Programming Throwdown - 178: Working from Home

Episode Date: December 3, 2024

Intro topic: Smart homesNews/Links:SpaceX Starship Flight Test Five / Sixhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIKI7y3DTXkShareDBhttps://github.com/share/sharedbOrion AR Glasseshttps://about.fb.com/news/2024/09/introducing-orion-our-first-true-augmented-reality-glasses/Blade and Sorcery 1.0 is outhttps://www.meta.com/experiences/blade-sorcery-nomad/2031826350263349/Book of the ShowPatrick: The Book that Wouldn’t Burn by Mark Lawrencehttps://amzn.to/4fry2XWJason: Masters of Doomhttps://amzn.to/3YxuD3cPatreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=hTool of the ShowPatrick: Balatrohttps://www.playbalatro.com/Jason: Cursor IDEhttps://www.cursor.com/Topic: Working from HomeIntroBackground & WFH experiencesIs it Panacea?Realizing it works better for some than othersInternally MotivatedSchedulingCommunicationsHome SetupDedicated spaceHandling Non-work DistractionsKeyboards, Monitors, Music, … Desk related thingsThe specter of RTO ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Hey everybody, we are here with a new episode of programming throwdown and it's patrick and i talking about working from home um but before that we're going to jump into a little bit of intro topic uh for people this is their first time listening uh you have some news news and links of the day book of the show tool the show, and then we will dive into our main juicy topic, which is working from home. And it's going to be interesting because this is one of the few topics where Patrick and I disagree. So we're going to have a little bit of a friendly debate here about working from home. But before we go into that, I want to talk about smart homes. I remember hearing about smart homes a really long time ago

and thinking, actually, here's where I first heard it. Remember when Bill Gates, this is like, I think in the 90s, he showed off his home and as he was walking through the house, the lights are turning on, the sound was following him. Yeah, I remember thinking that was amazing. This is what a billionaire does. Actually, I had one before that. It was Carousel of Progress and then that. Oh, man, Carousel of Progress is so good. So just for people who don't know, Carousel of Progress is this amazing ride at Disney.

It's still around. I took my name there. Amazing is a bit of an oversell. But yes, it is a ride at Disney World. Yeah, I guess it's dated now. It's like in the future we will have microwaves you know um but at the time it blew my mind and they um uh you know they go through the progress of of like the american story and stuff it's really cool um at the very end uh

they talk about the future which is now the past which is kind of funny to think about but but in the future we'll have an oculus quest effectively and um and they had a uh smart uh was a smart oven yes correct um and then the guy uh the the you know the the father of the show he he um he says something about like the sun is 900 degrees or something and it causes the oven. What was that? The score. He's like getting his score. He's like, I've got 800. I've got 900.

Oh, yeah. That's right. And the oven thinks he's setting the temperature and burns the turkey. It's hilarious. But yeah, you're right. I remember seeing that and thinking there's no way an oven would be able to understand what you're saying and and here we are um then i went through a phase where i thought you know the problem is that it's too expensive to retrofit a home and so like you're never actually gonna really see any of these things um which i think was true for a long time. But now,

you know, people are buying new homes and the technology has been around for a while. And so I'm actually starting to see more like smart things in homes, which is really cool. I personally went through and redid all the switches in the house to go through uh alexa so now i can tell alexa to uh you know turn off the lights in this room or turn on lights in that room and i have them on a schedule so you know when the kids forget to turn the lights off in the morning it turns all the room lights off every weekday morning um and it's been pretty awesome and it's been actually pretty easy to set up yeah i actually don't think homes are becoming more smart i think actually a lot of this stuff is uh figuring out how to retrofit them it seems to be anyways but i kind of like that it's kind of like smart tvs i kind

of have a beef i hate smart tvs because i hate my really nice tv okay great so i like the tv but the smart part i don't know i don't want to see ads when i start my tv that's not only that it's like two three years old and then it's laggy is i'll get out and they force you into the like there's no hardwire base os that will just like let you switch to whatever you've plugged into hdmi and so it ruins the modularity and all of a sudden your nice expensive tv feels junky which probably intent somewhat intentional but um the smart home stuff i guess can be on a very big spectrum from like frustrating to amazing i also uh retrofit a lot of my lights i

did it with kind of a hard hard mode so i did it with Lutron Radio Raw which is you actually go into the electrical box open it up rewire in the switches and sort of switch them all over and it adds dimming capability but you there's like some features locked behind like a training class you have to go to them and get or whatever

so I had to do some kind of like workarounds to and I bought all my switches used on eBay because there are like physical actual switches rather than buttons so they're like really nice and they color match to all the other light switches in the house so I made it yeah I have I have the

same thing except I got the Amazon basics version which connects to Alexa and all that but it's the same in the sense that you have to pull out physically pull out the switch and it replaces it with as you said a button yeah so this one has still an actual switch uh and it will work if the internet you know it doesn't connect over wi-fi so it has its own like backhaul radio network you know like whatever um and then you have like a hub in the house and then the hub bridges into ethernet so that you know you can expose it in in my case siri and google home and whatever

um for for that optionality but same thing you know setting schedules and you know connecting various things fans and whatever yeah none of us neither of us have done i'm assuming you haven't done like a smart fridge or a smart stove or anything like that no i've seen a i've seen an amazing stove um where you set instead of setting how much heat you want you set the temperature so you're like i want this base plate to be 350 degrees and apparently if you get it to the right temperature then you don't need cooking oil like you could throw an egg on and if it's the right temperature it'll like caramelize the outside and the egg will just slide around oh that's cool i i don't know but i've seen the ones where you

know you tell it like what kind of meat it is and approximately you know how much it weighs and you stick a temperature probe you know kind of on the inside and it's measuring basically the temperature gradient like it knows the outside temperature with the temperature probe and then it knows like the internal temperature. And so it's trying to, you know, kind of intelligently guide. It sounds cool, but I just don't know. Like I normally keep toasters in ovens for more than a decade. I don't know, like in a decade, is that going to age well or not yeah my uh my parents have one of those they have like a ninja and uh it's actually amazing like neither of my parents uh i hope you're not listening mom are pretty good cooks to be honest um but this thing is like you can't mess it up like you basically take a raw steak you put it in you put the probe in you press a button

and then like a perfectly cooked steak comes out and uh even they can do it so i've been really impressed so nice but i have seen people on the internet with you know home assistant setups and stuff that uh have insane scripts and all i can think of is like what happens if something were to happen to me and i end up in the hospital or whatever and i'm not home and like my spouse my wife like you know she can't figure out how to like debug the fact that like the light switches aren't working or you know air conditioning keeps going to random temperatures and so I do actually think there's like a sweet spot in what parts you want to be just a little bit better than a dumb thing can do but actually you can go overboard with you know rfid tags and scanning in and a whole procedure that could just like be very fragile and i i would shy away from any i've

not embraced any of those things myself yeah the other thing which is kind of adjacent to smart home is uh i have like these smart tags on all of our keys and so every uh every three months i have a little calendar notification for myself that's like charge all the tags and they're all they all take like a little micro usb and i actually bought a hub that has like an octopus uh of of micro usb flanges that come out and i plug in all the keys into them to recharge little tags but that's been a life changer because like some so many times like oh i can't find the keys it's like hang on you know it's like you're captain america you press the button it's like you're captain america you feel like a hero at home all right i should be i should be an

advertisement for uh etex but yeah i will say i'm the one who has to go on to all the apps and ping various devices to get you know help help finding stuff but i remember growing up that was always a thing i can't find this i can't find that you can't find the remote okay all right jumping on to news you have the first news yeah i wanted to cover this somebody pointed out to me the other day your conversation got to to rocket launches in space and they're like patrick you're the one who always seems to know all of these things when's this happening whatever i was like okay well i feel attacked but you're not wrong um anyway so so i feel like we had to cover it uh on here which was since last recording which

has been a while uh spacex had their uh ift5 launch where they sent a spaceship and the and the booster up and landed the booster back caught it on chopsticks at the spacex headquarters there in uh in texas and then the the starship went all the way almost all the way around the world they went to the indian ocean and splashed down and they actually caught it on a buoy camera. It was very cool. If you haven't seen it by now, I guess you're probably hiding from the news.

