1 00:00:00,040 --> 00:00:02,960 You don't really write code by hand anymore at certain 2 00:00:02,960 --> 00:00:05,720 organizations. If this part of the craft for 3 00:00:05,720 --> 00:00:08,560 you is where you get your fulfillment, that at your job to 4 00:00:08,560 --> 00:00:10,720 me is completely changing. Juniors, they don't really care. 5 00:00:10,720 --> 00:00:12,920 They're like 6 months is fine. I'm starting out early in 6 00:00:12,920 --> 00:00:14,600 career. I can invest this and this is 7 00:00:14,600 --> 00:00:17,200 where it's going. Those that cannot, to me, they 8 00:00:17,200 --> 00:00:20,480 will be legacy quite soon. Things are changing already in 9 00:00:20,480 --> 00:00:23,160 hiring processes. I've seen companies just focus 10 00:00:23,160 --> 00:00:26,280 on system design. Show me how you design a system 11 00:00:26,280 --> 00:00:28,360 that can start simple and then can scale. 12 00:00:28,480 --> 00:00:30,560 It is the calling out there. People that have little 13 00:00:30,560 --> 00:00:33,440 experience, people that cannot grow and educate themselves 14 00:00:33,440 --> 00:00:35,000 quickly. They will be weeded out. 15 00:00:35,520 --> 00:00:38,840 A special Q&A episode, which I call Reddit Reacts. 16 00:00:38,880 --> 00:00:42,160 It's the second edition and last time I'm sure you were not here 17 00:00:42,320 --> 00:00:43,800 because it was about 3 years ago. 18 00:00:43,880 --> 00:00:47,520 Questions I found on Reddit, statements, controversial topics 19 00:00:47,520 --> 00:00:49,040 and I'll give you my perspective. 20 00:00:49,160 --> 00:00:54,600 So enjoy. How do you become technically 21 00:00:54,600 --> 00:00:59,640 cracked in 2026? For me, 2026 is not that much 22 00:00:59,640 --> 00:01:02,040 different from 2025 or any year previously. 23 00:01:02,640 --> 00:01:05,560 The biggest analogy I can get to, and for those who don't 24 00:01:05,560 --> 00:01:09,720 know, cracked is just really, really, really good, is to put 25 00:01:09,720 --> 00:01:11,640 in the reps. When you start out fitness, 26 00:01:11,640 --> 00:01:13,960 you're not going to be a strongman from the get go, 27 00:01:13,960 --> 00:01:14,920 right? You're not going to develop the 28 00:01:14,920 --> 00:01:17,040 muscles that aesthetically you might want to have. 29 00:01:17,600 --> 00:01:20,920 It takes a long time and it takes a long kind of venture of 30 00:01:20,920 --> 00:01:22,960 discipline. The people where I've, I would 31 00:01:22,960 --> 00:01:26,120 say they're really cracked. The people where I, if I start a 32 00:01:26,120 --> 00:01:28,760 startup or if I start a project, I want them in my team because 33 00:01:28,760 --> 00:01:31,920 of their execution prowess. Those people have put in the 34 00:01:31,920 --> 00:01:35,320 reps and those people have put in the reps so much so that when 35 00:01:35,320 --> 00:01:39,760 we're discussing a problem, me who has, who might not have put 36 00:01:39,760 --> 00:01:42,400 the same amount of reps in, I'm like, well, I would have to 37 00:01:42,400 --> 00:01:45,240 figure out how to build this. As we're discussing a problem, 38 00:01:45,240 --> 00:01:47,840 there are some holes in my knowledge, some things that I 39 00:01:47,840 --> 00:01:50,800 would have to figure out or experiment with, and these 40 00:01:50,800 --> 00:01:52,800 people that I would truly trust that I would say are really 41 00:01:52,800 --> 00:01:54,640 cracked. Those people have built 42 00:01:54,640 --> 00:01:58,600 something similar or have developed this kind of feeling 43 00:01:58,600 --> 00:02:02,040 where they instantly have an idea of how they would build it. 44 00:02:02,120 --> 00:02:04,760 When we're discussing something where they could break down a 45 00:02:04,760 --> 00:02:06,760 big, big problem. And in their mind, they can 46 00:02:06,760 --> 00:02:09,600 already have kind of a stepped approach of how they would get 47 00:02:09,600 --> 00:02:12,680 to this huge end result. And for me, that's really cool. 48 00:02:13,200 --> 00:02:16,000 Putting in the reps is actually something that you can do quite 49 00:02:16,000 --> 00:02:18,080 easily. Greenfield is definitely 50 00:02:18,080 --> 00:02:20,720 different than brownfield or something that is out there in 51 00:02:20,720 --> 00:02:24,880 production for many, many years. So you need a varied amount of 52 00:02:24,880 --> 00:02:27,240 experience. So starting with personal 53 00:02:27,240 --> 00:02:30,400 projects or hobby projects, those are quite easy to start 54 00:02:30,400 --> 00:02:33,480 with, especially with agentic tooling that you have. 55 00:02:33,480 --> 00:02:38,040 There is the discipline that you need to use it as an educator 56 00:02:38,120 --> 00:02:42,000 and potentially not as a power booster if you want to learn and 57 00:02:42,000 --> 00:02:44,440 really use this to boost your educational knowledge, your 58 00:02:44,440 --> 00:02:47,480 fundamental knowledge. And then you have open source. 59 00:02:47,880 --> 00:02:50,840 I think 2 weeks ago an episode came out about open source. 60 00:02:50,840 --> 00:02:52,800 If you haven't listened to it, definitely give it a listen 61 00:02:53,120 --> 00:02:57,600 because that is an established project with kind of strong 62 00:02:57,600 --> 00:02:59,880 conventions that you can contribute to. 63 00:02:59,880 --> 00:03:02,200 And the way you contribute to it really matters, right? 64 00:03:02,200 --> 00:03:05,840 Your audience is not your peers or your audience is not 65 00:03:05,840 --> 00:03:07,560 yourself. You cannot say this is how I 66 00:03:07,560 --> 00:03:09,600 like to structure my pull request and this is how I like 67 00:03:09,600 --> 00:03:13,200 to structure my code commits. Your audience is the people that 68 00:03:13,200 --> 00:03:16,120 maintain this repository, and the more you accommodate for 69 00:03:16,120 --> 00:03:20,960 that audience in how you develop software, the more versatile you 70 00:03:20,960 --> 00:03:23,360 will become and the more easy your pull requests will also be 71 00:03:23,360 --> 00:03:25,120 merged, which is that feeling of fulfilment. 72 00:03:25,120 --> 00:03:30,400 Again, I think you learn a lot from contributing to open 73 00:03:30,400 --> 00:03:33,200 source, especially when you want to become kind of technically 74 00:03:33,200 --> 00:03:36,280 cracked. Figuring out not just using 75 00:03:36,280 --> 00:03:38,200 tools from a tooling perspective, but also how they 76 00:03:38,200 --> 00:03:41,440 work under the hood can give you an edge and it's definitely 77 00:03:41,440 --> 00:03:44,560 worth it. And then lastly, there are many 78 00:03:44,560 --> 00:03:48,240 people giving out their time for free online in the form of 79 00:03:48,240 --> 00:03:50,760 mentorship. So if you create code and you're 80 00:03:50,760 --> 00:03:54,400 not really sure what it is, right, you can use agents to 81 00:03:54,400 --> 00:03:56,680 review yourself. But still a human pair of eyes. 82 00:03:57,040 --> 00:04:01,080 Some people that have really good industry experience is 83 00:04:01,080 --> 00:04:03,360 different feedback. And those people are out there. 84 00:04:03,400 --> 00:04:04,880 They give their time out for free. 85 00:04:05,400 --> 00:04:08,040 The website I always refer to and I'm not affiliated in any 86 00:04:08,040 --> 00:04:09,280 way. I just know people that give 87 00:04:09,280 --> 00:04:12,480 their time out there for free is adplist.org. 88 00:04:12,480 --> 00:04:14,320 I'll put it in the link. I'll put a link in the show 89 00:04:14,320 --> 00:04:16,480 notes. I should definitely talk to them 90 00:04:16,480 --> 00:04:18,839 and ask them if they want to sponsor the podcast, but in any 91 00:04:18,839 --> 00:04:21,000 case, they are not a sponsor right now. 92 00:04:22,680 --> 00:04:24,560 People are out there giving their time out for free. 93 00:04:24,600 --> 00:04:26,840 Engineering managers of Spotify, of Netflix. 94 00:04:26,840 --> 00:04:29,720 I've seen them hardcore back end engineers, really good front end 95 00:04:29,720 --> 00:04:31,240 engineers. I know some of them. 96 00:04:31,840 --> 00:04:34,760 So you can go there and you can say I want to book a half an 97 00:04:34,760 --> 00:04:37,040 hour time slot with this person and this person is really 98 00:04:37,040 --> 00:04:38,640 reliable and has really good reviews. 