so many podcasts

1:03:52

are just gone. Even the good ones,

1:03:54

sadly, you know, don't survive. We have in our

1:03:57

portfolio shows that are like, we've had to.

1:04:00

trouble keeping all of our shows alive. And we

1:04:02

try really hard, because they

1:04:04

have to be sustainable. And

1:04:07

yeah, consistent ones, the ones who are dedicated, which

1:04:09

really does require you to have some sort of,

1:04:12

I don't know if extrinsic is the right word,

1:04:14

but like some sort of other motivation that's feeding

1:04:16

it in order for you to

1:04:18

continue. Like there's some shows where it's friends

1:04:20

getting together and talking. And

1:04:22

like they'll do that forever, right? Because they

1:04:25

just enjoy getting together and talking. And maybe it's

1:04:27

their excuse to talk once a week or

1:04:29

once a month. And those shows are

1:04:31

awesome. And those people tend to survive because they

1:04:33

just love to get together and talk about whatever

1:04:36

the hobby is. And

1:04:38

so that's just one example of like, that's their motivation.

1:04:40

It's not the audience, it's not the listen, it's not

1:04:42

the money. It's that opportunity to

1:04:44

get together. And so if you

1:04:46

have something like that, in

1:04:49

a lot of cases, this is your own learning. Like,

1:04:51

well, I'm just learning. I wanna keep learning. It's

1:04:53

a good excuse to talk to smart people

1:04:55

on a microphone, who otherwise wouldn't like spend

1:04:57

an hour with you. But now they're

1:04:59

gonna teach you stuff. Like that's a great

1:05:01

motivation that keeps podcasters going. And

1:05:04

eventually those podcasts do grow. It's

1:05:06

an interesting balance though, because you kind

1:05:08

of talked about the example of friends

1:05:10

talking. And this was another thing

1:05:13

that, especially in the past few

1:05:15

years, like since the pandemic, you saw

1:05:17

people kind of jump on the mic and

1:05:19

they're like, oh yeah, two friends talking, right? It's like, you just

1:05:21

got a rambling for like an hour. And

1:05:23

then you start listening to that show, but

1:05:25

nothing useful for the audience was actually there.

1:05:28

It's just two people talking. So it's kind

1:05:30

of the balance of like, sure, they're not

1:05:32

maybe motivated by growing a

1:05:34

large following, but at least

1:05:36

the content is somewhat useful. Yeah,

1:05:39

which I mean, to a certain extent, I was

1:05:41

contradicting what we do, because we don't really do

1:05:43

any of the just friends talking stuff. Like we

1:05:45

do joke around and we've added

1:05:47

a talk show to our lineup, which

1:05:49

is more chill and more conversational than

1:05:51

our other shows. But

1:05:53

we're about education, really.