Um, but like definitely go watch it is very cool. And I just wanted to, you know, talk about that. That is a huge engineering fee. Like, you know,

just in general, like all of it, people didn't know this, like cost to orbit. I still think, I know, I think I've said this before probably on this show, but you know told people there's a few things i think will just like completely transform stuff in a way we don't understand and i think really really low cost like per mass to

orbit is one of them because you can put lots of things up manufacturing systems whatever you can like start to harvest asteroids i just think like it's very hard to predict all of the things that can happen if it's cheap and frequent access to to space um just my personal opinion even starting to see that with starlink and like there was some natural disasters some hurricanes here in the united states and people getting internet fast and you know being able to request assistance and that kind of stuff is is just you know transformational and now even they were turning on cell phone to satellite direct communication for calls um so there's just all sorts of things i think we're not we're going to be in a future where there's just constant internet connectivity for everything as a given

is just like the low barrier and that's already pretty transformational but then also you know just like i mentioned you know all the other things that that kind of come on um abundant power like almost infinite power would be another one that i think people underestimate how transformational it'll be just while we're on this topic anyways but going back i had a question about the harvesting asteroids because i've played like x4 and ever space i've played a lot of video games where you are harvesting asteroids in space and i always wondered like is that a real thing like do asteroids have rare metals like to so they have enough rare metals to justify going and harvesting them so rare metal is like rare on earth in a cheap and abundant you know like way to access so it's not it's not a thing

that would happen today and i think people have tried to make it happen because like it's on the verge of affordability that's one of those things like you can try to be an early person and someone will be the first but it's also true that in whatever 50 years it'll just be a no-brainer right like hey to go out to that you can get propellant up and then use that propellant to go out to the asteroid belt get an asteroid look for an asteroid whatever bring it back it's not going to be like humans of the old west you know like going out and panning for gold kind of stuff i don't think and it'll be people locating one bringing it but imagine if gold went from like a relatively rare thing

to cheaper than, you know, maybe not like iron, but cheaper than, you know, just normal metals or whatever. And so you would drop the asteroid in like a lake or something? Like you would position it? Maybe. But no, I mean, I think if propellant, which is a problem because it's heavy and bulky, if you could get it up, get the asteroid,

bring it back to Earth orbit or mine it with things and sort of refine it to some degree, and then you would bring it back just in a capsule or whatever. Not the whole asteroid, but the gold. I mean, we bring back, imagine like what, you know,

you four humans in a dragon capsule come back down safely. Imagine if the capsule was instead, I mean, really heavy, filled with gold. That's gold. That's a lot of gold why can't you just drop the gold in a lake because i mean it won't burn in the atmosphere right i mean oh yeah well it'll turn into plasma and then you'll have like disassociated uh gold spread all over the earth oh i didn't realize uh i didn't i thought the

melting temperature of gold was like a lot higher than that it's really low yeah i mean almost anything like you know we get hit by rock rocks all the time and you so you lose a lot of it so i i don't know maybe some people have some ideas on doing that or if you very controlled the entry somehow wait so maybe okay is it kind of a dumb question but like if if gold destroys and like how does the spaceship not destroy when it comes in the atmosphere like is this something stronger than gold that's uh not a single dimensional question right like oh i see yeah i mean gold is not a very strong thing period um but uh yeah i, the bulk of it is by shedding, shedding heat.

So you get these ceramic tiles is the most common thing. And they're, I guess, somewhat ablative. So like the parts on the outside, they're very insulative. So the heat doesn't pass in ceramics themselves have a very, very high temperature. And then I believe they also use some forms of like parts of it is, is burning away. But that reaction of burning the outside away is actually cooling the stuff underneath uh oh interesting it's very careful but for a metal you don't get that right metals are very conductive so if you burn something on the outside it would

just all that all the heat would just come through it they're hyperconductive so like you could in theory like like surround a huge chunk of gold in space with like ceramic plates and then throw it like build a capsule around the gold or put it in a capsule and yeah land yeah okay that makes sense that is super cool man so we'll see um you know and i think that's also uh you know controlling the speed using propellants i'm not saying that's going to be five years i'm just like you know it's it's very cool to see somebody you know almost exponentially improving our access to to space so shout out to any spacex people who may be listening to this and like cringing i do feel free maybe we'll have oh yeah spacex people hate us right now i have a few friends there and uh yeah they work uh incredibly hard so they're very

dedicated and yeah huge props to them um and so upcoming will be the test number i guess are numbering at six so in the next couple weeks as of recording so it may be already done by by the time you guys listen to this episode but they're gonna kind of attempt to do most of the same things but you know just a little bit better um and so build up you know repetitions and learn and you know measure better sensors try try some you know small modifications but but definitely very cool very exciting um and then the thing that i mentioned to people that i guess a lot of folks missed was landing the booster back on the pad with you know the chopsticks and eventually even the starship back uh means you can basically set it back down fill it back up again and shoot it up like this whole thing where you don't splash it down or land it on a drone ship or a you know landing pad and have to like ferry it

means you literally just like that and that is the plan they just like lower it back down onto it is the launch pad just lower it back down on the launch pad pump it with propellant again check to make sure nothing's broken and send it up so you can sort of send a single ship up multiple times a day um at sort of like production and so with a dozen ships doing you know even two launches a day that's 24 flights to space a day think about how much stuff you could put up like it's crazy yeah that's wild um super cool man um yeah i mean there's so many things i could go there but we'll just in interest of time check out the video if you haven't seen it i've seen it it's it's really amazing um and uh yeah huge props to those folks um all right my news first news is share db there's a really cool library of uses for a

variety of projects and the basic premise is um maybe i'll just start with git as an analogy right so you know with git you have uh commits and like you could make a commit uh don't consider yourself yet with branches just for a moment but like you could make a commit and then if i go to make a commit uh to main it will say oh you can't do that because you're not on the latest version you need to fast forward and so you do a git pull and so it will try to you know if someone's made changes while i was working it'll try to like you know undo my changes make their changes and then redo my changes um and most of the time that works except it could be a conflict like if if you uh deleted a line and i added some characters to that same line that's now deleted now we have a conflict right because you know i'm

modifying something that you deleted and so it's not obvious what we should do there like maybe it should be undeleted or maybe my modifications are now irrelevant right it's not clear and so git will warn you i'll say hey we have a conflict and you go into your code editor and fix it, right? This is all stuff that everyone knows. But you could imagine like an autonomous, like a rule-based system. So for example, for the example that I gave, you could say, well, if there's a conflict and one person deleted a line and the other person modified it,

then just delete the line. So you could end up like defining rules um for how to govern these conflicts without any human intervention now it might not do what you want but it will not require any uh human in the loop right and so this is the premise for something called operational transform which is effectively just a set of rules such that you never end up in a state where you don't know what to do. And so Google Docs, any of these collaborative things, if you've ever used Notion or any of these tools, they all work under this premise like if if if patrick and i are editing a google doc together as we literally are right now and uh and patrick deletes a line right as i'm modifying it google doc doesn't pop up and say oh i have a merge conflict it has some logic to handle it and i don't know off top

of my head what it does probably just deletes the line but but it will handle it right and so as you can imagine that handling it is not trivial um there's all sorts of weird edge cases that could happen and that you have to think about and so this library share db is actually made by the guy who made the sharing featuring Google Talks. So a bit of background, this guy built this way for people to collaborate, you know, using the browser and operational transforms, all of that. Google bought his company. That turned into a product called Google Wave that was managed, in my opinion, poorly as a product and subsequently failed. But then Google Wave was absorbed by Google Docs to make what I think is an amazing product,

which is Docs and Sheets and presentations and all that, using that same technology. So that gentleman has since left google and built an open source version of the same technology and this was a long time ago like i think eight years ago he left google and i'll have to look up his name but um and so he's going to continue to work on it and make it better and better and better um and so share db is the latest version of it i've used this in a few different projects you know if you have something and it can actually work on json now too so imagine like you have a json object that represents the state of your app and you want multiple people to mutate this state um you can use the share db library and it will handle like the web sockets and all that stuff

for you um so i'm a big fan of library i've used it in a few projects i said i think it's really fun uh definitely it's easy relatively easy to to get started with and uh yeah if you ever have a project like this i would uh recommend it. That's really interesting. I tried briefly to search, but I was having name collision with the name of the database who wrote it. But that's awesome that, like you mentioned, it feels there's probably a bunch of apps that end up needing to solve the same issue. And so having a sort of like backend that just kind of helps you do it is actually really cool. Yeah, totally. All right. My next news topic is something that's been off and on in the news, something the topic we've covered, which is augmented reality and virtual

reality. And this one just got me really excited uh some advance happens every few years and then nothing happens uh and something happens again and i get excited again and i just i just want it to be a thing and i don't know when it was will be which is that uh meta talked about their orion augmented reality glasses i think they kind of said that it's too expensive they have no plans to make it into a product at this time but they wanted to kind of show off uh what it was presumably you know get some press around it uh show that they're still working on their kind of metaverse ideas but um you know if you haven't seen any of the coverage about it definitely check it out from an engineering and technology standpoint it's's very, very cool what they are attempting to do.

And again, like I said, I think there's been Google Glass, you know, these, there was, you know, various startups have attempted to get into this space. Feels like this one is now the front runner of like people who got closest to the vision of, you know, you walk down the street and you just have overlays uh on your glasses and as someone who's worn glasses since i was uh pretty young i have always been like there's this space where you could just put stuff like yeah i wish i could could see things and and you know still still not so hopefully in our lifetime uh we'll sort of get this uh you know a technology to come through i just think it would be be pretty cool. In my opinion, other people disagree, but I think it makes so much more sense than smartwatches or your phone,

you see so many people now just walk around like looking down at their phone. And just from a situational awareness thing as a pet peeve, I was like, out the other day, you know, doing a run, and I ran past so many people that were outside walking, presumably to get exercise and just literally staring at videos on their phone. I don't want to throw stones at tiktok but uh anyways it's just like it got to me in some like old man get off my lawn kind of way like you're outside walking around like have headphones in have like whatever but like you totally aren't paying attention it's it's a little dangerous and you know also like if it was under glasses two things one maybe they would keep more awareness and second i wouldn't know and so the world would be a better

place uh anyways so shout out for uh meta those orion you know augmented reality glasses i think are really cool uh you know there's obviously ways we still have to figure out like you can't actually like project black over something right so i actually mask something out um is is still a challenge but uh i'm excited for having just you know even a very basic just very easy to use not super expensive little bit of display you know in my glasses even just like a blinking light or something like let's just let's just get like lower our expectations a little i don't really care just something that'll uh maybe i can put one up in my smart home you know a little light that flashes when someone's at my

front door or something i mean i would definitely get rid of my smart watch if i could just get notifications on my glasses so it's like one less device i'd have to wear yeah i it makes sense to me but it's just a it's a hard problem and i think smart people are working on it i i wish them luck yeah totally um all right my second news blade and sorcery 1.0 is out um i totally love this game um you know a lot of games when they get to 1.0 it's not really that different than 0.99 you're like okay well you know, a lot of games when they get to 1.0, it's not really that different than 0.99. You're like, okay, well, you know, congratulations to you. But for me as a consumer, it really doesn't matter.

