The indispensable cog

I’m afraid of bears. There’s not many things that I’m afraid of in life, but bears is one of them. I don’t want to be anywhere near a bear.

I’m afraid of this wild wildlife. I have deer parking on my lawn all day, all night… I’m afraid that – usually, they shy away from you. If I’m walking on a path or whatever, they might give me a wide berth. But I’m like, one day they’ll be like “We outnumber you, man.”

Right?

“We could take you out.”

“And I’ve got horns.”

“There’s like a dozen of us out here.”

Yeah. Have you seen the movie Revenant?

No, but I know – doesn’t he get eaten by a bear?

Not quite.

Almost, almost eaten by a bear.

Yeah. Leonardo DiCaprio, his character, I believe his name was Howard Glass… But this guy is famous in the – I don’t know, in the era before there was electricity, basically. I don’t know. There may have been electricity, but it was like –

[unintelligible 00:06:25.20]

Yeah. Back in the day when you used to have to fill the weapon, or the gun, with the powder, and the gunpowder and all that, to fire it. That kind of day. And I won’t tell you, because it’s worth checking out, but it would make you fear bears even more.

That’d be hard, because I’m pretty afraid of them already.

It would solidify, how about this? It would icing your cake.

It would confirm. It would confirm suspicions.

Yes, yes.

I’m not that afraid of deer though, Johnny. I just don’t think they can organize like we can. You’re giving them too much credit. They’re not going to organize against us.

I mean, in the age of AI, anything’s possible, you know?

Yeah… Put a chip in that deer head. Yeah. Well, maybe. It’s true.

Hugh Glass, to close a loop… Hugh Glass, H, U, G, H, Glass. A very famous person. It’s like Paul Bunyan. A tall tale. He had conquered such massive encumberments, I would say, in life… Bears… He recovered from this. I guess I’m gonna kill that one plot for you.

Well, we already know that he almost died from a bear, so…

Obviously. But he survived circumstances no one should survive, and has been through things that not many people have been through. And so his tale is bigger than him, and so that’s why Hugh Glass is a well known name if you pay attention to those kind of stories.

I’m also noticing that there’s a dad joke here somewhere, which –

Oh, okay…

Hugh Glass…

Yeah, I was gonna go on to that, and I’m just like “Let it go, Jerod. Let it go.”

What’s the – tell the dad joke.

No, I mean… You’re a dad, Adam; you should have already gotten it.

Nope, don’t get it.

Oh man, we need to work on your dad joke abilities.

School me. Give me a quick schooling. I want to know what you’re laughing about.

Hugh Glass… Huge… Yuge… Ass…

Okay, gotcha. Gotcha.

We’ve gotta connect these dots for you, Adam? Come on now.

Hugh Glass… Okay, alright… I’ve been schooled. Thank you. I’m there now, and I’ve tracked with you, and I’m laughing with you now. I actually met somebody yesterday or the day before who was quite witty, and he would joke a lot, sarcastically… And I’m cool with that, except for when you’re laughing and I’m not, because your joke is funny, but it’s only funny to you because it’s so insider baseball it’s only insider to you. And I had to explain him, like, I want to laugh with you, and I can’t, because the joke is only for you… And so you make me feel foolish, and I want to laugh with you, so just give me a little bit more. I don’t mind the sarcasm, I don’t mind the witty jokes and stuff like that, but just bring me inside a little bit.

Do you ever just laugh anyways? Like, you don’t get it, but you’re like [unintelligible 00:09:08.03]

And I do, but it was so – the person had done it so much, I was like… I can only laugh a few times like that, until I’m like “I’m not getting that one, okay?”

“I’ll give you one…”

Yeah. I’ll give you a couple. And after three or four, I’m like “Explain that one to me, because I want to laugh with you, and I feel like a fool… Because I It sounds funny. Give it to me.” So anyways, it’s been a minute, Johnny; way too many minutes. You’re one of my favorite people the entire world. Every time I see you in person, I want to give you the biggest hug ever. You’re such a cool dude. You’re such an inspiration, really, too. And I think the joy you have for all you do is infectious. That’s my favorite thing about you.

Oh.

[09:49] Yeah. Always the big smile, always welcoming to people, always kind, you know… And I think those are some traits we admire to have in life.

Thank you. I appreciate that. It’s not always easy to be all those things, but that’s what makes it rewarding, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

No matter how hard you have it in life, I’ve come to learn that there’s always probably somebody who’s having it harder than you. So you never know. If you cross paths with somebody, maybe a smile, maybe a hello, something… It could be that one thing that tips them over, and prevents them from – themselves from tipping over, right? So try to keep it positive whenever you can.

Yeah. I don’t have my journal near me, but I do journal, and I just journaled the other day, that kind of thing. And the paraphrase of what I journaled was “It could always be worse.” It doesn’t mean you should always be like “Oh man, I can’t be sad about my circumstances.” It’s more like “You know what? It really could be worse.” I mean, because my family has been through some things. We’ve had loss, we’ve had just various things throughout our years… And it really could always be worse.

So find the joy, the glass half full versus half empty in life. I don’t know that that’s specific for you, but you just said so… But my demeanor for you has always been – or my assumption of your demeanor has always been “Man, you’re just so joyful to be around. You’re always happy, always smiling, always bringing something fun, never a downer, never a complainer, in any way, shape or form…” So I’ve always appreciated that about you.

Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Well, for those who don’t know Johnny, he’s also known as Golang Johnny…

Is that right? Golang Johnny?

Oh, yeah. Don’t you have that website, Johnny?

I do. It was like a joke we came up with during a Go Time episode… And it sounded – it was so funny, and I went ahead and registered it anyway… Because the following show I wanted to come back and say –

Yeah, you wanted to say “I got it.” [laughter] If you go to GolangJohnny.com, is that what it is?

Yeah, yup.

And you’re gonna find Johnny Boursiquot. Does it just redirect to your website? Or is it actually a website itself?

No, that’s its own thing. It’s its own thing. It just has a cool picture of me on the stage at GopherCon…

Awesome. That’s one way to get Google juice, is just go ahead and buy that sucker. So you are Golang Johnny. One story that I would love for you to tell from your perspective and ours… I think you hinted at it on Go Time 300, which was very much a look back, and a looked forward at Go Times past and future… And you mentioned – the reason I want to bring it up here is because the three of us were involved in that, and I don’t think anybody else really was… While you are a staple and a regular Go Time host and have been for years, you were initially cut from the ranks.

Yeah, yeah.

You didn’t make the team the first time around. And – I mean, talk about some perseverance. Adam, you were heavily involved in that decision. You guys wanna drudge this out?

Yeah. I remember it vividly, because it felt like firing… And I’m not a firing kind of person. I don’t like to deliver bad news to anybody. But I’m also naturally comfortable in confrontation. Not fist fight confrontation, but more like if I’ve got to deliver bad news, I think – you could probably tell me right here now on the podcast, John, if I was gracious about it. I feel like I was.

Yeah, you were.

But I really try to be kind-hearted in delivering not always positive news. And I really can’t remember what it was… I think we were early on even, I would say potentially even green. Jerod and I had only done this single podcast…

It was our first non-Changelog show. Not the Changelog. It was our first one.

Yeah.

