Looking Forward with Tim Banks

Welcome to Fork Around and Find Out, the podcast about building, running, and maintaining
software and systems.
Welcome to Fork Around and Find Out, the podcast all about technology and forking around.
Today we are going to find out with Tim Banks.
Welcome to the show, Tim.
Hey, how's it going, y'all?
Good to see you again.
We had you on the Chippet Show last year and it was a fantastic episode and we wanted
to have you back.
We wanted to have you.
No, I wanted to come back.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
I love y'all.
Great.
Oh my God.
I don't know how do we really like top the Chippet episode?
Oh, oh, there are plenty of ways to top it and I think we're starting off spicy right
now because we had a whole pre-show conversation here and Tim says they hate renfares and I'm
curious to.
Okay.
So, and here's why.
Here's why.
All right.
Now, renfares are for like 14th century is 15th century is Europe, right?
I'm half black and half Mexican.
What do I have to do with 14th century?
The way you looked into the camera and said it.
I can't read.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, like a bunch of unwashed people who can't do math, right, largely, largely, largely
illiterate, you know, the food is awful.
That turkey leg was amazing.
Speak for yourself.
Okay.
Do you think, do you really think they had smoked turkey legs in Renaissance era Europe?
They didn't.
Like that.
Number two, they have smoked turkey legs at every festival.
Do they?
Yes.
Yeah.
Every festival you go to has smoked turkey legs.
Yeah.
I mean, Disneyland just kind of kicked it off.
Yeah.
It's everywhere.
Yeah.
Everywhere.
Literally everywhere.
Has smoked turkey legs.
But do I get to look cute and get it like turkey leg?
Yeah.
But, but okay.
So let's go to that looking cute because like it's relative.
There are some people that look cuter in prayer than other people that don't and it's largely
relative.
But like it's just cosplay is all it is, but, but I'm not going to cosplay people who
are trying to like genocide my people.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, like, I'm, that's everything that's fun, like I'm brown, like that's everything.
Well it's not everything that's fun, but I'm certainly not, I'm certainly not glamorizing
like, you know what's great about these people, nothing.
I go to Rundrair as a fairy.
They didn't, they didn't like, I mean, I think they were equal opportunity.
The fairies go after everybody, you know, you know, that's, that would be like me going
to, I don't know, some festival or something that doesn't exist is me going like dressed
up as Jesus somewhere.
Like, you know, like, you should do that.
That would be fine.
Dress up as a Palestinian immigrant in this economy.
I feel like you could put a spin on that.
That would be so much fun.
I mean, like, like my shirt is, is, see, that's what I'm saying.
Like, like, I feel like you could make that the most ironic Tim version of just about anything.
Yeah, but, but I, you know, I, there are some folks I would cosplay, but, but neither fairies
nor Rundsons.
Who would you cosplay?
Oh, I would.
Now I've never cosplayed before, but I would cosplay.
Shut up.
Will you get dressed up for something?
I mean, is it Halloween?
A cosplay?
Like, is that?
No.
Like, what do you designate cosplay?
Cause I feel like you get dressed up for something all the time.
A specific character.
Well, I mean, I dress, I dress, but it's not cosplay.
Cosplay is like as a person, as a specific character kind of thing.
Right?
No sports jerseys.
No, no name, number.
I mean, I mean, I have Mexico team sports jerseys like that, but like, but like not really
cosplay.
Right?
If I was going to cosplay anybody, it would be Saw Gerrera.
Who's that?
Saw Gerrera is probably, in my opinion, the most badass character in the entire Star Wars
universe.
Right?
He was played by Forrest Whitaker in Rogue One.
Right?
But he also.
The best Star Wars movie, Rogue One.
He's also in Andor, and he's, but he debuted in Clone Wars.
Never seen Star Wars.
Any of them?
Any of them?
Autumn, I'm going to kick you off the show right now.
You seem to go stop and watch.
How, how are you going to, you're like, oh, I'm into fairies and blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah, but I've never seen Star Wars.
Fairies and magic are different than the species.
What are you, the forces?
How is it?
Yeah.
How is it different?
But they're just different kinds of magic.
How do you know?
They don't, they both don't exist.
Exactly.
Star Wars is like the ren fair of magic.
Like Star Wars is just right up.
Star Wars is literally space ren fair.
Yeah.
100%.
Princesses, weird characters, swords.
Yeah.
You know, squash bucklers.
Yeah.
Predators.
It's sci-fi.
It's like, it's like space, but like.
You've never seen it.
So I don't know how you're going to describe it.
No, I'm saying the way you're describing it sounds like all this stuff, but like with
space.
Star Wars is a space western, is all it is.
It's, it's no different than, essentially it's a blueprint for like, well, it's a blue
same blueprint for cowboy, bebop, try gun, et cetera, et cetera.
Space western.
Firefly.
Yeah.
I guess.
You like firefly?
Oh man.
Okay.
Every time we have Tim on the show, I feel like we need like full video episodes.
Why don't you release this to YouTube?
This should be on YouTube.
We can post this on YouTube.
Yeah.
Because like for one, they can't see their eyeliner and the faces and then they'd be like
staring into the camera and like, it's the best.
Which by the way, if this is your first episode of foreground and find out listeners, this
one is going to be a lot of fun.
So.
Tim.
So let's go all your backgrounds.
Well, first of all, I really wanted to do this as an after dark.
Like I wanted this to be like, you know, like a live stream after art and I will still talk
you into doing one of these one day.
Me about me.
Um, I am, uh, I am a for a couple of more days.
I am a four straight brown belt in, uh, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
This is coming out after Saturday.
So you're,
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
So, so I am, I am a black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
How do you work so hard?
Five time Pan American champion, three time American national champion, three time, uh,
silver medalist and world championships, uh, international masters bronze medal and a
bunch of like gold medals and various opens throughout Texas and other states just like
that.
Um, uh, and then I also do like some computer stuff to pay the bills.
Um, you know, I've got to pay for the.
Uh, and I'm, and I'm pretty good at that.
I've been doing that for like almost 30 years.
Um, so, but yeah, like, and then, uh, and then, you know, aside from that, I, uh, I am
a, you know, just an absolute raging leftist, uh, and, uh, and, and support causes, uh,
that, that one I've used like that.
Um, so, but yeah, no, I've, uh, I've got a, um, a very long and unremarkable background
in several careers.
I was in the Marine Corps.
I was a musician.
I was a professional chef.
Uh, I was a general contractor.
Um, so like I worked.
Is there anything you can't do to like dance?
I'm a terrible dancer.
I can't, I feel like you could, I can't, I, I would need to see this in real life.
I feel like, so, so what I can do is I can swing dance and Hazel's going to love it
that I said that because I have not done it in years.
I can swing dance because it's like some series of steps and stuff like that.
But like normally I just like, I can play.
I have such great independence when I play drum set and stuff like that.
I can, you know, marshal foot or right foot like blah, blah, blah, blah.
So it's not a matter of that.
It's just for some reason I cannot, I can't, I can't do it.
Everything else in my body, but I can't dance.
I feel like you can probably dance better than most people.
I mean, I probably can.
If Tim and I had a dance off, I guarantee you'll still win.
Oh yeah.
Because I can, because just because I can find that.
Is that fair?
I mean, I can, I can still find a beat.
Don't get me wrong, but like.
There's, there's a reason that I listened to hardcore music and go to mosh pits
because it's just like that's the dance of like.
Every time you say that, I think about that picture of your arm
and it grosses me out all over again.
