It's a renaissance woman's world (Friends)

Welcome to changelog and friends a weekly talk show about dude. Where's my blog? Thanks as always to our partners at fly.io The public cloud built for developers who ship you'll fly you might too or more at fly that I owe. Okay, let's talk This is the year we almost break the database.

Let me explain. Where do agents actually store their stuff? They've got vectors relational data conversational history embeddings and they're hammering the database at speeds that humans just never have done before and most teams Are duct-taping together a postgres instance a vector database. Maybe elastic search for search It's a mess.

Well friends attack your data. Look at this and said what if the database just understood agents? That's agent to postgres it's postgres built specifically for AI agents and it combines three things that usually require three separate systems native model context protocol servers MCP hybrid search and zero-copy forks The MCP integration is the clever bit your agents can actually talk directly to the database They can create data intro spec schemas execute SQL without you writing fragile blue code the database Essentially becomes a tool your agent can wield safely then there's hybrid search Tiger data merges vector similarly search with good old keyword search into a sequel query no separate vector database No elastic search cluster semantic and keyword search in one transaction one engine. Okay, my favorite feature the forks agents can spawn sub second Zero copy database clones for isolated testing.

This is not a database that can destroy It's a fork. It's a copy off of your main production database if you so choose We're talking a one terabyte database fort in under one second your agent can run destructive experiments in a sandbox without touching production And you only pay for the data that actually changes. That's how copy on right works all your agent data vectors relational tables time series metrics conversational history lives in one Queerable engine is the elegant simplification that makes you wonder why we've been doing it the hard way for so long So if you're building with AI agents and you're tired of managing a zoo of data systems check out friends at Tiger data at Tiger data.com They've got a free trial and a CLI with an MCP server. You can download the story experimenting right now again.

Tiger data calm I'm out who's saying is back one of our JS party animals one of our favorite people Your JS party animal No, I've never been quiet. I've never even I never heard that term. Oh, I see when I was on the show Yeah, okay, I mostly say behind your back, you know in post-production. I'm like hey JS party animals All right, you're also a person.

You're also one of our favorite people. It's the octopiper. Is that a Silicon Valley reference? Sure is I caught it, but I didn't know I had the show started.

Are we Okay, okay animals part was magic She's a JS party person and she's also one of our favorite persons and she's back It's been about a year. You're still doing your digital thing at a starry digital. You're doing more than you're doing before welcome back Thanks for joining us once again. Thank you.

It's a pleasure to be back. I'm like gosh Do I even know how to podcast anymore? I think as you know last time I was like I'm a new mom and you know It's just really like now. I'm a toddler mom You know my son's just started at the Montessori local like our local Montessori, which is really lovely and Yeah, and I'm like if you I feel like you know work has been in you know the steady kind of go go go mode You know it's um, I'm at a rapidly growing company and it's so you know very exciting to to kind of be part of this This growth arc and so now with my son kind of starting school I feel like a little bit of expansiveness around like you know Hey, do I want to start like talking to nerds on the internet again and I think the answer is yes I must be your back on the show Adam.

She's here to talk to us nerds. I'm a nerd. Okay, so there you go. Congratulations Thank you so much.

Thank you. But yeah, I I think since I've last been on the show kind of continued to kind of grow in my role And I'm now a director of software engineering, which is like I feel like I'm now back to like baby baby director or baby role in the sense that with every new type of Challenge, you know at the very beginning you know You're kind of back to square one in some ways is like learning learning new ways of working and thinking and being and so it's been It's been a real like eye-opening journey And I hope to kind of share some of the things that I've been thinking about and experiencing with you all today How do you approach that because you've been through many iterations? I've said you've been reinventing yourself over and over again and here you are again somewhat reinvented So you have to have a process or like an approach at this point because you don't so many times How do you enter into something brand new as a baby and navigate that? Yeah?

It's a really great question. I think I think for me, you know, I just it's like morbid curiosity Right, I think just yeah, just kind of really be curious and care You know, I think those are two kind of like secret sauce kind of like umami factors for like what it takes to be a good Engineer and then you know, I think as a leader kind of like adding on top of that, you know being empathetic understanding You know, it's people first and all that jazz, but I think you know to your point of kind of me reinventing myself I've done a lot of pendulum swinging, you know We're you know, I've been a high-level IC and then a manager and then high level IC and the manager and even at a star you know I came here as a principal software engineer and before that I was a senior engineering manager at Cisco and before that, you know Staff engineer at Stripe, right? so it's like I've had this like crazy swing and I went from principal engineer to principal engineering manager to now director and And I think you know, I think the driving factor for me has just been like are the problems interesting and are the people like lovely And you know are these people I want to spend, you know, a good chunk of my time with right so interesting problems interesting people You know, I think that's kind of the I think the kind of the one shared thread for me And I think like you know if the equation changes on either of those right if the problems are either not interesting anymore And or if the people you know, if like the environment is just not right like that's kind of where you know I think for me, that's that's where I've been like all right time for change But I think for me like I still kind of have the same attitude I did when I was last on the show, which is like, you know, I hope I kind of get to retire with this company I'm having a ton of fun growing a lot and Yeah, I just I you know I think it's so hard in this industry to find a place that's really just right for you And so I feel like I found this place and I my hope is that like as we're growing and scaling right? It's as you can imagine being part of a company that's growing rapidly It's a little bit of a banana boat, right?

You're like, you got to just hold on and so I'm my hope is that like, you know, you know I'm as in love with this place, you know in five years or ten years as I am today So well, I thought about you recently because we were talking with Nicholas Zacos slick net if you know about the relative neglected state of NPM and of course, I think of you in that circumstance and When kicking in that topic, but just use that to ask you how does it feel to be out of the browser? Because you're like relatively free from the throes of NPM. I'm sure there's probably something no body Or your system somewhere, but you're not in the browser anymore. What's up with that?

You're like outside of the web I'm not in the browser anymore and also just like LOL it like, you know, you've done the demise of NPM When you think of me, Jerry, if you need some, but I need some better associations Well, we're talking about like how many people work there and stuff and I was like, well I do have some insight because you were working there during the acquisition and all that and I was like I didn't bring up any of that on the show, but yeah So first of all, I don't think anyone that's using software is able to escape NPM right like both as a user or as, you know a builder and or a prompter these days, right? And so like there's no escaping it, which would put that other set the record straight. That being said I am Working on a whole set of new challenges and new problems and new constraints And I think that's why I'm like so in love with this this role and this job and this company and this the problem Space that we're in because I feel like it's like the nerds paradise of problems and you know Just because there's so many constraints and then you know moving outside the browser I'm now like what I consider truthful stack, which is you know, you know, we're really dealing with software That's also installed on top on different clouds as well as different, you know operating systems And there's a whole host of constraints that kind of come with thinking about that You know when you have multiple distribution targets, you know, you have to really I have a whole new level of appreciation for people that are Develop desktop applications because that is one of the things that I'm also now responsible for and It is like humbling work. It's very humbling work The idiosyncrasies between platforms and operating systems like and cloud providers and like dealing with, you know Kind of trying to normalize all of that in a singular code base is a lot You know, and I think like it's been it's been a very rewarding challenge for me and a breath of fresh air As I feel like, you know, right now Especially in the JavaScript world.

I mean, there's still a ton happening a ton of interesting work happening in the standards world and everything else But I think like for me like the conversations that we were having we're just kind of getting tired specifically around framework wars and you know just kind of arguing about rendering patterns and and so I'm just you know, I'm excited about new problems and Excited to be kind of learning a whole new set of things that you know come along with that. So what are your deployment targets? Like what kind of operating systems what kind of hardware? What are you building?

Yeah, let's let's start with what I'm building Yeah, yeah, I know we're actually sort of like semi and stealth last time I was on the show Which I couldn't say as much as that. You know, I can now and even now I'm like a But we're essentially an infrastructure company for people that build in the real world, right? So think of like your mechanical engineers your aerospace engineers, etc They use all these different kind of engineering tools super expensive licenses and super, you know, old code bases, you know, some of these software like they were, you know, Some of this some of the software that's still used today to build like your airplane was like first invented with like the Apollo launch at nasa Like, you know, like you know, like no kidding. So with all these kind of disparate tools You know, everyone has their own favorite provider and this and that and so what our kind of infrastructure platform allows you to do is kind of connect All of your data together and kind of give you situational awareness and kind of you can then pull data out and extract into standard formats And then you can use AI to do all kinds of things you can build custom workflows You can, you know, make sure that like as you're building things things are still in compliance, right?

Because you're able to kind of pull data from like all these different models and and so yeah So essentially it's a platform for enabling that kind of a digitally threaded workflow for people that haven't really been able to do this type of stuff before Like people are emailing each other files with like lots of really sensitive IP as you can imagine like people building airplanes and other things rockets You know, there's all kinds of really sensitive IP And there's no easy way for people to kind of collaborate with each other across the same team let alone Being able to actually collaborate with vendors, right and being able to share like tire specs with, you know The person making the tire for the for the plane for example So all this the software this infrastructure software that we built in a starry Is installed on your network. So that's the other cool thing So we're like a GitLab in that like it's installed self-hosted software, you know, works on your cloud like all the clouds Gluing all the clouds, right and one of the things I'm responsible for is kind of our integrations platform, right? So how things get in and out and we have agents and we've got kind of a You know whole SDK for people to like write their own integrations. We have a number of ones that we maintain and write and so in addition to kind of Owning kind of like an ecosystem platform.