And there were a few factors… I mean, I think very little of it was personal to Johnny. A lot of it was just the fact we already had three, and four is a weird number of hosts…

Three is the magic number.

So there was like “Well, there can be only three.” It is a nice, conversational magic number… Especially if you’re going to have a guest, now you already have four. Four with a guest is like – that’s just like too many cooks. And a lot of it was because Eric and Brian were the original team. And yeah, we’re just like “Well…”

[14:07] I would say our invitation to Go was –

Yeah, it was Brian.

Brian Ketelsen, and then Erik. And so I feel like we were, in some ways, being shepherded into the Go world by them.

Yeah. I mean, [unintelligible 00:14:20.13] it was more logistics than anything else. I didn’t take it personally at all. Nobody owed me anything. So it was a conversation that we were having, still trying to put together a show, still trying to figure out “How is this gonna actually operate?” And actually, it was Bill Kennedy who reached out, and says “Hey, this thing might be happening. Would you be interested?” And things like that. And he started connecting the dots. And I’m not sure how you came across my name Adam, but to me, that was the genesis of it. Bill says “Hey, I think you’d be a good fit here. You can make that happen.”

And then conversations went on, and I’m like “Oh, this sounds great.” And truth be told, I was very excited about it. My imposter syndrome was kicking very hard.. I’m like “Oh, what am I gonna do?” And I started trying to understand what do podcasts host do, how did they interview… I started studying the process. So I wanted to do as good a job as I could… But by the time things started rolling, we had that conversation, I was like “Ah–” I’m not gonna lie, I was bummed.

Sure.

And you delivered the message sort of very kindly, and I understood why… And I’m like “You know what? Hopefully, this is not my last opportunity.” And I think you said so yourself. “We’ve got a lot of things in the works, a lot of things coming… Let’s keep that door open.” And yeah, lo and behold, eventually, I made it onto the team, and the rest is history. So I try not to – when I think about it, there’s a couple ways I could have handled it. I could have been like “Ugh, these guys…” I could have been probably bitter about it, resentful… Or I could be like “You know what? I almost got this one right. Let me just keep moving forward, and hopefully another opportunity sort of shows up… But I keep doing my thing.” So I can’t hand my sort of contentment and my joie de vivre… I’m a French speaker, after all; I can’t hand that over to somebody else. I am responsible for my own happiness, so I can’t be bitter, and sort of take on things that I have no control over. So I kind of have to be like “You know what? Next time.”

Next time.

And it happened, right? So the universe works in interesting ways.

It does. I’m also – and Jerod, I think this is why we make great partners, is that we’re… And I’ll say ‘we’ because this is how I am, and I’m assuming this is how you are, because I don’t see you acting this way… I do not like to burn bridges with anybody. I’m never like “You don’t measure up. You’re out of here”, for any reason; even if the person is owed that response. I would always be kind in my delivery of any negative news whatsoever. And I just do not, desperately do not like the burning your bridge. I like to leave opportunities open, leave doors open…

Now, if there’s scenarios where there clearly need to be – I will close the door and lock it, but I won’t burn the door down, or the bridge down, to keep using the bridge metaphor. I would just be like “This bridge shall not be crossed ever again”, but I won’t burn it down, you know? And that’s just how I operate in life, really. I don’t like to burn bridges.

Well, thankfully, that bridge wasn’t burned… And I think the original trio that was Brian, Carlisia and Eric did almost 100, high 80s, low 90s episodes. And then we put it on hiatus for a while, and when it came time to reboot Go Time… Which - we weren’t sure if we’d ever reboot Go Time. It was out there for probably about a year, maybe 18 months of no production.

[17:53] But when we decided to get a team together and give it a second shot - which we did the exact same thing with JS Party, by the way. I’m not sure if it’s making the same mistake twice, or was it even a mistake? I don’t even think it was necessarily a mistake, just the way the history went.

There’s Johnny, like right there on our short list of “Well, we need some more people.” And because you didn’t burn the bridge, and we still had fond feelings for you, it just didn’t work out the first time, it was an obvious choice the second time around.

Can you believe that initial conversation was probably very early in the year 2016? So we’re talking about eight years ago.

Wow. Yeah.

And then you’ve been on the show for probably five… I don’t even know how long.

Yeah, I’ve lost track at this point.

Yeah.

It’s been a minute. Yeah.

One thing you said early on was “How are we gonna keep doing a show about go every week? Aren’t we gonna run out of stuff?” So far no, but I mean, I know it gets hard sometimes. How do you how do you come up with new stuff all the time to talk about? Because Go is a niche inside of a niche. So there’s only so many Go releases and functions to call, and… You know…

I know, right? I think we started diversifying the kinds of things we were talking about. So we started talking about things that are adjacent to Go. Not just the language itself. There’s only so many episodes you can have on the actual syntax, and the concurrency, and all these things. There has been dozens and dozens of blog posts about “Oh, why I like Go. Why I hate Go.” I mean, wherever you fall on the fence there. But the things that are being built will Go, the productivity gains people are getting out of it, what companies are building their entire stacks around – these things became sort of where we spent a lot of time.

And then as time went on, I think we’ve – also sort of bringing even non-technical, but still adjacent, to some degree, topics into the mix as well. Now, I don’t know how much our audience appreciates that sort of diversity of topics. I’m sure some people would prefer the hardcore technical stuff all the time, and nothing but. But I’ve heard from other people as well say “Hey, remember that episode you did on something that is not Go-specific?” It was something that maybe they were investigating, or going through, and they heard from one of the hosts about something that resonated. So I hear it on both sides.

So I think for me unless somebody says “Hey, you can’t do that”, I think a lot of a lot of topics should extend beyond Go-specific things… As long as there’s some connection back. Because life is not one-dimensional. So there’s going to be some things that are relevant, that make sense to touch on.

For instance, I’m listening to the Founder Mode conversation right now. I’m a few weeks behind, of course, as I always am, catching up with Go Time… And Founder Mode conversation with you, Kris and Angelica - when you’re not a founder, you’re just a regular employee at an organization, how does this Paul Graham essay apply to us? And I

think it’s fine. I think that’s totally legit for a Go Time conversation, because of course, we all live in this world where we’re using our skills to make a living, or to create stuff, or to start a business, or working for a startup founder, or working in a large organization… We’re all in these different areas, and these facets all affect us. And so it’s easy to tie back to the programming language, or to the people using the programming language, because we’re all kind of in this similar lifestyle.

I think you hit the nail on the head with the word facet there. I think that’s what it is, is like perspectives and facets within an ecosystem. It doesn’t have to be “Oh, what is the latest feature that’s being scrutinized?”, which there’s some in the Go world… What’s the latest feature? What’s the latest release? How does that work? I think it’s more about the culture of being a developer that I think shows are more interesting around. I know that you’re steeped in this cloud-native go world where that is very much the way things are… However, I also want to know why you think the way you think, or how you react to a certain piece of news that affects every developer, to some degree, shape or form.

[22:09] I will say, however, I am totally unschooled on Founder Mode. I have purposely not – I’ve heard of it, I know it’s out there, I can assume what it means, but I have not read the essay. I have not even read Bryan Cantrill’s response to it, and other people kind of like jumping on the bandwagon of it and how great it is… I’ve only been on the peripheral to know it exists; I do not know the details of the essay, and I have not begun to listen to this episode either to hear y’all’s perspective. So just to put my card out there, I am non-steeped in Founder Mode.