That's the reason I don't go to mosh pits anymore.
Ramatize me.
Thanks.
But it's also kind of really funny because it's like, oh man,
I can't resume this thing again.
Um, but it's also really kind of funny because I have this thing where it's
like, uh, I am a good enough developer.
Um, like I write automation, right?
But you don't want me like writing like code.
You know what I'm saying?
Sure.
Like I can, I can think my way through code.
I can do that kind of stuff like that.
But I, I don't have the, I don't have the right kind of patients.
Right.
To be a developer.
It's just does not appeal to me.
It's not something I do, but so it's like, but now.
Tell us about your career.
Like what have you done?
Like tech wise.
So like I started off, you know, way long ago pre Y2K working on like
Windows systems and, and like AS 400 domain friends.
And for people that are too young to know what Y2K is, it was the year 2000
when we thought all the computers are going to break.
Well, because I think people see Tim's like big personality and spicy takes
and they don't realize how much of a background that you have to back up
all of those spicy takes, right?
And not just like some people on the internet do the like grift of just
being spicy.
No, no, no, Tim has the actual like pedigree to like back up all of those
spicy thoughts.
So like, tell us about that before we get into this place.
So I was, I was, I was a Windows sysadmin and AS 400 operator.
Then I moved into Sun systems systems administration.
And then, you know, especially around E10Ks and Oracle databases.
And then move from there into basically pretty much every commercial
Unix out there as HPUX and IRIX digital digital Unix, which is my
favorite, working on big deck alpha systems.
So a lot, a lot of big Unix systems, a lot of mainframes and stuff like that
as an operator and dealing stuff like working for ISPs and working for
manufacturers supporting things like that.
So a lot of enterprise stuff and a lot of early internet stuff where, you know,
it's like, I'm dealing with arrays of T one lines and dial up modems, both on
the server side.
Like, you know, I used to, like I was the kind of person that had all the,
all their modem settings, like, you know, AT ampersand seven, you know,
carrot, blah, blah, blah.
Like I had those things.
It's like, oh, is this Rockwell modem?
I'll use this, this use dial up string.
Oh, is this, you know, 56 K and I had opinions.
I had opinions.
I matter of fact, I had a US robotics courier 56 K external modem up until
like 2015.
Have you ever not had opinions?
I mean, not that I can recall, but, but, but, but like I had a pain like even
then it was like, well, you know, you want to use this one over this or this one
over this or these ones looking these circumstances and blah, blah, blah,
because you had to, right?
Cause it was like connecting to the internet wasn't just a frivolous thing.
It wasn't just an automatic thing.
Like it took some doing, you know, and if you wanted to have any kind of
capability, you had to not just have like a know how of how to type in the
keyboard.
You had to know physically how they worked and how to optimize them.
Like, like, you know, how long could the copper be?
How long?
Cause this, how many bends could you have?
It's like, you know, like, you know, what was your pot size?
You know, you had to know a lot of things about that.
You know, how to polish, polish the end of fiber off the cables to stick them in
your fiber channel drives and stuff.
You know, so like you had to know a lot about systems beyond just the
software.
You had to know about architecture.
Right.
Um, and then you get into kind of like a more hypervisor VM kind of base thing
with the advent of VMware.
Uh, and that, you know, you still had to know the systems, but they had to know
them less.
Um, and then, you know, started at working in the advent of the cloud.
So like I first started messing with the cloud with Azure when it was still just
nothing but like a windows systems orchestrator.
Um, and then with AWS, I think I started working with Azure.
AWS, I think I started working with like right in 2012.
Um, and then we're from there also into like large, because I worked on Oracle
systems in the past and I went into working on like large databases.
My SQL a lot, uh, because I was working for IS for, um, ISPs and, uh, and web
hosts, um, you know, learn, uh, you know, all the whole lamp stack pretty much
inside and out.
Uh, then I went into working into like MongoDB and other no SQL, then into
working as a senior SRE.
My last like frontline engineering job was a senior SRE at elastic, um,
working on elastic cloud and, you know, writing like pipelines and like logging
and observability, stuff like that.
Um, and I went to terms.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, and then I went into like more of the, um, uh, the more consultant space
working as a tamper AWS and then mission cloud, um, was a principal solutions
architect equinex.
Uh, I was the principal cloud economist at the duck bill group.
Um, and then, uh, lead, uh, lead, uh, developer advocate Adele.
And then now I'm here at Klan as a customer solutions architect.
So I've worked on companies from plucky little startups to, you know,
fortune 50 companies.
I guess Amazon's small, small fortune five or whatever.
Um, I've worked in everything from K through 12, higher ed, uh, you know,
government contractor, defense contractor.
So I've, you know, I've seen a lot and I've done a lot in the various environments.
What's been consistent across all of those?
Like what's the stupidity?
Absolutely stupidity of human kind.
Like we will, uh, we, we will absolutely make the same mistakes over and over
and over again at all levels.
Right.
Every startup founder thinks they are, they have everything figured out.
Every startup founder thinks that they're like, Oh, well, we're going to be doing
it this way and they all make the same mistakes every last one.
I feel like the last year, like you can tell why old people just be over life.
Like, you know what I mean?
Like it's just watching the same mistakes over and over.
But you see companies, uh, you know, they go from the little startups and they try
to grow and they run into these same problems with scaling, right?
The same growth, you know, the growing pains and they just, there is a problem
with taking people who are good engineers and putting them in the, you know,
leading companies, right?
Because they don't know how to lead.
It's like when you take a good engineer and you make them a manager,
those are two different skills.
But it's like, it is a completely different skill, but also it's like,
they don't know how to lead, right?
But they also don't want to be told how to lead, right?
And, and there's this big clash of like, Hey, you're not doing this very well.
I'm like, Oh, well, I'm growing and learning, but they don't accept that from anybody else.
But do you think that's because engineering typically has like a certain personality type?
Because I wonder that too when it just comes to working with other engineers.
It's not, it's not engineering that has a certain personality type.
It is entrepreneurship that has a certain personality type, right?
The person who's gonna like, I'm going to start off and do this thing on my own, blah, blah, blah,
because I think it's a better way to do it, right?
Which is fine.
And that's great.
But the problem that you have is that...
Oh, we lost you.
Oh, am I not there?
I can hear you.
Can you hear me?
Tim, come back.
Oh man.
I was just trying to reconnect.
I can hear y'all.
It's so wild.
Give me a second.
So I can see the time ticking.
So I know it's still recording.
It knows we're talking about it.
Let me know when you can hear me.
All right.
Am I there?
You weren't here for at least a minute.
Oh, wow.
What was the last thing you got?
Entrepreneurship was the problem.
Okay.
So the problem is it's entrepreneurship, the certain personality type that goes into entrepreneurship
because they feel like, hey, I can do this thing different better.
I have a better idea, right?
Which is great.
And that's all well and fine.
But the problem that you have is that you are going over road that a lot of people have
already gone over.
Instead of learning from the tire tracks, they're like, oh no, we can do this.
We're going to go over the same thing.
I want to go over here.
And those tire tracks go usually off the side of the road.
The other thing that they have is there's this notion of you got to learn from mistakes
and they will go to people who have been successful and like, well, how did you do it?
Right.
Right.
But what they don't do is they don't go to people who weren't successful.
And how do they do it?
Because those answers are almost always going to be the same.
But is that really just entrepreneurship?
Because engineers do that all the time.
But again, it's a different thing because they're engineers that don't do that.
They're engineers that are like, I'm just going to be sitting here doing my thing.