I also own kind of an underlying data platform in which I can't get into too much but But yeah, I think what's been fun for me is Moving into kind of this director role You know, you really like you you you get to feel the impact of what it means to to be enabling other people to do their best work, right? And how do you like tap into the power of teams? How do you like how do you how do you get people to be creative and you know? So it's it's just been you know while like solving all these hard problems It's been really like I've also been equally deeking out on like what it's like to work with like really smart people and Shift from having they're always having the right answer to like always asking the right questions, you know And making sure that like folks are focused on the right thing.

So so very cool So I'm thinking about like kind of like a GitLab or a collaborative space for Engineering data is like more of a data collab is it than a code collab? Like what exactly is flowing through these things? Yeah, let me I can give you an example that I can talk about because this is pop this one is public But as you can imagine like a lot of our customers I can't like I can't talk about them But we are you know, very um, you know, we're doing great in terms of kind of our reach within the industry But Blue Origin is one of our partners and we were actually part of an AWS rainback keynote in October Where they were kind of we can put this in the show notes. Um, you know, they were designing a a part for a Well, really they're building a moon vacuum.

Um, so basically Blue Origin is trying to like survive the lunar night No one has been able to survive the lunar night. Um, because of the huge temperature fluctuation And um, it's two weeks long no one's been able to stay on the moon for that long or nothing has been able to survive and so, um And so they're going to be sweeping up regolith, which is like moon dust And uh, they're using that to like power up a battery And so, you know, to sweep up this regolith like it's like a very harsh substance. It's not from earth Obviously, there's a lot of like, you know, um, unique composition to it And so they need to design the correct kind of cylindrical shape for this moon vacuum That's going to sweep up this moon dust Blue Origin leveraging a starry's platform, um, along with, you know, um, end top and other partner of ours But they're they're an actual digital engineering tool like they're an actual tool provider Like they work on like CAD software, basically grammar to parameterize models, you know, they were able to kind of leverage You know, setting up these AI pipelines to kind of do all this rapid iteration, right? Where you can like pull data from their models, uh, you know, um, given a bunch of inputs, right?

Because we have our platform is code first So you can, you know, um, string together these complex workflows with AI And what you can do with the starry is you can set up boundaries for AI And that's like a one of our huge value propositions It's like we eliminate AI hallucinations, right? Where you can like sort of vibe code or rocket by, um, you know, because you're able to set the boundaries Pretty tightly around like specifications and make sure that like things are still in compliance Um, and so, you know, um, Blue Origin was able to kind of leverage AI pipelines to do a bunch of iterations with our software Our software like helps you, um, you know, with all of that, um, you know, connectedness with your data Setting up boundaries for AI, you know, um We have an obviously MCP server that like lets you do all the things, right? Um, and so they were able to kind of do all these iterations with the, um, with the part, developing the part Which kind of like was like, you know, um, 75% faster, 40% like better quality, etc. And so like, um, and those kinds of, um, numbers are pretty huge for people building in the physical world Um, so I think that's the other thing that's been humbling is, um, seeing workflows for people Building like cars and planes, you know, with software, we have a completely different, um, iteration cycle, right?

And so, so I think that's, that's, um, that's also what's been very humbling, learning about, um, how different life is When you're designing a physical part and how much longer iteration cycles are And how much more expensive it is to be wrong, you know? And so it just takes months and years to like build these huge planes And so, um, you know, the types of improvements that, you know, we bring to the workflow, right? Like just kind of like save thousands and thousands of hours, like across multiple teams As well as the kind of unlocks that teams get when they actually have their data in one place And it's connected and they can actually use modern tooling to like, um, essentially talk to their data, right? Um, and so it's just, it's just a game changer, right?

And so I think, um, you know, we had a very big public company launch this year at, um, AIAA, which is like the like aerospace conference, aerospace and defense kind of conference like, you know, 6,000 plus people in Orlando this past January And, um, you know, our like CEO was like the keynote and like we had panels and workshops and booths And so we're kind of now like talking to the industry publicly, but previously this, you know, we're in a very fortunate position To have a lot of leadership with like a lot of really great connections and, um, you know And so we've been able to kind of, we haven't like a number of partners that are, you know, have been very early adopters of our platform And, um, yeah, it's just been very humbling to kind of see what it's like to like make a rocket design a engine And like, and how much, um, you know, software can really just up level that whole process, you know? It's really like it's truly humbling stuff, so You guys dabbling in the digital twin era where you're like 3D versioning things, it's like that So is that what your platform is helping to collab on? Is like the digital twin co-thing? I mean, I basically we are like the, we're the actual, I think we're the really, I mean The only software that I think will help you actually be able to build a digital twin, um, Is one of the programs that we did was with, um, U.S.

Air Force, um, it's flyer one, um, We kind of did a whole digital certification of airworthiness for a drone, um, which has like never been done before Like, now a starry like is actually nominated for like the collier trophy this year, which is like the We're like the first software company nominated for this prestigious award where like previous recipients of this award Like you would know by first name, you know, it's like, it's it's just wild I mean, so I feel like I'm in this really fortunate position to like Be in the middle of this transformation for this whole, you know, a whole it's like an uplift for a whole industry Like shifting their way of working, um, you know, kind of bringing that forward like several decades and so What's the stack? Like, how can you can you describe like the different languages that make up the stack? Yeah, I mean, I don't want to like maybe so I um, we use everything from go rest python, um, you know, obviously typescript, um, and you know Just our our stack is, um, you know, we use a lot of Kubernetes, right? Because, um, you know, we have umbrella, uh, helm charts that kind of do all of this, um, kind of infrastructure containment, right?

And complexity containment because it is installed software, right? So we have to like we have our I feel like our whole install Process and product is like its own it's its own product, right? Like installing complex software that has to run across distributed networks and multiple machines, right? Because we have like a control plane and then we have a data plane and then we have agents that are running on people's laptops or in super computers or you know And so it's um, it's distributed software that's installed.

How's calls? Um, in what sense like going into like a skiff or like What's going wrong with our self-hosted thing that you installed in is running on our network? Please come and help us. Yeah, yeah, we have what we call forward deployed engineers That's you know, we've our solutions engineering team that are like embedded with all of our, you know, our customers And so um, they kind of help like co-manage house calls like work at your customers, but they work for you But they kind of work for your customers, right?

Exactly correct. That's exactly what they do. Yeah, and it works really well By the way, like when you have, you know, it's so helpful to have someone that's like kind of, you know, cleared with their, you know With the IT, they've done the background check for that company They're basically like a self-contractor for that company, right? Right, and so um, so it's just really nice to have kind of a quote-unquote man on the inside, right?

Because then you know when you're debugging like complex, I mean, you know, these are, you know We're working inside of the most lockdown and secure environments in the world And so that's the other, you know, really also humbling factor of being in this industry It's just like there's a lot a lot of security concerns and you know, and as a really unrightfully so, right? And so it's um, you know, there's a lot of additional constraints to kind of like building software, shipping software There's a lot of compliance standards. Like I feel like my knowledge on like security and compliance standards Like I feel like I could just go like I should I could go get a job tomorrow It's like some like security compliance engineer really because like I just, you know, I feel like I'm like, yeah Okay, Phipps and this and that all this kind of jargon that like, you know, two years ago Like I wasn't like thinking about or worried about I'm now like, okay, like I get it, you know What exactly is Phipps? So Phipps is like a standard Is that F I P S or is it something different?

F I P S it's like a standard to compliance standard for like, you know, um, how secure like things are, you know Basically to put it like simply specifically like, you know, if there's um, Phipps compliance Compliant algorithms and there's Phipps compliant, you know, um services and you know, and there's a whole You know, you know, you know, 400 page book around like what Phipps compliance is in this For this flavor of tool and whatever else and you know, things like FedRAMP and you know, there's all these There's this whole I mean, this is not my genre, but I'm just saying I have to play in this genre now, right? Like I have to play by these roles and so it's very different than being some like B2C Startup and like just shipping yoloing, you know, um, your yeah our software has to go through like a lot of like, you know We do our own pen testing our customers do pen testing I mean, it's like a whole, you know, you know, everything from logging to you name it like, you know There's a lot of kind of auditing and just kind of making you know sanity checks and like rightfully so, right? Like our customers are installing software from us on their networks You know, I flirted with that stuff in my specialization in college And I got on the inside and started learning the acronyms and reading through the papers And I thought this is completely contrary to what I want to do with my life and I pulled a 180 I just went the other direction. I probably ran as fast as I could away from it's just so much red tape Ryan just I mean, that's good reason but not a place that I wanted to hang out, you know, 100 percent.