But this game had a major, major overhaul in 1.0 that made it even more fun. Oh man, I mean, I've put just countless hours into this game. So I'll tell you my routine really quick. I might've already said this on show, but I have these things called heavy hands. They're about like three pounds each and they're basically metal gloves. I almost said gauntlets, but they're not really, they don't protect you at all. gloves that you wear on top of your hands that just add a lot of weight and uh i'll put on these like really heavy gloves uh you can still hold the the uh quest controllers with them and i'll basically swing swords and and you know fight bad guys and stuff in this game and that's like an amazing workout you will sweat bullets uh if you wear these heavy gloves and try and swing a sword around for an hour. Up until 1.0 it wasn't really even I would consider

a game in the sense that there's no progression, there's no hook. It's basically like you go in an arena and enemies show up and you sword fight them. But it wasn't really, it was more of a tech demo uh than a game um 1.0 makes it truly a game um there is so many fun things you do just for example uh not to i won't spoil the ending or anything like that but but

there's a mini boss that you fight and he's got like a kind of like if you ever played the game star fox or any of these games where the enemy has like a weakness like a certain point that's a weakness so the boss has a weakness point but it could be like way up high and and the mini boss is uh extremely tall so like 20 feet tall. And the weakness might be like on the top of his head. And so you literally have to climb on this boss's back while he's like thrashing around and trying to get you off of his back. You have to climb on his back, get to the top of his head and start whacking him with a sword. exhilarating um i actually never get seasick or anything like that playing i'm unfortunate maybe it's just too many years of playing uh pixelated doom and these other games in the 90s but uh i'm somehow immune to it um but i i could imagine like pretty much anybody else getting sick on this because this guy's like throwing you around and you're trying to hold on and you're trying to like wall climb uh rock climb this this giant thing so um extremely extremely fun uh they added like skills so you can like there's a skill

tree um i put all the skills into the athletic stuff so i actually don't do any of the sorcery part in blade and sorcery i just put all the skills into being able to like hit people harder with the swords um which goes along with the exercise part of it um i found it extremely fun and it is totally worth uh whatever they're charging which is pretty reasonable i don't think it's like a 60 game or anything i've so i haven't tried this one i'm curious if i should i tried the gorn people were like really into gorn and gorn is good too okay i don't like that so then maybe i won't like this one by a correlation this is a million times better so it's it's directionally the same as gorn so like if you didn't like the whole premise of gorn you might not like this one but this takes it to the next level for

sure maybe i just i you seem to be into very skill skillful uh vr stuff i've never i was more do like the puzzle puzzle games like uh escape room i expect you to die that kind of stuff has been been my go to oh yeah the like let me get better at the game itself. I just, yeah, I haven't, I guess I should keep, keep trying. I think partly I don't get super, super motion sick, but I do a little bit.

And so the ones that are more aggressively like move around and, uh, you know, be fast and quick. I feel like you see the limitations of your VR system quicker, um, because of update rates and stuff versus, you know,

slow and I can move move but it's a more applauding pace isn't isn't as a problematic yeah i mean so i just checked it's 30 dollars uh i think you can refund it within 48 hours so you could always grab it and then say like oh i'm vomiting my brain's not um uh yeah so so do you use a broomstick handle as your sword like is there a danger of whacking your tv or any other people in the room that's an interesting idea i never thought about that that would be pretty cool someone should make basically what i've what i've done but with a broomstick handle so like you know a really heavy glove that goes on the outside that doesn't interfere with your thumb so you can still play right and then a broomstick handle for the sword so you can whack yourself in the head I know

that I know they have them like 3d printed like gun rifle like attachments for some of the shooting games and stuff there they don't look like guns they're just degenerate but you know hold the hold the handles a proper spacing apart or feel a little bit like a pistol grip or whatever for for some of the oh cool i've seen online i i as a 3d printing person you kind of bump across those things sometimes so i wouldn't be surprised if someone has you know iron pipe but no i'd probably break a snap but like uh yeah anyway something heavy to attach and really get a workout yeah it's super fun actually if you if you had something really long you'd get that cantilever force right so i was gonna say that heavy you just need something with those olympic weight lifting weight attachments to the end and you could put like a 10 pound plate you know a foot out from you oh that was so hard you couldn't like the torque would be

you know or go a meter out and then you do like a pound at end of a meter and you'd just be like oh and then it's like i have to explain to my family why there's like a olympic weight-sized hole in the wall i guess i mixed my i'm gonna make people. I said a pound a meter away. You'd have to 500 grams a meter away. There we go. Yeah. We're in America. You have to do it in like dove farlings. It's a half stone at a furlong distance. All right. Book of the show. Mine's an actual legit book this time. That is The Book That Wouldn't Burn by Mark Lawrence. I've recommended a series from Mark Lawrence before, and this is the first book in a series. I'm not actually done with it yet,

but I am enjoying it so far. I will say for me personally, it was a bit of a slow start. I kind of just went off of, you know, recommendation that it was an author and it was getting good reviews. And I didn't even read the description. I kind of just went off of, you know, recommendation that it was an author and it was getting good reviews.

And I didn't even read the description. So it was a bit like trying to figure out what it was going. And then I kind of got excited. And then I was like, when to prepare for this and read the summary. And I was like, oh, this was just like literally the back of the book. Okay. Anyways, but definitely been an interesting parallel storylines that intertwine telling of a kind of interesting world. I don't know the full details yet, but one of those things where rather than tell you all of the stuff up front, you're just kind of learning as the characters sort of go through their story. And there's some interesting ideas uh and sort of a

mysterious world that's being inhabited and you're trying to figure out you know how similar or dissimilar uh is this and so i definitely check it out book that wouldn't burn by mark lawrence if you're into that kind of like science fiction fantasy if you've read something from uh from mark lawrence before uh very cool so it's the first book of the trilogy? It is the first book in a new series. Okay. So yeah, you have to be prepared to wait for the second. Oh, okay.

Yeah, fair point. I guess I should have told people that the library trilogy, I think the first and second book are already out. And the author, yeah, the third one isn't yet, but this author mark lawrence has been able to finish multiple series before so it's not their first rodeo yeah right that's not not name calling any specific patrick rothfuss anyways that they can't finish their series um if you're listening patrick if you're here for you,

man. Yeah. We get back to work. I've heard much worse things said to him. So I feel, I do feel bad. I do feel bad for them. Yeah,

totally. No one likes to be stressed to be, to do something creative. I mean, that's like, people probably have no, no idea what we're talking about. My book of the show is also a book. It's called Masters of Doom.

And it is a biography of John Carmack and John Romero, two of the founders of its software that created Doom. It's awesome. I mean, I'm a huge fan. I put countless hours as a kid into doom into commander keen uh into uh so many of these shareware games uh kingdom of craws is actually mentioned uh they work closely with scott miller who made kingdom of craws um so it was just like a total nostalgia trip uh if you're not you know a millennial uh maybe this

won't relate like it uh but uh man it just really threw me down memory lane um so fun i am about two-thirds of the way through it um and i'm just having absolute blast listening to this book. One of the interesting things is they really talk about, some of the people wanted to make a really gory demon-like game since the beginning, but they started off making Commander Keen and making kind of some of these silly games but you know they always had this big vision at least on the artistic side

you know on the technical side John Carmack's always been kind of like head and shoulders above all his contemporaries which is I think pretty admirable and they talk a lot about that overall I thought it was uh i think it's a fantastic read i'd recommend folks to check it out i have read that book i was actually looking

quickly i was for sure i probably recommended this but i have not so uh yeah good good recommendation um on uh masters of doom like you said i actually didn't play a lot of the games that were talked about there, but I kind of knew about them. But reading about, I don't call it like the dichotomy between folks

just trying to push for artistic versus like technical and John Carmack, you know, still today, I feel like is around and, you know,

we were talking about VR and had some stuff going on there with Meta and Oculus and the work he was doing there. But, you know, we were talking about VR and had some stuff going on there with, with meta and Oculus and the work he was doing there. But, you know, I think definitely like for a lot of people, a very formative figure in the programming space and sort of the way he

approached things and the way he did things and just, just kind of going for it and, you know, kind of a rare, a rare talent there. But, but definitely an interesting read even if for nothing else it's kind of interesting to start to see those retrospectives of things

that are largely software or programming right there's not that that many of them where programming is really the i don't know star of the show and and here here it kind of was and so uh we're kind of getting to the point where you can have those historic lookbacks. I also did happen to see recently randomly some recommended book lists from Elon Musk, not that endorsement of him, but this book was on his list. So I think you're in, I guess, maybe you can, that's correlation, right? If you guys read and recommend the same books, then you're going to have the same outcome and wealth wealth so yeah i will eventually be able to catch something with chopsticks i mean i've been trying basically my whole life to pick up a dim sum i can't do it

that's true i ain't really bad at actual chopsticks so maybe i should engineer robotic chopsticks maybe i would do better that's right all right times for tool of the show well i did a book for book of the show i'm not doing a tool for tool of the show that's okay uh i'm doing belatro which is a very weird thing i don't ever say it it's just one of those words i always see but b-a-l-a-t-r-o which is a i guess you call it a roguelike uh yeah that's right roguelike. It's been around for a while on PC, but it recently had mobile releases on Android and iOS. And so you can now play it mobily, which is very bad for my free time for a while.