People are constantly reinventing the wheel and being like, it's different.
But the people reinventing the wheel are the ones that make their own companies because
as soon as I started a project, I'm going to make this its own company.
You know what I'm saying?
People who reinvent the wheel, Apple don't reinvent the wheel.
Except for the click wheel.
That was a big reinvention and they claim they reinvented the wheel with it.
I think it's really interesting how Apple has been very careful about getting into the AI game.
Well, because they're terrible at it.
No.
Apple's been the smartest about it.
Absolutely.
And then if you look at how AWS has got nothing but horrible press for the last two weeks
about how they're behind and how that messed up their stock price.
You mean two years?
Well, yeah, but I'm talking about they got the crap kicked out of them for the last two weeks.
They've been getting it for two years, right?
But they've tried the aspect of investing in Anthropic, the biggest investment they've ever made.
They've tried reinventing Q coming out with...
You know how many times they've reinvented Q?
That's what I'm saying.
You know what I mean?
So the more that people talk about Apple, I'm sorry, that just makes Apple look smarter
because they were like, look, we know that this is not our wheelhouse.
This is not our specialty.
We're going to do enough of it to stay competitive.
But I really think that this is a very interesting contrast between the two in this AI race.
The main thing I think is interesting about what we see that Jenae has done.
It has... It has lowered the bar for entry into something.
And in the same way that... Let me give you a great example, right?
You know when kind of pop music and hip hop music really started to suck, right?
Was when anybody could just get on the internet and record something and put it out there, right?
And then people could hear it, right?
It used to be that it was vetted.
You couldn't just record something and get it on the airwaves, right?
You would have to go to somebody, somebody had to audition.
Like, okay, yeah, we're going to take you.
We're going to groom you.
We're going to invest in you.
So you're going to go here and like, you know, go to this finishing school.
You're going to music school, blah, blah, blah.
You finally get it out and it's produced.
And then it hits the airwaves and it's a product of some kind, right?
God damn it.
I can't receive it again.
They don't have that now, right?
So, so folks could just go on like MySpace or whatever and like record this thing and like, oh, I'm a recording artist.
And then now people are going to listen to me and like, it got worse and worse and worse.
You know, the inch notification of music, right?
You democratize it.
Sure.
But you lowered the bar to get people out in front of people, right?
I mean, the internet did that for a lot of things, right?
Because writing, music, videos.
Yeah.
The distribution became easy to reach a lot of people.
Exactly.
And because it became so easy, like, you know, like, you know, any two, you know, any two, no offense, but any, you know, any two, any two dorks out there can go and make a podcast, right?
And get it out there.
Instead of like, you said be like, are you going to talk show?
Are you going to be like, maybe, maybe, maybe public access cable or something like that, right?
So, you know, now think about this with any product that requires development, right?
Hands on keyboards.
You know, so now any, any person who has, you know, 20 bucks to chat GPT or Claude or whatever can vibe code their way into some kind of product and make it look real good to put it out in front of people.
Hey, I've done this thing, right?
But it's actual crap, right?
And they didn't have to vet it past anyone who's a systems thinker or an architect or systems engineer or anything like that.
Even an investor is going to be like, man, I don't know about that.
That's not good.
Because it's too easy to do now, right?
The difficulty of doing something meant that you had to think it out.
And now you don't do that.
The fact that it was very expensive because you had to hire other people to do it and pay those engineers.
There, there was more thought put into it.
But I kind of wonder like, it's not always going to be this cheap.
It's just not sustainable to keep chat GPT this cheap.
I mean, we're in the Uber moment of touch.
All the VC money is funding how cheap it is for end users to get a ride.
Exactly.
And right now we're like, oh, cool.
My ride is this much.
And now, you know, all the Uber prices have gone up at least double over the years since when it started.
And I think it's going to go the same way or a lot of the startups are going to shut down because they just can't afford.
Gardner just came out saying that majority of the agentic projects will be sunsetted before 2027.
Because that's the runway.
That's like the runway for a lot of startups.
Well, not just that, but I think that right now they want to try everything as an agent.
And eventually it's going to, you're going to see like what would have just been better as a bash grip somewhere or regex and programmatically done or what was just not feasible to begin with.
But like, where does this like, where does the fallout end up?
I would agree with you on that.
If the fact that people are still trying to put WordPress sites on Kubernetes.
You know what I'm saying?
I really think that that gets some people like that some people's jam that like, let's over complicate this.
And I'm just like, bro, you could have put that website in S3 and made it.
Why are we doing this right now?
When I was coming up, right?
You could host a website by, by, you know, logging in SSH to a server, like, you know, making a little going in, going in VI, making a little HTML, blah, blah, blah, blah, right.
And then, you know, major little HTS, because we direct and pop something into the patch.
You're serving your webpage, right?
You go in and make a little DNS to point to your thing slash till the username, blah, blah, your host a website, right?
On a server.
That was enough to server static.
And you can serve static assets from there all day long and everything was good.
Fine. Well enough.
Apache web server bind, you know, as it was fine, right?
We don't do that no more.
Right.
Even on a static website, you have like CDN, it's got this and got this.
A very, very complicated thing to do the exact same things we were doing before.
Right.
But to what end?
You know what I'm saying?
Like, like if we, we, we have to go in and write a lambda to do a function when users SSH into a server and just run that thing.
And there's some people out there doing the simple way because they absolutely refuse.
But I get what you're saying.
But, but, but where has it, where has the money been?
Right.
The money has been in these ridiculously complicated ways of doing it.
Why?
Because there's money in it.
You know what I'm saying?
But I wonder like how long is the sustainable because the, what was that X?
They did like a projection of how profitable AI would have to be to sustain it in the amount of years that it would take is like wild.
You know what I mean?
So like, is this then like, I know that they've blown a lot of money before, but this almost seems like, you know, like, is like, does this then affect how they can invest in the future?
Like, what is the fallout?
And like, at that point, have we lost so many people's trust?
I'm going to, I'm going to my, my, my response to this is just Tesla.
Right.
Remember people, companies don't have to make a profit on the books.
They just have to sell stock at a profit.
Doesn't matter how much money you lose as long as your stock is going up.
That's what that's what it is.
Right.
Tesla losing money left or right.
Still the moves left.
Whether they want to admit it or not.
Right.
Maybe they made a profit.
Finally.
Right.
After how many years, you know, but it doesn't matter as long as the stock price is good.
Right.
But can we continue this?
Like, how long can we continue this for?
As long as, as long as the stock prices are going up, as long as there is return on investment for the investors, nothing else matters.
That is the problem with, with late stage capitalism is that you can make anything as crappy as you want to.
You can lose as much money as you want to on the books as long as that stock price keeps going up.
That's the only thing that matters.
So it's seeing like just tech from like ISPs to now.
Like, what do you, like, how do you think this next ride is going to go?
Like the only, the only thing that's the only thing that is going to save.
Yeah.
As we have to, you have to, first of all, you have to put community, not community, consumer protections back.
Right.
The SEC actually has to go in there and like bust some monopolies up.
Right.
There's, there's only like 10 companies anymore.
Really.
Yeah.
You know, that, that, that can do anything to have any sway to control that make any products like that.
You know, how many, how many like really hardware manufacturers are there anymore?
Like for, for consumer, consumer.
It's just a few.
Right.
It used to be a lot more and it was a lot more competitive, but also there was a lot less,
you know, of literally a monopoly of information at this point.
Right.