Yeah, it's um There's good money in it. I if you can if you can suffer it I mean, I'm just saying I'm very grateful for our cybersecurity team because like they abstract a lot They have you know, it's you know, so they style it away So you only have to know the acronyms You don't have to actually like do all the paperwork necessarily. I mean, I don't have to do the paperwork or any of that. Thank god But somebody is doing the paperwork.

Don't you believe? Otherwise things go haywire. It's a lot contracts will be lost, you know Yeah, it'll be interesting to see, you know to quite frankly like I think there's a lot around how security protocols and Compliance tests and whatever else are measured handled, you know, etc Like there's a lot of opportunity to kind of also just improve how some of that stuff is done, right? Some of the complexity also just generally also creates like in confusion and inefficiency and um, so it'll be interesting to see, you know You know, in five years or ten years like it, you know, is this you know, can can we leverage a starry to like also move the needle?

Right because I think our platform essentially is an infrastructure platform and it can be used to solve any problems And so like, you know, we're in aerospace today because ultimately for us like, you know This was the hardest industry to break into and so if we solve this problem for aerospace It'll be easy for us to kind of go into any other vertical like, you know, railroads or cars or finance medicine, etc And so, you know, um, like I'm eager to kind of see what we can do to just make things better go faster, you know So so we're talking about space and yes, we breeze right over that moon dust vacuum that we probably should not be so cool Everyone should watch the video, watch that AWS 3 in Venkino, and you'll hear just vacuum it out moon dust, huh? Yeah, that they said that yeah, they partnered with a starry and then top it So anyways, very cool Well friends, I don't know about you, but something bothers me by getting a bunch of actions I love the fact that it's there. I love the fact that it's so ubiquitous I love the fact that agents that do my coding for me believe that my CI CD workflow begins with drafting Tom will files for get a bunch of actions. That's great.

It's all great until yes until your builds start moving like molasses Get a bunch of actions is slow. It's just the way it is. That's how it works. I'm sorry But I'm not sorry because our friends at namespace they fix that yes We use namespace dot so to do all of our builds so much faster namespace is like get up actions, but faster I'm like way faster.

It caches everything smartly a cache your dependencies your docker layers your build artifacts So your CI can run super fast You get short of feedback loops happy developers because we love our time and you get fewer I'm back after this coffee and my build finishes So that's that's not cool. The best part is it's drop in it works right alongside your existing get up actions with almost zero config It's a one line change. So you get speaker builds you can let your team and you can finally stop pretending that build time is focused time It's not learn more go to namespace dot s. Oh, that's namespace dot s.

Oh, just like it sounds like it said go there Check them out. We use them. We love them and you should too namespace dot s. Oh AI data centers in space your thoughts I mean, I think there's so much Yes, I say yes to that and then some because so I think like being new to aerospace I've only been in this industry like just just under two years now and holy moly I didn't realize how big of an industry space was you know, of course, like as you can imagine like being in this I can't talk about all of our customers right I can talk about working because it's public but like I didn't know there were as many space companies as there are like, you know, and um, you know, I didn't realize how big of an industry This is because you're just thinking like oh, it's like NASA's sending up like a rocket every 10 years like no Literally like, you know, space cargo satellites you name it like there's so much back and forth traffic like that goes up and down And so I think that's been um, I mean, it's just what are there's just so much to explore Both in terms of like humanities like resourcing needs and energy needs and you know, I say yes Like let's go cannibalize another planet that doesn't have life on it yet Like but also like let's not do something crazy like I don't know like throw off accesses and like, you know Put this universe into like another tailspin, right?

So like let's try carefully, but I'm but I'm for it. I'm for it Yes, okay. I wonder how popular is we can actually affect space? It's just so It can be done.

We will find a way I agree with that but now something like gosh, it is so far from here to the moon alone Let alone to the next celestial body Mars, you know, different planets Astrid we're trying to mine who knows, but like could we really affect space in any meaningful way? I think we're more likely to affect earth from space, you know, just like low earth orbit and somehow throw off our gravitational pole or something Oh, yeah, yeah Or even like we talked about that before like shadows Like could there be enough satellites in space to create shadows on earth? I mean one day one day there one day there could be right but I'd say like Yeah, I mean first of all the number of countries that are also getting into space is like fascinating like India's like the one to watch Like they have like a crazy space programs and space startups and yes, they're doing a lot They're doing like for example, give you an example of like a commercial space venture that's happening outside, you know, like India, India, India led It's an agriculture where they are basically looking at like heat maps and carbon and basically gases that are being released and like temperature fluctuations of like You know places where there's vegetation grown, right? And basically based on that they're able to do all kinds of analytics and predictive markets for commodities and you know, give that data to farmers And you know, that's like a very interesting use case And we can put the link to that company in the show notes as well for people to look at but like I mean, that's just it's just you know There's a lot of different opportunities popping up with space and in particular like it's you know People it's not just like obviously it's it's to do with operations back home, right?

It's to do with like it always connects back to earth, right? And so yeah, so I think it's it's interesting how I don't know human I'm just humans are humanity and like humans. I mean like we are we are freaking cool Can I just I mean we really we poop with so much about everything that's going wrong in the world And we don't really focus enough on like all the incredible innovation It's also happening at the same time, you know, and it's not just talking about a eyebrows Like I'm talking about like just real just ingenious stuff that's happening day-to-day, you know, right? It's cool.

Look how far we've come it is cool building rockets and going to the moon I mean in my goodness, you know, we were like in caves just what you know several thousand years ago Recently we talked with these folks from zipline they're doing autonomous drone deliveries and I started off with medical needs and Blood transfusions in africa and now it's like they're gonna deliver your your happy meal to your house and wow It's really cool. I mean the tech is cool. They use cases I mean there are concerns of course around noise and like you want things zipping around in low Earth orbit with just low earth atmosphere all day long, but it's all that kind of stuff But it is like the ingenuity and not just a creative aspect of humanity But our ability to like see it through to a product or conclusion. It is freaking cool, right?

Yeah, yeah, incredibly cool. Um just vacuum it up moon dust, you know I mean and to use moon dust as a battery source. I mean, that's kind of don't understand it. How does that work?

I mean, you know, it's like, you know, what do you use like to make worms on earth? You're like cut to the trees collect collect the wood, right? And so, you know, it's the same idea You know same kind of idea, but obviously a lot more science and that's not you know, it's like I just write the software, man, right? Higher than even your big right there.

I think what's also been really humbling Jared is like I've just kind of fallen in love with their space because of just the complexity of it all right Like it takes so many disciplines to like make a rocket and or make a plane Um, like it's it's it's a humbling amount of disciplines and it's a humbling amount of skills that like is required to like make this thing You know and we are just one flavor of the many flavors of engineers that are part of this process And I think like that's also just been very humbling, you know, and I mean air space It's just it's such a romantic industry in the sense that like there's so much romance around like flying, you know And flying fast and like exploring the sky and like, you know, it's like this god-like Thing that humans have been able to do and if you really think about it Like it's really quite frankly like one of the greatest things that we've also been able to do as people right, um So so yeah, so I don't know it's it's it's very inspiring to be like a small part of that journey now So space is cool space is the coolest do you think about the very very big versus the very very small In your job day-to-day. Can you say more on that? Like you mean like the big picture versus it? Yeah, like the very very big is like space, right?

You got celestial bodies you got the sun, right? And then they're very very small so we have physics on two different scales or at least known physics, right? And then physics totally changes from a very very big version of it to a very very small and very very small Like atoms right nucleus, you know particles things like that and so like a whole different game when you think about tethered Particles to each other at the subatomic level and like that to me is just so well to think about because somehow that plays a role In your role in the very very big because you have particular Materials that you use for certain properties and certain reasons because they sustain a certain amount of heat or density to sustain travel and space And so you really have to think about the very very small to anticipate or even prepare for the very very big Yeah, yeah, I'm not such a I wish I had the luxury of being able to like do that kind of like big picture thinking But I think I can only kind of really do that on a podcast or occasionally it and like you know in like a presentation meeting Yeah, really. Yeah, because on the day to day Yeah, I'm thinking about like the minute details of like, you know building software distributed software and all these different constraints and like You know maintaining a you know contracts and doing migrations and that's what I'm thinking about day to day Like day to day.

It's you know, our work is very like very inwardly focused and so um, so yeah, I think that's also, you know I mean, yeah, the cool thing about building a platform is you're building a platform You're not building like just a you know a tool for this one use case So I think like yeah day to day like my head is usually around like that and and then just a lot of resourcing management, right? Always kind of thinking about like who would be the best person to pick this thing up? Or who would be the best person to solve this and like how do I leverage my principal engineer to do this other thing? How do I leverage my other principal engineer to do this other prop?

You know, and so it's like always like it's it's it's this constant like shifting of Resources in order to kind of like optimize your path to getting said thing done, right? But that like then that that said thing done. It's like multiply I'm like seven or ten things. I'm trying to get done in the day or you know Seven and ten meetings staff on each other so give it probably is the case a sneak peek and you know first q1 2026 a small but mighty software startup accomplishing small things We're technically not a startup anymore because of our revenue.