I'd been playing it on my Steam Deck actually, and it was bad for, you know. Anyways, get his fancy Steam Deck and all I did was play this card game. Anyways, it was much better on my my iphone uh but i've been playing it it's one of those like perfectly finds the bounce of like it's random and you can do as good as you can and you still just lose and i play kids with play games with my kids sometimes and they think they're just amazing and i try to like express to them you realize you you took a very bad strategy you

needed a specific very unlikely outcome four times in a row to win and you got it like yes you won but like i don't know that you should be super proud anyways this is that game sometimes you're just really really bad draws or whatever and you can lose but you can always just be trying to improve your probabilities and i feel like with these games, you can't overthink it. You just got to kind of go fast. There's no don't get analysis paralysis. You just kind of zip through it and try to do your best. But definitely been having a good time.

I think it comes in. I got it off of Apple Arcade or whatever. So I didn't pay for it. But I believe it's not super expensive on the various platforms. So if you've never heard of it before or never tried it, I would definitely give it a shout out for that plane ride, bus ride, train ride, sitting in the car, having a few minutes. Definitely not while you're using the restroom.

Definitely don't use your phone when you do. But those are the perfect opportunities for getting in a few hands for Metro. Okay, small digression here okay but sorry you can use your phone in the restroom totally fine no really are you joking or are you no no i'm sorry i i was just like go ahead okay but you know what you cannot do you cannot use your laptop in a toilet stall and then you definitely cannot put the laptop on the ground on the toilet stall like i saw this one time at work and i was like this is like a whole new level of disgusting like this is like uh um like those people who for some reason like spit in the urinal i don't understand that either but like this is like even worse than

that this is like oh i need to put my laptop on the floor of the toilet stall like what are you thinking i i let's just i can't i just gotta keep going let's keep going i don't want to know where you're playing your games from i don't know where you're playing your games from. I don't want to know where you're slacking me from. Just like, let's just keep it. It's fine. Yeah, we don't need to go scatological on this show. Oh, no. Yeah, don't bring your toilet. Don't bring your laptop into the toilet stall.

Just don't do it. It's not that important. That code can wait, you know. All right, my tool of the show is, and actually I thought an unbelievably amazing tool it's called cursor it's a ide um i i guess because of whatever limitations they couldn't just make this an extension on visual studio code so they had to actually fork wild things like for example i renamed a function and it was like hey you know you called this function and like all these other places all

over your code base you want me to fix it for you i was like sure um that i think already exists you know in different different things like we've had that refactor option in NetBeans a long time ago. But then it just kind of got more and more sophisticated to where you're changing things and it's hopping to different points of the file and other files and like, hey, you should do this, you should do that. And I wrote a doc string for a function. And when I was done, it jumped to the next function

and started a docstring for me. It's like, hey, it looks like you're in docstring writing mode. Let's keep writing docstring. I thought it was awesome. I think it's a real threat to Copilot and to these other tools, and so I would imagine Microsoft's probably hard at work to make the actual Visual Studio Code do some of these things. But yeah, I hadn't really experienced IDE like that before.

So it's totally free. I think it's a usage-based model. So if you code enough, you'll eventually hit some kind of a limit. I haven't used it enough to hit any limit. But at that point, or maybe it's a time limit. I'm not totally sure. But at some point, you'll have to start paying for it. But they have a pretty generous free tier. So I totally recommend folks trying it out. It's pretty wild. I haven't used it, but I will say some of the stuff you're talking about was discussed. I was listening to the Lex Friedman podcast and he interviewed the team at Cursor, the folks that are there. And they talked a bit about why fork Visual Studio Code, why not a plugin? plugin. I also talked about some of the difficulties in sort of the human machine interaction. And then also like how to trade off various models selection between each other for potentially different tasks and just even the suggestion diff flow and how that would work. So if this

is a topic that's interesting to you, I'll give a shout out to that podcast. It's definitely not a short podcast. i guess ours isn't very short either um but if you're interested they it is an interesting discussion they also talk a little bit about you know how to tell if lms are are kind of like intelligent what problems do you think they could or couldn't solve like what's the extent um so i thought that that it was an interesting listen so yeah totally i've i've uh i'm definitely in this camp where for whatever reason i um uh i haven't had as much oh you know it's because i've been reading books in the car instead of doing podcasts so i've been doing masters of doom and some of these other

books but uh because of that i've been accumulating notifications of things that I want to watch. So I have on my phone all these notifications of all these episodes of Lex Friedman. And I don't want to clear them, but I also don't seem to have enough time to get to them. Yeah, I do. While I'm exercising, I tend to listen to books. I haven't done listening to books. Books when I drive, podcasts when I exercise has been my balance. Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head. I need to actually exercise.

I'm not going to. I'll save that diatribe for another time. All right. So let's jump into the topic working from home. So let me set the stage here um i uh originally got interested in working from home around 2018 2019 when we decided to move to texas and so basically uh you know this is pre-covid pre all of that and um you know there are undoubtedly a lot more tech jobs in the Bay Area than there are in any city in Texas. And so working from home seemed like a nice way where we could

move closer to family and all of that, but still I could keep the the jobs I really enjoyed. At the time, it wasn't an option. And so I was in the middle of interviewing for in-person jobs in Texas because I was pretty committed to move when the pandemic hit. And I remember I was actually sick. I don't think I had COVID. I think I just had a regular cold, but, but I was sick, uh, during the time when they said like, this is the last day you can come into the office. And I was, I was super sick. And so I actually couldn't even go in and get my stuff. And so it took me like probably half a year to get my stuff out of the office because at some point they just completely shut it down. Um, and, uh, um, and so at that point I decided, Hey, well, we're all working from home here.

I might as well make this, make this move. So, so we did move to Texas. And so I worked, uh, worked from home for a while. Um, and so, you know, as did a lot of other people um um and so then at some point uh companies opened back up and now what we're experiencing is a big debate around uh rto or return to office so notably you, Amazon has said that their employees have to come into the office five days a week. They even went a step further and said,

if you're in a satellite office, if you're like the one person in Nashville, even if you're at an Amazon office, that's not good enough. You have to go to where the rest of your team is. So even people in the office have to move to a different office. That's maybe, I think, the most extreme version. Then there's a whole gradient. I know Dell said you can't get promoted if you're working remote,

which I thought was actually not very smart. I feel like that creates all sorts of weird side effects, my opinion, but they did that. And then all the way to on the other end of the spectrum, companies like Figma, actually, ironically, Twitch, which is owned by Amazon, really taking a stand in the other direction and saying, no, you know, remote is here to stay, remote is better. And we will never give up on remote, really taking a stand there. And that's kind of where we're at right now at this real crossroads. What's your take on that, the current situation? Yeah, i think you have a decent summary of it i'll

say we you know used to do a lot of interviews and i think a lot of the companies we talked to had strong opinions on remote work and i was i think a lot of those were even before before covid i will say i think the tooling around remote work and the expectations and some of the stuff i think we're going to try to talk about today um is is evolved a lot in the last you know since covid and and sort of everybody went and had to go do it for a while i think there's a better understanding of of what it means um and there are a lot of companies that were built sort of ground up saying we want the best people no matter where they are. We're going to build up a culture around it.