Okay. Are you hoping that we steep you, or are you hoping that we move on? What are you trying to do here?

Steep me in if you have to. Close some loop, if you don’t mind.

Oh, gosh…

What is important? What are the cliff notes of founder mode?

TL;DR, Johnny, what’s founder mode, and what was the overall takes on Go Time? I know Kris was kind of meh. Angelica was excited. I’m only halfway in… You seem to be in the middle.

Yeah, so for some context… Every once in a while you have these sort of, let’s just say influential, in one way or another, by some definition, video or blog or whatever it is that comes from a popular figure. In this case it was Paul Graham, which hopefully most –

Famous for his essays.

Yeah, he’s famous for his essays. They tend to be sort of impactful, short, to the point, no flowery language… People love that about about those essays. And Founder Mode was one such essay, and sort of focused on what happens when you especially start from a startup, and you become a scale-up, as they use in terminology, and you start to grow as a company, and now you have multiple layers being added between the top and the people on the ground, writing software, shipping things… So you have all these sort of levels, these managerial levels that come into the picture. And the founder, or founders, with the original idea, the original vision, they start getting sort of decoupled further and further away from the people with the boots on the ground, implementing the thing, implementing the vision, pushing things forward. And then now, because of all these sort of managerial layers, there become sort of different ways you can work in a company with these different managerial layers. You have the people that are sort of action-oriented, and you have the people that are sort of discussion-oriented. And the moment you read it, you’re like “Oh, yeah, I’ve been in those situations where I have the managers who have to have a meeting, set up a meeting for a meeting.” Like “Yo, dog, I heard you like meetings, so I got you some meetings.”

Right.

[unintelligible 00:24:41.26]

And the other people that are more action-oriented. So all that, there’s this aspect of the founder, sort of, or an individual sort of going founder mode, basically saying “Hey, boots to the ground. Let’s do this. Remove the layers, remove the fluff. Be action-oriented and sort of do things.” At least that’s what I took away from the whole thing. It’s like basically saying “Do whatever it takes to move the mission forward, move the product forward, whatever it is that you’re working on, move that forward.” And sort of know exactly what kind of management you want around you, if at all, that kind of thing.

Again, he was speaking to startups and scale-ups, companies that are not sort of huge, massive sort of empires… Because those companies, once you get that big, there’s naturally going to be multiple layers of management. I don’t know if you can even avoid that. That’s just what happens, the more people you have in an organization. But if you are a startup or a scale-up, perhaps sort of push back against that tide of all those layers, because you’re going to be more effective, and you’re going to be delivering stuff.

[25:49] So to me, I’m like “Okay, if I’m just a cog in a machine, I’m just low on the totem pole…” I’m not a founder. The founder’s saying “Hey, let’s push, let’s go. Let’s get in there and deliver things. Let’s work on things.” That passion, that energy. If I’m just getting a paycheck every couple of weeks from you, I’m putting in my 40 hours or whatever… Should I care? Because it’s your company. Unless I’m getting some equity or stock or something from doing more than you’re paying me for. Like, how should I view founder mode? If I’m a software engineer writing Go code, how should I – and you come at me with “Founder mode.” Should I care? Is it relevant to me?

The way I understood this is like, okay, I understand the spirit of the essay, but how do I make it applicable? How do I take the good parts, so to speak, and make them applicable to what I do on a day to day basis, if I’m not a founder? And that’s what our discussion focused on.

You think founder mode, if you’re not in that founder position, you get positioned as a cog? Is that right?

I think my attitude on sort of being a quote-unquote cog in a machine has sort of shifted over the years. Before, I used to think – and early on in my career, or perhaps not even sort of my career, but early on… Or rather, let’s go back 10, 20, 25 years.

Ooh. That’s back there.

Hey, I’ve been doing this for a while.

He’s been around, man.

I’ve been around, I’ve been around. People have been paying me to write code for 26 years now. I calculated it. And I’m astounded by that fact. But anyways.

That’s a long time.

If I go back to the early days, a few years ago, companies I think had a softer edge, at least one that appeared that way. Companies used to talk about “Oh, we are family here. We care about our people”, all of that sort of language. I think underneath everybody sort of knew “You pay me to do the job, and if I stopped doing the job, or I don’t do it well, by some definition, I’m out of here.” People knew that, but companies were more willing, at least in the tech sector, were more sort of softer on the edges, so to speak. But nowadays, I don’t think anybody who works in tech, especially in light of the recent rounds and rounds and rounds of layoffs and everything else… And you’ve got people recording and putting their layoffs on TikTok… The attitude towards companies with those languages that say “Oh, we care about our people, whatever it is, yet executives are raking in millions in bonuses while they’re laying off people…” There’s this dissonance between what they’re saying or have been saying, and the reality of you being an employee or cog in that machine. No matter how good a job you do, you are always at risk, no matter how good a job you do.

While they might position your layoff or your firing as a performance thing, we all know that’s not always true. We know at the end of the day, companies, especially publicly-traded companies, they don’t have your best interests at heart. They have the shareholders’ best interests at heart. That is priority one, the shareholder. So you as an employee, you are means to that end. So the more you understand that reality, the more you can calibrate your relationship with an employer, or whatever you’re involved in. So that doesn’t mean, however, that you stop caring about your craft, what you do, the professionalism that you bring to your work, the passion that you bring to your work. That is a personal thing. No company is ever gonna be able to take my level of interest, of passion, of wanting to do the right thing. No company holds sway over that. If you hire me for a job, I’m gonna do that job, because I’m a professional. That’s what I do. You pay me, exchange services… I give you what you’re looking for, and you pay me in exchange for my time. So that’s a very professional thing. And I see clearly the nature of that relationship.

[30:11] The problem comes when you start adding things around it to make me feel a particular way about your company. You don’t need all that flowery stuff. I will do the job. So I think in this day and age, I think for me, I took founder mode to mean “Okay, care about what you do, at the deepest level.” If you stop caring about maintaining code for your company, or if you think your co-workers are annoying, for whatever reason, or you stop loving going to work, and stop loving that job, then maybe move on. Maybe your time there is over. But don’t sort of lower yourself to the point where you’re just doing a crappy job because you don’t like where you are. Just move somewhere else and be your best self, right?

Gotcha. I did some googling while you were talking there, just briefly… I actually kind of enjoy this about Google now, where you can just sort of treat it like a prompt… So I just said “Summarize Founder Mode.” So rather than going to ChatGPT or some paid product, I’m just like “Okay, let me just throw this into Google.” And it’s or the most part on par. They summarized it by saying that founder mode is a way of running a company that involves direct involvement and oversight, or “micromanagement”. And it says “Great founders have hired executives and it’s not worked”, and this is summarized from Sam’s newsletter on Substack. This part of it, at least, is in summary that “Great founders have hired great executives, and it’s not worked. Instead the thing that works is “Founder Mode”, which is direct involvement and oversight of what would typically be called micromanagement.”