99 00:04:38,640 --> 00:04:42,600 And then just talk about some challenges that you have and get 100 00:04:42,600 --> 00:04:45,760 feedback from these people. It's really valuable. 101 00:04:46,120 --> 00:04:49,760 SO3 stepped approach, putting in the reps, doing it in different 102 00:04:49,760 --> 00:04:52,840 types of code bases, early brownfield, very, very 103 00:04:52,840 --> 00:04:55,760 production like and open source can get you there to bridge the 104 00:04:55,760 --> 00:04:58,520 gap and then getting feedback from people that are very 105 00:04:58,520 --> 00:05:02,240 experienced in this field and doing that over and over and 106 00:05:02,240 --> 00:05:03,160 over again. All right. 107 00:05:03,160 --> 00:05:06,280 I don't think there's a ceiling to how technically cracked you 108 00:05:06,280 --> 00:05:11,000 can get just by virtue of having so much information out there 109 00:05:11,000 --> 00:05:14,520 and things evolving so quickly. You do have to accept that you 110 00:05:14,520 --> 00:05:17,120 will not know everything about everything because things are 111 00:05:17,120 --> 00:05:19,520 evolving continuously. And if you're not comfortable 112 00:05:19,520 --> 00:05:23,560 with that, then either accept not being technically cracked 113 00:05:23,560 --> 00:05:27,240 all the time and only in certain fields, or maybe this field is 114 00:05:27,240 --> 00:05:30,240 not for you because this is a field where you continuously 115 00:05:30,240 --> 00:05:32,680 need to learn. And it's easier when you're 116 00:05:32,680 --> 00:05:34,520 young, when you're early in career, when you have all the 117 00:05:34,520 --> 00:05:36,720 time. And to be honest, it gets harder 118 00:05:36,720 --> 00:05:38,280 the more responsibilities you have. 119 00:05:38,280 --> 00:05:42,200 If you have kids, if you have bills to pay, you cannot afford 120 00:05:42,200 --> 00:05:45,400 to have as much free time as you want. 121 00:05:46,200 --> 00:05:48,400 And it's a trade off. That's reality. 122 00:05:49,280 --> 00:05:52,960 This is a statement and this, this person says the juniors who 123 00:05:52,960 --> 00:05:55,600 only learn to code with AI are going to have a rough time at 124 00:05:55,600 --> 00:05:58,600 about five years. They talk about two juniors 125 00:05:58,600 --> 00:06:01,400 being in their team, both shipping fast, both growing up 126 00:06:01,400 --> 00:06:04,520 with Cursor and Claude, and they're quite afraid what it's 127 00:06:04,520 --> 00:06:05,880 going to look like in five years. 128 00:06:06,440 --> 00:06:08,160 I don't think I agree with the statement. 129 00:06:08,160 --> 00:06:11,000 I don't think juniors are going to be stuck in five years. 130 00:06:11,000 --> 00:06:13,840 Things will evolve in five years, especially in this field 131 00:06:13,840 --> 00:06:17,040 is a long, long time. I think things will evolve to a 132 00:06:17,040 --> 00:06:20,360 point where you define your interfaces and kind of what 133 00:06:20,360 --> 00:06:23,760 happens, what is agentically generated in the middle, people 134 00:06:23,760 --> 00:06:26,760 don't really care for as much. Or you have conventions in place 135 00:06:26,760 --> 00:06:30,280 to kind of audit and to make sure that the quality is as high 136 00:06:30,280 --> 00:06:33,400 as it can be. Because to be honest, you will 137 00:06:33,400 --> 00:06:36,400 never have a code base that is 100% to your liking, that is 138 00:06:36,400 --> 00:06:40,960 100% aesthetically pleasing or elegant as some people say. 139 00:06:41,160 --> 00:06:44,000 Elegance is very opinionated and some people agree or disagree 140 00:06:44,000 --> 00:06:45,880 based on what some things look like. 141 00:06:46,320 --> 00:06:48,040 It's all very personal. And in the end, when you're 142 00:06:48,080 --> 00:06:51,800 talking about production grade software, to be honest, most of 143 00:06:51,800 --> 00:06:52,840 the time it doesn't really matter. 144 00:06:53,480 --> 00:06:56,800 Things or code specifically needs to be simple and it needs 145 00:06:56,800 --> 00:06:59,720 to be easy to change. That's the most important aspect 146 00:06:59,720 --> 00:07:03,040 of production quality code in my opinion. 147 00:07:03,040 --> 00:07:06,000 If it's not easy to change, then you're going to have a hard time 148 00:07:06,520 --> 00:07:09,680 building changes upon it. And if it's not simple, it's 149 00:07:09,680 --> 00:07:11,760 going to be very hard to understand for humans, but 150 00:07:11,760 --> 00:07:15,440 especially nowadays as we're following this evolution for 151 00:07:15,440 --> 00:07:18,960 agents. So that's what you need going 152 00:07:18,960 --> 00:07:20,960 forward. And you can still do that by 153 00:07:20,960 --> 00:07:23,360 manually creating code. And you can still do that, in my 154 00:07:23,360 --> 00:07:25,840 opinion, by having agents generate the code. 155 00:07:26,200 --> 00:07:28,000 You need to have strong conventions in place. 156 00:07:28,000 --> 00:07:31,320 And for the people that don't have at least half a year of 157 00:07:31,320 --> 00:07:34,360 experience working with this AI assisted development tooling, 158 00:07:34,600 --> 00:07:36,280 they will disagree. Put it in the comments if you 159 00:07:36,280 --> 00:07:39,720 disagree, but if you don't have at least half a year experience, 160 00:07:39,720 --> 00:07:42,640 I'm just putting out an arbitrary amount of time to be 161 00:07:42,640 --> 00:07:43,960 honest. But for me half year makes 162 00:07:43,960 --> 00:07:46,120 sense. Then I'm assuming you're going 163 00:07:46,120 --> 00:07:48,360 to disagree after you bridge that gap. 164 00:07:48,400 --> 00:07:51,760 I've seen for some people it could be a training, it could be 165 00:07:51,760 --> 00:07:54,440 a specific moment, it could be a pair programming session. 166 00:07:54,640 --> 00:07:57,800 Something just clicks and then they're hooked and then they see 167 00:07:57,800 --> 00:07:59,600 this new way of working which is quite effective. 168 00:08:00,120 --> 00:08:03,800 Fundamental knowledge will always be needed, but to what 169 00:08:03,800 --> 00:08:07,080 degree that fundamental knowledge is, I don't know yet. 170 00:08:07,200 --> 00:08:09,000 That's something we're going to have to experience. 171 00:08:09,280 --> 00:08:12,120 But the junior people right now have an edge that is quite 172 00:08:12,120 --> 00:08:15,960 unique because when things are new, when I'm telling people 173 00:08:15,960 --> 00:08:19,040 that have 20 years of experience that they need to have six 174 00:08:19,040 --> 00:08:23,560 months with this new way of working, the juniors, they don't 175 00:08:23,560 --> 00:08:25,240 really care. They're like 6 months is fine. 176 00:08:25,240 --> 00:08:27,760 I'm starting out early in career, I can invest this and 177 00:08:27,760 --> 00:08:31,000 this is where it's going. So the sooner they're able to do 178 00:08:31,000 --> 00:08:32,960 that and they also start with a blank canvas. 179 00:08:32,960 --> 00:08:36,440 They don't have 20 years of baggage, and baggage can be 180 00:08:36,440 --> 00:08:39,200 good, but it can also in this case be potentially negative. 181 00:08:39,200 --> 00:08:41,880 Then they don't really care, right? 182 00:08:41,880 --> 00:08:43,080 They start with the blank canvas. 183 00:08:43,080 --> 00:08:45,320 They start with the six months of experience with a ISIS 184 00:08:45,320 --> 00:08:47,320 development tooling. They deliver over and over and 185 00:08:47,320 --> 00:08:49,000 over again. And when they reach a 186 00:08:49,000 --> 00:08:51,520 bottleneck, which might be a knowledge, which might be in a 187 00:08:51,520 --> 00:08:55,640 code base, they will adapt. I strongly believe that for the 188 00:08:55,640 --> 00:08:59,040 people that are transitioning into this, they also kind of 189 00:08:59,040 --> 00:09:01,120 start with a blank canvas. It's really for the people that 190 00:09:01,120 --> 00:09:04,880 have 20 to 30 years of experience, they have baggage 191 00:09:04,960 --> 00:09:08,000 and that baggage is really, really valuable. 192 00:09:08,000 --> 00:09:10,840 All right, don't. I don't want to undermine that. 193 00:09:10,840 --> 00:09:13,480 It's incredibly valuable. That's why I truly believe in a 194 00:09:13,480 --> 00:09:16,240 good mix of seniority within teams. 