And I do actually think that that's really important. But the other thing I'll just say to bring up here in the intro is there are two, at least two very important pieces of work from home, which is company and the company's culture and the company's expectations, but then also personal. And just like there are many, many kinds of companies, there are many, many personal situations. And so I think to be reductionist about either, that there can only be one company, well, I mean, I guess insert a free market argument here, but also to have a belief that everybody is the same. And because you have a certain way that you are, it's really one of those things, almost one of the most extreme ones I've seen where really taking time to communicate with others and empathize, maybe their situation, their health, physical setup, their family situation, their whatever

could just be so divergent from yours that it's very hard to understand their desire to be in the office or not have to come into the office. And then, you know, as Jason mentioned, I guess to like muddying it all is those things being forced to change or changing over time um anytime i think there's a change it's also uh difficult because people's ability to handle or deal with change can can vary and so um i think all of those make it a a topic that's not one size fits all but i do think there's some things to talk about that you know if they're if you're going to work from home full-time or part-time there are some i think things you can do

to to be aware of to help yourself to to sort of think about it and i i do agree that there's a spectrum from you know remote work all remote work hybrid plans and i think going forward with high confidence i feel I can say they're all probably going to meet more diversity, more variance in the kinds of companies and jobs available than there was pre-COVID. Pre-COVID, it was almost always in office expectation for full five days a week or more. And very, very few companies were fully remote. But I think in the future, I think that variance will be a lot higher. I think you'll see a lot more different kinds of companies and even new models and ideas

popping up. And so, you know, I think we'll have in that way that will hopefully be better because you can kind of choose based on your personal preferences. Yeah, that totally makes sense. So yeah, I think maybe we should start with kind of our background. um so you know both of us were uh from florida my family ended up moving to texas your family's still in florida and we were working uh you know thousands of miles away in california and i do think that we should just acknowledge that that's tough like i mean there's a lot of people who do it it's not uniquely our problem there's people whose families are on the other side of the planet right that's even harder um but but uh i think you know as you like have kids and then try and raise those kids they take a lot of time and the more time you put in the

more sort of nurturing uh uh life that they have so of course you're really compelled to do that and uh and so that that's when you really start wanting to have more family around so i think that it does tend to the work from home benefits do tend to skew kind of uh older um and then on the flip side you know it's it's good uh you know before you have a family or any of that it's nice to go into an office where you have a family or any of that, it's nice to go into an office where you have, we went into an office before we had kids where we could benefit from like having other people around and just all the sort of passive communication that goes on there, the sort of water cooler chatter and all of that. So definitely there's, as you said, there's a lot of different factors.

I think like sort of spoiling the ending here, I think that we do have to take sort of a relativistic approach and say, look, like different people are in different situations. And the company just needs to be able to handle those situations on like a case by case basis. So blanket things like all remote people are fired, like what Amazon is doing, or they don't get promoted. Or on the other case, to the other extreme, we're not going to pay for an office. And so you will never have a place that you can go to that's your place to work. So, I mean, these are two extremes that I think are just not going to help not as helpful as finding some middle ground i think yeah i think you summed up the basis and motivations about family situations being a key reason i think for both of us of why of why the the situation ended up um where we did i do think there is something to be said for sort of software only companies or parts of the company versus companies that have

a physical or manufacturing or business component or i mean i think it can also be reductionists like i think where you and i both have spent most of our time working are companies that had very large software only organizations or only software organizations and very little hardware integration components. And so those things can be very different than, you know, places that have manufacturing lines. And so I think from that way, it's also hard for a one size fits all approach or people to kind of understand the needs of both. And then like you do mention, I do agree that I think earlier in your sort of career, having camaraderie around for a variety of purposes and mentorship and that kind of stuff, there's less rigor in your schedule and it can help a lot to be in the office.

I do agree with that. And I think Facebook has come up and said some stuff about that or meta, I guess, where they had some, you know, a little bit of a different handling for junior engineers

versus more senior engineers. And, you know, over time, they've sort of worked on that. And so I do think there's some, you know, merit to those discussions. And've sort of worked on that. And so I do think there's some, uh, you know, merit to those, those discussions. And I, and I do really think that, but I also think a lot of people don't realize when you're, you're sort of work from home, that internal motivation, the psychologically and being really brutally honest with yourself and saying, Hey, if nobody's around, like when everybody's

around, there's that peer pressure, right? Like, Hey, even if you have an object, like people are kind of seeing you working, you're seeing other people working. There's like a deep internal level of like, I should also be, you know, working. And it can be true if everyone's just playing around or goofing off at the office. That's also a distraction. But seeing everybody work can be really motivating for you to do work as well. And if you're home, are you going to be able to do that? Or are you going to be distracted by the stuff in your life or your situation that are going on or the things outside or the noises or going for a walk or whatever, right? Like, are you actually going to be able to sit down and focus no matter what's

going on? Or, you know, I will also say it is difficult. Even, you know, I work from home and for instance, this week there was a partial holiday. Even, you know, I work from home and for instance, this week there was a partial holiday. I don't know how you call it. So I was working, but like my family had off and some people work, some people had off. It was, it was sort of mixed. And so I was sitting at my computer. My family was off doing something, you know, more or less fun and around the house and then out and about and coming and telling, and I'm sitting here like attempting to get my work done and they were respectful to me but am I able to be motivated enough to stick with it and get what I need to do done even though those distractions around and if you're in an office that motivation is sort of there for you because you're there right like yeah kind of cut off from it you've

already committed uh versus if you're sitting there and hearing video games being played or hearing you know stuff happening are you still sitting there and hearing video games being played or hearing you know stuff happening are you still sitting there and typing your code with the same focus uh or are you not able to have that internal motivation is something only you can answer and it's going to be different for everyone yep yep totally okay so i think we got we did a pretty good job covering what it is what we should cover now so you, you know, if you're not working from home, you're going to be working with people who are working from home.

And so it behooves you no matter what to understand the best, like the do's and don'ts of working from home. This can help you if you're managing people, or even if you're a peer to somebody who's working from home, you can always offer this advice, or you can suggest that they listen to the show. Uh, but just knowing goods and bads, I think are really important for this. Um, so, um, the first thing we have on the list is scheduling. I think that this is extremely extremely important um some kind of general

things i've done that worked really well is um you know i did uh finally kind of like color code my calendar i put a bunch of personal things in my calendar so for example if i'm working from home on friday and i have an intent to to uh smoke a brisket on friday while i'm working from home on Friday and I have an intent to smoke a brisket on Friday while I'm working from home, which is a great idea, highly recommend it. I will actually set up tiny 15-minute meetings for like, okay, take the brisket out and wrap it and put apple cider vinegar on it or whatever. Like if you're thinking like, I'm going to do my laundry while I'm at working from home or these other things, just make them explicit. You know, if you're ashamed to like put these things on your calendar where everyone can see it, you can make them private meetings,

you know, so people don't have to see. I don't really care. So like sometimes I'll go to a meeting and they're like, how's that brisket coming? But, but I think being intentional about your time can just be transparent that part is less less less important but what is important is that you can look back and say yeah you know this this day you know i i uh i spoke some brisket i did some laundry i went for a run i did all these things but you know i worked from like nine to nine or something or 9 to 7. So I did the hours. I just took breaks in the middle and it works out. I think it's easy to fall into a trap where you start running a lot of errands and doing a lot of other things. And then at the end, you just don't know whether you really like put in enough time.

And I guess like a meta point, it doesn't really matter how much time you put in. What matters is getting your projects done, right? So you don't have to put in eight hours a day, but, but, but I think that it's all kind of connected.

It's like, you can end up in a position where let's say a deadline slips, then you're going to kind of wonder, did I just not work as hard as I should have on this? And so that's where you go back to your calendar and say, like, oh, no, I actually was, you know, I did work a ton of hours, I just miscalculated how hard this project is. Versus, you know, when you're at work, you have this like, because you're driving to work and back, you have this like general sense of how much you're working

and when you're at home you lose that sense you have to replace it with something explicit i absolutely agree on this on the scheduling front and i think the reverse as well too is having a schedule with your family as well so that it is a mutual respect thing like hey from this time to this time like you're gonna see me i'm around but i'm i'm i'm not here like this is this is time i'm dedicated but then there's also times when i'm not and so i'm not doing work in this block and this is family time and you know it's the end of the day so that you don't end up accidentally working you know 14 15 16 hour days because you just didn't plan otherwise.

And I do think you got to try to strike that balance or even just burn burnout. And so I think scheduling is important on both fronts. I also think scheduling is maybe a bit more of a important topic and making sure that you connect with team members that you need to. And really, even if it's not going into a meeting, scheduling that, like, hey, I'm going to have a email conversation or Slack or connect with this person and do this thing because there's no, oh, I'll just do it when I see them because you won't see them, right? Like, you're not going to bump into them. So those things have to uh sort of planned and and sort of thought through and i think that it can be a bit we were having this i was explaining to someone what crm software

was because they were like oh i don't even know what salesforce is this huge company and they're do crm and i don't even know what crm is that's explained to me like oh that sounds dumb that's just a spreadsheet and i was like wow okay whatever uh but but this part one part of it is managing your relationships with other people at work and building up maybe that's talking very condensed about work stuff but maybe it's also having casual time to to connect with people and understand who they are and sort of like build up that that rapport with people um and it has to become intentional and so scheduling those things as well um i think can be a bit weird at first but it's definitely important yeah i totally totally agree i think um you know looking back so and i

think we've kind of like uh foreshadowed this but you know i found working from home personally to be really difficult i wasn't like i mean the work got done but i feel like i didn't you know communicate uh as often i just i just didn't build the same relationships so like when i look back at my work from home time um you know i still have closer relationships to people that i worked with in person before the pandemic um and so i've spent the past two months working in person two three months and uh i feel like i have a closer relationship to some of these people um than people i worked with remotely for much longer and again it's this is a spectrum so uh if you worked with me remotely and we're close friends and we talk all the time on on sms this is obviously not directed to you uh but but

just in aggregate i feel like i didn't develop as many as close relationships and and i think a big part of that was uh just not being again explicit so just you know especially uh especially with people above me in the chart you know i i never really felt comfortable setting up a meeting with my boss to just talk about the weather like that never really felt okay or even like my boss's peers or even other peers who are higher level than me. And so because of that, I didn't really build any of those relationships. And the relationships I did build remotely were, you know, people who like either reported to me or were like kind of reported to my peers, etc.