And then the lens for this mode is towards startups and scale-ups. So likely the founders should be directly involved in raising new funds, or directing the product, or micromanaging to some degree this user experience or this developer experience, which has become all the rage the last several years… It’s like “We are DX-focused. We’re developer experience-focused”, and not our friends over at GetDX.com focus. A different kind of developer experience, but similar or cut from similar cloth.

Break: [32:23]

A while back I wrote this, because I felt this – it wasn’t called Founder Mode at that time, but what I was experiencing and why I wrote this was a result of Founder Mode, now that I have retrospect, and that’s why I pulled this up. So a while back on my blog - which I do not write too often; I’ll link it up in our show notes - is I wrote a post called “I’m a cog.” And this is in light of reading Lynchpin from Seth Godin, and then In light of being pressured into this Founder Mode world, where I’ve got skills, abilities, growth opportunities, but the organization was very - hearing this, and hearing you, it was Founder Mode. And we were a startup; we were a scale-up, and so it makes sense why this pressure was there.

And so I wrote - and I’ll share more if you’d like, but I’ll just share what I think is probably the essence of how I felt at the time about being a cog. It was acceptance. So I’ll say this – this is a quote:

“I’m a very sharp, highly specific, purposefully purposeful cog that’s part of a much bigger, much more grand machine. I play a very specific, highly needed part, so that others can do the same. I serve the unit, the team, and its mission. Not myself.”

I also have a military background, so I came from –

I was gonna say, this sounds like a military person’s [unintelligible 00:35:44.16]

Yeah. I have this military background too, so it was always team. It was never I, it was always we. And so after reading Seth Godin’s Linchpin, which I think is not really Founder Mode, but it’s Founder Mode-esque. It tells you to be a linchpin. Don’t go into an organization and just be a cog. Be somebody who is a change maker, somebody who could be leaned upon. A linchpin in the true terminology Is back in the day, back in Hugh Glass’ day, the wagon wheel had to be held on to the wagon via this thing called a - what? A linchpin. If that linchpin was not there –

We still use them on trailers, and all kinds of things.

Right. The wheel was no longer on the thing that made the wheel purposeful anymore. And so to summarize how I felt here, I really felt like I was fine with being a cog. I was cool with that. That doesn’t mean I want to be treated like crap, or be not treated well. It was that I was okay with being not a linchpin. Later on I said “I’m starting to wonder if the concepts shared in Seth’s book, Linchpin, was a bit arrogant or self-centered. Aren’t we all indispensable? Aren’t we all replaceable?”

So to strive for being a linchpin was almost like striving for perfection. Perfection is just seemingly unattainable, and almost the enemy of profits and the enemy of done. We’ve heard that several times. And it’s like “You know what? I’m cool with being a cog.” I’ll just recognize my purposefulness in being a cog and what role I play so that others on my team can do the same. So we all win.

So let’s carry that thought. Let’s pull on that thread a little bit. If it meant you get laid off, or fired, or whatever, whatever term they want to put around it, in order for the whole to keep moving forward, do you also happily accept that?

[37:43] Oh, man… How many times have I been laid off? Maybe once. I think maybe. I haven’t ever really been fired. To answer that question… I would not be happy about being let go, for sure. Let go, laid off, I don’t care how you term, it’s never a positive thing. But if my experience there was positive, if the founder or founders treated me with respect, and I was removed from my position in a way I think was kind, and my team still had care for me… Like, when I left Pure Charity, the thing I did prior to - and Jerod was like “Dude, you should do this full-time”, and in 2015 I finally listened to Jerod and my wife and I left Pure Charity… And I wrote this post when I was at Pure Charity, and so the Founder Mode was applied to me there, that was later on penned by Paul Graham…

I think that if I’m treated well and I’m removed from a position in order for it to move along, I think I’d be okay with that. I would not be happy about being let go. But if I was treated with respect and let go properly… But I think if I was let go improperly, or not treated with respect or kindness on the way out, by my team or the founders, then yeah, I’d have a personal problem with that and not be okay with it. But if the mission continues, having been an entrepreneur and a runner or a leader, I’ve had to share some bad news, as you know, Johnny. We shared that early on. And so I think that I have both sides of those coins in my brain when I share my sentiment back to you, to respond to that question. So then no, I would not be okay with it. But if it was done well, and with respect, and kindness, then I would be okay with it. And I would find a way to move on to the next thing.

Disappointment, not resentment.

Yeah. Certainly disappointed. Like, “Man, I really want to be on that train.” I was working hard to be on that train, I was purposely purposeful as a cog, as I’ve written here, I was on my own personal mission, I’m serving the team, not myself… And so that’s my DNA as Adam when I apply myself in any organization, whether I run it or not. Whether it’s a a volunteer group at church or my business, I apply myself similarly. So I think - yeah, disappointment, not resentment.

Right. I think some of that assumes that you are mission-oriented with the organization that you’re in…

For sure, yeah.

Because you can be a cog and just be there for the paycheck, and you’re fine with – like, it’s not against your morals what they do. You think it provides some value, obviously the marketplace appreciates it, that’s why it’s still a business… But you’re just there to do your work, and to do the best of your ability, and to be a cog, and to make some money. And in that case, I think “For the mission to continue, I must be let go”, for me that doesn’t hold weight anymore, because - yeah, the mission is their mission, not my mission.

I think in a place like Pure Charity, Adam, you were very aligned. And there are times where you are working somewhere where you’re like “I totally believe in what we are doing.” And so maybe there it’s a bitter pill, but one that it’s worth swallowing, because yeah, now at least the organization isn’t going to crumble. I have to go, but it will continue. But in cases where it’s more about the money, or maybe the relationships, or you like the work you’re doing, but you’re not like – you know, it’s Walmart, or something. Where it’s like, fine, it’s a grocery store/department store.

Yeah. A much bigger mission that you can have an impact on as a cashier. I mean, I guess you can actually do a lot as a cashier, too.

Sure. I’m just saying I think in that case mission-oriented matters if you’re going to have that kind of an – I wouldn’t have that outlook myself. I’ve never been laid off. I’ve never worked in a large organization, so I have a very thin worldview…

Me too. Always small. Yeah, always small.

But I’m not exactly happy to be a cog. I want to try my best to be indispensable. I want to be the person where they’re like “We’re laying off 20%, and we can’t get rid of this guy, because he’s too useful.”

Jerod, Jerod…

Sorry, 60%. [laughter]

I have a quote for you.

Okay.

Ego is the enemy.

Okay.

Ego is the enemy.

Ego is the enemy.

You don’t wanna be indispensable, Johnny?

No, I can understand what he’s saying though, too.

I asked Johnny.

Oh, sorry. I can’t respond? My bad.

No, you can, but let Johnny respond.

I’m sorry, Johnny. Go ahead.

No, no, you can chime in, Adam. But what I will say is that –

[42:06] I’ll wait. I’ll be patient.

So in my 26-year career I’ve been laid off twice. And I’ve worked at very large companies, I’ve worked at very small companies. So I’ve lived enough life as a professional to have seen all manner of ways layoffs are done well, or people are treated fairly, or unfairly, kindly, unkindly… So I’ve been exposed enough to that. So from that standpoint, I speak from a position of privilege, because I’ve experienced all these facets. The one thing I think is consistently, that – it wasn’t always like this when I was younger, and more foolish, and more sort of hot-blooded… If somebody said “Hey, you’re not doing a good job, or we have to lay you off, or we have to fire you because of reason X, Y, and Z”, and I have been fired once… The initial reaction is always visceral. No matter how stoic you are, or try to be… Because it’s disappointing. Especially if you know you’ve been doing a good job. To be told – it’s like a rejection. Nobody loves rejection.