We're like a scale up now, but Scale up yeah, that's almost worse than calling you an animal. I know you just call it start up. How dare you? More we're growing none of these names.

I'm not gonna call any more names accomplishing Software today and team tools techniques processes. Is it agile? Is it not is it Jira? Is it pivotal like give us all that any degree because you're like in the details daily using tools managing people trying to like corral A bunch of smart people to do something bigger than they can do alone.

Give us all the nuts and bolts. Yeah for sure I mean, you know that I mean I'd say like You know, this is where like making the sausage is kind of like blurring in the sense of like there's nothing You know, I feel like it's you know, everyone's doing the same thing across companies just in different like ways Um, so I think for us we're like somewhat we're like light on process where it doesn't matter and we're not so light on process where it does matter Right as you can imagine. Um, but I think for me, it's you know, we're not really dictatorial around agile or ceremonies or whatever It's like do what's productive and communicate. And so yes, Jira and you know, unfortunately I would love to be on the middle.

I think it's something we are considering in the future Um, but Jira lots of Jira lots of spreadsheets lots of time road mapping You know, I kind of I've talked about this before on another podcast But like, you know as a lead you're kind of splitting your time between like the future the present and the past right like the past because you're kind of cleaning up Tech debt and there's you know, old bills that you need to pay right down on your code base and Processes and docs or whatever else. Um other gaps And then the present because that's the kind of the day-to-day and then the future and as a lead Like I spend a lot of my time in the future because I'm kind of like, you know I'm like in the expedition ahead of the team kind of exploring new grounds finding like, okay, like yeah, this this looks good We can start making camp here, you know, like that's like that's me day-to-day But yeah, I'm doing um, you know, really for me It's a lot of planning a lot of like design work Like I'm obviously you know being we're kind of still a small enough company where you know, even in the leadership role You know, very technical and hands-on Um, and I really hope that I never have to change that about myself Um, you know, because you know, I think it's really important to be able to do the work of the people that you are leading Because if not, you like are completely out of touch and like, you know, all kinds of bad things happen Uh, like you also have no empathy for their problems and all that and so so yeah, so just a lot of architecture a lot of design code reviews Um, you know, I'm blocking folks like yeah, I mean, it's you know, I think what I'm really most excited about these days Jared is just teams like, you know, uh, you know, the power of teams is like really becoming apparent to me because like I figured out like Wow, like, you know, how do I just enable people to do their best work? And I feel like I've like kind of found the secret sauce of at least that's working for me right now in my company And and it's just really incredible to see people just kind of go and like the the kind of results that you see when people are just like Kind of unshackled and unburdened and where people feel like they have agency and when people feel like they can you know, they're engaged and they care You know, and so um, so in that sense, I'm having a lot of fun with teams right now and um, you know, and the muscle that I'm You know, always going to be trying to grow is you know, how to be um, you know how to continually improve my leadership with teams, right? Because I think for me, it's you know, I'm now at this new mastery level where I'm accountable and responsible for the work of multiple teams I've done that before as a principal engineer where but I was not accountable.

I was responsible and now I'm responsible and accountable And so it's like a whole how's that different exactly? Spill it out for me is if I'm like 10 not five but then give me 10. Okay. Yeah, I mean So I think it's one thing to like I'm the person that has to like go to executive leadership meetings and present like our roadmap or present Like here's what we were delivered or here's what we weren't able to deliver and why right?

And so at the end of the day, like it's on me To answer to like why this is either good bad didn't ship ship late, you know, whatever whatever it is And so I think that's the difference. Um, you know versus kind of a principal engineer. I would never It's like for me. Anyway, as a leader, I would never ever put any of that on a say on an I see like any anything that goes well Is for the team to own and celebrate?

Right anything that doesn't go well is like bubbles up and that's on leadership like that's always failure always goes up Legular operation kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so I think um So I think in that sense, like it's it's it's very humbling and it's a responsible guy.

I take it very very seriously um, I'm like enjoying it and um and yeah learning a ton, you know, so there's like there's so much to learn and I think like Maybe maybe the thing that I'm like a little worried about these days is that like we use AI so much like these You know in different capacities during my day, um, you know, I need to find time to learn the old way Because I feel like AI is yes It's great at like upscaling quickly on something new but I feel like I don't have the time especially as a busy manager now like to Like do that deep mastery of something right and like and you know You master something through like, you know suffering a little burning yourself a little things like that You know, um, and so I I feel like mastery is kind of like a little bit of a dying art, you know, uh in general So like um so I want to figure out like, you know I think I want to maybe pick one thing a quarter or one thing every six months to try to really deeply master Um, you know whether that's like terraform or I don't know like MSI and solar like I don't know like anything and just pick pick something Um, you know something technical to like deeply master. Um because I feel like that's just yeah I feel like AI is like kind of after feeling my skill level there Like I feel like I'm not spending a lot of time mastering anything anymore Have you heard the term polymath yet in your life or aspire to be a polymath? No, I haven't what's that? So this is a new term to me in the last six months a polymath This is based on dictionary a polymath is individual with deep recognized expertise across multiple often diverse fields Using this broad knowledge to solve complex problems and drive innovation often like connecting dots from like, you know In Silicon Valley one of the vc's was like, you know what bird can use a sesame seeds I'm gonna invest in sesame seeds because there's gonna be a cicada issue in x y and z where these sesame seeds are done And he made a lot of money that's good that might be a polymath potentially But where you have the ability to connect dots from different disparate places and apply them But it really is around this idea of renaissance person which I think in the pre-call you mentioned it Jared And then this idea of deep mastery unlike dabblers true molly true polymath achieve high-level proficiency at three or more fields Yeah, yeah, that makes sense Yeah, and honestly like so it's really interesting that you say that because I'm like I feel like being at a smaller company that like punches so like like, you know Like all of our customers are like, you know, like I don't know hundred x bigger than us for example Um, and so we really punch up our way, you know, and I think as a result of that I think everyone as a star at a star is like very good at more than one thing Right, there's very few people at the company that are just doing one type of thing And so um, so I think it's been really interesting for me as like a cross-functional leader as well Right because like I feel like I'm doing product work and I'm doing kind of like I see principal engineering work And I'm doing like manager work and I'm sometimes I'm doing qa Sometimes, you know, like I feel like there's a lot of like I stretch around a lot and I think that that's also just I know I feel there's there's something about that that's also very good for your soul And when you're in tech, um, especially because I think it builds a lot of empathy Um for other people that you have, you know, like other jobs other, you know, your colleagues Like you have a better understanding of like what their expectations are of you Um, and you know what you what you if you know if you were sitting across there, you know, the dial what you would want, right?

And so I don't know I think it's good to have a little bit of flexibility I think um in many ways that feels like the opposite of what's commonly found in enterprise where people are so kind of like Packed into just like their little square box, you know, they have to be as creative as they can in their little square box Yeah, like I can do is that one thing and you're that one thing Let's say yeah Yeah, and that's why nobody wants to be enterprise guy Everybody wants to be like startup bro because startup bro is like fun and gets to do all the things and it's like yeah Man like I'm doing this and that totally whereas enterprise guy. Yeah enterprise guys always feels a little soul crushed, you know Poor enterprise guy, but um, but no, so my hope is please Let's not you know like that's you know, yeah, it's just as you grow You never know like how things are gonna change and so I'm like I hope we can preserve that part of our culture Because I think it's really special for people to be able to do Uh, not necessarily have more than one job per se but to do more than one thing Does that make sense? I like it personally I mean I think my brain thrives on novel problems Absolutely same, which is both a good thing and a bad thing It's totally a curse in a lot of cases until they've blessed in others Or I you know like you give me a brand new problem. It's not even my problem Okay, it's I'm gonna benefit from this thing my brain is like Must solve this problem.

Okay, my brain will let it go and it's not a good thing in some cases But I get to help people on the way, which is always a blessing to me And uh, you know, they're like thank you for solving my problem I didn't even know that anybody would come by and help me He even think about this or care, you know, but my brain really thrives in brand new novel problems And then it gets really tired of like long-term execution like phase 10 my brain is not Yeah, you're like no more. Yeah, the rewards aren't high enough. My brain's like no. There's no dopamine there I don't okay, you gotta bail out.

Yeah, yeah, not enough dopamine at phase 10 It's all diluted it's reps and disciplined Yeah, your early stage guy your early stage guy, you know Best there honestly, I really you know, I think you should you should be able to thrive Yeah, uh in a team oriented fashion, but definitely like I that is where I'm best applied I can work effectively in all the areas But my best and most efficient processes are in the beginnings in the novel and the setting things together and that kind of thing So I kind of appreciate desiring to be more polymath more in his aunts. I aspire one day That's amazing and yeah, that makes sense and honestly like this is the earliest stage company that I've worked for and holy moly I'm I'm like man, I hope this doesn't become a thing, you know Like there's only so many early stage companies you can work for in your career And so I'm just like I said, I hope this is it But it's it's really fun. I mean, it's like once you once you know you like this this This space and the stage it's a little dangerous, you know, because not every company is going to be in a starry where it's like Mature people successful product, you know, um inspiring and a world world respected ceo like, you know It's like where yeah, we're very unicorn. You know what comes next after scale up, don't you?