You know, between, between Microsoft with all, all majority of the hosted code, I feel like
in the world at this point, you got Meta who owns both Facebook and the social media aspects
like that.
You got Apple with a monopoly on these sort of things.
Like there are just a few companies out there that everything funnels to the top to and everything,
every time something is good, they need to buy it up or take it over.
You know what I'm saying?
Meta is famous for that.
Like they will just buy all.
They're having, they're still in a lawsuit about if they need to split out Instagram
because they, they bought it so they could swatch it.
So, so nothing like that is good.
Nothing is going to change until that changes, right?
Until, until we actually break up some of these interests and we make some of these folks
compete against each other.
Right.
Interesting to that point.
Proctor Proctor and Gamble just said that they're going to increase their prices by 25%
to go with tariffs.
Right.
And if you think about that, because of the amount of companies and products that Proctor
and Gamble now like produce because they are such a monopoly, that one company raising
their prices by 25%, the amount, just the difference that that's going to have on the
economy is going to be wild because it's not like just stuff that you can choose not to
buy.
It's laundry detergent.
It's so many things.
They've bought so many companies.
Well, here's the other thing too.
It's not like those prices are going to go back down either.
And it's not like they're, it's not like their competitors are going to keep their prices
down.
Right.
Now they're setting the bar.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Anyone else that would be in the space now says, oh, I can make more money.
Right.
Like now the price is a different bar.
Yeah.
Look at airlines.
Right.
What is the real, what is the real difference between airline tickets, you know, and to
go from one place to another?
If I die on frontier or not.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But like make it on spirit.
You know, but you look at most of your major carriers, you're talking like dozens of dollars,
maybe difference.
The main difference is what time it takes off.
And it's wild because it used to be like nice food on certain airplanes and then no food
and like it's really just like it is the most bare minimum of airplane like processes on
all of them now.
But I remember, I still remember when you had like American United, Delta, Pan Am, continental,
Eastern, you had all like when you had a bunch more airlines, right?
And then you had a lot more choices.
You don't really have those choices anymore.
Right.
I remember when there were more car manufacturers and you don't really have.
Didn't someone just buy spirit too?
Spirit of Halloween.
Like.
Spirit airlines.
Cause I know Alaska about Hawaiian.
They merged.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That is wild.
Yeah.
So like I don't even think that the smaller companies that we're thinking about are the
smaller companies anymore.
And that's the only way they can really be competitive anymore.
And so you look at all these mergers and stuff like that.
So, so you take that.
Now I want you to take that and look at the tech landscape, right?
Where does all the AI money funnel to in the end?
Nvidia.
Nvidia.
Right.
And Nvidia stock is going to keep going up.
Nvidia is going to keep making investments.
All these other things.
Covered losses.
All these other companies.
Stock price is going to keep going up.
Why would they, why would they care about whether it's profitable or not?
Which is interesting to me.
Cause it's not like there aren't other AI hardware like Google does it.
But they do it for themselves.
They don't typically sell it.
I see a lot of these like.
Graviton at this point.
Graviton is the arm stuff.
They have a Triton.
But they, but they, but all those people still offer Nvidia, Nvidia stuff because.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cause it's the generic one that everyone, it's like, it has the ecosystem.
But what happens when they have too many chips though?
Cause like it cannot be like a lack of chip.
What do you, what do you mean too many chips?
Give me a scenario where that happens.
It's like too many lanes on the highway.
It just, it just fills up.
Yeah.
They're going to use them.
If they're there, they're going to use them.
This is where I go back to the cloud has made us reckless.
But I mean the heart, but like, okay.
So the cloud.
Yes.
The cloud needs to be powered by something, but like the increase of like these massive
amounts of chips.
Like how is it sustainable?
Like we've, wasn't there like a river that they showed the other day that completely
has like no water.
Here's, here's the thing though.
They don't care whether it's sustainable.
They absolutely do not care.
They will scrape out and destroy every bit of earth.
They can't as long as they can still keep making this stuff.
I think this is also interesting though, as like engineers and as people in tech,
right?
Like we're like, we were talking to Duffy the other day and he was talking about kind
of like looking at the next like train and the next thing that you want to get into.
But like how do new engineers or even engineers that have been in it for a while?
Like what is like the future things that you look towards?
Because I mean, it's hard to figure out like what are we doing next?
Cause it's just like complicating the things that we already did.
This is also the thing where the part that we're not talking about in our industry is
right?
When this is all said and done, what is our, what is our part in this?
Right?
Right?
I mean, you've got everyone who's directly shilling, you know, Gen AI, right?
As if it's a good thing.
Right?
And it is like, it's like watching people, you know, um, shill for cigarettes or tobacco
or, or, or, you know, um, alcohol or heroin, like there are, there's enough information.
Or web free.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, there's enough information right already out now that, that using DNA is actively
harmful.
Like actively harmful for mental health, for your cognitive, so like that for your ability
or reasons like that.
Right?
There's, there's already studies out on that.
Right?
Because we already know what its ecological impact is.
Right?
We already know, right?
What is, what its economic impact is to like, you know, to, to, to, uh, various cities and
stuff like that, to people, you know, people's jobs are like that.
But yet we're having people who come out here and still saying, Oh, well, it's a good thing.
And how?
Right?
Where people who are saying, Oh, this should be mandated that people have to use it.
Right?
Right?
And, and I want you to think about, imagine if they mandated that people had to use hair
or what?
You know what I mean?
Like does it make you feel good?
Can it make you faster?
Maybe like he's good.
All right.
We're going to mandate.
Everyone's got to do, going to do a bump of cocaine like every hour to make them more
productive.
Right?
That just makes me think about when Coke used to be put, I meant when cocaine was put
in Coke.
So does, you know what I mean?
Like, bro, if I'm telling you right now, if you had little kids walking around just
like, if you had all these engineers, if you had all these engineers here snort methamphetamine,
I'm pretty sure they'd be very productive and it'd be less horrible for the atmosphere.
Wasn't there like an article the other day about how many people that are on Wall Street
are doing Adderall?
Like, are we not?
Like it seems like they're already doing it.
But, but the interesting part is here we're saying, well, oh, it's, well, it's a net good
because eventually it will do this or it was to do this or whatever.
I was like, but these were things we could already do before.
That's why I'm just so confused.
Like I feel like the logical part of my brain is like, okay, these pieces go together and
like just I am failing to see the logic and like where this goes next.
The thing that happens is when we ask him at what cost, right?
And then that just gets smoothed over because no one really wants to talk about at what cost.
I think what you're saying before about consumer protections like FCC needs to go in and break
up some non-belief.
I also think on the other end, I've, I've definitely come around to the collective bargaining
of the employees, right?
Being able to say, we're not doing this as a whole and nowhere in technology do they
have that power to say, no, this is, this costs too much.
People are individually walking out and saying, no, and some big names have, you know, been
outspoken about that, but it's not a collective whole.
The company does not care.
There's like, okay, we'll go to next.
What I think is really interesting about tech is we, you know, we, you know, this big,
big, you know, DevOps movement that's been around what 15 years now or whatever.
And it's a big fancy way of just saying, Hey, we're going to collaborate.
There's all this.
How do we collaborate?
I think that's why I love DevOps the most because to me it's got the most human collaborative
community, like version of tech.
You know what I mean?
But this, that problem has been figured out by every other industry forever ago.
Restaurants have figured it out.
Doctors have figured it out.
Automatically, they've just figured it out.
Construction has figured this out.