Yeah.

To be told that “Hey, we’re going to have to let you go because”, like you say, Jerod, you thought you were indispensable, but at the end of the day really you’re not. So at the end of the day, again, the business, a company doesn’t exist to serve your needs, or to cater to your feelings.

Sure.

It exists to make other people wealthy. Now, if you happen to also get some level of wealth by some definition, relatively speaking, from where you were and what you’ve been able to earn at an organization, that’s great. It just keeps you happy, it keeps you chugging along. But ultimately, businesses are designed to make a certain group of people at the top wealthy. There’s nothing wrong with it. I mean, you start a business for that reason. You want to be well off, you want to take care of your family, you want to have money in the bank…

Profit.

Yeah, exactly. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. So you get hired as a tool for that purpose. Now, when you get that “Okay, I’ve been let go. I thought I was indispensable and I’m not”, I’ve experienced enough of that to now, basically, if I’m going into an engagement with an employer, or doing consulting, whatever it is, I have to go in, I have to check my ego at the door. I have to say “You know what? I’m going to go in here and I’m going to do as best a job as I can based on what I know the customer or the employer or whatever it is wants. And I know that at any point I could be removed from this position. This could be taken away.”

I believe there’s an ancient Chinese proverb or something basically that says – maybe it’s not Chinese, but I’m misremembering… Basically, it’s the idea that a wise person gets given this beautiful, ornate teapot. Very elegant, very beautiful to look at, custom-made, and gifted to them. And then they have a child or a sibling or something that keeps coming to them and say “Hey, don’t you love the teapot? Don’t you admire it?” He’s like “Yes, I do, but it’s already broken.” And the child is like “What do you mean it’s already broken?” “Yeah, it’s already broken. it is what it is, but it’s already broken. I can’t continue to have this forever. It’s already broken.”

And through conversation, you come to learn that the way that this person is able to sort of stabilize themselves, so that eventually, when the teapot does indeed get broken - maybe it’s the child that knocks it over accidentally, or whatever it is… The teapot is now broken. This beautiful, very enjoyable thing is now no more. That person is now “Huh. Okay.” Because it was already broken in their mind, so they didn’t lose, and their world wasn’t shattered along with that teapot, because they didn’t invest so much of themselves into it.

[45:55] So I have to go into these things saying “Hey, it’s already broken. I’m here to do as best that I can do for as long as I can do, but if this thing were to be taken away from me, tomorrow, next week, next year, that’s okay, too.”

That’s all fair and good. I didn’t say I am indispensable. I said I want to be that. And so I don’t think it’s egotistical to desire to be that, and to be more than a cog. Fully knowing that at the end of the day maybe I’m still just a cog, and it’s already broken. That’s all well and good.

So – delusion. [laughs] You lie to yourself.

No, not delusion. Desire.

Desire.

Yeah. Drive.

I really feel like I should just read this whole blog post to you guys.

Nah, don’t do that… [laughter]

Everything Johnny just said, there’s echoes of what I wrote down here… I’ll read two lines for you.

Okay.

I say this, I’m going to read this to you, Jerod, appreciating what I think is your – you’re not desiring to be perfect, but you’re striving to be an indispensable member of the team. If not owner of the organization kind of thing. So this is what I wrote: “To think that you can truly be indispensable is a farse. It’s fiction. It’s not possible. It’s a trap of the prideful.”

What do you have to say about that, Jerod? [laughs]

Maybe I won’t show up to work tomorrow. [laughs]

I say that though while appreciating the work that goes into strive for being indispensable. Not literally to be indispensable, but to strive to be indispensable-like. That’s a great trait, too.

See, but being indispensable implies that others must see you as such. Now you’re putting that level of self-worth in the hands of others. To me – and I understand where you’re coming from, Jerod. To me, the way I – and I used to approach it like this, because I like for people to like me. We all do. It’s ingrained in us as human beings. We want to be liked. We’re a tribal kind of entity. So we don’t want rejection from the tribe. We want to be welcomed and liked, and say “Oh, Johnny, hey! How you doing?” Because by being likable, by being the one that always delivers, always comes through, you’re the one teammate everybody can just call in and boom, you just solve all the problems. By being that, you get that little hit of dopamine. It’s like “Ah, I love when people love me.” But you’re putting that sort of self-worth in the hands of others. And nobody will tell you – like a stoic; nobody will tell you how dangerous that is than those who know how it feels when all that adoration and admiration gets pulled back, for one reason or another. Because it’s not in your control. What is in your control is how good a job you do. How well you deliver on the mission, the work, whatever you’ve been assigned to do, however small it might be. If you can deliver and objectively say “Hey, I did a good job there”, what people think of me as a result is not in your control. So I’m like “Hey, whether that praise comes or goes, it doesn’t matter to me.” Because at the end of the day, I know if I get laid off, it’s not gonna matter how much praise I got or didn’t get, because that too is outside of my control. The only thing I have control over is the work that I’m doing right now, and how good do I feel when I’ve delivered it, and get up and walk away from this keyboard. How do I feel about myself?

Yeah, and I guess I don’t need the other people noticing it aspect of what you’re talking about. I don’t derive my self-worth from that. And so I think if I was laid off in that circumstance, if I was indispensable, and they didn’t know I was, then I would be like “This is a huge mistake they’re making.” And I would like for that to be true. Like, then they go ahead and lay me off… I’m sure, Johnny, you’ve left huge holes in whatever organizations you got laid off from. And they probably didn’t realize what a big mistake that was. And I think maybe even though you are a cog, in some sense you are an indispensable cog, and that organization will never be the same without you. That’s what I strive for, is like “Yeah, they’re gonna really regret this one.” Not that they have to recognize me as the guy who fixes all the things and all that. That’s not where I derive my self-worth. But my desire is to be as great a teammate as I can be.

[50:28] Can I speak for you for a second, Jerod, having been –

For me? Am I not doing a good job?

[laughs]

No, I think you are. I want to layer it on, I guess, one more layer for you… Having worked with Jerod for many, many years, Jerod is not the kind of person that requires praise to show up and be effective, and to be on mission, to be driven. None of his, to my knowledge, my experience with working with him for many years, he doesn’t require praise to have his ambition. And I think Jerod has a high standard set by himself, and it doesn’t matter if you agree with the standard or not, he’s gonna strive for it. And he doesn’t need you to recognize he’s striving for it or reaching it to continue to show up and be effective. Did I do a good job, Jerod?

You can keep your job, Jerod.

Yeah, thank you. [laughs] Well, I mean, I guess at a certain point it’s probably why I’ve done the things that I’ve done, which is I’ve stayed in small businesses, I’ve started or had ownership in companies that I worked for… Because at the end of the day, that is where I thrive, I guess, in these circumstances. Not as an employee for somebody else in founder mode, but actually in, I guess, founder mode… Which I don’t really – I try not to; I hate micromanaging people, so not that, but… Not like that tactical founder mode, but basically, I’ve been at the head of businesses, small business, very small businesses, most of my career. I have worked for other people as well, but usually with some autonomy, because that’s where I thrive, I guess. Probably because I have that self-driven thing going on.