Whoa I know So starring won't always be you know what it is today either so you know, I know I'm just like oh my gosh You know, but no, it's fine. It's fine No, I think I think we I think we've got many many years of lots of fun ahead so, um, you know, some kind of fingers crossed But um, but yeah, it's you know, it's just uh, you know, I again and I say this with so much gratitude really because you know This is really still a very tough time in our industry and and I think on many levels right like like philosophically It's a difficult time. There's it's difficult time because there's so much change, but it's also like really exciting because there's all this like it's like a It's like a to quote one of our partners. Um, Steve Massey.

He's a co and founder of um siskit Uh, we can link to in the show notes, but he said to me the other day It's a bad time to be a problem that I was like you're right. This is a bad time to be a problem You know lots is happening a lot of great stuff is happening But there's also just all this cultural turn, you know, and I think for me, like one of the biggest drivers of the cultural turn is this like weird Idea that we've been trying to or I think like, you know, the ceos of anthropic have been trying to sell which is like, you know, oh All developer jobs or all human draw, you know, no humans need it in six months like humans will have no jobs in six months Like just this ludicrous idea at least nine months ago. Well, Jared and I'm trying to understand like why are humans Like I don't even like what, you know, why do humans think that they don't need other humans? Like I mean ultimately if I'm solving a problem, it's always gonna be to make another humans life better And it's not gonna, you know, and so I just this notion of like like, oh, we're not gonna need humans or people taking joy in the demise of Suffering engineers or the you know, just kind of dismissing Human work like, you know, yeah, we maybe people will be doing less menial work by all means But I think like we'll still be people there'll be new problems to solve new jobs You know, I think I sit squarely in that camp.

So I don't know so I just am saying it's a weird time Weird time, you know, so I feel like I'm in this like little happy bubble, but um, you know I'm very aware of like, you know, the festival that is like, you know, the the tech industry right now, you know So for now I take solace in the fact that code is easy to generate, but products are hard to build You know, it's pretty easy to like just generate some code and you know, and I say that as a participant in the generation of code Yeah, but building a product that actually is actually useful and solves a problem Is it really takes a lot of taste? It takes a lot of connected dots across different disciplines. Oh my god You know, it's not just like, oh, you know, clod. Give me x.

Give me facebook. Can you get by zuck? Okay, you're done, man. Like I just generate a Facebook.

Okay. It's done You can't do that you can't generate products in that easily if you can at all I work eight to, you know, eight to ten hours a day. Don't work weekends. And so I I know firsthand Yeah, like that it takes all of the things that you just said, right?

I think that was also some of the thesis with uh, nicole Ferguson's latest. Okay. Um, frictionless frictionless. Yeah, frictionless Yeah, it's kind of like the follow-up to accelerate and so it's like, you know, her thesis was like, you know If AI can like spit out code in like, you know, 40 seconds You know, why does it still take software teams months to ship software, right?

And so she kind of talked about that whole thing that you're describing but like, yeah, I don't know I mean, I just I just wish that we would, you know, you know, it's this weird like greed factor with capitalism Like that's like, I'm a capitalist but I there's aspects of capitalism like I don't like and this is one of them You know, where it's this, you know, zero-sum game kind of situation with resourcing and talent and humans And I don't know I just feel like there's like the world and there's so much more abundance Like in the world than I think people make it seem, you know, um, and so there's kind of like, you know, scarcity is what's in their best interest, right? To make you feel like that, correct, you know, so which you know, damn them for doing so Indeed, but uh smart because hey, that's how they make their money because you know, that's just the way it works So here's the thing about network security for enterprise It's usually a six-month project involving hardware, consultants, and at least one person whose entire job is managing the vpn Norlayer looked at that solution and said, what if we could do that in 10 minutes? What is norlayer? It's a toggle-ready network security platform built for businesses vpn access control threat protection all this stuff all in one place No hardware requirements.

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What's the sentiment these days like what's the temp still not great? I know the surf days are over, but it's still still not great I think we're still in the wait and see holding pattern I think we're all aware that the tools have gotten way better Over the last year even if the models haven't gotten way better I think that's right the current trend is the tooling and the ability to give tools to the models and the just really the good old-fashioned software engineering that has Been built up around models that are like nominally better than they were a couple years ago I've just really unlocked a lot of productivity and recently so much so that I mean a while loop and a tool and a large language model can do amazing things right now I think we're all seeing that but it's Unlocking more productivity from smaller teams from indie developers But what Adam said hits it right on it hits the nail right on the head. I mean you still have to be able to Create maintain and build hopefully not in that order. I did that order.

I mean software products not just Software. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and that is still very much and I think we'll be for a while now The the playground of humans. Yeah, yeah, and humans need humans guys Can I just put that out there humans need humans stop trying to take humans out of the equation in the sense that like This notion that like there's going to be one person running a billion dollar company like just barf at that Okay, um, and also just yeah like it's more possible than it has ever been though, right?

You have to admit that. Yeah, I think it's not necessarily impossible that somebody gets there Is it healthy? No. I mean is it possible?

Yeah, it really is possible that person's gonna be pre-talented person I think it's stupid like at that point like you could scale right you would do it for bregga All those things. Yeah, it's a billion dollar company that runs in one time zone got it Anyways, but no, I mean, it's it's all good. I'm just I'm just a little bit bitter about all of the Oh my god. There's gonna be no software engineering jobs in six months And I'm worried about like what that's done to like the pipeline.

They're gonna be wrong entering our industry You could do more with less, but you can't there's gonna be more to do And there's you just not gonna get to the place where we're gone completely. It's just not gonna happen Not in this lifetime, uh, maybe the next 10 years Just because like when you can it would be stupid It would be it wouldn't make any sense to create a tool that can generate so much and then say you want humans because Listen to all the generation stuff later on like even that alone It's gonna be more software and more software all this software is for humans I mean at some point you can sort of like program the AI to do its thing in perpetual notion like a ralph loop But even then you gotta have to have a human in the loop or on the loop No to define the spec and to have actual value in it So I just don't see software engineers going away I see more software getting created and more engineers need to be right born and grown and and trained And it may change it may drastically change what we saw as software engineering beforehand, but I think oh, yeah We see a groundswell of new development. I mean certainly a new groundswell open source is a lot more out there now I think the shape changes. Yeah, the org shape the team shape those things change necessarily Yeah, but they're just more smaller.

I think there's more smaller things and less big things We're seeing before in our call the day, jerk. We mentioned the piece of team size There's the idea that you know back in the getting real book from 37 things I believe they prescribed a four person team Maybe a five person team like four engineers one designer or some sort of leader I believe it was their prescription and then Jeff Bezos, you know kind of queen the idea of a two-pizza A two-pizza. Do you believe it was what it was? Yeah, which the idea was like four people or less Uh, could you consume two-pizza with four people less probably?

I think it's I think it's more than four people. I think it's closer to six. It's two pizzas Well, you haven't seen the way we eat here in the mid-life Yeah, I don't I mean I'm speaking from experience here. Okay I have a pizza guy on one person.

Yeah, multiply me by the amount actually I'm and I together are a two-pizza team. It turns out, you know Yeah, that's so funny So I think we'll see that the pizza team shrink maybe to two people Yeah, I I think there's certainly a trend and there will be a trend of you know smaller teams Right because I think you know, but I think there will be lots of small teams Right and then to your point like definitely the craft is changing, you know as it should right it's um, you know I and I urge everyone to like You know change along with it, right? Um, you know, so it's definitely that's very important and it's uncomfortable But you'll be better for it, you know, if not, you know, there's a lot of There's a big need for blue collar drops if you're in North America Like we train as an electrician or all kinds of you know, all kinds of need for other high paying Which could be more lucrative in certain scenarios as well and perhaps even a more enjoyable way to make a little bit Absolutely certainly there will be job displacement things will change But if you look at jeven's paradox and you look at these things like historically when we've been able to do more with less Which is what these tools let us do we can do more with less humans have never chosen less like oh, we can do more with less Let's do more and just always more more more and that's the the ambition and the drive and the ingenuity of the human race is more So we're not going to do less. We're not going to choose that we're just going to do more and more more Which should require more people.

Yeah, do the more people you need That's what took us to the moon, right? I mean like we want we want to preserve that but there's also just like I don't know I mean I get this is where I feel like, you know, I'm you know, I'm a capitalist It's like pro like regulated markets. I mean and obviously also quite frankly like I think you know Any real capitalists would be pro regulated markets And you know, there's this kind of like flavor of extreme capitalism that we're in right now is very odd But um, you know there needs to be checks and balances and so I think it's you know, for me What's lacking in the tech industry right now is just like examples of good leadership like at mass, right? Like certainly pockets of leadership at companies and whatever else but just as an industry like who we all like looking up to right now That's like doing it right like, you know, like I'm not looking to like any one particular company or or leader That's like, you know, just like this, you know, very inspiring Like there's this kind of like FOMO follow each other like culture.