So I do feel like you have to get out of your comfort zone and uh understand like yeah you know my boss is definitely busier and has more responsibility than i do that's why he's my boss but uh but that doesn't mean that you won't take like 15 minutes to just talk about the weather over zoom that was that was i think in hindsight i kind of like a mistake that I made. But, and then Patrick, I think you've been working remote, you know, same time I have, but you're still working remote. I think you've found, you've really thrived remotely. Yeah.

I mean, I think for me, so you, we should say, I guess you started working remote at a company, you moved to a new company where you were more or less remote, and then you've kind of moved on. So I've been at the same company the whole time. So I think maybe I'm a bit rose-colored glasses because I had built a lot of those relationships ahead of time and then brought them remote with me. So I haven't had to rebuild them. I had rapport with almost all of the people um that i work with and even even my management i do think you have a great point though that people should be aware of is being very careful in hybrid situations if you're remote and other people are on site especially if you imagine a manager that's on site and has some people that are remote and some

people are there is uh i think there's a natural uh sort of difference that can build up there and some managers may be very good at sort of handling that and others may not be and you just got to be real realizing that like jason's saying like you need to make sure that you're intentional about building rapport that people on site wouldn't need to be is that fair or unfair well like i tell my kid it doesn't matter life's not like it doesn't need to be. Is that fair or unfair? Well, like I tell my kids, it doesn't matter. Life's not, it doesn't need to be fair or unfair. It's just the way it is. And you can either realize it or not.

It's your choice, I guess. But spoiler, it's the way it is, is you're going to maybe have to be intentional about some things that aren't. And that goes into, if that's part of why you don't like it, yeah, that's fair. Oh, that's different.

You said the word fair. Anyways, but yeah, I think that the, you're absolutely right. of why you don't like it yeah that's fair um oh that's different use of the word fair anyways um but yeah i think that the you're absolutely right like building those those relationships is critical and i think it feeds into everyone's talk about next it's just communications and i think if you're uh for companies that are fully remote you know comes like obviously i really got to figure it out um but remote work also generally comes with people in different time zones or different schedules that are even more divergent than being in the office. And so I think figuring out a culture around your most people have now sort of the the meetings, the sort of Zoom, Microsoft Teams, WebEx, whatever, you know, video conferencing, there's email, you know, and then there's some

instant messaging kind of thing, whether you do that over text or Slack or the Teams product or whatever, right? People Discord, people have these sort of like, I guess, three modalities, as well as sort of wiki page editing or whatever. And I think figuring out the right way to communicate what you're working on, what your availability kind of is, communicating where you leave off on something if you're working on, what your availability kind of is, communicating where you leave off on something if you're handing it off or what you need people to do or how like what you're looking for help with or, you know, hey, I need this, you know, PR to be reviewed, whatever those kind of things are and being very, you know, deliberate about all of your communication or the very vast majority of

your communication becomes written as opposed to casual in person. I'll just, when I see them, I'll tell them. And as someone who continues to work remote, despite working with people who are in a more hybrid situation, it's kind of funny to hear people say that, right? Like, oh, I'll just tell them when I see them. And it's like, okay, but for me, that's, that's like, I might have a meeting scheduled with them, you know, once a week or that they're in the share, but otherwise I'm not going to see them. So to me, if I need to tell someone something, I have to type it right now, like, or, you know, plan to type it because otherwise, you know, that communication won't take place. And so I think just across all of those things, finding the right way that people are aware of the work

that you're doing so that there's not a conflict to be resolved, right? Like making sure there's no overlap or we're doing the same thing. So being intentional about communicating what you're doing, when you're doing it, how the work is getting done. And it's, I found there are some people that I work with are very good about expressing their status over, you know, in team rooms or in personal messages proactively. And then other people really have to be sort of prodded to give a sort of update. And as if you are the person who's in a remote day or remote, you know, working situation permanently, I think making sure to be proactive about communicating what you're doing and what you're working on so that not that like people like

jason you know it's not getting your 40 hours in it's just like that people are aware that you're there and the tasks that you're taking on and that they feel they know situationally where you are and that's something you have to to sort of pursue yourself yep yep totally agree um i think um you said something that really stuck with me um too much oh the uh the uh yeah the whole like i'll see them you know i'll just tell them when i see them i think that another important thing there is to keep notes because you know you can't really there's certain things that like aren't practical to do immediately like for example the example you have is perfect where you know it's not just something i can text somebody it's something that requires like a

face-to-face conversation um but it's not practical for me to uh just set up a zoom call right now with some person because who knows what they're doing like you would like in person you could just walk over and say hey blah blah um but over zoom like it's a little bit more challenging because uh the person might not even get your your zoom invite in time if you did it for five minutes from now right so what i did instead is which i which i thought was a really useful and i've carried this over even to when i work in the office is just keep notes um you know i use a remarkable pad um but you could also use uh you know a kindle scribe or you could use uh google docs it doesn't have to be a physical thing paper and pencil i haven't heard of this thing but apparently some new invention um but yeah just keep notes i think that's important and and that

um um and that way you know when you do meet with somebody you have like four things that you can cover and so um you know it ends up being more efficient. Yeah, absolutely. I think I use a notebook and pencil. I don't know. I don't know. Half the time, I don't think I ever go back and even look at what I wrote or be able to make sense of it. But just helping you and jotting down, like you said, a few notes about things.

I do think there is a culture in office as well, just to be balanced about it, where some people are more okay being interrupted, others less so. And this is for a variety of reasons, but you can kind of read people, you know, like see, like, do they look like they're really busy or do they look like they get interrupting? But it's a difficult problem. like i have a certain priority of thing that i need they have a certain desire or lack of desire to talk right now and like this is unspoken but it is a non-verbal communication in person uh that that sort of happens and needs to be normalized there uh online it's like you said it may like people don't know like am i just sitting doing

code am i just doing training and they are free to ping me i'm happy to pause it and talk to them um you know it's really difficult people don't know you know kind of what you're doing and so i try to express to people hey for me if you want to meet with me you know again here are the hours i'm generally available so you can generally expect me to be available within this time, but I might have meetings. So just send me a message and say, hey, I want to chat. And then I'll either tell you, yeah, let's do it now.

Or like, hey, here's the next time I can kind of do it. And that you should never feel bad about asking because I won't feel bad about telling you no. And or not now, or here's the next time I can do it. And that they shouldn't feel like making it very clear hey you can't see me so just ask me and you know most of the time i'm able to to make time to talk to them yeah definitely also you know setting up uh kind of like social things that's another kind of thing i would put under communication um you know when when i was in person usually the org uh leader you know the director whoever would set um some kind of event

like oh it's taco tuesday i'm gonna go and order a thousand taco or i don't know 200 tacos for like the entire org um and uh or you know hey this is uh this day or let's do you know board games on thursday or whatever it is um but online uh when you're working remote you know i think you might have to be the person to set that up um and it's important to have that kind of social time um and and it follows more or less the same rules as in person where not everyone has to go to Taco Tuesday. You could continue to work at your desk. You don't need to do that. I mean, I wouldn't recommend that. I think socializing is actually really important. But I'm saying you don't mandate, there's no mandate to go to Taco Tuesday. And similarly, there's no mandate to hop on a social Zoom call and play like Web Hangman or something or some little fun game.

So you don't make it mandatory, but I think having that space for people is really important. Yep, I completely agree um and then the i think the last major thing we wanted to cover is uh if you're going to be doing hybrid work or work from home i mean i think planning your space you're going to do the work in is is very important i mean i think that there's this like oh i'm going to just do my work from the couch or i'm going to, you know, just be wherever. And sometimes I do that, but it's very rare. I think that it's a lot better to have a dedicated space that, you know, even if you go work from those other places, you can at least, you know, have the place that you go to focus and your brain knows this is the focus place and you go there and that's where you focus.

And it may be a space that's used for other stuff at other times, but during the days that you're working from home, or if you're working from home all the time, maybe it's a permanent setup. And again, like I mentioned in the beginning, depending on people's life situation, there may be a lot easier or harder for them. But for me, it's been very important to have, this is my desk. I've spent time trying to curate it into the the way i want and we can maybe talk about some of what that that is but um when when i'm sitting here doing this and i always have to you know tease the people to people in the house with my family is like

if you hear me clackety clackety clackety on my keyboard like that's not the time to just ask me casually something you know whatever like yeah maybe wait um but i think having those those things is is very critical yeah totally i mean i went through a period where basically um like at four o'clock the kids would start like banging on the door to want to come in and play video games so so we have all of the video games in the same room that i do all my work in which is uh spicy yeah not not a good idea because because you know the kids want to play games and we give them like a half an hour a day during the week of of game time um so so uh it's not like they get more time if they come earlier but of course they just really want to do it as soon as possible, right?