195 00:09:17,160 --> 00:09:19,840 It also means that they need to be open to learn, learn new 196 00:09:19,840 --> 00:09:22,720 things, open to learn new things, potentially even from 197 00:09:22,720 --> 00:09:24,240 people that are less experienced than them. 198 00:09:24,720 --> 00:09:28,360 Those that cannot. To me there will be legacy quite 199 00:09:28,360 --> 00:09:32,560 soon. Do most of you seriously not 200 00:09:32,560 --> 00:09:36,240 write any code by hand anymore? This person talks about really 201 00:09:36,240 --> 00:09:41,720 loving the craft that is coding, finding a problem or fixing 202 00:09:41,720 --> 00:09:44,240 something and then getting a dopamine hit when it's actually 203 00:09:44,240 --> 00:09:46,720 solved. And that is now outsourced to 204 00:09:46,840 --> 00:09:49,680 agents in this new agentic way of working. 205 00:09:50,160 --> 00:09:54,280 My latest experience was kind of end of last year where for a lot 206 00:09:54,280 --> 00:09:57,200 of months I didn't do any hands on coding anymore. 207 00:09:57,800 --> 00:10:00,560 And I understand the difference, right? 208 00:10:00,840 --> 00:10:04,280 I like building things and the building process is really speed 209 00:10:04,280 --> 00:10:06,800 up. I also like the state of going 210 00:10:06,800 --> 00:10:09,640 in flow and then typing away and then making solutions where I 211 00:10:09,640 --> 00:10:12,680 think this is actually quite neat going into a cycle where I 212 00:10:12,680 --> 00:10:16,400 get review remarks from my peers and then correcting it, 213 00:10:16,440 --> 00:10:19,440 something I'm proud of. That latter part is completely 214 00:10:19,440 --> 00:10:21,400 changed. You don't really write code by 215 00:10:21,400 --> 00:10:24,320 hand anymore at certain organisations. 216 00:10:24,680 --> 00:10:28,760 Not every organization is at a level where all code is 217 00:10:28,760 --> 00:10:31,960 generated by agents. I don't believe that. 218 00:10:31,960 --> 00:10:34,800 So companies are definitely playing catch up though. 219 00:10:35,440 --> 00:10:38,000 If this part of the craft for you is where you get your 220 00:10:38,000 --> 00:10:41,040 fulfilment, that at your job to me is completely changing. 221 00:10:41,040 --> 00:10:44,000 So you need to find something where you can still find that 222 00:10:44,000 --> 00:10:47,200 same passion or fulfilment or move that to part of your 223 00:10:47,200 --> 00:10:49,240 hobbies. Because if companies are 224 00:10:49,240 --> 00:10:53,040 expecting you to work like this and there is an ambition and a 225 00:10:53,040 --> 00:10:56,760 strong belief that this makes people more effective, even 226 00:10:56,760 --> 00:10:59,400 though the metrics and the statistics and the surveying and 227 00:10:59,400 --> 00:11:02,880 the results are still a little bit out there, there's a strong 228 00:11:02,880 --> 00:11:05,040 belief that it can speed up people and make it more 229 00:11:05,040 --> 00:11:06,720 effective. That's what organisations are 230 00:11:06,720 --> 00:11:11,320 pushing for, which means that currently it's just changing. 231 00:11:11,840 --> 00:11:15,120 If you want to pivot, it's likely going to be a few months 232 00:11:15,120 --> 00:11:19,280 of time investment for you to be effective or to feel effective 233 00:11:19,360 --> 00:11:21,000 close to what you were previously. 234 00:11:21,360 --> 00:11:26,240 But this investment in my opinion is worth it, so find 235 00:11:26,240 --> 00:11:29,680 something else to get fulfilment from because things are changing 236 00:11:29,840 --> 00:11:33,400 and everyone's unique. This one's hilarious. 237 00:11:33,400 --> 00:11:36,720 I vibe coded for six months and my code base is a disaster. 238 00:11:36,840 --> 00:11:39,880 The app works, users are happy, revenue is coming in. 239 00:11:40,160 --> 00:11:41,560 That's actually only the good part. 240 00:11:41,960 --> 00:11:46,320 But I tried to onboard a dev and they opened the repo and they 241 00:11:46,320 --> 00:11:50,680 just said what is this? I think this is vibe coding with 242 00:11:50,680 --> 00:11:54,600 people that have 0 experience. I came back from this work 243 00:11:54,600 --> 00:11:57,520 remote trip in Australia and I talked to my Uber driver. 244 00:11:57,520 --> 00:11:59,200 I still need to make a LinkedIn post about this. 245 00:11:59,560 --> 00:12:05,160 This person is an acupuncturist, acupuncturist. 246 00:12:05,760 --> 00:12:07,720 This is really hard work for me, an acupuncturist. 247 00:12:07,720 --> 00:12:09,520 And he talked about creating an app. 248 00:12:10,040 --> 00:12:12,920 He said app continuously but in the end it's a web page and it's 249 00:12:12,920 --> 00:12:16,480 for acupuncturists like him. He has all the domain knowledge. 250 00:12:16,480 --> 00:12:19,360 He said this was an idea he's had for many, many years, and 251 00:12:19,360 --> 00:12:22,120 then he opened up Lovable and he's just started building it 252 00:12:22,440 --> 00:12:24,880 and he says he has analytics with regards to usage. 253 00:12:24,880 --> 00:12:27,000 He has a whole test suite and he's building out more 254 00:12:27,000 --> 00:12:29,240 integration tests. He has it up and running. 255 00:12:29,240 --> 00:12:32,160 He has users. There's no revenue yet, but he's 256 00:12:32,160 --> 00:12:35,160 super excited and he's trying to think about distribution because 257 00:12:35,160 --> 00:12:37,960 he's now built the thing and it's value. 258 00:12:38,240 --> 00:12:40,800 He has the domain knowledge. This idea was translating some 259 00:12:40,800 --> 00:12:43,800 Western practices or medicine into Chinese practices or 260 00:12:43,800 --> 00:12:46,080 medicine. But the fact that he built that 261 00:12:46,080 --> 00:12:49,360 for me is incredible. I don't know what the code base 262 00:12:49,360 --> 00:12:51,120 is. Looks like all right. 263 00:12:51,200 --> 00:12:53,960 I'm sure this person doesn't know about any type of code 264 00:12:53,960 --> 00:12:57,280 conventions or any type of architectural patterns. 265 00:12:57,280 --> 00:12:58,560 In the end, it doesn't really matter. 266 00:12:58,800 --> 00:13:01,920 They had an idea and they executed it, and right now it 267 00:13:01,920 --> 00:13:05,040 provides value. Code might not be simple. 268 00:13:05,200 --> 00:13:07,720 Code might be very complex, which means at a certain point 269 00:13:07,720 --> 00:13:09,640 it's going to be very hard to change. 270 00:13:09,920 --> 00:13:12,520 Which means adding a feature that was previously not in 271 00:13:12,520 --> 00:13:15,400 scope, but all of a sudden valuable based on user feedback 272 00:13:15,960 --> 00:13:18,640 might be possible or might require a lot of refactoring. 273 00:13:18,760 --> 00:13:23,480 And then vibe coding might reach its limits, right? 274 00:13:23,480 --> 00:13:25,600 This is all a hypothetical, but the fact that there's another 275 00:13:25,600 --> 00:13:27,520 person that says after six months, my code base is a 276 00:13:27,520 --> 00:13:30,440 disaster, it's for me quite funny. 277 00:13:30,840 --> 00:13:33,880 I think these people, either they're going to go through this 278 00:13:33,880 --> 00:13:36,400 way of working where they realise, OK, I have to change 279 00:13:36,400 --> 00:13:39,200 something. They might hire a person, an 280 00:13:39,200 --> 00:13:41,880 engineer that has experience to help them kind of navigate this 281 00:13:41,880 --> 00:13:44,320 thing. But this problem is not unique. 282 00:13:45,080 --> 00:13:48,360 It's maybe unique in the way that it's right now presented as 283 00:13:48,360 --> 00:13:51,720 vibe coding, but codebase is stagnating and becoming hard to 284 00:13:51,720 --> 00:13:55,400 change. Just had a longer time horizon, 285 00:13:55,400 --> 00:13:56,880 right? Instead of six months, it might 286 00:13:56,880 --> 00:13:58,920 have had six years. And then all of a sudden people 287 00:13:58,920 --> 00:14:01,760 would be like, well, it's so hard to change that we either 288 00:14:01,760 --> 00:14:05,080 need to rebuild components of it or we start from scratch and we 289 00:14:05,080 --> 00:14:07,600 rebuild from scratch. That is not a unique 290 00:14:07,880 --> 00:14:11,400 circumstance in our industry. It's basically what has happened 291 00:14:11,400 --> 00:14:13,360 to many companies that I've been involved in. 292 00:14:14,440 --> 00:14:17,040 They get rid of certain vendor lock insurance that they have. 293 00:14:18,480 --> 00:14:20,560 It's not a unique problem right now. 294 00:14:20,560 --> 00:14:22,680 It's just accelerated. And vibe coding is really cool 295 00:14:22,680 --> 00:14:25,320 because it allows you to build quite quickly, but also you will 296 00:14:25,320 --> 00:14:27,520 hit certain bottlenecks just quicker. 