Like everyone's already figured out how to collaborate between disparate concerns and
disparate stakeholders to, to work together and do one thing.
Right?
That's how, that's how.
I also love open source because it is like, I think DevOps and open source go so well
together because of the collaborative.
Open source is the ren fair of technology.
It is.
Did you see Tim's face when you said that?
You heard a part of his soul.
I would only say that maybe if you're trying to like unwashed bodies by numbers.
Wow.
percentage.
I want to say you're wrong, but.
Go, go, go, go, smell around a ren fair.
Tell me I'm wrong.
And that's my least favorite part.
But, but, uh, but I think what the reason I'm saying that is because all these other
industries also figured out the importance of unions.
Right.
Construction.
I was going to manufacture manufacturing engineers ever get to a point where they unionize
because I feel like we're constantly in between the golden handcuffs and like, and I feel like
the chance that we had to unionize was like kind of like fumbled.
And do we ever get that chance?
We have to reckon with the fact before we ever unionize, we have to reckon with the
fact that what we are doing requires no more brain power than being a plumber or being
an architect or being, you know, a carpenter or anything like that.
Right.
And until we do that, we're going to think we don't need to do that because those unions
are for, for, for those kinds of jobs, for blue collar, how people don't see the connection
though you're all building.
I do think that AI opened a lot of people's eyes of like, maybe I'm not that special.
Right.
Like maybe, maybe this, this pattern that has been trained in this model that spits it
back out of the thing that I wanted.
I do think that's been an eyeopener for a lot of people of like actually before, but
you were looking it up on Stack Overflow.
The pattern wasn't a secret.
Right.
The thing you had to connect to that's here's the thing is a, and I love this argument.
Well, it's no different than looking up with Stack Overflow.
Yes.
No, I'm not saying that.
No, no, no.
Wait.
I'm not saying that AI isn't different, but I'm saying you, we're getting information.
Right.
And but like, I think when it was Stack Overflow, like I'm actually really sad that I think
we're going to lose the community of Stack Overflow, even if they were mean, but it was
a bunch of people solving the same problems and then leaving breadcrumbs behind for other
people to solve those problems.
Right.
Right.
Like this, don't get me wrong, using AI is different.
They're not the same, but it's still going and seeking out information to help you solve
a problem.
It now depends on if you're using your brain to help you solve that problem or if you're
vibe coding.
Yeah.
Yeah.
How could you think that, like nobody was special on their own.
I don't care how big your ego is, you were special because you were out, you were good
to, you were able to find that information and then make it make sense.
But you, like every engineer depended on somebody else and their breadcrumbs.
You know what I mean?
You say that until, until the startup hires the Rockstar engineer or the 10x engineer or
this engineer is like, oh, they can figure out everything on their own.
They don't need anything else.
But they don't though.
They like, that is the ego and the fact that they, right.
And, and that people who break everything and never know how to take accountability
for it.
But, but that, but that ego is what will keep us from unionizing for a long time.
I think that ego has kept us from unionizing.
And that's what I'm saying.
Like, like until, until we can accept that, until we can accept that, like, like, oh,
well, I'm smarter than, no, you're not.
You actually are not.
But like, you know what blows my mind though?
Like majority.
Okay.
If you think about all the people that we have interviewed on this podcast that are
like amazing technologists, what are the things that they all have in common?
They've all been on this podcast.
Did you go to college?
Absolutely not.
Okay.
Look, think about it.
Majority of people did not go to college.
Majority of people have had many jobs and all different kinds of jobs that, that changes
their perspective on how they like come to technology, right?
Like Kelsey Hightower, Duffy, uh, like all these people.
I think Angie Jones is the only person that has like a straight computer science degree.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Straight.
But you know what I mean?
Like an act, like a typical computer science degree, right?
So like, it's just funny because I mean, I have a master's in IT.
Like that's.
You what?
Yeah.
Like there's, yeah.
I think that the correlation there, there's more, what every, every year Nicholas Cage
has a movie come out.
There's more pool drownings, right?
Like that's a very broad like statement of like, this is what happens with the data,
but not actually like necessarily cause.
I think good people, people that's that want to do good and are kind to other people will
do better for the broader industry.
But there are a lot of, there's a lot of money and there's a lot of egos and there's
a lot of right.
I do think that people that have have a background of multiple of trying like things in the physical
realm and different jobs and just like, I think that for one, you're proven that you've
tried different things and you've learned how to succeed at different things, right?
Like if all you do is go to school and succeed at one thing, I'm not saying that you're not
a good engineer, but I do think that there is a difference of like having different jobs,
trying different things and like having a diverse background.
So the question I have autumn is how many of us are CEOs of these companies that actually
are making setting the direction and and and we're not right because by and large, right?
Because we don't think like they think.
But I think that's a lot.
I think there is a very distinct attitude of where the technological world is going.
If we could talk to people that are building it and using it and who have been there a
long time versus the like executives, the the vast majority of the people I know in
this industry, right?
This is their life, not their job, their life, right?
And when you when you when you make that their life, then they have it has to be supposed
has to be important.
They have to do this because it is their whole life.
It's like anybody else like if I've dedicated my life to this thing, right?
You're going to tell me that I'm not that good at it, not that special at it.
Like it's going to be real hard.
It's like the thing that when I tell people it's like a first time people like when somebody
is like really into a company, right?
Oh, I've been working here for like 10, 15 years, whatever.
And then they get laid off and they don't know what to do.
I definitely think it becomes part of like, like if you're not careful, it can become
part of your self-worth, but I don't understand why they can't like why it isn't like you
can be good at something and still admit that it takes community and that it's not just
the fact that you are individually like a freaking genius all on your own.
Like I think it's, it's even more than that.
You can be good at something and also realize it's not that important.
That's the bigger part.
It is not that important.
You are not that important in this thing.
There are how many other software engineers out there?
There are how many other operators?
You know what I'm saying?
Like you are doing this thing.
You are replaceable.
All of us are replaceable.
And because of that, right?
It is important that we do things together, that we act as one, right?
Because if they can just replace you with anybody else and they can and they will, right,
then everyone has to be in the same sheet of music, right?
You have to bargain collectively.
You have to insist on these things as a unit, as a whole, as a practice, as a trade, as
a guild, right?
Otherwise, they're going to just nearly, willy-nilly everything for anybody like that.
We don't have the protections that they have in Europe for these jobs.
We don't have the protections they have in Canada for these jobs.
We don't have the protections that other folks in this country or in the U.S. have had
to fight for to do.
And the other thing these companies, when you try to, the companies that launch here,
will do everything they can to bust the union effort, right?
So again, this goes to the fact that we don't have the kinds of regulations we need to do
to protect either the consumers or the employees.
Everything is here just to put money in the pockets of investors.
And almost always, almost always, so much that it should be the name of a law, right?
What is good for investors is mutually exclusive to that, which is good for employees or consumers.
I don't think we're getting those laws anytime soon.
But when we come back to what is our part in this, right?
How ready can we admit to the polls, like, yeah, like, oh, wow, like, you know, we were
absolutely ready to lambaste and ridicule out of the industry.
And we have people who are big into Web 3, like people who are huge into Web 3, but we
don't hear about them no more.
You know what I'm saying?
NFTs.
NFTs are nowhere to be found.
And, right, right.
And those people got real quiet, right?
But how many of the people we know, respect and love, right, are shilling AI, right?
And those are going to say, like, look, this is not great.
This is not good.
Like, this is not it.
This is not the vibe.
This is not, you know, this is not the moment, right?
But to what end?