So that just creates this weird situation where I would start acquiescing and saying, okay, at four, I'm going to go work in this fair room on my laptop. But then it's not very comfortable and you kind of lost your context. And so finally i realized like okay no uh you know from you know whatever until five o'clock uh you know the the office is off limits like i have to focus and uh that made things easier i totally agree having a dedicated space is is huge if you could do it yeah and so i mean when people go to the office generally and and this can vary some people get stipends for uh you know an allowance for setting up their home office many people don't um but you

know in the office you often are provided you know keyboard monitor that kind of stuff um but at home you know that's not necessarily true but i don't know i i still probably have better setup than i probably did at the office. But you know, I have a standing sitting desk, even though I sit the vast majority of the time, but at least it's sort of micro adjusted to where I want. And I can stand up. And so I have a nice standing sitting desk, I have my computer up on or my monitor up on a monitor arm. So the desk underneath it is nice and clean. And I think having that space that just, I don't know, maybe other people are like, no, I'm not really, I don't really care.

But I have speakers because I don't need headphones in my home. So I have speakers set on my desk to listen to music at a appropriately ear sensitive volume, but still sounding good, a webcam for doing my, my stuff. Um, and having it all set up really nicely and in the same spot. So every time when I go into a meeting, like I know where things are, I have the stuff I need, I know what I'm going to do.

Um, but yeah, and I have a, I did get a nice chair. I think a lot of people have really crappy office chairs, but, uh, Oh, wait, really? Wait, tell me more about this. Cause I, I'm definitely in this camp where I think I have a crappy chair, but like, how do you, what actually makes a chair good? For me, it's one that's like adjustable.

I'm not going to like go in, it's a really nerdy deep topic, but I mean, you go on the sort of Reddit and see a lot of common ones that people are suggesting and offices close all the time. I personally, I mean, and when I was in the office, I sat in conference rooms all the time i personally i mean and when i was in the

office i sat in conference rooms all the time and that had random people sitting in the chairs and never bothered me so for me buying liquidated office furniture which you can find on ebay um for like 20 of the price you know like 80 off or most cities of a decent size have like office liquidation warehouses which is where i got my chairs from you can go in and sit in them um and so there's like you know herman miller chairs that that people really like and they can be customized and be very nice but adjustable seat height adjustable seat depth adjustable you know like lumbar support uh and where i live it's very hot in florida so i have mesh backed chairs so there's no like cushion so that there's airflow and i don't get a sweaty back um but you

know all those things are are important to me uh to be really comfortable else i get back pain um which goes back to the exercising um you got to make sure you exercise but also have having a comfortable chair because you're going to be there a lot and in the office you often move meeting to meeting if you have meetings and generally move at home it's very easy to sit down and then not like leave your chair uh for for vast majority of the day right so you're sitting in the same spot even more than in the office and having those intentional get up and walk around times is actually actually important but but having a nice chair to sit in because you're going to be there longer in my opinion or at least for me i was there longer uh is super important yeah that makes sense another thing that i would

put on the list is uh is going outside i noticed that like uh when i work from home like you know like okay so general my general strategy i've talked about this on the show many times, but just to recap, is I'll work a ton of hours during the week. Like if, if, if things get busy, I will put more and more and more hours during the week, but the weekends are totally off limits. Like I'm only going to work on the weekend if something's truly on fire, there's like a major disaster. Um, but because of that, like, like yeah i'll come in on monday it'll be a lot to do i'll work monday or tuesday or wednesday and at some point around wednesday i'll realize like i haven't left the house in like 70 hours or something and it'll just be out of control and so um and so yeah one thing i would recommend is is uh um you know do like a fake

bike to work or something where you bike for like five miles and you just end up back at home but like it's it's like your bike to work you know or do do something where you uh spend some time outside i am fortunate in that i get a lot of natural light in the office. So it's not like I'm not seeing the sun or anything like that. But I think being outside is super important. And even if you're there on the weekends doing a lot of fun stuff, I think it's still important during the week to just take some time, go for a walk, do something where you're going to be outside. So what you're saying is you need to touch grass? Touch grass every day and not like a chia pet on your desk. That doesn't count. That's cheating. That's a cheetah pet.

No, I agree. I think in the personal thing, as you mentioned, I sometimes will take account of when was the last time I... So I do go outside a little bit to your point to that level. But when was the last time I went somewhere that wasn't just my house? And sometimes it can be, I won't admit to how long, it can be a very long amount of time. And I'm okay with that. But people around me ask, am I okay? If they figure it out or realize I haven't gone anywhere, but like, hey, you haven't been anywhere in a certain amount of days or whatever. Are you okay? Oh, yeah, fine. I have plenty to do here or whatever. And like you mentioned, I exercise. So I do running. So I run outside. I'm out in the outdoors, but I won't

necessarily go anywhere else and like you said when you're at work you tend to drive to work and drive home that's at least a thing but you also tend to at least i did stop on the way home sometimes if you need something from the store or whatever versus for me i don't know yeah if you could get it delivered you can you know i have other folks who are out and about more so my wife will pick stuff up or whatever but i do think like you said it's important for your brain to go somewhere else from time to time yeah i mean kind of related to that um one thing that that i found really useful was to go to different kinds of meetups and different events um and basically create synthetically that kind of water cooler chat

where um you know it's it's a bit like strange because like not your co-workers it's other tech people who work for presumably other companies unless you happen to have co-workers nearby who are going to the same meetup um but you know it gives you that sometimes you just need to like be with a group of people with some kind of topic and just kind of talking and grabbing some pizza. And so you can kind of get that same kind of energy by finding like-minded tech people in whatever city you happen to be working in. um i think we covered a lot of home setup stuff you know i definitely for better or for worse don't really like pay a lot of attention i guess one thing i do have is um a laptop stand so the laptop screen is higher i was finding that was kind of like you know more hunched over um so i do think getting the screen at the right eye level will save your back i think

that's important um and uh oh what about like how do you so i'll tell i'll talk about my setup but then you can tell me yours because i'm feeling yours is probably way better um but what i have is i have my uh gaming desktop and i have my work laptop hooked up to the same peripherals you know same keyboard mouse you know monitor etc and so i never quite got the whole kvm thing to work i think i bought one and then returned it to amazon so what i have now is i have a display port splitter and a usb switch switcher and so i have to press two buttons which is kind of annoying but if you do it right you can actually press both at the same time but basically i press one button and it switches over to my laptop display port press a different button and my laptop now is

controlling the mouse and keyboard and webcam and all that um and then when i want to go back i press the buttons again um and so i found that to be pretty useful because you can get one nice ergonomic setup and use it for both things i mean i i guess it's gonna depend situation. I did have a setup very, very similar to what you're describing for a while. Actually, like almost identical. But my current one, I just have two identical desks side by side. And so my gaming and like sort of family PC is like on the same desk, same chair, not the same monitor.

My work monitor is a little bigger, a little nicer. And I have a laptop stand that I actually have my ipad on which is what i use for video conferencing um so it's like a custom you know built device doesn't matter what i'm compiling or doing in the back end my my videos run smooth um but yeah i i have two side-by-side setups that are very similar but not not identical um i use a split keyboard split mechanical keyboard um versus the the regular desktop is a conjoined one because not everybody has gone through you know the just the the sitting there for the same length of time and making sure to figure out the right finger habits and stuff so other people use that computer i'm the only one

who uses this computer um and so yeah i i have a very similar setup but i have it basically duplicated and that's a luxury right like i i understand that's not possible for everyone but it works for me and i really like it yeah um i guess that kind of goes into our second to last topic which is uh you know handling distractions i think we talked a little bit about this uh with with family distractions um i think i mean just to to recap i think being distracted or like maybe in other ways saying it is kind of like you know in you know interleaving you know personal stuff and work stuff some amount of that is probably fine like probably you know even more productive than going into the office and not being able to do any of those

things but again it's just really in my opinion it's really about measuring measuring all of that now there are some things that are truly distracting like if you have a dog uh that keeps bothering you or something like that um that's a true distraction but i think most of the most of the time it's really just we're conflicted with things that we need to do in a around the house that are just so much more apparent you know like um like even just simple things like oh a trash is trash is full. I see it now three, four times more than I did before. And so you have a tendency to just spend a ton of time on these things. Yeah. And I think like getting deliveries to the door, you know, being there kind of is an

advantage of being home. And I tell people sometimes before there was any work from home and, you know, my company didn't have a hybrid. So even people who are in the office or still have some days that they're they're home um i it's very like there's so much expectation of like getting deliveries or purchases or whatever like people want you to be home and then they don't necessarily keep the hours they're supposed to be there um i had a repair person come the other day they were like six hours late and i had called several times like to try to figure out where they were they got upset like i'm gonna be there and i'm like

but if i wasn't gonna be home all day like this is gonna be ridiculous and i slotted time for you to be here and then like you're not here um yeah and so i think absolutely you're right i think having careful diligence about like what happens what what are you going to handle because come on like some stuff just needs to be handled right like some part of your house on fire or something you probably should take care of it um you know that meat has to get tended to it's got to be delicious yeah i mean that jet ski is not going to drive itself listen listen no i'm just kidding but you're right things like the dogs children like so you know my kids are uh you're right. Things like the dogs, children, like, so, you know, my kids are,