297 00:14:28,000 --> 00:14:31,360 And you need to, from my perspective, learn how to accept 298 00:14:31,360 --> 00:14:33,560 that if you have the knowledge navigated early. 299 00:14:33,560 --> 00:14:35,960 But if you don't, when there's a bottleneck, you fix the 300 00:14:35,960 --> 00:14:37,760 bottleneck. And the way you'd go about it, 301 00:14:37,760 --> 00:14:39,920 you have to either teach yourself or you just hire a 302 00:14:39,920 --> 00:14:42,960 consultant that has expertise to help you go through that. 303 00:14:43,640 --> 00:14:45,560 Depending on how much money you have and how much money you want 304 00:14:45,560 --> 00:14:47,360 to spend, you can accelerate that process. 305 00:14:47,640 --> 00:14:49,760 But in the end, there's learnings to be had for people 306 00:14:49,760 --> 00:14:53,640 that are new to the field, even more so than for the people that 307 00:14:53,640 --> 00:14:56,640 are already in the field. So yeah, I think we're going to 308 00:14:56,640 --> 00:15:00,680 have more examples of this. The problem is when applications 309 00:15:00,680 --> 00:15:02,880 have security holes. I think that's the biggest 310 00:15:02,880 --> 00:15:06,280 concern that I have right now. Lovable got hacked and then 311 00:15:06,280 --> 00:15:10,080 many, many secrets of the websites they host or the 312 00:15:10,080 --> 00:15:12,640 websites that are built upon that were out in the open. 313 00:15:13,960 --> 00:15:17,000 At least I read about that. I don't know if it was just 314 00:15:17,000 --> 00:15:20,080 secrets or if it was also user credentials, but for me that's 315 00:15:20,080 --> 00:15:23,360 the biggest concern where you deliver value and users are 316 00:15:23,360 --> 00:15:25,240 using it. But if it's full of security 317 00:15:25,240 --> 00:15:30,120 holes and security exploits, then yeah, security people, the 318 00:15:30,120 --> 00:15:33,560 main experts in that field, they have a lot of work to do still. 319 00:15:34,560 --> 00:15:38,160 Why are non-technical leaders obsessed with screen sharing 320 00:15:38,160 --> 00:15:41,400 during incident calls? So for those of you that don't 321 00:15:41,400 --> 00:15:44,720 know, I started out my career in operations not doing any 322 00:15:44,720 --> 00:15:46,720 software engineering. I had some software engineering 323 00:15:46,720 --> 00:15:49,920 experience from uni, but the first year was just in 324 00:15:49,920 --> 00:15:52,280 operations where I wasn't really allowed to touch code. 325 00:15:52,720 --> 00:15:57,440 And I've done many incident calls, I've done many kind of 326 00:15:57,440 --> 00:16:01,200 migration projects. And this was pre COVID era where 327 00:16:01,200 --> 00:16:02,880 there was not really a lot of working remote. 328 00:16:03,280 --> 00:16:05,920 If I needed to do something in downtime and I needed people to 329 00:16:05,920 --> 00:16:09,320 navigate and contact with, there was not really any screen 330 00:16:09,320 --> 00:16:10,680 sharing. I feel like that's more of a 331 00:16:10,680 --> 00:16:13,600 modern thing. But in any case, I just open up 332 00:16:13,600 --> 00:16:15,840 a call, multiple calls with people. 333 00:16:16,480 --> 00:16:19,480 And I said, OK, I'm going to do XY and Z just like we planned. 334 00:16:19,520 --> 00:16:22,160 And I would do that and they would not see what I was doing. 335 00:16:22,360 --> 00:16:25,400 They would just be on the call on standby and then when it was 336 00:16:25,400 --> 00:16:26,640 their turn, I was like, all right, you're up. 337 00:16:26,640 --> 00:16:28,640 You know, we need to do XY and Z just like we planned. 338 00:16:28,640 --> 00:16:30,680 And they would do that and just tell me, OK, it's done. 339 00:16:30,680 --> 00:16:33,280 And I would coordinate with another person because I was 340 00:16:33,280 --> 00:16:35,640 responsible for application operations. 341 00:16:36,640 --> 00:16:39,880 So screen sharing part is for me, nothing unique. 342 00:16:39,880 --> 00:16:42,280 If people are asking for, can you screen share? 343 00:16:42,280 --> 00:16:45,080 So they can either learn or they can follow through. 344 00:16:45,800 --> 00:16:48,080 The problem is if they're kind of in the way with the questions 345 00:16:48,080 --> 00:16:51,160 they ask, but if it's genuinely from a good perspective, then 346 00:16:51,160 --> 00:16:54,400 who cares, right? Is it really something that is 347 00:16:54,400 --> 00:16:58,240 kind of unique to you or is it an ego thing that you need to 348 00:16:58,240 --> 00:17:01,120 figure things out as you go? I don't know. 349 00:17:01,440 --> 00:17:03,960 When I used to play video games as a kid, I hate it when people 350 00:17:03,960 --> 00:17:06,480 were looking over my shoulder, but now I don't care. 351 00:17:06,480 --> 00:17:09,319 Maybe it's an ego thing. I feel like you need to reflect 352 00:17:09,319 --> 00:17:12,440 on that. Screen sharing is not as big a 353 00:17:12,440 --> 00:17:16,640 deal from my perspective. Maybe ask why they want to see 354 00:17:16,640 --> 00:17:18,560 it, right? If it's if it's from a learning 355 00:17:18,560 --> 00:17:20,720 perspective, then definitely accommodate. 356 00:17:21,200 --> 00:17:24,200 If they want to see how things go and see how you navigate, 357 00:17:24,640 --> 00:17:27,000 then who cares? Either they see it or they 358 00:17:27,000 --> 00:17:28,840 don't, but the result is going to be the same. 359 00:17:29,080 --> 00:17:32,360 If it slows you down, then have a conversation on why that is 360 00:17:32,760 --> 00:17:34,080 and maybe they can accommodate, right? 361 00:17:34,080 --> 00:17:36,520 If they ask so many questions and you have to explain things 362 00:17:36,520 --> 00:17:39,280 and you can't really do the damage control that you're there 363 00:17:39,280 --> 00:17:42,920 to do, then that's a valid remark, right? 364 00:17:42,920 --> 00:17:44,520 It's valid feedback to give to them. 365 00:17:45,440 --> 00:17:49,120 I wonder if they actually realised that this person says I 366 00:17:49,120 --> 00:17:51,080 don't do anything and I still get promoted. 367 00:17:51,160 --> 00:17:53,160 I've been at the same company since graduating. 368 00:17:53,720 --> 00:17:58,880 I've been there for about four years, I make really good salary 369 00:17:59,400 --> 00:18:02,680 and I just got promoted. I've consistently written maybe 370 00:18:02,680 --> 00:18:07,280 500 lines of code tops per year. Aside from database queries, 371 00:18:07,280 --> 00:18:10,560 I've never built a project, excluding in college and in my 372 00:18:10,560 --> 00:18:12,720 free time. My work consists of scrolling on 373 00:18:12,720 --> 00:18:16,440 reels and occasionally fixing a bug in an application that was 374 00:18:16,440 --> 00:18:19,960 created when I was a child. OK, since this person, this is 375 00:18:19,960 --> 00:18:23,600 the first company they joined since graduating, you have a 376 00:18:23,600 --> 00:18:25,760 decision to make, all right? You make a really good salary. 377 00:18:25,760 --> 00:18:27,520 Apparently you don't do anything, you don't learn 378 00:18:27,520 --> 00:18:28,960 anything. So this is a risk to your 379 00:18:28,960 --> 00:18:31,040 career. Are you OK with that? 380 00:18:31,440 --> 00:18:35,080 Then just ride this sugar train. It's not my choice. 381 00:18:35,080 --> 00:18:36,600 I would be incredibly frustrated. 382 00:18:37,080 --> 00:18:39,880 When I joined my first job. I wanted to make impact and I 383 00:18:39,880 --> 00:18:41,360 wanted to learn as fast as possible. 384 00:18:41,360 --> 00:18:44,880 Now I know right now and I didn't really realise it back 385 00:18:44,880 --> 00:18:46,480 then that not everyone is like that. 386 00:18:46,880 --> 00:18:50,720 If this is OK for you then that is fine, but the risks are 387 00:18:50,720 --> 00:18:52,640 there. Your skills will atrophy, 388 00:18:53,000 --> 00:18:55,920 especially after four years and only doing 500 lines of 389 00:18:55,920 --> 00:19:00,160 production code and then debugging applications that were 390 00:19:00,160 --> 00:19:04,240 built before you were live. It doesn't really like future 391 00:19:04,240 --> 00:19:07,480 proof your skill set when it comes to your career. 