1:05:56

And so if we're not exposing you to new things

1:05:58

or new ideas or new people, people, what

1:06:01

are we really doing? We're not gonna talk about

1:06:03

the weather or food or

1:06:05

that kind of stuff and just waste people's

1:06:07

time because I got very frustrated

1:06:09

with podcasts where I'd show up for the topic,

1:06:12

but the topic would be buried 20 minutes

1:06:14

into small talk between the two hosts and

1:06:17

it's like, let's not be those people. So there's definitely

1:06:19

a time and a place and certain, I mean, if

1:06:21

it's a show about movies and

1:06:23

friends are getting together to talk about a movie, but

1:06:26

they're talking about what they had for breakfast the whole

1:06:28

time. It's like, this goes to another one. Which

1:06:30

is give the people what they came for. We

1:06:33

very much believe in giving them what they came

1:06:35

for and not something else. And

1:06:37

so yeah, there's a balance there. I just saying that

1:06:39

if you get together as your friends and you enjoy

1:06:41

that, you're more likely to do it ongoing,

1:06:43

but maybe your show just stinks anyways, I

1:06:46

don't know. Oh, that totally makes sense. And

1:06:48

so in the context of the

1:06:50

work that you're doing with Change Log,

1:06:52

one of the things that you do

1:06:54

sometimes I see these very interesting off

1:06:56

takes that you get. And

1:06:58

these takes are something like

1:07:00

wasted time if you're spending a lot

1:07:02

of time building your editor configuration and

1:07:04

all these things. Yeah. But the

1:07:07

other piece was something stood out to me

1:07:09

recently where I ran into one of your

1:07:11

clips that was soft skills and the focus

1:07:13

on importance of soft skills for developers. And

1:07:15

this is something that a lot of developers

1:07:18

neglect. Yes. And as a podcast

1:07:21

host yourself, as somebody that runs a community, for

1:07:23

you are the one that appreciates kind of the

1:07:25

value of soft skills the most. How

1:07:27

do you see kind of developers

1:07:30

in the modern tech space evolving

1:07:33

those soft skills? Because I see

1:07:35

it so, so commonly where

1:07:37

folks have a hard time kind

1:07:39

of communicating their ideas. They have

1:07:42

a hard time soliciting feedback and

1:07:44

reacting to said feedback. They have a

1:07:46

hard time putting things in writing. Like

1:07:48

there's a lot of these things that

1:07:50

are not implicitly kind of technology related,

1:07:53

but are key to success. And something that again,

1:07:55

you said it and like it just went off

1:07:57

from me like, oh my gosh, this is like

1:07:59

exactly. that I wish more people knew

1:08:01

about. Yes. Well,

1:08:03

I can't speak for all of the developers

1:08:06

out there, the engineers or the programmers, whatever

1:08:08

they want to call themselves this time of

1:08:10

year. And maybe I'm in a

1:08:12

bubble because we do tend to speak with developers

1:08:15

who like to speak on podcasts and they're

1:08:17

very much – they're polished with

1:08:20

some of their at least communication

1:08:22

skills, which for me, communication

1:08:25

skills are the

1:08:27

cross-cutting, most valuable skill you can have in your

1:08:29

life, the ability to communicate. It helps you in

1:08:31

your career. It helps you in your relationships. It

1:08:33

helps you get what you want. It helps you

1:08:36

not get what you don't want. I mean, to

1:08:38

be able to communicate, which is a very hard

1:08:40

thing and one that I think

1:08:42

all of us are still constantly learning how to

1:08:44

get better at or not, is

1:08:47

a superpower, especially for software engineers where

1:08:49

you already have a power, but

1:08:51

you can't necessarily wield

1:08:53

it to its full strength without being able to

1:08:56

convince somebody that this is a good idea or

1:08:58

to send a decision that you made or

1:09:01

show your manager that you are

1:09:03

very productive and here's how you went about solving

1:09:05

problems. I mean, it's

1:09:07

so valuable and I think that the people who

1:09:09

are plugged – at least the people who are plugged

1:09:11

into our community know that. They

1:09:14

seek ways of improving that and so they're

1:09:16

reading the books. They're listening to

1:09:19

the podcasts. They're trying to

1:09:21

improve not just their engineering skills because at the

1:09:23

end of the day, yes,

1:09:25

programming is hard, but it's nowhere near

1:09:27

the hardest thing that we have to do in

1:09:29

our jobs. The people who realize that are the

1:09:31

ones who transcend and they get the promotions and

1:09:33

they get the raises and they start their own

1:09:35

businesses and they just have success. The rest of

1:09:38

them, we just stay

1:09:40

writing code and some people are happy to

1:09:42

do that and that's fine, but there just

1:09:44

isn't really a path to progress if

1:09:47

you're not willing to round out, make

1:09:49

yourself a full-fledged human being. Do you think

1:09:52

that you being a podcast host and kind

1:09:54

of running your podcast network helped you hone

1:09:56

that skill of communication? Oh,

1:09:58

absolutely. Absolutely. just the

1:10:00

ability to listen, which is really hard for

1:10:03

a lot of people, and for

1:10:06

young Jared as well, was more difficult, because

1:10:08

I was more waiting

1:10:10

for my turn to talk when I was younger, you

1:10:13

know? Because I was gonna show you what I know, like you

1:10:15

showed me what you know, now I'll show you what I know.

1:10:18

I was never listening, I was just waiting for my turn.

1:10:21

And I see that, especially in young people, but I see

1:10:23

that in lots of people, where I can

1:10:25

tell, oh, you're not listening to me, you're just waiting, you're

1:10:27

waiting for your turn. And as

1:10:29

an interviewer, of course, the main thing that

1:10:31

you do, the main thing that you

1:10:33

have to do is listen, which is hard,

1:10:35

because life is distracting, and my thoughts are very

1:10:37

entertaining to me, and maybe yours

1:10:39

aren't quite as entertaining to me right now, because you

1:10:42

just keep talking, and I'm trying to,

1:10:44

you know, it's hard. And of

1:10:46

course, just by interviewing people

1:10:48

hundreds of times, you're gonna get

1:10:50

better at it. You're gonna start listening more, and

1:10:53

reacting to what they say, and not just reading

1:10:56

the next question that you've written down. And

1:10:58

I was terrible at that, you know? But

1:11:00

then I did it 100,000 times, and now

1:11:03

I'm just a little bit less terrible than I used to

1:11:05

be. It comes with experience. Yeah, absolutely.