Maybe I couldn’t make it in a large org, it’s quite possible. I don’t have the breadth of experience you have, Johnny. I have the same time duration, but I’ve been doing the same thing. Like, I’ve done three – I had the advantage of being a contractor, and so while I was my own boss, I had a lot of abroad experience of like working with teams, in different codebases, and different businesses… You get a lot of experience that way. But not in like a typical nine to five engineering team. I’ve never had a product manager. I’ve had customers, so those were like proxies for that relationship… So I don’t have those kinds of relationships, just because I haven’t had that experience that you have, in so many different roles.

Interestingly enough, something you said earlier brought back a fond memory… One of the positions in the past that I got laid off from – actually, no, that one was… I can call it a firing. It wasn’t a “Oh, we’re making cuts because finances” or whatever, what you typically hear these days. It was “We were expecting something else, but we got something different.” Which I’m like completely fine with. What happened though, I think maybe six months later, or less than a year later – to piggyback on what Adam was saying about never burning bridges… Like, we parted ways very amicably. That was not resentful, we did the thing, we sat down from across from each other, looked each other in the eye and said “Hey, I was expecting this. I didn’t get that.” And I was like “Okay. I completely understand.” We remained friends… And this was back in Boston. So we remained friends, and everything. And six months later, or however long, we actually go and have lunch together. We sit down, I’m gonna say “Hey, how’s the business? How are things going?” Whatever it is. And literally, again, the same experience, sitting from across the table, it’s like “Yeah, we made a mistake in letting you go.” So when I heard that –

[53:59] Bam.

When I heard that, I was like “Holy smokes!” Internally, I’m like jumping for joy. I’m like “I knew it. I knew it. I knew it.”

Totally. So you were indispensable, man. Come on.

Yeah, yeah. I guess I was. I just didn’t hang a lot on it… But I understand what you’re saying. Feeling like when you leave, you leave a hole that is noticeable. Yeah, I love that. I mean, I’m not gonna lie. Feeling that you have that kind of impact. But the thing is, the higher-ups are probably never gonna feel it as much as your team, or as much as people you work with closely, day to day.

And maybe the word ‘indispensable’ is saying too much. I like what you just said there. “I want to be impactful. I want to make an impact.” And when that person leaves, that impact is now a hole. And to me, that’s meaningful. That means I’m bringing value in big ways.

I’m a hole maker. I make some holes!

Yeah, I can dig a hole, man.

That’s cool though, that you’ve got that –

Yeah, man. That had to feel great.

Yeah. Oh, it felt amazing. It felt amazing. I was in cloud nine. I was like “Oh, man. I knew it.”

I think that people should do that more frequently, too. If they know they – especially if the person kept thriving in the community, like you have… Circle back and be like “Hey, I don’t know how this all panned out for you. I can kind of see what you’ve done since then… But by the way, when you left, it really hurt the organization. It was a mistake.”

Right.

I almost feel like that could be like a good – just a good feeling to give people, you know…

Something to say to people? [laughs]

I don’t know… It’s certainly a good reconnection moment, too. Like “Hey, by the way…”

No, I think if that happened, and you meet up with that person, like Johnny did, absolutely be the person that tells them that. As long as it’s true, right? Because it does feel good to know that, and it is validating. I think there was a Google engineer recently who - I’m fuzzy on the details, but they either left, or was laid off… Went and started – and they’re like a machine learning guru. Went and started a thing. And Google had to pay something like two and a half billion dollars to get them back onto the employee payroll, basically to rehire this person. So there’s some validation of like “Well, that was a big mistake. You should have just kept me around in the first place.” The details are fuzzy, so that could be –

Or they need to hang their hat on somebody, a patsy. “Something went wrong. Come back here and run this thing so we can fire you nine months later.”

[laughs] It’s a setup.

Yeah, maybe. Yeah, that’s even a better story.

Well, that happened in Silicon Valley.

I hear that’s a good show.

It is a good show.

Break: [56:31]

Speaking of Silicon Valley, Johnny, what’s going on in Silicon Valley with these fake job postings? I mean, you’ve been onto this for a little while, because I’ve heard you talking about it on GoTime, and then I covered it in news this week, because there was an [unintelligible 01:01:05.17] speaking at Paul Graham. There was an Ask HN, which was posted seven days ago. “Who is pretending to be hiring?” And it turns out there’s people out there with jobs that are not real jobs…? I mean, what’s going on, man?

It’s just a hunch that I got. So one of the things that I do and have always done as a professional is I’m always looking at job postings. So while you have YouTube influencers saying “Hey, this framework is the best thing”, or whatever, and geeks get excited, nerds get excited about technologies, and programming languages and everything else… I’m like, okay, that’s one lens. The other lens is what are companies actually hiring for? What list of technologies do you see on those job descriptions? So I’m always sort of looking at those job descriptions. “Hey, what do SREs need to know these days? Hey, what does a full-stack developer need to know these days?” So I’m always keeping an eye out to see where the trend is going. Regardless of what the hype is doing, I’m looking at what people actually get paid for. So I started noticing the same job. I’d literally bookmark it. I’d take a screenshot of it. And I started noticing the same job, with almost the same description, maybe a word changed here and there, often from the same recruiter, other times from different recruiter, but the same job, again, with a word change here and there, asking for same exact thing… And I’m seeing the same thing come up over and over again, week after week, after week, after week, after week.

Before, I didn’t pay any attention, because we didn’t have – back in the heyday, everybody had a job, and you saw less of that. And basically, companies were just tripping over themselves to hire people. At the start of the pandemic, and everything else, when all the overhiring was happening, so to say… So you didn’t notice it as much. But now that so many people are on the job market, you’re seeing the influx of these job postings. And you’re like “Okay, how come there are so many job postings”, especially in places like LinkedIn, or Indeed, or Dice, whatever it is - so many job postings, and so many people are saying they can’t find jobs, going from three to six months before they find a job…Getting an interview is harder than it’s ever been… I’m like, something is not making sense here. What are all these job postings? And I started seeing the pattern repeating over and over and over again. Then I’m like “Something doesn’t add up here. Is somebody just training a model, or something? Do they just want people to just keep on sending their resumes into this void? What is going on here?”

So I have no evidence, no empirical evidence to say “Hey, this is what’s happening”, because I don’t know if anybody’s gonna sort of step up and say “Yup, we do that.” I don’t think it would be in their best interest. But, I mean, something smells odd. Something smells fishy here.

[01:03:51.25] Did you see the comment thread on that Hacker News post? Because there’s a lot of people validating your intuition. The top comment – now, this is also anecdotal, so none of this is like journalism, or anything like that. However, these are people who are working in these places. This is a person consulting with a startup in the Bay Area. They say “We have nine job openings listed on the website, but in reality, one position is really open, and the bar is sky high. By that, I mean that the founders would hire the right person, but the other eight positions are just there for signaling, and nobody looks at the applications we get.”

Yikes.