392 00:19:07,880 --> 00:19:10,840 So if all of a sudden there's a reorganisation which could 393 00:19:10,840 --> 00:19:13,800 happen and you're on the streets looking for a job and people 394 00:19:13,800 --> 00:19:17,200 were asked, OK, what experience do you have in the last four 395 00:19:17,200 --> 00:19:20,440 years at your job, then there will not be a really good 396 00:19:20,440 --> 00:19:23,360 answer, which means that finding a job will be really hard for 397 00:19:23,360 --> 00:19:25,040 you. And there will be another post 398 00:19:25,040 --> 00:19:28,600 on Reddit where it says 4 years of experience and it's taken me 399 00:19:28,600 --> 00:19:30,760 a year to get a job. Well, yeah, they don't tell you 400 00:19:30,760 --> 00:19:32,920 about the background experience that this person actually had. 401 00:19:35,000 --> 00:19:38,240 So I feel like this is a real wake up call. 402 00:19:38,240 --> 00:19:40,840 If you find yourself in a similar position where you 403 00:19:40,840 --> 00:19:43,520 cannot make impact or you feel like you're not, what you're 404 00:19:43,520 --> 00:19:46,360 learning is not contributing to the skills that you want to have 405 00:19:46,360 --> 00:19:48,600 in the future, then you need to act. 406 00:19:49,000 --> 00:19:52,040 I hate it when people say, oh, woe is me and my career is kind 407 00:19:52,040 --> 00:19:55,160 of driving itself and I'm not behind the steering wheel. 408 00:19:55,160 --> 00:19:57,480 I feel like you need to grab hold of that steering wheel. 409 00:19:57,720 --> 00:20:00,120 Talk to the people with regards to what you actually want to do 410 00:20:00,120 --> 00:20:03,000 in life and in your career and make that happen. 411 00:20:03,400 --> 00:20:07,280 If it's not at this company, then your new job is to find a 412 00:20:07,280 --> 00:20:10,280 company where you can actually grow, and it might definitely be 413 00:20:10,280 --> 00:20:13,000 taking a pay cut and starting off at a junior position 414 00:20:13,000 --> 00:20:15,360 somewhere else. It's a really rough time 415 00:20:15,360 --> 00:20:18,920 compared to especially two to three to four years ago where 416 00:20:18,920 --> 00:20:23,080 there were more and more jobs. But if Meta is laying off 10% of 417 00:20:23,080 --> 00:20:25,920 their population, I don't know how much of that is engineers 418 00:20:26,200 --> 00:20:29,840 and other huge companies are laying off staff, which might or 419 00:20:29,840 --> 00:20:32,360 might not include engineers. Then right now there's a lot of 420 00:20:32,360 --> 00:20:36,720 people looking for jobs. So if you don't act, then I'm 421 00:20:36,720 --> 00:20:40,560 afraid for your future. Have the best engineers 422 00:20:40,560 --> 00:20:44,160 basically stopped applying? Forcing companies into passive 423 00:20:44,160 --> 00:20:46,280 hiring? This person has a theory. 424 00:20:46,760 --> 00:20:48,880 A lot of the strongest engineers aren't really in the market 425 00:20:48,880 --> 00:20:50,480 anymore in the traditional sense. 426 00:20:50,480 --> 00:20:53,360 They're employed, busy, selective, and only move when 427 00:20:53,360 --> 00:20:55,400 something unusually compelling shows up. 428 00:20:55,880 --> 00:20:58,600 So they have a question, Do you think the best candidates are 429 00:20:58,600 --> 00:21:01,480 mostly passive now? Are they waiting for the right 430 00:21:01,480 --> 00:21:03,960 opportunity? This is interesting right? 431 00:21:03,960 --> 00:21:06,920 Because if you like what you do at your job, there's no reason 432 00:21:06,920 --> 00:21:10,160 for you to move. If you don't like what you're 433 00:21:10,160 --> 00:21:13,280 doing at your job, you still want something that is better. 434 00:21:13,480 --> 00:21:16,720 So if you cannot find better out there, then you will stay at 435 00:21:16,720 --> 00:21:20,200 your current job. It's not really black and white. 436 00:21:20,320 --> 00:21:22,760 There might be really good things at your job and some 437 00:21:22,760 --> 00:21:25,160 things that just suck. So you're trying to find 438 00:21:25,160 --> 00:21:28,320 something where it's 100% great and 100% in my opinion doesn't 439 00:21:28,320 --> 00:21:30,800 exist. Everything is a trade off right 440 00:21:30,800 --> 00:21:32,600 now. At my current job, I have a lot 441 00:21:32,600 --> 00:21:34,880 of freedom and I have a lot of room for growth. 442 00:21:36,080 --> 00:21:38,480 My salary might become a bottleneck in a couple of years, 443 00:21:38,480 --> 00:21:40,360 which means I have something to think about. 444 00:21:40,960 --> 00:21:43,960 Am I going to continue investing in my personal career and in my 445 00:21:43,960 --> 00:21:46,760 growth? Or is it time to harvest because 446 00:21:46,760 --> 00:21:50,160 I've invested enough and I want to be at a job that actually 447 00:21:50,560 --> 00:21:52,320 also brings a lot of money to the table? 448 00:21:52,720 --> 00:21:57,040 I don't know yet, but because I don't know yet and I'm happy 449 00:21:57,040 --> 00:21:59,320 where I am at, I'm not actively applying. 450 00:21:59,480 --> 00:22:02,240 If something comes up on my doorstep, I do think it's good 451 00:22:02,240 --> 00:22:05,880 to apply and to learn from those application processes, to see 452 00:22:05,880 --> 00:22:08,560 what is out there and to see what is needed and to see how 453 00:22:08,560 --> 00:22:10,080 you actually go through an interview process. 454 00:22:10,080 --> 00:22:12,440 I take all of that as a learning, but I've been at my 455 00:22:12,440 --> 00:22:15,680 current job for seven, close to seven years, something like 456 00:22:15,680 --> 00:22:17,720 that. Now it's a consultancy, so I go 457 00:22:17,720 --> 00:22:21,040 from assignment to assignment, which means I'm at the same 458 00:22:21,040 --> 00:22:24,720 company, but not really because in those seven years, I think 459 00:22:24,720 --> 00:22:29,160 I've been in at least 12 different projects, which some 460 00:22:29,160 --> 00:22:32,760 have been a year more, more than a year, some have been a few 461 00:22:32,760 --> 00:22:35,800 months here and there. And I learned a lot through that 462 00:22:35,800 --> 00:22:37,880 throughout that process. Strong onboarding. 463 00:22:37,880 --> 00:22:40,080 How can I make impact as fast as possible? 464 00:22:40,400 --> 00:22:43,120 What is my legacy when I leave this company behind? 465 00:22:43,320 --> 00:22:46,280 How do I make sure that things are better when I go than when I 466 00:22:46,280 --> 00:22:48,160 started? Those are some of the things 467 00:22:48,160 --> 00:22:51,480 that I focused on. And it's a very kind of, yeah, 468 00:22:51,480 --> 00:22:52,960 unique feel. It's consultancy. 469 00:22:52,960 --> 00:22:55,760 If you've been seven years at your same company, then you 470 00:22:55,760 --> 00:22:59,400 might have this kind of baggage of contacts that people want you 471 00:22:59,400 --> 00:23:01,640 in meetings because you just know things, not for your 472 00:23:01,640 --> 00:23:05,240 skills, but because of you're kind of a historian at that 473 00:23:05,240 --> 00:23:07,640 company. And if I find myself in a 474 00:23:07,640 --> 00:23:10,360 position like that, I've never been in a position like that, 475 00:23:11,040 --> 00:23:12,560 but I don't think I'd be happy, right? 476 00:23:12,640 --> 00:23:16,040 I want to be valuable due to the skills or the perspectives that 477 00:23:16,040 --> 00:23:18,200 I provide. And if that is just being a 478 00:23:18,200 --> 00:23:20,960 historian, then I would rather be a history teacher. 479 00:23:21,440 --> 00:23:24,520 It's not what I want to be at a company, but those engineers 480 00:23:24,520 --> 00:23:26,920 might be really, really good. If they cannot find something 481 00:23:26,920 --> 00:23:31,440 out there that is as good or better in terms of financial, in 482 00:23:31,440 --> 00:23:34,200 terms of growth, in terms of impact, in terms of fulfilment, 483 00:23:34,200 --> 00:23:37,080 in terms of tool usage, then they will just stay at the 484 00:23:37,080 --> 00:23:40,720 current company. So I'm not sure if the best 485 00:23:40,720 --> 00:23:42,880 engineers are currently out on the market. 