1:11:08

And consistency. That's right, that's how you get

1:11:10

the experience. You keep showing up. I

1:11:12

love this. I feel like this

1:11:15

show was packed with a lot of

1:11:17

gems that are, honestly, reusable in a

1:11:19

lot of domains, not necessarily tech, but

1:11:22

I always wrap up the episode with a

1:11:24

question for my guest, that is, if

1:11:27

you think of a piece of

1:11:29

unconventional advice that stems from your

1:11:31

experience, that you would advise

1:11:34

somebody younger that is early

1:11:36

in their career, maybe they're contemplating

1:11:38

of starting a company similar to

1:11:41

the one that you're working on right now, what

1:11:44

would that be? I don't know

1:11:46

if this is unconventional, but I

1:11:48

think it's perhaps so obvious

1:11:50

that people don't say it, and

1:11:53

so I'll just say the obvious, and

1:11:56

I'll say that if you do this one

1:11:58

thing, regardless of your career path, you

1:12:01

will find success. It's not complicated. It is

1:12:04

hard and it's this. When you

1:12:06

tell somebody that you're gonna do

1:12:08

something, then you do it. No

1:12:11

matter what, do it. That's it.

1:12:13

That's the tip and that applies

1:12:15

in any career and that's so

1:12:18

rare to find somebody who

1:12:20

consistently does what

1:12:23

they say they're gonna do. You know, they

1:12:25

follow up afterwards. They send that

1:12:27

email. They deliver the

1:12:29

message. They whatever it is. They finish

1:12:32

the chore. They do the

1:12:34

backup. Whatever it is, if you just

1:12:36

do the things that you

1:12:38

said you were going to do, you will

1:12:41

be so valuable to so

1:12:43

many people. Not just in the workplace but

1:12:45

especially in the workplace and

1:12:47

everybody will want to have you around

1:12:49

and they're going to want to give

1:12:51

you things to do and they're going

1:12:53

to invest in you because that's a

1:12:56

very hard thing to accomplish but

1:12:58

if you just set your mind to it like oh I said

1:13:00

I was gonna do this, I better

1:13:02

do it and then you do it, you'll

1:13:05

find success. I love it

1:13:07

especially given that it's very easy

1:13:09

to slip out of that mode and what you

1:13:11

just described as it's being very common in young

1:13:13

people. You definitely see a lot of that like

1:13:15

oh yeah I'll give you that that review by

1:13:17

tomorrow and tomorrow comes. Review

1:13:19

is never there. Like oh it slipped my

1:13:21

mind. I'll do it later

1:13:24

next week. The next week comes and

1:13:26

still not there. There's a thousand and one

1:13:28

reasons why you might not get something

1:13:30

done but if you're the person that does get

1:13:32

the thing done they said they're gonna do, people

1:13:35

will just bring you more and more of

1:13:37

work, more and more business, more and more

1:13:39

raises because that's

1:13:41

so valuable. It's just reliable and

1:13:44

a finisher. You know it's easy to start things, it's

1:13:46

hard to finish them so if you become a finisher

1:13:49

then you're on the right path. Unstoppable.

1:13:52

What a way to wrap up this

1:13:54

episode. Jared, thank you so much for being

1:13:56

here. Where can folks learn more about the

1:13:58

things that you've been build the things that you do.

1:14:02

Pretty much all of my work in

1:14:04

this domain is found at change log.com.

1:14:07

And we'll make sure to include the links to all

1:14:10

the podcasts, change log, and all the show notes, so

1:14:12

make sure to check it out. Thank

1:14:14

you again for being here. Thank you. This is awesome. Thanks

1:14:19

once again to both Catherine and Den

1:14:22

for inviting us on their pods. It's

1:14:24

fun being on the other side of

1:14:26

the interview every once in a while.

1:14:28

Speaking of Adam and I will be

1:14:30

on Joe Reese's podcast next week. Oh,

1:14:33

and if you're a podcaster and would like

1:14:35

us to join you on your show, don't

1:14:37

hesitate to ask. Who knows? If it turns

1:14:39

out well enough, we might even feature it

1:14:42

on a future episode of the change log.

1:14:44

You heard Den asking me about our

1:14:46

awesome community, but have you joined our

1:14:49

awesome community? And if no, why

1:14:51

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1:15:29

all for today, but come back for

1:15:31

changelog and friends on Friday for our

1:15:33

third installment of it depends. I'm

1:15:36

joined by Adolfo Otrigavia and will be

1:15:38

it depends on whether or not you

1:15:40

should specialize or generalize in your software

1:15:43

career. That's a good one. I'm looking

1:15:45

forward to it. We'll talk to you

1:15:47

then.