Um, that's just very common with, you know With tech that like, you know, I just I don't know I'm curious to hear if you if you you all can think of like inspirational leaders that we have right now What do you know about this uh, apparently I actually mentioned dude like how much deeper can you go on this? Uh, you're probably looking at the Wikipedia entry right now. So go ahead. Oh, no, I'm not well Oh, you're not well, I could I could tell you the definition of it I just want to thought experiment a little bit because this is really this is what we've been talking about today pretty much But just not with this really cool term jeven's paradox.

That's that's a good thing to say. I think it's cool I can tell you what it is going to me do that now for sure The jeven's paradox occurs when technological advancements increase the efficiency with which a resource is used But the resulting lower cost of consumption causes told a man for that resources to rise rather than fall And one of the examples it gave was led lights You know as lighting led lights became more efficient and cheaper, but people tend to light their homes more extensively now and for longer periods So that's one obvious example I think we're gonna see that with software because now it's a lot easier to build but spoke software engineers where it was just Inefficient in terms of economics inefficient in terms of team size pizza team size, you know You're gonna see more and more of a spoke software become plausible and not that sass is that or dying But like you won't only apply a sass to a problem because sass has largely been the only funded possible team worthy secure Fips you name it applied, but now maybe you can do it in a bespoke manner where you just wouldn't do it before because now You can and it can actually fit the problem better. That's what I wonder about this It's like I never heard this paradox before this totally seems to apply On this is we'll see you know the cost go down to produce the code But the product still takes a lot of effort But the code is easier to get to and I just can put more people to the code problem You got more bespoke products out there that solve software problems Yeah, absolutely and then you also have a lot more people who don't know anything about software writing software Like then you have a whole cottage industry of people catching security holes for live coded apps, right? Like, you know, I definitely would put my money in some security companies or like fix it companies I invite that though.

I mean I like I want some live coders out there, right? I invite I mean we can't be against that because as an industry we've been like welcome to newcomer For a decade, right? And there's been like in wars and infighting and conference like get new people here Sponsoring to come like it's the same thing. It's literally the same thing It's like vibe coders who are never invited now have an invitation unfettered You can't stop me and they're making things and just because they're not smart like we have been smart We've been here for 20 years or more say well, you can't downplay that That's just a new it's a newbie We have to embrace the newbie and find ways for them to become more advanced in thinking understand engineering is around software And welcome them and not like downplay the vibe coder like I think that's just generally not good for us to do Yeah, I think you're right I am eager to kind of see how we as a community make space for for I think that person right like that persona I think the challenge is that there's not necessarily an interest in like going deeper into the craft, right?

And so like where you know where do you draw the line for someone like? I don't know. I guess maybe it's that like we need to re-examine the word like builder Like what does it mean? Like are you like you know a builder that also like goes, you know Are you like builder to the foundation or you just builder to surface, right?

Like vibe coders are just like their surface level of builders, but builders on the last now, right? Yeah, and so I think we're we're kind of just a more expanded like definition of builder like I think the successful vibe coder becomes Yeah, a engineer or they are no longer successful like as as the thing that they've I've coded becomes viable and useful I'm either find a way to acquire those skills or hire an engineer to work with them or whatever it is Well, that thing just goes away and doesn't actually survive So I feel like there might be some like survival of the fittest mechanism that just kind of takes care of that problem And yeah, I mean all of the stupid demos people post online to like get the clicks or whatever They can just have their phone and get their clicks and they're either going to become serious about it Or they're going to get hacked and then it's going to be a disaster for them or you know, you know, so there might just be like That problem might just work itself out. I agree with that 100% I think it will work itself out Yeah, I'm curious to see how that plays out for sure Well, there's only so long you build on quicksand right if you build something on quicksand which is kind of like a coding If you build on quicksand it's going to topple or you sell it before it topples and next person gets the topple It's like, you know, somebody else is holding the bag people ideas Adam. Is that what's going on?

Well, I think it's happening, right? You see somebody build something innovate so fast create this groundswell some investor or some team of Private equity once you get in they're hungry. They're greedy. It's agreed I mean that that's sort of like but falls most downfalls.

It's like you're going to get greedy Maybe acquire something because you think it's going up meanwhile the person's a vibe coder and it's not that's a bad Pajorative to apply to somebody's just like well It may not be as secure as it should be it may not have the thought process as it should be and it may be built on quicksand more So that is on in solid foundation So I think it's more likely a vibe coder app is insecure than it may be secure But you know a year from now this may not age very well because vibe coding may you may actually have models that's the sustain vibe coders Like hey, I know you're not that smart. I know you want this thing And i'm gonna give you security for free, you know, and maybe that's where anthropic takes us or whoever takes us It's like in a year from now that may not be true That would be very good for the health of the internet if if lms like kind of like yeah But there's also kind of somewhat scary though because then they're doing more than what they kind of already do more than what you tell them to do But you know what i mean, there's like taking like creative liberties that are like, you know Yeah, let me let me share this arc with you This is kind of fascinating to me like early 25 we're in 26 now if you didn't know early 2025 It was generally taboo to say that you were Basically not not possible because of the miles from that grade But you weren't really saying that you that a majority of your code was written by AI It was generally taboo to say that but by mid-year 2025 It was like some of my code is being written by a or a lot of it's being written by a now You have you know well respected well capable engineers in the end of the year now going to this year saying all of my code Not only is it written by a I I even look at it anymore Like in a year's time you have that that leap of change from societal acceptance and willingness to even see that But weren't there like a bunch of windows bugs with the latest version of windows like basically like everything Everything was broken like Isn't it already broken? What i'm saying is that like this attitude of not even gonna look look at it is kind of scary because like i mean We talked about this before right like there's a throughput problem with like generating more code Like you know and developers definition of done is like when they're done coding But no no no somebody needs to go to view your code or maybe more than one person even and then you know It needs to get tested someone needs to verify that it does the thing right needs to get deployed It's not break things right It needs to co-mingle and live with other code And so you know this idea that like like you know You kind of need humans in loop for many of those things You certainly can like employ AI agents for a lot of that nowadays too however like You know where's kind of your human in the loop that's like verifying quality right given that we know these things kind of very often go off the rails Right, so I mean for real production codebase Someone's saying that they don't even review or look at things generated by AI like i'm sorry Like maybe i'm gonna be uncool but like i i that's it go say it i wouldn't hire that person You know to contribute to a production codebase Yeah, i mean it's one thing for your side projects, but yeah, no you need it you need to like You know you need you need like who's yeah, i'm i'm still in your interest Sure, right you've got physical objects being created money being wasted when it's wrong Lives as they when it's in the sky totally makes sense in your industry But then you have like software straight up only software products being created and they're they're solving a brand new novel problem And they i'm i don't even have a brand in mind when i think about this But i can imagine The desire to not look at your code anymore because you want to just like drink the kool-aid and say trust the model You know just in time do this and maybe once or twice you get a good result and you don't get bitten Uh, and if you're solving an inconsequential problem where it's not table stakes or laser stake, you know Maybe you get a calculation wrong or maybe an email doesn't get delivered Maybe that could be an issue too because like maybe that's a money email or something like that But that's aside from the point where there's not lies at stake I can see someone pushing the boundaries and i kind of welcome that too because you want some people who are willing to go out and recon Right go out in potential danger zone and bring back the potential good or bad things And they may be the ones who are just early testers of this crazy idea that we eventually all just subscribed to Yeah, not tomorrow, but maybe two years now No, I hear that and I think that's the beauty of like The world in the sense that like we all work on different types of problems with different constraints and different like levels of risk Right to your point. So yeah, I say go for it.

Um, I can't take that risk But I think like, you know, I hope maybe one day we can like I work at a very AI forward company like and so But I am very sure right in the balance. Yeah, I'm personally very conservative with my risk tolerance So I can I can speak to adam's arc because I kind of lived that arc to a certain extent now This is all personal side projects or like low stakes code But I experienced because we continually try these things over time my own response to AI generated code going from like this is terrible And then later being like this is not great It's it offends me, but I understand that this would also work I would never write this to being like actually that's something that I would write to being like actually that's a little bit better than I would Have thought of it. That's a good idea and then you watch it generate long enough and you're like Nine times out of ten. It's like darn you're perfect and then eventually you're just like why am I even looking at it?

Like it's just this like a man's rock boiling in the water over the course of a couple years To I still look at it. I still talk to the thing and say no, no, no, let's not do it that way Let's do it this way, but there's a lot of guidance that you're having to do as a experienced engineer. That's the thing I'm super involved in it. I'm still super involved in it But I trust it way more than I used to just because of the exposure, you know, just continuing using it as like as they improve Yeah, no, no, I mean, listen.