486 00:23:43,280 --> 00:23:46,600 What I would do and what I see the best engineers do is re 487 00:23:46,600 --> 00:23:49,720 network. So they will not necessarily 488 00:23:49,720 --> 00:23:55,080 call the ply to a vacancy at a company where they don't even 489 00:23:55,080 --> 00:23:58,360 know what that company is. The company is new, the company 490 00:23:58,360 --> 00:24:01,360 is not really established. They will network with people 491 00:24:01,880 --> 00:24:03,480 that work at the companies they want to work at. 492 00:24:03,480 --> 00:24:06,400 And those companies typically are either really, really good 493 00:24:06,480 --> 00:24:09,680 big tech companies or they're really, really good. 494 00:24:09,680 --> 00:24:14,320 High potential, high risk, high reward startups, scale UPS, you 495 00:24:14,320 --> 00:24:17,040 name it. Networking for me is the name of 496 00:24:17,040 --> 00:24:19,040 the game nowadays. If I know someone that works at 497 00:24:19,040 --> 00:24:22,440 a company and I've been working together with them and we did a 498 00:24:22,440 --> 00:24:26,840 24 hour hackathon, for example, then yeah, I already worked with 499 00:24:26,840 --> 00:24:28,400 this person. They already know a lot about 500 00:24:28,400 --> 00:24:30,440 me. If I see a vacancy or if I think 501 00:24:30,960 --> 00:24:33,240 I would love to work at that company based on what I know 502 00:24:33,240 --> 00:24:36,280 from them working there, why wouldn't I reach out to that 503 00:24:36,280 --> 00:24:39,160 person directly? Really, really good engineers 504 00:24:39,160 --> 00:24:41,240 for me. There's always room at companies 505 00:24:41,240 --> 00:24:42,680 for really, really good engineers. 506 00:24:43,160 --> 00:24:46,520 So your hunch might be right. I don't know what your pipeline 507 00:24:46,520 --> 00:24:50,360 looks like. Interview process also can make 508 00:24:50,360 --> 00:24:52,520 a difference, right? If you get a take home 509 00:24:52,520 --> 00:24:56,720 assignment and it's 8 hours compared to a very fast hiring 510 00:24:56,720 --> 00:25:00,000 pipeline where we just jump in a call and I can show you exactly 511 00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:01,880 what the results are of something that I have been 512 00:25:01,880 --> 00:25:04,240 building. Or we jump in a call, you give 513 00:25:04,240 --> 00:25:07,520 me an assignment and you go out of a call and in one hour I can 514 00:25:07,520 --> 00:25:09,480 show you results. It's very different. 515 00:25:10,080 --> 00:25:12,760 So it needs to come from both ways. 516 00:25:12,880 --> 00:25:14,320 Really good engineers are looking for really good 517 00:25:14,320 --> 00:25:17,600 companies and you show that in the type of people that you have 518 00:25:17,600 --> 00:25:20,440 on board and the type of hiring process that you have, the 519 00:25:20,440 --> 00:25:23,920 hiring experience. If you don't have anything and 520 00:25:23,920 --> 00:25:28,640 you're starting from scratch, let's say at a start up, then 521 00:25:29,480 --> 00:25:33,880 you better have a really good network and you better have 522 00:25:33,880 --> 00:25:37,400 really good offers to those networks and definitely leverage 523 00:25:37,400 --> 00:25:40,240 the network of network effects. If you hire a really good 524 00:25:40,240 --> 00:25:43,360 person, ask them who are really good people that you've hired or 525 00:25:43,440 --> 00:25:46,760 that you've worked with and then cold call them and then say I 526 00:25:46,760 --> 00:25:49,120 just hired this person. They said you're amazing. 527 00:25:50,160 --> 00:25:54,640 Let's talk software engineers. How do you see the future of 528 00:25:54,640 --> 00:25:57,240 software engineering? With all the recent news about 529 00:25:57,240 --> 00:26:00,960 large scale layoffs and how fast AI is improving, I'm curious how 530 00:26:00,960 --> 00:26:03,840 people here see the future of software engineering. 531 00:26:04,280 --> 00:26:07,600 Do you think it's still a strong long term career path and what 532 00:26:07,600 --> 00:26:10,440 do you think will help engineers stay competitive and stand out 533 00:26:10,920 --> 00:26:12,160 the future of software engineering? 534 00:26:12,160 --> 00:26:14,720 Now I don't have a crystal ball so I cannot give you a 535 00:26:14,720 --> 00:26:16,520 definitive answer. I can only give you my 536 00:26:16,520 --> 00:26:18,800 perspective. And for me what is software 537 00:26:18,800 --> 00:26:22,200 engineering is changing, right? If your fulfilment we talked 538 00:26:22,200 --> 00:26:25,360 about that is really in the hands on coding part, then that 539 00:26:25,360 --> 00:26:29,920 is slowly but surely in my opinion moving away. 540 00:26:30,960 --> 00:26:34,520 That doesn't mean that other challenges are not as 541 00:26:34,520 --> 00:26:37,800 interesting, something like system design, systems thinking, 542 00:26:38,160 --> 00:26:40,760 thinking about architecture and business context, making 543 00:26:40,760 --> 00:26:45,120 trade-offs in terms of speed and delivery, customer value. 544 00:26:45,360 --> 00:26:47,600 For me, those things are very, very interesting and they're 545 00:26:47,600 --> 00:26:50,720 becoming, they're coming more to the forefront, more to the 546 00:26:50,720 --> 00:26:54,000 plate, on the plate of engineers, not to forget 547 00:26:54,000 --> 00:26:57,120 anything with regards to infrastructure as well as 548 00:26:57,120 --> 00:26:59,600 debugging production issues. For me, those skills are 549 00:26:59,600 --> 00:27:01,800 incredibly valuable. They have always been, and they 550 00:27:01,800 --> 00:27:05,120 might even become more and more valuable moving forward. 551 00:27:05,560 --> 00:27:09,200 So the shape is changing now when we're talking about career 552 00:27:09,200 --> 00:27:15,640 and long term viability. I feel like a few years ago 553 00:27:16,720 --> 00:27:21,160 there was this narrative where this is where you make money and 554 00:27:21,160 --> 00:27:25,480 it's very easy to get into. Do a six month boot camp, self 555 00:27:25,480 --> 00:27:30,160 educate and get into this field and make impact or start 556 00:27:30,160 --> 00:27:32,440 creating things and companies will hire you. 557 00:27:33,320 --> 00:27:37,120 That part I feel like was trying to solve the things that are 558 00:27:37,120 --> 00:27:39,520 quite repetitive. Not every company is doing 559 00:27:39,520 --> 00:27:42,280 unique things. Every e-commerce website that 560 00:27:42,280 --> 00:27:44,840 I've seen has some similar components. 561 00:27:44,840 --> 00:27:47,680 When we're talking about product catalog, product detail page, 562 00:27:47,680 --> 00:27:51,200 check out funnel, payment, transaction order history, order 563 00:27:51,200 --> 00:27:54,320 management, warehouse management, fulfilment, return 564 00:27:54,320 --> 00:27:58,440 process, etcetera, etcetera, loyalty process, all of that is 565 00:27:58,440 --> 00:28:01,160 already kind of established. So when you're building that 566 00:28:01,400 --> 00:28:05,400 from scratch how it used to be, yeah, you just need a lot of 567 00:28:05,400 --> 00:28:08,280 hands to build all those topics, especially when we're talking 568 00:28:08,280 --> 00:28:11,000 about something new, a company that didn't do e-commerce 569 00:28:11,000 --> 00:28:13,360 before. Nowadays when we're talking 570 00:28:13,360 --> 00:28:16,200 about repetitive processes that kind of have established 571 00:28:16,200 --> 00:28:19,840 success, AI is really good at pattern recognition and 572 00:28:19,840 --> 00:28:22,280 something that is established output. 