I'm not saying that they should be treated like people who have a Web 3, because I think
there was great promise, but I do think there does need to be a reckoning, and we as an
industry need to stop with the, this is brand new and everyone wants to jump on board, right?
We should be much, much, much more skeptical of stuff, because that's the way, early days
of open, early days of open source, man, you had to go in front of stuff like that and
like put something, they would lambaste you, but you had to really prove something, you
know what I'm saying?
Like, like, it should be where you have to go in front of like some people with some
experience and actually convince them before you get airtime, right?
You know, you know, like, like, I think people have a choice now, though, everybody, like
there's so many layoffs and things going on.
I don't know if people feel that I think they do, but I don't, but in a way, like, people
are just trying to like pay their mortgage at this moment, you know, right?
And we are, we are, and we are absolutely in some, in some ways a bit of our making,
but also we're also victims of circumstance here, right?
But the other aspect of it is that it's not going to get any better until we say, like,
okay, we're going to make this change.
That's true.
You know, personally, I am, I am very much of a fan as the person who leads the company
should be the one that wins by combat.
Like you should be able to, I should be able to go to CEO of any company and be like, let's
fight and the winner gets the winner gets to lead the company.
I mean, I like my chances here, like a black belt, like now all of us are black belt.
Hey, look, these CEOs could have been doing something better with their lives.
They could have, they could have been studying martial arts.
I was still waiting for the, uh, the Elon and, uh, I'm so sad.
Oh, the Elon, the Elon, the Elon Zuckerberg fight.
Here's the thing.
Here's the thing.
Here's the thing.
Both of them are big fucking cowards.
The two of them.
And, and, and, and I will look, look, I will go right now.
I will challenge Zuckerberg or Elon Musk right now, right now.
Half of your fortune right now, Zuckerberg.
I know you trained your jitsu.
Come on.
Half of your fortune.
I, BJJF rules.
I just want to know like who, like, who were you rooting for because you have
the knowledge of like BBJ, like, which one did you have your money on?
Oh, Zuckerberg.
Oh, Elon was not even.
No, Elon, Elon, are you kidding?
Are you kidding?
Are you kidding?
Mark Zuckerberg in my life?
It's not even, it's not even rooting for it.
It is, it is, it is reality.
It is absolute reality.
I think the question was, would, would there have been like a permanent injury
for Elon?
I'm just saying that, like, if I had, if we, like, if we all had to exist in
this new timeline that is garbage, that could have at least given us a
little bit of joy.
Like it was the least they could have done.
I will, I will, I'll be very clear on this and, and, and I want this to be
unequivocal, like the number of people that Elon Musk could be in a fight
is smaller than the number of people that could beat Elon Musk in a fight
in the world.
Thanks for that.
It seems, it seems logical to me.
Everyone just missed the Justin phase.
It was adorable.
Hey, this video is going up.
We'll, we'll, we'll post the video.
It's fine.
Tim, you said something earlier and I wanted to ask, you said, all these
people, startup entrepreneurs are asking people that succeeded, but not the
people that failed.
What's something that you failed in, that you learned from?
Oh man.
Uh, you know, like I've been fired from jobs before.
You know, like, uh, I, uh, I had the, I think it's like you fired from jobs.
You know, I've had failed relationships.
I've had like personal failures.
Like, uh, you know, so like failure is, it's not even a thing I fear anymore.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, like, and I'll give you a great example, uh, in jujitsu, right?
You know, the first thing, the first two things you learn how to do the first
is fall and the second is how to lose because you lose a lot.
You lose all the time.
You spend your first probably year of jujitsu losing all the time, every day,
day in, day out, getting smashed, getting beat, getting roughed up.
Get, you know what I'm saying?
Like, like it is not any body, anybody with, not everyone, but there's sort
of, but, but pretty much any person, even if you have some, some, some physical
challenges is capable of doing Brazilian jujitsu, but not every person's
heart, mind, and soul are capable of doing that.
It is, it will chew up your ego and spit it out.
Right.
Um, and so learning how to deal with that kind of failure on the progress as,
as, as the, the price you pay to get good at jujitsu, um, is one of the biggest
lessons I've ever had in my life.
But if you want to talk about like how, like a things I failed at, like, oh man,
I've failed a lot of stuff.
I've had failed restaurants.
What do you mean?
What's, what's a lesson you take?
You had a restaurant?
I've, I've, I've been, I've opened three restaurants.
I was like the executive chef.
I wasn't like the money person like that.
That was, that was, but yeah.
I love hearing about the whole lives people had before tech.
Um, so like, what's the, what was the question?
What's the biggest lesson?
What's a lesson you've learned from one of those failures, right?
Like the failures happen and we're wrong about a lot of things.
And usually we change our mind or we change how we act or how we approach a
problem.
You, I honestly, the biggest thing I have learned from my failures is that
failure is not something to fear.
Right.
Um, failure, people who are successful all the time are lying.
Nobody is successful all the time.
Nobody's a hundred percent anything.
Right.
And the, and, and how you fail, how you learn, how you deal with failing and how
you learn from failing is, is as important, if not more important than how you
lose sleep.
And, and so like my, uh, my, my daughter, right?
Uh, my, my 14 year old, 15 year old now, right?
Uh, as a two-time world champion in Brazilian jiu-jitsu for her, when she was
eight, right?
Um, she'd never lost a fight until last month and she went in against the
current reigning Pan American champion in her age division.
And she got, she, she got, she just got rocked.
She got put on her back and just absolutely dominated the whole thing.
Right.
And, you know, I was there and, and, and, and my, my ex, her mom is also a
black belt Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
We're both high level competitors and like, you know, we're blah, blah, blah.
We watched it happen.
And I was like the first thing that I had to do was like, she came off there and
I was like, I'm proud of you.
You did great.
Yeah.
That's a big moment.
And, um, if she was really upset, she was really upset, right?
Cause she had that had never happened to her before.
Right.
And I was like, you didn't fail.
Right.
You didn't win, but you didn't fail.
You went out there, you did a good job.
You did, you did, you know, your best, um, you had a hard competitor.
She's really good.
Right.
That doesn't mean you're bad.
Right.
It just means she's better than you.
Right.
And just as like, okay, let's get you some food.
Let's get you blah, blah, blah.
And like two hours later, she's chit-chatting with her friends, you know, on
discord and playing games, stuff like that, you know?
Um, and I think that's great because I know grown ass dudes who will go home and
just, they're just despondent because they lost.
They cannot.
I was just going to say that I thought that it's such a wonderful lesson to
learn at that age, like, bro, we come into contact with people every day that
they could have become better humans, learning how to fail and learn, but,
and learning how to manage those emotions while failing.
You know what I mean?
Like, because I like, I'm sorry, but like, look at the news and how many people
who have like mass shootings and craziness because they were told no, you
know what I mean?
Or because they weren't able to do something.
Like every, every woman I know, it has, has to run through the checklist of
telling a dude, no, I swear to God, it's the scariest thing that you have ever
experienced.
Like people are like, well, why don't you just tell them?
No.
Why don't you just end the day?
And you're like, cause I'm scared for my actual life the whole entire time.
How many times have I told you both I was going on a date and that like, if I
didn't like call until like, or a text and so long to make sure that I wasn't
dead, both of you.
I'm going to, I mean, I'm still waiting.
You should be sharing your location.
We'll talk.
I, but like, but that, but that's what I'm saying.
Like that, like that is such a wonderful lesson, but it's like such a poignant
lesson because we know adults who have never had to learn how to manage those
emotions and work through that.