This is like a brave new world, right? You know, I'm not I'm not against the usage here. It's more just around like for production code, you know, serious business Yeah, just make sure that there's a Sanity check on that on that on that patch. That's all Just saying, you know, because I think there's also just like a lot of really interesting stuff popping up now around like All this kind of like prompt injection where you know, it looks the same to your naked eye But it doesn't because like this is like a special character that's you know this and that and like I think that's actually the thing that We should be worried about a lot more because like that that's something anybody like that can Yeah, how are you gonna get injected on the prompt?

Oh, um, no, no people like just copying. Oh prompt comp here That's like worse than people copying output that's been generated by an element. Yeah. Yeah, careful that copy paste folks Yeah, yeah, copy paste is like yeah So you've got to like kind of sanitize all of that and and the fact that like you can have like you can do prompt injection Like with the open AI browser, right?

Like it's so easy to do prompt injection on there like with you know, like with an image and are you running AI browsers yet? Oh hell no, I mean either I do not want an AI in my browser. I know lots of people do same. I don't I'm just like You guys think about it wrong.

I'll tell you think about it wrong. Okay. I was gonna open our eyes Let me let me school you guys. Okay.

Okay, so your personal browsing my personal browsing. I'm with no oh hell no Now when I'm researching something something that I'm trying to learn or recon or go get information. Oh hell. Yes Well, let it go read web pages for you.

Is that what you mean? Yes. Yes. I mean browse the web on my behalf and pull back information So yes in that case AI browser all the way give me more Um, but you know my daily driver in safari read an article with AI now.

No, yeah, it's not my intention I still want to be I still want that liberty to read what I read. Okay. You want an unfiltered view of the university Yeah, I don't need AI everywhere with me like that. Yeah, exactly.

You know, that's old school web people just reading web pages You know like who does that lady bro keep us uh in intact lady, bro We'll probably not I assume this I haven't even actually investigated this but I assume lady bird will not Add AI to over the browser. Yeah. Yeah, that one's gonna be that's a pure play I think they'll resist it for as long as you possibly can't if at all labor It's gonna stay pure. I think it's just gonna render websites and get out of your way So I think we'll always if we always have a pure browser we're good to go But I mean the way I synthesize information is not with an AI with me at all times I have some version of an AI with me, you know in close proximity But I'm not leaning on I certainly don't lean on AI to think for me I do synthesize a lot of information though.

I do and in close proximity sounded like, you know You have like a you have like an AI girlfriend in your pillow, you know I mean like always within 10 feet. Okay. Yeah, we were hello. I'm not gonna go within 10 feet without an AI No, yeah, it's not nearby.

They're not listening. Oh my god. I'm yeah, I'm I'm recovering from a cold And so I have like a very like I don't know like what's what's that like raspy laugh right now? And you're just like You know perfect radio.

Yeah, perfect. Yeah, I would say most AI things you think you have a reaction to I would pause take a step back And think of it from a different perspective because we're taking our first thought is personal Our first thought is almost even offensive or offended because we are the developers and engineers that are getting quote-unquote replaced I say native that and I think that we just need to rethink how we leverage this brand-new tool in a whole new way and there's a lot of people who are naysayers about it And they're just not thinking about it and you got to just reframe your thinking about it Yeah, I mean I'm all for AI use like 120 percent. I think for me It's about like use it safely And like you know safety comes like like many flavors of it right like I personally fall into the camp of like no AI for kids You know Specifically because you know we don't really have good guardrails in place for a lot of things right now And so you know adults without mental health issues like that's like ideal target audience for AI You know because really you know Yeah, yeah, no kids. Um, and then you know if you're using it for anything important like you know financial transactions or thing You know just important things just you know use it.

Just just yeah, how about human and little verifying stuff like that's it Right? So for me, it's just about like be smart, right? Here's an idea for you on these things too. What if you wrote a program to verify the program?

So rather than just writing tests in your integration for example What if you actually said, okay, let me assume and this is let me assume my tool is deployed Let me actually write a program that acts as I would I'm gonna program it with my intellect and how I would think about it And it's gonna automate future atom or future atoms to test this thing like you got to reframe the way you're thinking about it You really do 100% actually that's kind of the way I prompt now I always ask AI to write the software for the thing that I like if I'm trying to do analysis for something or whatever I always actually have it write software and tests So that I like know what's changed. Um, so just like 100% agree Test passing is table stakes having a test harmless external from the actual application is not tables. It's now table stakes Now it's table stakes. Yeah, yeah now it's table stakes But like you know, that's how we have to think about it.

It's darn near free. That's the best part about it I mean, it is free Jared. I mean, so it's so low-class is basically free That's why everything is kind of cool. It's like yeah Might as well remember how hard it used to be to write tests Yes, because most of the time, you know, I hate to say it But you're like codes a little shitty and not well isolated so it's really hard to write good unit tests And then you're like, oh, you know, like You do dependency injection, you know dependency injection test remember that remember that night marathon I haven't been stopping and should I even mock anyways?

I'm not supposed to mock but I kind of have to because you spend a whole time mocking You spend a whole day writing mocks and then you go read a blog post from guy some guy who says you never write a mock You're like, oh, yeah Oh my gosh I was a bigger fan of like just setting up like an intercept server And then like leveraging like spies and you know, like more so than mocks like so you're like your mock is at the network layer You know, that's kind of nice. Yeah, that is nice I want to hear about these spies man. These spies and mocks Oh, yeah, spies are the best spies are like, you know, you're spying on a function or during Like you know at runtime and so you can see kind of like what parameters it was called with and like, you know, was it called How many times was it called and you know, so it's it's pretty cool. Yeah.

Yeah, one of them interesting Yeah, yeah, yeah, I just I feel like there's gonna be a whole generation of engineers that are just never gonna have to They probably never before even know what a spy is, you know, and they shouldn't have to exactly to your point Like they should not like we've moved on to like the classic old manuals at cloud paradox is like I suffered therefore You should have to suffer like that's kind of the mindset I get it because there's times where I'm like, you know what we used to write our tests I think that's what's keeping minimum wage down in the United States That might be a multi-variant factor. I mean more than one factor there Exactly. I agree. So where we go from here you guys have deployed a lot of cool stuff Inside of as an i-story.

It's sorry. It's sorry. Yeah, it's sorry You've got go rust python typescript and Kubernetes the the cadre of winning phrases in her tech world these days Anything else behind the scenes there any Ruby involved anymore? No Ruby, but we have a whole Layer of different integrations, you know for different kind of digital sharing tools and and tools that you use like, you know Word or whatever right like it's you know, we basically have integrations for all the software that people do for their jobs And so that is written in whatever is the best SDK language for that integration And so you know that kind of brings our language count up pretty high right because it's like C sharp or Java or you know Sometimes it's python if we're lucky, right?

Um, but you know, I think that's you know We've got stuff written in all kinds of languages as a result of that But but yeah core platform is is in those kind of more kind of traditional languages And yeah, I think in terms of like what's next I think you know, like every scale up You know, we're kind of at um, you know, we're just kind of growing our platform And it was really great Is you know, we have this like straw man that was built and then we kind of like iterated on that And so now it's like it's interesting to see like I'm at the like maybe fourth big juncture of the of the platform Just you know and to kind of be part of like a growth cycle for like living breathing software Um going through so many big kind of big growth spurts has been very fun Right because like I've never joined a company this early, you know Usually we're just kind of refining like much more narrower verticals and so to kind of be like growing horizontally to be getting taller and bigger Is fun, you know, and so that's kind of what that's that's what i'm that's we're all kind of going through Building more building more services building more features making our platform like just you know integrate with more things And just in general like yeah, we're doing a lot of great stuff with um, you know, supercharging our kind of AI workflows And um, yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's like what a time to be alive and not a good time to be a problem, right? To go back to that earlier, right? Yeah, getting solved real soon Exactly getting solved real soon And yeah, I mean I think like you know with all the things that are happening in the universe today and all the uncertainty in the world Like I feel between kind of enjoying what I do and just kind of also on a personal level You know, um, you know, I'm a mother and I it is like the best thing ever for me You know, I'm really enjoying mommyhood and it's a deeply nourishing thing for me And um, you know, I just like I said, I just feel I have a wonderful community of friends And so I feel very blessed and so, you know, no complaints from me, you know, so now it's like I'm else eager to kind of reconnect with people.