Yeah… “For when I’m asked, the CEO told me to say that we are prioritizing finding the senior dev first, and that position has been open for six months.” So that’s a situation. I mean, that’s about as clear as validation, at least one company is explicitly doing exactly what you think they’re doing.

Yikes. Yeah, it’s smoke and mirrors. Like –

Right. And the reason seems to be because it makes them look better.

Right.

That’s what most of the people are saying on this thread, is that because VCs are using – I mean, this goes back to Goodhart’s Law, right? When a measure becomes known, it’s no longer a good measure… It’s that VCs are now looking at company health, this sounds like, and they’re saying “Well, if the company is hiring, then that’s a healthy company.” And so it’s an indicator of company health. And so then the company is like “Oh, that’s an indicator of company health? Let’s act like we’re hiring.” Bam.

“Just no good candidates out there… They don’t measure up.”

Yeah, exactly. Waiting for the right one.

“We just can’t find them.”

“We’re holding out for the right one.”

We can’t find any… [laughs] Apparently, no one’s out looking for jobs.

I saw this video, I think it was on YouTube, of that kind of thing… And it was one of those things where the person plays both roles. They’re like the recruiter, and then they’re like the person… And it was like a company, it was like an HR person at a company was one role, and the other person was somebody who would go out and find the talent, a talent scout. And they would say – probably kind of like nodding to what you’re saying here, Johnny, is they would go out and find people, and they would say “Those are all great candidates and all, but we’re holding out for that one. That one. Now, those are ten great candidates… Keep them on ice for us. Keep them on ice. Keep them interested. Let them know we’re interested. I need you to go out and find me five more that are better than those folks there. But keep those 10 on ice.” And then they come back with the five more, they’re like “You know what? Those are good, too. But I really feel like there’s one – there’s a winner out there. Keep all 15 on ice. Let them all know we’re still interested.”

And that might even like play into the whole multiple interviews, these song and dances that people – and here you are, on the other side, in between, siphoning through savings, or raking up credit card debt, or whatever it might be to make ends meet, and somebody is playing you. Not cool.

No.

Not cool at all.

Not cool at all. Yeah. This goes back to understanding the relationship between you and a for-profit entity.

Fine. I want to be a cog then. Okay? I’m fine with being a cog.

Sorry, we don’t have any positions for cogs.

I interrupted real quick. I wanted to throw that joke out there. Go ahead. Continue.

Nine cogs available, but they’re all – I can’t find any good cogs.

I’m a cog now!

[laughs]

[laughs] You are not a priority, my friend. You are a cog in the machine. And that’s okay, too. That’s the thing. In this market, we’ve all accepted that it is what it is… But you know what, though? You know what? As they say, the pendulum will swing the other way. Mark my words. The pendulum will swing the other way. When it does, as a cog, don’t be a douche. Don’t go walking in…

“This was a huge mistake!”

“This was a huge mistake. I told you, mofos, not to do what you did. But you did it. And now you’re going to pay the price.”

“I was indispensable!”

[01:07:53.26] Don’t be that guy. Don’t be that guy. Or gal. Again, this is not about them. Ultimately, I think it’s about you as a person. And I keep throwing that term around, and this one I take to heart greatly… Being a professional. There’s a way a professional carries themselves. There’s a way a professional does things. You’re a professional, you get paid for money, hopefully you love what you do to get paid that money… But as a professional, you are always a professional. Good times, bad times, happy times, sad times, you are a professional.

See? Let people go with respect, hire with respect, show up as an employee with respect… Right? Some care in the process. Not everybody’s going to do that, though… They’re not. Fake jobs, man… Fake jobs.

Fake jobs. I mean, seriously. So to your pendulum comment, Johnny… Does the current crop of language models stop the pendulum for the developer? Is it swinging away from us, and will it continue to stay that way, or is it going to swing back anyhow?

There’s a natural thinning of the herd happening, or that has happened, with any innovation. Something that changes the way things have always been done. Whether it’s in tech, or in farming, or you name an industry. There’s innovation that comes and disrupts the way of things. And that should be expected. I think tech, for so long, we were so comfortable, with the fact that basically we were untouchables. No one could do – what we did was magical.

Absolute gods…!

Yeah, literally. We have memes and movies and things… We were hailed as these powerful beings who they only were the ones who understood how to make the computer do things, that mere mortals couldn’t even aspire to. And we went through that – and that whole notion was sort of amplified back in the Obama era when we had all these “Learn to code. Everybody should learn to code”, that whole thing. Remember that whole push towards everybody –

Oh, yeah.

Left and right organizations were spinning up to run workshops… Heck, I ran Go Bridge workshops. I would go in my local community in Baltimore, I would find people who wanted to learn how to code, I would get them in a room on a Saturday or Sunday, work with local businesses to get people into the room to learn how to code, because I truly believed, and I still do, that a career in tech is a life-changing, generational sort of impact kind of skill to develop. So we went through that phase… Now you barely hear about these workshops happening anymore. Dev bootcamps, and everything… You barely hear about those things anymore, because the market is not suitable for these things.

So all that to say is that now getting into tech is going to be a little harder - or rather you can get into tech, but getting a job in tech is going to be a little harder, because there are different skills that are now expected, that you’re going to need to bring to the table. Understanding what an LLM is and how to work with them… I’m not saying you need to go get into the math, the machine learning math of it all. You don’t need to become a data scientist, but you need to understand what an LLM is, and how to use it, how to build a RAG system, which is basically the Hello World of AI development… You need to understand how to build a RAG system… So these things need to not be foreign to you. So the skillsets you need is just changing, because there’s new innovation.

So I think there’s always going to be room for software engineers. It’s just the skillsets are changing. Will there be fewer jobs? Because those jobs now, the skillsets required for them, the bar is a bit higher. So some of those things that you used to hire a junior for, you can now outsource to an LLM, or some gen AI technology. So people are becoming more productive. So it just changes the bar a little bit, but I don’t think – I don’t know, people are generating a lot of AI slop, that people like me are going to have to come in and fix anyway… So I’m like “Hey, well, I’m okay with that.”

[01:12:21.13] I said it probably a year ago now, but I’ll say it again… There’s never been a better time to go buy that domain, AIrescue.io… Oh, don’t get the .io. Get the .com. Maybe that leads us into our final topic, but…

Right, right.

But if you want to start an AI – I remember when there was Rails rescue companies; they were going to rescue you from your heaping pile of Rails app that your team created in a hurry, and then left.

Scaffolding.

Yeah, exactly. And now there’ll be like “Hey, I’ve got this unwieldy thing that was written by an LLM and I need someone to save me from this.” So get the domain now, that way the Google juice will be there when people are searching for you.

Yeah, yeah. By all means, everybody; if you’re out there, you want to let AI generate your initial app thing for you, please. Go right ahead. Make more of those things, please.

No-code it all day long. Get to it.

No-code it all day long. It’s fine. Just go right ahead. Because the only thing you’re doing is making sure that I, and people like me, are going to have jobs. So that pendulum will swing.

Yeah, for sure.

100%. Well, I mentioned the .io… Let’s call this chapter “Dot io, no mo”, because – due to geopolitics. I mean, this is a crazy story.

Speculation, though… It’s not guaranteed.