573 00:28:23,920 --> 00:28:26,840 So something like e-commerce, you can use a lot of agents to 574 00:28:26,840 --> 00:28:30,360 help speed up the build process. Now understanding what a 575 00:28:30,360 --> 00:28:34,720 customer actually wants and AB testing kind of your examples 576 00:28:34,720 --> 00:28:38,960 and thinking about where the value is in terms of delivery, 577 00:28:39,080 --> 00:28:43,360 MVP and figuring out where some production bugs are just very, 578 00:28:43,360 --> 00:28:46,400 very nasty. Those skills are also always 579 00:28:46,400 --> 00:28:50,080 going to be there and they can be automated to some point, the 580 00:28:50,080 --> 00:28:53,960 repetitiveness, but there will always be a unique aspect to it, 581 00:28:54,120 --> 00:28:55,840 which means that's where your edge is. 582 00:28:55,840 --> 00:28:59,320 That's where your value is moving towards more so than it 583 00:28:59,320 --> 00:29:03,360 used to be potentially. Coding was never 100% of the job 584 00:29:03,800 --> 00:29:07,560 unless you're at a start up and I know at least one person in my 585 00:29:07,560 --> 00:29:11,520 network that just he's running start up but he just codes 80% 586 00:29:11,960 --> 00:29:15,600 and his start up to be honest is not moving that quickly in my 587 00:29:15,600 --> 00:29:18,320 opinion because he codes 80%. That's what he loves to do. 588 00:29:18,440 --> 00:29:21,840 He doesn't really have the financial how do you say that 589 00:29:21,840 --> 00:29:23,760 strain his back is not against the wall. 590 00:29:23,760 --> 00:29:26,840 So this is more like a hobby start up in my opinion, which is 591 00:29:26,840 --> 00:29:29,040 fine. Everyone has their own thing. 592 00:29:30,480 --> 00:29:33,640 Coding as an engineer is never going to be 100% of the job. 593 00:29:33,840 --> 00:29:35,520 I don't think it's going to be 80% of the job. 594 00:29:35,840 --> 00:29:41,000 I think I did a poll, all right, I did a poll on YouTube, 305 595 00:29:41,000 --> 00:29:45,920 votes. 46% says less than 25% is what I'm doing in terms of 596 00:29:45,920 --> 00:29:48,800 coding. Now that less than 25% is going 597 00:29:48,800 --> 00:29:52,600 to be optimized with agents. And sure, other polls, other 598 00:29:52,600 --> 00:29:54,560 parts of the software development life cycle will also 599 00:29:54,560 --> 00:29:59,400 be optimized with agents, but that other 75% is where your 600 00:29:59,400 --> 00:30:03,320 value is. I think that 25% is not going to 601 00:30:03,320 --> 00:30:05,240 go away. It's still going to be a certain 602 00:30:05,240 --> 00:30:06,680 percentage. You're still going to have to 603 00:30:06,920 --> 00:30:11,120 orchestrate agents. And I like companies that say, 604 00:30:12,080 --> 00:30:14,920 and that's right now. And I'm also very naive and very 605 00:30:14,920 --> 00:30:18,200 hopeful, trying to be very positive that we will do more. 606 00:30:18,240 --> 00:30:21,000 So why would we remove engineers that make impact? 607 00:30:21,400 --> 00:30:23,960 We will just hire more engineers that make impact and then go 608 00:30:23,960 --> 00:30:26,400 faster, right? The sooner we reach a bottleneck 609 00:30:26,400 --> 00:30:29,360 and fix those bottlenecks, the sooner we will be where we want 610 00:30:29,360 --> 00:30:32,160 to be in terms of vision, in terms of outcomes and in terms 611 00:30:32,160 --> 00:30:35,040 of value, because that was, that's what companies are aiming 612 00:30:35,040 --> 00:30:37,400 for, right? They want results, outcomes and 613 00:30:37,400 --> 00:30:40,440 value. So the faster you can go, the 614 00:30:40,440 --> 00:30:43,000 better it is. There is a number of people 615 00:30:43,000 --> 00:30:45,520 where people processes just become a bottleneck. 616 00:30:45,800 --> 00:30:49,480 So when that is there, then yes, you have too many people, so you 617 00:30:49,480 --> 00:30:52,480 might need to cut people. You have to find companies where 618 00:30:53,680 --> 00:30:56,320 I feel like there's a sweet spot where you can make impact, but 619 00:30:56,320 --> 00:31:00,920 there is a lot expected of you. This job has always paid really, 620 00:31:00,920 --> 00:31:03,120 really well. We've just talked about a person 621 00:31:03,120 --> 00:31:05,880 that has been at a job for four years, not really doing 622 00:31:05,880 --> 00:31:09,800 anything, watching Reels as part of their day-to-day. 623 00:31:10,240 --> 00:31:12,360 To be honest, in my opinion, that's unacceptable. 624 00:31:12,720 --> 00:31:16,640 You get, you pay, you get paid a lot, and then you watch 625 00:31:16,640 --> 00:31:19,800 Instagram. That's unacceptable. 626 00:31:20,080 --> 00:31:22,240 If you find yourself in a position like that, it's time 627 00:31:22,240 --> 00:31:25,360 for change. Or just ride that sugar train. 628 00:31:25,360 --> 00:31:28,280 It's not for me. Do whatever you want to do, you 629 00:31:28,280 --> 00:31:30,920 do you. So for the future of software 630 00:31:30,920 --> 00:31:34,720 engineering, things are changing already in hiring processes. 631 00:31:35,200 --> 00:31:37,360 I've seen companies just focus on system design. 632 00:31:38,160 --> 00:31:40,760 That is the biggest part, might be the only part that they care 633 00:31:40,760 --> 00:31:43,320 about. Show me how you design a system 634 00:31:43,320 --> 00:31:46,600 that can start simple and then can scale and based on questions 635 00:31:46,600 --> 00:31:49,080 that I ask on database complexity or compute 636 00:31:49,080 --> 00:31:51,800 complexity, what is your answer? How do you think, How do you 637 00:31:51,800 --> 00:31:53,440 reason? How do we have a discussion? 638 00:31:53,680 --> 00:31:56,640 How do we have a conversation? If you can reason about systems 639 00:31:56,640 --> 00:32:00,120 that you've never built, or you can reason about starting simple 640 00:32:00,120 --> 00:32:04,040 and then growing to more complexity and seeing and 641 00:32:04,040 --> 00:32:07,160 communicating how you still keep things simple, and that's 642 00:32:07,160 --> 00:32:10,520 incredibly valuable. So if that's not something that 643 00:32:10,520 --> 00:32:13,240 you're good at, I know for me, it's definitely something I'm 644 00:32:13,240 --> 00:32:15,520 not great at. It's something for me to work 645 00:32:15,520 --> 00:32:17,240 on. It's something for us as an 646 00:32:17,240 --> 00:32:19,560 industry, as engineers to become better at. 647 00:32:20,360 --> 00:32:21,720 There's a lot of videos out there. 648 00:32:21,720 --> 00:32:24,200 There's a lot of Rd. maps on system design and how you can 649 00:32:24,200 --> 00:32:27,800 take ownership of that. It just requires effort and 650 00:32:27,800 --> 00:32:30,960 discipline. Are most programmers bad? 651 00:32:32,440 --> 00:32:36,920 Is this just inevitable state that any project ends up with 652 00:32:36,920 --> 00:32:40,240 after sometimes or are most programmers just bad? 653 00:32:40,960 --> 00:32:43,360 I don't think most programmers are bad. 654 00:32:44,040 --> 00:32:48,920 I think there is a scale and not everyone is technically cracked, 655 00:32:48,920 --> 00:32:51,040 that's for sure. I think a lot of people are very 656 00:32:51,040 --> 00:32:54,280 very capable. I think the bad ones get weeded 657 00:32:54,280 --> 00:32:57,400 out quite quickly because everything is kind of 658 00:32:57,400 --> 00:33:00,440 transparent as you work, which is quite unique, right? 659 00:33:00,440 --> 00:33:03,760 You can see based on your pull requests and your code commits, 660 00:33:03,760 --> 00:33:06,320 what someone is putting in in terms of output. 661 00:33:06,800 --> 00:33:10,000 And then in terms of quality, you can also judge that from 662 00:33:10,000 --> 00:33:13,120 other people's or you can get feedback from their peers. 663 00:33:13,120 --> 00:33:16,480 So I feel like people that are really not great, they get 664 00:33:16,480 --> 00:33:19,360 weeded out. And also because this is an ever 665 00:33:19,360 --> 00:33:22,440 evolving landscape where you need to continuously learn. 666 00:33:22,440 --> 00:33:25,240 The people that don't have the drive and discipline for that, I 667 00:33:25,240 --> 00:33:29,120 feel like they just themselves realise this is not for me. 668 00:33:29,120 --> 00:33:31,240 This is not worth it. Yes, there's a nice paycheck, 669 00:33:31,240 --> 00:33:34,480 but I feel this anxious feeling of imposter syndrome because 670 00:33:34,480 --> 00:33:36,040 imposter syndrome is a real thing. 671 00:33:36,520 --> 00:33:39,000 And sure there are imposters out there, but I don't think it's 672 00:33:39,000 --> 00:33:41,920 the most engineers. I think what this person is 673 00:33:41,920 --> 00:33:46,000 describing, it's just a sad reality of when times are tough, 674 00:33:46,720 --> 00:33:49,800 when people are have their backs against the wall, and this could 675 00:33:49,800 --> 00:33:53,000 be metaphorically people, leadership teams or an 676 00:33:53,000 --> 00:33:57,080 organization as a whole, then trade-offs need to be made. 677 00:33:57,480 --> 00:34:01,400 So do we go for something fast? Do we go for something risky? 