And a lot of those adults assume that this is a zero sum game.
Yes.
They have to win.
Otherwise there's nothing.
And it's really sad because how many kids events, because we all have children
and they all play sports, how many kids have we been at where the adult is
then teaching the next generation of children that a same mindset of zero
some, the great thing I like about being a ref in Brazilian jiu-jitsu is you
have to be a brown belt or a black belt.
So, you know, like when the parents yell at me, I'm like, you sure about that?
I love you so much.
But I wanted to say though, my favorite, like you were amazing technologist.
You have great spicy takes.
But my favorite thing about you is your heart.
Like I love that you just like, you just, you're just like a big teddy bear.
Like I don't care how much jiu-jitsu you do and all the spiciness.
Oh, I am, I am, I am the softest apart.
I love that about you.
I cry, I cry at commercials.
But I love that you own that shit.
Yeah, because like we need more examples of like
being able to do that.
And then I love that if anyone talks shit about you, you could also beat them up.
Like, you know what I mean?
Like, like you are just like the complexity is delicious.
Like, I love this for you.
But the thing is, is that that like, you know, it's like, did I did I
lose a match? Yeah.
OK, that's fine.
Well, that and I love that you, I love that you are willing to say the thing
that everybody is thinking, but is too scared to say.
Like half the time.
OK, but I do have a question out of all the spicy takes you've ever had.
Have you ever like committed to one and then been like, oh, shit, I was wrong.
Yes.
Like, what is the spiciest take that you like fully committed to?
And then you're like, you know what?
God, what did I is this is one on Twitter and I can't remember what it was.
And I and I, you know, the the actual thing what it was like that it was
something it was it was when, you know, you know, when the leftist purity
tests were on Twitter, they had for a while, right?
Oh, sweet Jesus.
Not ready.
You know, like, and so like I've I've been in the Marine Corps.
I was in the military.
And then like, you know, purity leftist Twitter came after me for being
like a warmonger in the 90s.
And I was like, I was like, bro, it was 93.
And I was trying to get out of my parents' house and get some money together.
And college wasn't an option for me.
So like, I don't, you know, yeah, I joined the record.
I was like, yeah, I was I was 18.
That was the thing.
Like also that's such a privilege take for somebody.
You know, I mean, I think that I think that there was a there was a there was
a lot of college going white kids who were coming after me out.
And I was like, I'm like, that's all we'll get.
Well, like, well, I was poor too.
I'm like, but you were poor and white.
But well, not just that, but there's different levels of poor.
Yeah. OK.
Like pretending that, like, there's not different levels of what you
experience when you're like middle class or lower middle class.
And then, like, making out with poverty and then pop.
Like, you know what I mean?
Those are very different, like and the and the thing is, like, this issue is,
is that the system is such that that is one of the only options for a lot of people.
And we don't have other options for people out there.
Like for the like, you know, like, I think, especially for people of color,
it is a very like it is one of the few ways that a lot of people have to change
their class, like to go from poverty to a little bit less than poverty or to buy a
house because people are buy a house.
You get some generational wealth.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I think that people I think there's a lot of people that that's not
that was not their first choice, but it was their only.
And so. And so, like, it was, you know,
it was one of those things and I can't remember what I said, but essentially,
it was it was that it was essentially just just like, like, I don't know why
you're you're blaming me here.
Like, you know, in the essence, in the essence of a lot of ways,
I'm you know, I'm a victim to the system, too.
Right. And a lot of people have problems.
And I would say that, yes, to an extent, I was I am like the rest of us,
you know, grounded as a capitalism.
But also, like, it wasn't it wasn't necessarily the best way to go about it.
Because, like, it wasn't that like, yeah, do I do I regret to join the Marine Corps now?
Right. Would I have would I have done it?
Had I other options? No.
But I think there's still the same kind of like people also will sit there
and blame you if you take out student loans and then say, well,
you have to pay them back and all this stuff because like you shouldn't
take out student loans, but then also what are the other options?
So I think that, yeah, I think it's hard.
So I think there's like I said, there's there.
That's not a spicy take, though, Tim, out of your real spicy takes.
What is your spicy take you want to take back?
If whether it be technology, something that was like.
I also I like I think I popped off at Amazon's
or Microsoft's security one time, something like that.
Oh, well, that's easy. I mean, that's not even spicy.
Well, it was it was just some spiciness is coming up.
But hold on. And I will.
But but here's the thing, though, like and and I'll never guess
because it was Ian Coldwater who called me out and said, like,
look, there are people that work on stuff just like just like you are
just like the rest of us doing the best they can.
Then I always find out blah, you know, and I was like, you know,
first of all, like there's a lot of things I can tolerate and say in the role.
But I it I would rather you cut off my arm than know
that Ian Coldwater was disappointed in something that I did.
You know, I'm saying, like that hurts.
They are that hurts.
Look, top tier human like they are only they are.
When you meet them, that's like they are one of the most
know, they are absolutely people.
But when you meet them in real life, they are the nicest, most humble.
Here's the thing.
You can never go wrong by asking yourself, what would Ian Coldwater do?
I think if they were mad at me, I would like I would probably cry.
Oh, no, I did. I was I was more upset if they were mad.
I was I was I was sobbing because like I actually care about
so like because they are worthy because when you did
when you disappoint when you disappoint someone who's important to you,
right, like it hurts like I told them big softy, right?
So yeah, those those ones that like like I regret and not because of like
but because because they were right.
They're absolutely right. I had not given thought about like.
But that isn't really good.
But I think that's a good lesson, though, because in tech, we are like we
I think part like this is the part I struggle with is the pissing contest
that you must get into as an engineer.
Like sometimes I'm real real good at it.
Like, you know, but sometimes it feels like you're arguing to argue
because you can write code many different ways and that doesn't necessarily
need to be like that argument. Yeah, yeah.
But I think it's so ingrained and the judgey and I would have done this better,
which there's a there's a part that that is valuable.
But sometimes it's you forget that they're humans building this and they're
trying their best. Yeah, yeah, it was a good lesson.
It was very much like a punching down kind of thing, which I was like, you know,
like sure now. And but that said, like, I had no problem punching up.
I will punch up all day long. I punch way above my weight class.
We know.
But but no, like it was one of those things that I was like, yeah,
no, you were absolutely right. And I'm sorry.
Like that, like I was I was despondent about that.
So I never want them to be mad at me ever.
Yeah, it was so. So yeah, that that that's probably the thing like that.
But that was such like a good like lesson, though, that everybody could learn
because we all make mistakes like that.
Like I think it's for it's easy to forget that there's humans behind it
because we just look at the companies, you know, yeah.
And like we're all out here.
But also by and large, if if if my feeling, if you hurt your feelings
were hurt by something I said, what is your part of all this?
You know, that's why I'm asking you, like, why did that hurt your feelings?
Therapy, this is just turned into therapy.
But, but, you know, so like, I do think there's there's there we we run into this thing
where it's like people just sometimes want to pop off to pop off, right?
So you want to like shitpost to shitpost and and that, you know,
that had a good run for a while, right?
But it's not really even now.
Like I'll say something I'll pop off a little bit.
But I pop off at groups of people.
I pop off at movements.
I pop off mostly at fascists, you know, tap lists and like that.
But but not a whole tech shitpost.
Like I almost missed when the people used to argue about if JavaScript was good or not.
Like not because I really want to hear that argument again.
But I think it was like just when everything wasn't so sad.