It’s possible. Here’s what happened… We’ve got all these fancy TLDs… Some of them are country code TLDs, that we’ve just co-opted to be domain hacks for our websites. One of those is called .io. You’ve probably have heard of it. And that one might be going away, because it was given to – it was used for the Chagos islands. IO stands for Indian Ocean, I believe… And according to a piece by Gareth Edwards called “The disappearance of an internet domain”, the British government on October 3rd announced that it was going to give sovereignty up, give it up - it has ownership, I suppose - to a small tropical atoll, which I’d never even heard that word before, this article… Apparently it’s like a small island, or something… A ring-shaped reef in the Indian ocean known as the Chagos islands. The islands would be handed over to the neighboring island country of Mo–

Mauritius?

Mauritius, thank you. You’re apparently more well-versed in these geographies than I am. About 1,100 miles off the Southeastern coast of Africa. Long story short is that .io is for Indian Ocean. Now it’s going to be Mauritius. And .io may be going away due to some people getting some sovereignty, which is always a nice thing to have.

Who would have thunk it? Your tech startup with a .io domain name as its identity would now be impacted by a 99-year lease coming up.

Yes, exactly.

What would make it go away? Like, it can’t exist anymore because the relationship doesn’t exist, and so the .io – I mean, I get how it’s applied, but what makes it go away? That they can repurpose it?

So the .io domain is technically going to be within the – if you want to call it the jurisdiction of basically Mauritius. Now, I would imagine that if they decided to get into the TLD business, they could become the administrators for such a thing. More than likely, I think they will probably outsource the thing and –

Cut a deal, or something.

[01:15:55.06] Yeah, bring it to one of those registrars who would be more than happy to take that over and manage it, and having the cost, because that’s going to be business for them. And people registered .io domains, us developers and startups love the .io domain… So that’s good business right there. And then yeah, they can just have a partnership with some sort of registrar, and sort of outsource the whole thing, or get into the business themselves. But it’s too much of an opportunity, there’s too much money there to just let that go away. I don’t think it’s going to go away. And there’s precedence for this. There’s the .su for the Soviet Union, which is still around, the .yu for Yugoslavia… These things are still around. So there’s precedent for this. I don’t think it’s going to go away, honestly.

.es?

Spain?

Is that at risk? I think that’s still around.

Well, I think it’s out there… I’m just –

You’re naming them now.

Just throwing some stuff in the bucket with you.

.co.uk… So here’s one that I have familiarity with, because I thought it’d be really cool, speaking of domain hacks, to have san.to. So I went out and tried to find the .to TLD. It stands for Tonga, and maybe that’s an atoll. I don’t know, it’s a small island, or series of islands, I believe somewhere in the South Pacific… And somebody has taken san.to. They have this small little website… They run it themselves, it seems. Tonga’s running this website. And every year, for a long time - I finally give up on it - I had a reminder to email Tonga people again, and see if I could get that domain… Because they’re not using it. They’re just camping on san.to. And I really wanted it, because that was back when URL shorteners were all the rage. And having your own personalized shorteners was just too cool.

So yeah, I’m well aware of countries that are running their own little registrars on their own little TLD… And so I agree with you, Johnny. I think this is a fun fact of history, and an exchanging of opportunity to these people… And that’s awesome for them. I think that they’re going to have an opportunity to make a decent amount of cash just by proxying this thing to somebody else who can run it, or something like that.

Yeah, yeah. And the British legacy, I guess, gets smaller a little bit.

It gets smaller and smaller. It’s no longer the British Indian Ocean. [laughter] It’s kind of an oxymoron, isn’t it? The British Indian Ocean…

I know, right? But hey…

Yeah…

It is what it is.

I couldn’t help but look up nomo.io. [laughter] Because I was thinking if that’s available…

That’s a pretty good joke, isn’t it?

…it’d be kind of cool to use that as a drum to beat on to petition to not let io go nomo.

Right.

Right, right. Maybe you list out all of the companies that use .io and say “Hey…”

“Sign the nomo petition.”

“Sign the nomo petition.”

Or it could be one of those websites that just says yes or no, and the question’s “Is there still a .io domain?” And it just says yes. Like, as long as nomo.io responds, there’s still a domain. [laughter]r

See? We are indispensable!

Oh, man… That’s indispensable right there.

Yes. I mean, an LLM could never be that witty and fun. You know?

No.

Maybe.

Eventually.

Maybe.

Oh, good stuff. Alright, well, that is all we have for today. Johnny –

This was fun.

Too much fun, man. We’ve gotta have you on more.

I miss you, Johnny. I can’t wait to see you again in person, man. It’s been too long.

We need to make it happen. We need to make it happen.

You coming to All Things Open, man? It’s nearby.

When is that? How near is it?

Three weeks.

It’s in Raleigh. You’re in Baltimore…

Yeah, that’s not too far…

It’s not too bad, right?

While we’re at it, let’s give away 20% off. If you’re thinking about going to All Things Open, you can go to the registration site and use the code mediachangelog20. And then we have some free passes, Jerod…

Yup.

Are they gone? Have we given them away yet?

I think we have a few left. We’ve got one reserved for Johnny if he’s gonna come…

You’ve gotta join Zulip, which is our new place… It’s the new Slack.

Zulip’s the new Slack… Sign up today for free. Changelog.com/community. Hop into Zulip, say “Hey, I want a free ticket.” We’ll hook you up, as long as we have some left. There’s probably less than a single hand’s worth, but… We’ll be there, so –

Let’s get rid of them. We need hugs, high fives, and handshakes. And we can’t do that unless you acquire the free pass and come to the conference.

And come to the conference.

There you go.

That’s the two requirements, is you’ve gotta acquire the free pass, or pay your own way if you’re that kind of person, except the 20% off… And then show up.

That’s right.

And we’re booth 66, y’all.

Oh, it’s official.

66 is our booth.

Nobody knows where 66 is.

So this is like a big deal. Like booths, and everything?

Oh, yeah. It’s going down, man.

We don’t mess around.

Have you been to All Things Open before, Johnny?

No, never.

Oh, it’s a great one.

Oh, yeah. You should be there, Johnny.

It kind of took over the OSCON. It’s like the biggest open source conference.

If you come, we’ll buy you some steak at Sullivan’s.

Ooh…!

Just you, Johnny. Not everybody listening…

Is that to all of our listeners as well?

This is just to Johnny… As an I’m sorry. As an I’m sorry and welcome back officially. Six, seven years later…

An I’m sorry from a decade ago.

Man, man…

Wow.

I don’t know, if you throw a scotch in there… Then I’ll consider it.

Oh, there’s scotch, too.

Oh, there’s certain scotch involved.

Smoked scotch.

Alright, Johnny’s booking his – would it be a flight, or would you drive? How would you get there?

Oh, I’d probably fly. I’d probably fly to the nearest thing. Yeah. Yeah.

Cool.

Oh, man, you’re making it hard to say no.

Why say no when it feels so good to say yes?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Audience, if you’re feeling the same way Johnny’s feeling, you know what to do… mediachangelog20, get 20% off, or come into Zulip and get a free pass from Jerod…

While supplies last…

While supplies last… Very limited supply. We love All Things Open. Todd and team run an amazing conference. It’s worth going to. And yeah, all that good stuff.

Alright. That’s all for today. Bye, friends.

Bye, friends.