678 00:34:01,400 --> 00:34:05,120 Do we go for a bandage solution for value now? 679 00:34:06,560 --> 00:34:09,080 And those solutions that are temporary, they might just 680 00:34:09,080 --> 00:34:11,040 become permanent. And if that happens over and 681 00:34:11,040 --> 00:34:13,800 over and over again, it doesn't matter who's operating. 682 00:34:14,000 --> 00:34:17,320 They are doing what is expected of them to potentially save 683 00:34:17,320 --> 00:34:20,880 their business from hell fire. So to judge them for it and to 684 00:34:20,880 --> 00:34:23,639 be like, well, these people are bad, I feel like that's quite 685 00:34:23,639 --> 00:34:26,880 naive. I feel like I wouldn't want to 686 00:34:26,880 --> 00:34:29,120 say that to my colleagues or to my peers. 687 00:34:29,639 --> 00:34:33,080 Now I have worked with people that are exceptionally good and 688 00:34:33,080 --> 00:34:36,280 then I do see a skill difference and I think those people are 689 00:34:36,280 --> 00:34:39,400 exceptionally good. But to be able to judge based on 690 00:34:39,400 --> 00:34:42,159 the output, based on a system that is there in production for 691 00:34:42,159 --> 00:34:46,320 10 plus years, that system has also survived 10 plus years. 692 00:34:46,320 --> 00:34:49,440 Not many systems, or I should not say not many, but not any 693 00:34:49,440 --> 00:34:54,800 system can say that. So yeah, give some grace to the 694 00:34:54,800 --> 00:34:57,760 people around you. Ask some questions instead of 695 00:34:57,760 --> 00:34:59,520 judging. That's my approach. 696 00:34:59,520 --> 00:35:02,520 That would be my advice. And learn. 697 00:35:02,880 --> 00:35:04,040 There's always things to be learnt. 698 00:35:04,720 --> 00:35:07,360 All right, Last one, I just got laid off. 699 00:35:07,760 --> 00:35:10,120 I want to take a gap year. Is that advisable? 700 00:35:10,400 --> 00:35:14,840 My answer is no. All right, I was outside of 701 00:35:14,840 --> 00:35:17,480 hands on software engineering for about a year and a half. 702 00:35:18,080 --> 00:35:21,640 This was two years ago and I had, I feel like the biggest 703 00:35:21,640 --> 00:35:24,760 career FOMO you just threw out there. 704 00:35:25,080 --> 00:35:27,320 And the fact that I'm talking to really good engineers on the 705 00:35:27,320 --> 00:35:30,040 podcast, it doesn't really help. And the fact that I wasn't 706 00:35:30,040 --> 00:35:31,920 really building and wasn't really inspired to do any 707 00:35:31,920 --> 00:35:33,480 personal projects doesn't really help. 708 00:35:34,320 --> 00:35:37,640 But I felt a lot of FOMO and things accelerated very, very 709 00:35:37,640 --> 00:35:39,760 quickly. I feel like if you have a gap 710 00:35:39,760 --> 00:35:44,120 year right now depends on what you feel that gap year with, 711 00:35:44,120 --> 00:35:45,880 right? If it's a year of travel and 712 00:35:45,880 --> 00:35:48,480 you're early in career, you do you. 713 00:35:48,480 --> 00:35:51,440 You might get back on your feet is not for me. 714 00:35:51,840 --> 00:35:55,280 I feel like this is the time to invest and to experience and to 715 00:35:55,280 --> 00:35:58,520 experiment and to find a company that invests in tooling so you 716 00:35:58,520 --> 00:36:00,640 don't have to pay those AI bills yourself. 717 00:36:01,040 --> 00:36:04,320 I just heard that GitHub is increasing their multiplier by 718 00:36:04,320 --> 00:36:08,000 9. All right, Opus was I think 3 or 719 00:36:08,000 --> 00:36:12,960 4, depending on 4.6 or 4.7 in the GitHub Enterprise, GitHub 720 00:36:12,960 --> 00:36:15,720 Copilot license, specifically GitHub Copilot, and they're 721 00:36:15,720 --> 00:36:20,160 increasing it to like 27, which means, yeah, the cheap licenses 722 00:36:20,160 --> 00:36:22,720 are becoming expensive. I'm going to have a 9X 723 00:36:22,720 --> 00:36:25,680 multiplier on my license. Something that was 30 bucks a 724 00:36:25,680 --> 00:36:27,880 month is now going to be something that is like close to 725 00:36:27,880 --> 00:36:29,760 300. That's ridiculous. 726 00:36:29,760 --> 00:36:33,120 So you might come back in a year and it might not be affordable 727 00:36:33,120 --> 00:36:35,200 from a personal side. And then because you have not 728 00:36:35,200 --> 00:36:39,240 worked for a year, experimented and rode this wave, no company 729 00:36:39,240 --> 00:36:40,600 wants to hire you. That is on you. 730 00:36:40,600 --> 00:36:43,880 Do not take a gap year is my advice. 731 00:36:44,240 --> 00:36:45,920 Find a company investor yourself. 732 00:36:46,040 --> 00:36:50,000 Find a company that invests in you and learn and grow and be on 733 00:36:50,000 --> 00:36:53,440 top of things. Because right now it's like the 734 00:36:53,440 --> 00:36:55,840 calling games. If anyone watches anime, that's 735 00:36:55,840 --> 00:36:58,360 definitely a reference. It is the calling out there. 736 00:36:58,560 --> 00:37:00,960 People that have little experience, people that cannot 737 00:37:00,960 --> 00:37:02,840 grow and educate themselves quickly. 738 00:37:03,120 --> 00:37:06,120 They will be weeded out. And yes, I believe that 739 00:37:06,120 --> 00:37:08,840 companies will go faster and do more with really good people. 740 00:37:08,840 --> 00:37:10,600 But you need to be really good to fit in there. 741 00:37:10,880 --> 00:37:14,680 If you're not really good then either get lucky. 742 00:37:14,680 --> 00:37:18,800 Network hackathons, open source contributions, meetups, 743 00:37:18,800 --> 00:37:23,480 conferences, network Build credibility, get your foot in 744 00:37:23,480 --> 00:37:25,160 the door. Ace the interview process. 745 00:37:25,160 --> 00:37:29,440 There is still the skill that is required to ace an interview 746 00:37:29,440 --> 00:37:32,440 process that can be taught, that can be learned, that can be 747 00:37:32,440 --> 00:37:34,160 executed upon. I believe that. 748 00:37:35,360 --> 00:37:37,440 But if you don't have the discipline to do that, it will 749 00:37:37,440 --> 00:37:40,200 be rough for you. Let me tell you that it will be 750 00:37:40,200 --> 00:37:43,200 very rough. So right now might not be the 751 00:37:43,200 --> 00:37:47,040 best year to take a gap year. However, if you have a financial 752 00:37:47,040 --> 00:37:50,720 nest egg and you've always been kind of entrepreneurial in 753 00:37:50,720 --> 00:37:53,880 spirit, then that gap year might not be a gap year. 754 00:37:53,880 --> 00:37:56,600 Might it might be a year to invest in building up something 755 00:37:56,600 --> 00:37:59,680 from scratch, right? It could be tooling to find 756 00:37:59,680 --> 00:38:03,360 customers to deliver value quite small, something that you solve 757 00:38:03,360 --> 00:38:06,240 for yourself and that you can then market to solve the same 758 00:38:06,240 --> 00:38:09,320 problem for other people. Those are the best, but I 759 00:38:09,320 --> 00:38:11,600 wouldn't call that a gap year. For me, a gap year is I'm taking 760 00:38:11,600 --> 00:38:13,880 a break, I'm not doing anything. I'm going to travel, I'm going 761 00:38:13,880 --> 00:38:15,520 to experience, I'm going to live my life. 762 00:38:17,680 --> 00:38:20,560 Everyone's journey is unique and you do you. 763 00:38:20,560 --> 00:38:23,640 I wouldn't do it right now. Take a year and build a start up 764 00:38:23,640 --> 00:38:26,200 if you want. If you really kind of feel like 765 00:38:26,200 --> 00:38:29,160 you're in this rat race and you're exhausted throughout your 766 00:38:29,160 --> 00:38:32,520 career and you feel like you're close to a burnout, then don't 767 00:38:32,520 --> 00:38:34,680 push through. That's not what I'm saying, but 768 00:38:35,160 --> 00:38:38,440 definitely think about kind of the repercussions and you can 769 00:38:38,440 --> 00:38:41,400 take a year and invest in yourself in terms of technical 770 00:38:41,400 --> 00:38:43,440 aptitude. You might have some hefty 771 00:38:43,440 --> 00:38:47,680 license fees, but if you can afford that, then why not make 772 00:38:47,680 --> 00:38:50,480 the most out of it? I'm going to round it off there. 773 00:38:50,480 --> 00:38:53,640 This was my Q&A, my Reddit Reacts episode 250. 774 00:38:53,640 --> 00:38:55,720 Thank you for listening. I'll see you next time.