Um, I think I'm gonna like maybe speak at a conference this summer And try to go to another tech conference as a non speaker so I can have actual fun, you know, uh, maybe in the fall And um, and yeah, I'm just like excited to kind of reconnect with um more of my tech community friends Um, because I have like I've kind of lost touch with some people Right because like people who I did I knew because of community engagement something like that We're not as in touch anymore Uh, and the people who I stay in touch with are the people who I had like very close personal relationships with and so I'm eager to kind of like reconnect and and then the other big thing is like I know I say this like every year But like I think I'm actually gonna try to get active on LinkedIn this year I said that last year, but I'm like I actually have to do it I did update my LinkedIn profile just at least show my sorry job history, which is great So that that's done, but I you know, all I get is weird recruiters spam And like it's just uh, you know, I'm like I'm not even active on LinkedIn And I get all these weird messages and so and like they find my personal email somehow I don't even know how I think they like reverse engineer get get up commit messages as my guest You know, but um, but basically there's tools to do this. Basically, uh, I'm gonna I'm gonna try to like uh, do the corporate worship meets like work facebook, you know thing Um, but I think for me, it's just like I don't I feel like I've kind of lost a social platform Because the only one that I was active on was twitter and like twitter's kind of turned into a little bit of a Nazi bar And so I don't know where my new place is and blue sky feels a little too much like an echo chamber So I'm just kind of like I don't really know I mean and it feels like maybe linkedin, but like I don't want to post on linkedin all the time So I I don't know y'all please help me where do I go to like connect with my my people's because there There's some people there's some diehards that are like still on twitter but a lot of people I know are either not active or gone And then the people that I've taken over on twitter are like are you down with a little bit slower a little bit slower social network Yeah, 100% I mean slows my speed right now. So like less like real time interactive. Yes.

Well, send a blog RSS feed Posse it out to all the sites subscribe to each other's blogs and we'll reach other blogs and then we'll just oh you think we Should go back to like blogging. Yes, that would be a great idea actually. I think so But then we'd have to figure out what sack we're gonna use for our blog I mean like you know, we can do it most on part, you know And how many times are we gonna rewrite it before we think how many podcasts we can do about our new blogging stack? You know what Jared really I still am an aspiring writer Like I you know you know this about me like I have like a book that I want to write on digital literacy And you know they're not for the people listening to this podcast They're for people that are not listening to this podcast It's for your grandma's and you're and you're you know, and you're you know You're your cousin that is like computer illiterate or you know Or you're 13 year old that like only knows how to use apps on a phone and not a computer You know what I mean?

And so that's definitely an audience that I'm eager to kind of reach at some point but um But yeah, I don't know I uh blogging might be a good idea actually. That's a good idea Are you would you start it with blog with me? Would you like do would you would you write? I have a blog You know, I'm saying like will you yeah, but will you like refresh your blog?

Will you like oh, yeah? I'm a freshman already. So you're a freshman Adam is and we'll just write on our blogs and we'll We'll talk to each other there and then we'll follow her you can join the posse party You just you just post your blog and then your blog syndicates it out to all the networks All people who don't want to come to your blog. They see they're maybe let's stop over have a read I love that idea.

You know, I think that's like that's I think that's very anyway. The indie web is cool again. Indie web is yes What would be a good platform for that? Mine's already in jekyll No, is it in jekyll?

I just converted from jekyll to hugo. Yeah, I was I was gonna use hugo You go super simple. You can have claw just say just take my you know, I have a jekyll blog That's like literally what I did. I have a jekyll blog here.

It is your instructor is your prompt. You're gonna inject this something like this Yeah, yeah, copy paste this. Okay, and I'll put some special characters in there Convert this to hugo dude like quick dude. I want to get blogging.

That's basically what I said And I thank you so awesome at the end dude. Where's my blog dude? Where's my blog? That's a really good title title title So you should be a writer.

I should I mean, listen, I'm telling you Jared. I will subscribe. I will subscribe to your blog Well, yeah, no, I would love I will definitely give it some thought I think writing is definitely I mean, it's like a healthy medium I think there's like a few things that everybody should do which is like everyone should sing everyone should write Everyone should dance Everyone should cook something know how to cook something. They don't have to be a good cook But they have to know like make a really good omelet or make a really good tuna salad Like know how to do one thing well in the kitchen.

Yes, you know, I think these are these are all Yeah, yeah, I think these are all good rules for life You know, but singing writing like they feel like different forms of like expression You know that I feel like are really like especially for knowledge workers Like we spend a lot of time in here here be I'm pointing to like my head For those who are listening and like it's good to kind of get it out, right? It's good to kind of be in your body and or be in the physical reality a bit more Like, you know, we spend a lot of time doing cerebral tasks Um, so so yeah, so do more cerebral tasks like writing but like writing for me comes from a different place So more it's more inside. Yeah, it's more. Yeah, it's more inside.

Yeah, exactly. I get it. I love it Yeah, yeah, that's great. All right.

Well, we'll see you in the blogosphere See me in the blog is here and yeah, and maybe on linked and see with that all you have to do is you set up your blog To just audit the you just posse party your blog over to linkedin is what i'm doing No, hey, I wrote something come read it. That's a good idea You know, it's just like, you know, I feel like this like teenager You know how like when teenagers are like dragging their feet about something because they don't think it's cool They like inherently think it's lame. That's how I feel about linkedin to be honest with you Like I've I think for so wrong. I've like looked down on it Like, you know, like some like you feel like a hypocrite to come use it now I feel like this like yeah, but you know what if you know what it's okay You know, there's there comes a time where every person must change It sounds like you're trying to talk yourself into squid smoking I do the time where I need to just have an intervention there comes a time there comes a time So that reminds me an old mitch headberg joke about flossing.

He says, you know, as hard as it is to quit smoking That's how it is for him to start flossing. He's got this whole bit on how How much he dreads starting flossing so that's what you're gonna do mitch headberg. Okay. That's right.

Yeah. Yeah flossing It's like using linkedin, you know, yeah, but it was great catching up with y'all absolutely Yeah, I don't know. This just felt like a very like a much more mature show than our than our usual like discussions our party Oh my god. I'm like a kid.

You started the show calling me an almost like what what am I a giant? You know, and it's so funny I think I think it took me a minute because you're you're talking like about Js party and And that whole errand like, you know, Js party was like definitely one of the things that I'm the most proud of I think you know Something I love and like I'm really really considering like yeah, maybe podcasting again for real, you know Which is great. I mean, I don't like I couldn't obviously like it couldn't be like an ML show, right? It would have to be like as an ensemble, right?

So that I could kind of spread out the commitment But it's something I definitely want to get back to maybe not write the second but definitely in general But I think for now I'm happy to kind of do the circuit as a guest and like catch up with folks such as yourself So I think that that's that's at least one way I can kind of like re-experiences, but yeah, but I feel so much more serious And I don't know why because I'm sick. No, you're a mom. Oh, come on. Moms can't have fun.

Come on. Oh, you can have fun You're just more serious. That's not fair, you know, you're not my real dad No, no moms. No, I mean, it is because I'm a mom I don't know maybe but I don't know, you know, I don't think so I just I feel I just I feel like we're doing something really important at And I think I feel the weight of that importance like, you know, when you are like changing when you know You're changing something in a big way that has like a big ripple impact like that's how I feel, you know Because it's like we're doing something so revolutionary for this industry and we're doing it in a way that's so you know It's decentralized and it's very open and like, you know, we have like, you know, you plug into our platform We don't care about like this tool or that tool.

We're kind of agnostic about so many things and you know, it feels like we're doing something good And I think like the weight of that maybe the weight of that is kind of what's translating into like the seriousness that I feel like, you know I wonder you want to let people vibe code. I mean, come on. Yeah. Yeah, it's okay.

It's okay It's okay. I'm fine You know what it is also like people building physical engineering like I went to like my first big physical engineering conference Which is a Ia this past January and people are wearing suits and you know, and they're so serious and every submission like there's like thousands of talks No, no, literally thousands of and like Everything comes with a technical paper and like here's the bibliography and here's basically like this art, you know, pure reviewable, you know Like artifact that you can you can have and I'm like man tech conferences are just like giant parties disguised as conferences And like here I was at this very big conference that was absolutely not a party and it was like a very academic conference And so, you know, you know, people do take themselves a lot more seriously and rightfully so, right? Like, you know, like building things that like impact people's lives, you know Um, so so that that that checks out, but it's like man Like we we have such a unique culture as software engineers that like isn't like the norm, you know, like looking at other industries Like, you know, so yeah, we like we're like we're like adult children, you know, so um, yeah, always be a kid Yeah, yeah, I mean, I definitely yeah, I mean can't take it too seriously I mean seriously enough to not hurt people, but not so much in the process, right? Yeah, I feel like I can't wait to read the article.

It's like, you know, texaspace podcaster, you know, like Five coats Five coats app that like brings down hospital grid Yeah, I do have friends in high places, so I could do something else. I'm just joking. I'm just joking I'm just joking. I'm like, you know, it's fine.

Have fun. Have fun with your um, yeah, all right have fun out there Mel, thanks for joining us. Thank you Yep, bye friends This is our second episode of the week and our second change vlog plus plus bonus of the week too Members stay locked in for an additional 20 minutes of discussion We start off laser focused on adam's big blog refresh and the tech he's going to use to accomplish it Then we get distracted when a male poses this preposterous question. It's baseball sport I don't know where you're from but where I'm from them's the fighting words If you haven't joined change vlog plus plus now's a good time Head to changevlog.com plus plus plus to directly support our work make the ads disappear and hear me beheamentally defend our national pastime Thanks again to fly.io to break master cylinder and to you for listening along next week on the pod news on monday Paul dicks talking building the machine that builds a machine on wednesday and our old friend formerly of the python steering committee right cannon on friday Have yourself a great weekend share the show with your friends who might dig it and let's talk again real soon