Well, you know, the thing is that was that the the the relevance of this framework
has become a lot less because of AI and we are now you don't even get to nerd
argue about the little things anymore.
You know what I mean?
Like there's no argument about the craft or like the actual like
non offensive horrible things like everything is just I don't know.
But you know what, though?
I think what becomes more important because I've always been I've always said
for a long time that the tech itself is is is inconsequential.
It's all a tool. It's it's it's meaningless, right?
It is it is a means to an end, right?
And so this is now very well illustrated
because of the fact that I can can do a lot of some of that low level work, right?
You know, syntax or whatever that all these people would argue about.
Like it doesn't matter, right?
What is the problem?
It's like only being able to paint in one color now.
You know what I mean?
Like the loss of getting to figure out like how you get to do things
and what's even beyond that isn't beyond that, right?
Because because it's like the thing that we should have been talking about all
along is the thing we're talking is the thing we should be talking about now.
It's like, what are the people problems?
What are the things we're trying to solve?
How does the technology, whatever it is, enable you to to do what?
What is the people and human problem we're trying to solve, right?
And so like we're we went so long
discussing the minutiae of what framework is better than this framework.
Then, you know, all these dumb little arguments, we have distro wars.
It's like that, you know, all the all the little all the little,
you know, religious, you know, cultist behaviors.
It really was religion.
It really was.
And then.
But but but we should have been talking about people all along.
We should have been talking.
We should we should have been like, are we ever going to go back
to solving actual real problems because it feels like we're solving
like made up problems that nobody asked for right now.
And it's so sad.
Like, I feel like we're not like we we're is it because of the lack
of like zero interest rates or like, what is it?
No, I feel like we are just it's it's the same thing.
It's a it's a lack of innovation.
We don't innovate anymore.
It's the same thing like like the same thing in Hollywood movies.
Like, you know, you look at like some big blockbusters, its sequels, its remakes.
It's like rehashed.
It's really hard to get passionate about like fake made up problems.
You know, it was really part really hard to get passionate about doing
the same thing a different way.
You know, and a lot of is doing the same thing different ways.
But this is like and because we don't but we don't understand the people enough.
We also don't understand enough context behind the people are right.
Because even I think and I think this a lot of people goes back to what I said
before a lot of people they're just I'm just a software engineer.
Like I said, what do you do?
Right? What did you ask?
What did I tell you when you asked me what I do?
You told me about you just to I do Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
That's the way like if I ask you what you do and you tell me what you get paid for,
like who are you? Right?
I'm a software engineer. Now, that's your job. Who are you?
You know, and once and until we have a full scope of who people are,
we don't know how to talk to them.
We're just going to talk about tech.
People don't even know how to talk about themselves.
I don't know if people know how to talk to each other anymore in general.
And I don't know if they like want like at some point
it our AIs are just going to be talking to each other.
Well, that's why that's why I don't that's what I don't have like
conference badges up here. That's why I don't have, you know, all your badges are gold.
I mean, you have a better badge.
You're just like, I don't put the plastic up because I got you don't have any space.
Like, be real.
But but that's what I'm saying.
Like, like I make it very obvious.
But I think contrast, though, when you're a woman in a male dominated field,
though, I'm really proud of what I've done in this field.
But that's not my entire personality.
And you should be. You know what I mean?
So I do think that you can do both.
But I don't not that I know the right way to do both.
But I think one of the points
since we get out here is you are what you measure, right?
The age old thing of you are what you measure in a company and in technology
and whatever, but also as individuals.
What do you measure about yourself?
I'm really proud that I'm a good friend and a good mom.
Yeah. But but to but to that end, like, like if I I'm not going to put up
a bunch of nerd shit back there to give me nerd cred.
I'll hide my you know what I'm saying?
Like, like on a bash, really love it.
Like, like if you want to if you want to talk to me about nerd shit,
we'll talk about nerd shit.
But I'm going to be like, is this really what you want to talk about?
You know, and because because it's not important.
It is not important.
The people, the problems we're trying to solve,
the differences we're trying to make are what's important.
If you want to talk to me about how I did this demo that say say five
seconds off of this or my build time runs, you know, two percent faster.
I don't care. I promise you a question.
What how do we get back to what how do we get in the capitalistic society
we live in and in the new age of technology?
How do we get back to solving problems that do matter that are important?
Well, the first thing you have to do is start talking to people about
PNF stuff is first person is also a great like going and being around people
in physical space to be able to talk and not it's not a transaction.
It's not a meeting. It's not a social media post. It's not a like.
It's why I love conferences.
Well, that's the thing, right?
The thing of the the important part of conferences, never the talks.
It's the hallway track.
And I wonder if we're going to lose that, though,
because people are funding like absolutely conferences.
Absolutely. I kind of wonder if like,
so I think that we're going to lose a lot on Stack Overflow
because the breadcrumbs were not leaving for others, right?
But I also think that people look at conferences as like a I don't.
The only people don't understand.
Obviously, the only people going to Congress is not by larger salespeople.
But like, yeah, but it's weird, though, because it's like,
I think with the lack of Devereal that we have and the fact that companies
don't see the value in going to conferences,
I wonder how much they're going to lose, but not know they're losing.
You know what you know what will end up happening, though,
is that conferences will start to go away like the ones we see.
Because because salespeople talking to the salespeople are going to
start to be like, and you know what, good, let's go back to meet up.
That you run away from half the time.
Like, let's go back to meet up.
Let's go back to more community focused stuff like salespeople don't want to go on that stuff.
The smaller local communities is going to be a lot more important.
My my New Year's resolution for myself, which I need to get back to,
was to meet all of my neighbors on my street.
I literally have lived here for 15 years and I don't know all of them.
And I was like, I should I should know this community
because this is the community I picked and I've lived here for 15 years
and extending that out to my social environment of work or people with like interests.
Right. Like I have a hockey team now.
I've learned a lot more of the people at hockey where I'm like, cool,
we're on a team, but I also learn people on other teams.
And I play other nights and knowing those pockets of communities
is super important to go meet them in person, spend my time
and show up and talk to them as people that all have problems and all have interests.
And some of it matters, some of it doesn't.
But it doesn't, you know, we can we can connect and we can be humans together.
We we need to do community building, right?
Actual community building, not, you know, I'm saying,
not like team building within our orgs, but I mean, like community building,
like how do we talk to people who do all this same thing, right?
To get to know them as part of building a community
and communities, not just all the people that do the thing, right?
Communities, people who have things in common,
who can work together towards a common goal, right?
And then if you can't figure out how to work with somebody,
you can't figure out what the common goal is, you don't have a community.
You know what I'm saying?
You just got people that are stuck in a place together.
Yeah. Tim, where can people find you online?
Oh, man, so you can find me on the blue sky at Elchefe.me.
I have a blog kind of like again, every time I say it's like, I need to update it.
I still, yeah, I need to update it at Tim dash banks.ghost.io.
Aside from that, you know, if you want to holler at my Instagram, it's at Elchefe.com.
But yeah, that's that's where you can find me.
I just started a ghost, too.
You signed up. Good job.
Proud to be proud of me. Yeah, it's good.
That is that is step number one.
You're good.
Tim, as always, thank you so much for coming on.
You I like I like this.
I like this. Definitely.
I want to do it again.
Listen, we got to do an after dark one.
I really think we should.
It would be fun. We just need to like, you know, needs to be a live stream.
All right. Thank you, everyone, for listening and we will talk to get soon.
Keep those community buildings strong and be kind to each other.
Right? Yes.
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