you know, kind of middle school age during the summer, they're home. That's not fair to others for me to, you know, change or behave differently, right? Like when they're home, that's how I kind of view it. So I have to set up a way to interact with them where, you know, like, hey, I can be here. I'm here to help you. But like, you also you also you know can't like these times are times where i'm doing focus and so i think absolutely right like distractions and people especially if you're if in a an asymmetric thing if everybody's work from home i think everybody kind of can do the same thing and it'd be similar but i think also being cognizant if some people are in the office and you're not then like you kind of don't want this like constant awareness that you are you know doing all this random stuff and they're here trying to get your attention or be focused

um and so you know yeah like i said i think a lot of that can be very difficult but you got to be i think intentional about it and making sure that you don't have lots of noises you have a space that you can work from or or we didn't talk about it but i mean it was a thing before now kind of like with we work but kind of went away but shared spaces where maybe you're remote but you still go to a place that has an office and actually yeah let's for a lot of these things let's dive into that actually because i forgot actually a whole chapter in my story, which is related to that is, as I said, I wasn't crazy about working from home. I did change jobs. And actually, the biggest reason I changed jobs was that it was an in-person job um and this was a few years ago so um like around 2021 or so and um and it was a we work so there were about eight of us uh the the whole company was 1600 so this was like a tiny fraction of the company but it was enough that they could get a um an office

and so it started off as eight i think it grew to around like 12 or 13 people obviously it's all sorts of random people at the company so it's not like i had a whole team there or anything like that um but the we work thing was was was interesting you know it it's sort of a good middle ground where you know you don't have like a shared space you know it's like uh uh when you go to the water cooler there's people for all sorts of different companies you have a kind of like your one room that you have to lock you can't you don't really know the people in the other rooms at least not in the beginning so you can't really trust them so it is kind of like a weird situation i would say um i don't think it's uncanny valley territory you know like i don't think it's actually worse than being at

home or being in the office uh uh you know it's not like something that's like strictly worse than both of those um but it is somewhere kind of in the middle where it is not quite that office feeling, but you do get some of it. And I like, too, that you get the commute. And it's also close to, at least in my case, that WeWork was close to downtown. So I'd have a lot of different events in the evening where I could leave my car parked at the office and then go and hear someone talk about uh you know golang or something um and uh so so I think it checked a lot of those boxes um uh and then just I guess to finish off the story the company I was at got acquired and the the parent company that acquired us shut down all the we works which was kind of personally

kind of a bummer uh but i understand why they did it um but oh yeah so getting back to your point the we works are are pretty nice and you know if you do uh feel like you want to go in an office and you have a small coalition of people at your company who feel the same way and are close enough together, you can recommend a WeWork. I basically did the whole thing in a sense like I found the WeWork. We dealt with all the pricing. I ordered the monitors for everybody. So I basically did the whole thing from scratch

and actually ended up not being as expensive as i thought it would be um you know for a company it was very reasonable um so so yeah something to consider do you think it's something that an individual could do like if they're just in this place by themselves can they just like rent a space there yeah a person on my team at my last job did that they got a we work for themselves um i know this because they asked me if we could reimburse them and i tried and we couldn't but so i'm sorry about that if you're listening i tried my hardest but um but but uh they end up paying out of pocket it was actually pretty reasonable um i don't remember the number also they're in new jersey so i'm sure it's it would yeah it would vary wildly but um but yeah i do know people who have done that and um um you know

especially like in his case i think he has two kids who are under four i think and so he's like i just can't be it's just it's just yelling all the time at home so use it an apartment so um so i think it made a ton of sense for him and yeah i'd recommend that as a thing folks can can try out there's a bit of a wide-ranging uh bit of tangent laden a podcast today but but i you know i think we we covered it from all aspects so it's good it's bad yeah like anything maybe like uh one last thing to cover is the future like where do you think this is going do you think rto is going to be enforced by a lot of companies you think a pendulum is going to swing back what do you think the future is going to be this is hard i mean i think like we said, this existed for a long time. So I think that there is an economic advantage, in my opinion, for companies to pursue not just the same solution.

I think there's comfort in sort of doing the same thing as all your other industry peers. But I mean, I think there's economic advantage to companies who are willing to do things different and try different things and offer stuff that's off normal. Or for very large companies, it doesn't even have to be the whole company has one policy, right? Like, I think that's an advantage of big companies. And so I think we will see more variants. I think we'll see a lot of struggles with companies changing. And I think not all the time, but sometimes companies change policies. And this has been true before and it's true now around remote offices and remote work. I think famously, you and I worked at a place that changed how many remote offices they wanted to have. And this was a big thing. And is that part of the economic cycle?

Is it part of trying to reduce headcount, save expenses, consolidation, tactical? It's very difficult to disentangle these things because even if people say why they're doing something, always say it. So I think you'll continue to see ebb and flow and people pointing at reductionist views of why that happened. But I think we'll see more variants i think as video technology gets you know just more accepted and more reliable percentage of people who do remote work you know let's call it at least two days a week or more probably going to continue to be pretty high, but we'll probably stabilize for a while until we see some other change that drives it differently or an innovative, really big

up-and-coming company that people try to fight against really shows a different way forward, I guess. So I think we'll probably be stable roughly where we are for a while. And I think it kind of makes sense. I think the belief that some people do it, but for the most part, not like everybody's going to be van dwellers and we're all going to like be in a van and travel around like it's remote work, but it's nomadic, you know, virtual nomad, you know, van dwelling, like whatever that you see these things from time to time. Like, oh, I worked from Southeast Asia and I worked from the ski resort in the winter. And I were, and for all the reasons we just said, I actually don't think that's

anything except a vanishingly small minority of people because- Yeah. I was talking to somebody who did this for five years and they got actually really burnt out of being a nomad. And so, yeah, I agree. I don't think it's sustainable. I think all the distractions around getting a reliable internet connection around, you know, maybe if you run your own business, I mean, there's always exceptions, right?

But the distractions, if you have a family, if whatever, like it's just, even I talk to people, you know, because I'm remote or like the place I work offers remote weeks. People are like, oh, I'm going to take this while we go on a family vacation to Europe. And it's like, okay, so all your family is going to be like doing cool things in Europe because, you know, we're in the United States and they're going to travel to Europe, going to do fun vacation-y things.

And you're just going to sit and work in the hotel in a much worse than normal place to be working, cramped, bad internet, you know, whatever. And like, you think that's going to actually be productive. Uh, and most people kind of agree, they realize it. And so it, it's very rare that someone does that. Yep. Yep. Totally agree. It's, it's one of these things that like, it sounds cool, like until you really think about it and it's like okay do i want to work for five days in this like cramped hotel room just so that like i could ski you know saturday and sunday and maybe wednesday evening or do i want to work in like a very ergonomic friendly place where it's quiet

and then just take two weeks off and go skiing every day like it's just the other one just doesn't make a lot of sense when you really try it out um cool yeah so i i guess i'll give my prediction i think that um i think that we'll reach some kind of you know stable equilibrium where where will be a couple of remote folks on each team. And so no team will be able to no team will be all getting together all the time. And so it's going to be kind of expected that like, hey, when there's a team

meeting, there's going to be Zoom there and there's going to be accommodations made for remote people in every team meeting. meeting, there's going to be Zoom there and there's going to be accommodations made for remote people in every team meeting. I think that's going to be the norm. I think that dam has like completely broken and there's no way, there's no reason to do anything different. I think for people managers,

that's where I could see companies companies continuing to draw a firm line. And so it could get to the point where you say, look, you could be an engineer, maybe you could be a line manager. But if you want to get that promotion to vice president, you have to move across the country. And so we might see a situation where, you know, like empty nesters, like relocate. It's like, okay, you know, I've, I raised my kids, they moved out, I'm ready to be a vice president, I have to move to the headquarters. And so kids go to college and you end up going to headquarters of, you know, company X or whatever it is. Because that seems like where they're going. Although there was that notable case for the Starbucks CEO, I guess, doesn't live in Seattle. And there's like a big hoopla about that. So yeah, I do think that for certain roles,

and obviously Patrick talked about manufacturing and things like you just literally can't do remote but but of the roles that are um you know entire that can be done remote there's going to be a certain set of those roles where there's just continuing to be pressure to be in the office i actually find that research is one of these roles ironically there's this feeling that oh if you're a team of researchers that you have to be around the whiteboard together which i think is actually completely wrong i think actually as someone who worked in research for many many years i think research should be like one of the first things that you distribute um but uh but we'll have to see how that plays out i think there's still a lot of unknowns but i think we both agree that remote work is not going away.

And I think that people should feel comfortable moving to, and I'm just going to pick, no offense to Idaho, but moving to Idaho and being able to get a tech job remotely. I think that people should feel confident. If you're wondering whether to make that move to Idaho, if you're still going to be able to have a job, I think you can make that move to Idaho. I don't know the internet quality in Idaho. That used to be a big concern. Now you just use taking it full circle.

You use Starlink. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. You just catch the internet on chopsticks. Cool. All right, folks. Another awesome episode episode thank you so much for listening um thanks so much for supporting us on patreon um a lot of fun there and we will catch you all next time Thank you. Share alike in kind.