Soft Skills Engineering - Episode 489: Ethical dilemma for a gambling app dev and ethical employers

Episode Date: December 1, 2025

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions: Hey Jamison and Dave, love your show! A question for you guys coming all the way from the Netherlands 🧀 I’ve started as a software engineer in a gambling company lately and the moral aspect of it bothers me a bit. And while listening to you talking about the importance of accessibility in the last episode (#488) I came up with this moral dilemma: should a developer push for making a gambling app more accessible for users with disabilities or better not to? 😅 Thank you 🖤 Listener Arie Marie asks, What are some good ways to research prospective employers to see if they have a strong commitment to ethical and human values? What are good questions to ask prospective employers during an interview? How can I be a developer and do what I love, and know that I’m not making the income inequality greater? How do you develop a lens to look at a company and discern it’s positive impact? How do you know if you’re making the world a better place?

it takes more than using get cherry pick because of your own self-inflicted and seemingly insurmountable merge conflicts to be a great engineer this is soft skills engineering episode 489 i'm your host dave smith i'm your host jameson dance soft skills engineering is a weekly advice podcast for developers who just have to resort to get cherry pick and you know it's a bad day everyone who doesn't know all the stuff i know about git is just an incompetent noob and everyone who uses advanced git features that i don't know about or use is just a noodler that is wasting their time the right amount of git trickery to do is the amount that i do right which is sometimes cherry pick sometimes rebase very carefully yep this this one came up in our

slack community this week and i was just remembering like how often i have to use cherry pick and ref log to fix a problem that i myself created i've only used the ref log once and i can't even remember why but i hear about it and i think what do you what are you doing that makes you need to reach for that usually it's like i dropped i deleted something really bad and now i can't find it anywhere except there my boss uses a thing called get butler and to me it is the same as the minority report scenes where Tom Cruise is just like wildly flinging screens around with his hands.

What is it? Augmented reality? Like it just seems magical. But then every once in a while, he'll say, yeah, I can switch tasks. Give me like 25 minutes to go pick up the shambles

of my current repository state. That's really cool. So that falls clearly on the spec. That's past the amount of Git trickery I do. So it's obviously wrong. it's obviously unnecessary complexity too much yeah you've learned too much it's the roi on your learning is bad yeah no i should probably look at it at some point dave should i also before i do that should i thank your patrons yeah go for it okay thank you to

these folks or entities or lots of side projects yeah getting hawked yeah that we shout out every single week thank you to ci issues sharpenty.io seth is begging for a review on his pr and hardware is a mr pork chop okay that sounds like the completion of a previous one i wonder what that is yeah learn react testing at howtotestfrontend.com with a party emoji and a jack-o'-lantern yeah bounce the friends but forgot the emoticons sad smiley face made of a parenthesis anyway use never ending story pointer.com so i can i fight actual fires as a hobby because it is so much less stressful than my tech job my actual name on linkedin is yami debugging in the dark canny the mobile development ordinary first of his name quote

or one equals one drop table meow mix jacob's handling nice with that's jacob possessive yeah apostrophe s handling nice okay i'm ready to start my pairing session oh wait let me just take care of my feet here crinkle crinkle what what is crinkling here the missing semicolon christy the world's okayest programmer i'm wondering if the alexa set an alarm at 4 a.m prank still works hashtag the grind hashtag never give up that's the soft skillet nation motto big props to the real mvp jameson and king dave rad rad rad rad wow filling up that profile name field you change your patreon name to that and i salute you i do too nick molyneux if the service org uses a subservice org and these controls at the subservice org are necessary

pretend it's not javier gonzalez chewy ted timbrel a single opening parenthesis dan from drone to play never is not just a crater on mars flamingo emoji i like chicken i like liver miyamix miyamix please deliver dave you said you might come to the swiss python summit but you did not eventually i feel so sad i feel called out every week now yeah you'd have to go and then they will feel called out for having an outdated name genuinely i wish i had the memory of attending that event i really do and i regret not going it does sound cool kyle boss kensi dodds that guy over there jenny kim the stochastic parrot ira chan jonathan king is nigh beautiful functional user documentation i set up this knock knock joke two weeks ago without a plan and i'm googling tech

knock-knock jokes but they're all bad that is a guest on episode 276 of the federal tech podcast soft wars episode 5 i almost said episode v what a fool i am episode 5 benchmark culture crash strikes back is that is that a benedict cumberbatch i think it's a benedict cumber yeah i think that is i almost forgot his real name yeah is that a beta test compiler cache i think so brayden canes john grant britney ellick closed parenthesis and then a single actual closed parenthesis character thank you thank you to those people either flogging their side hustles or just making us laugh either way you are you are important to the show and thus to my life yes if you want to join them you can go to soft skills audio click support us on patreon

click the requisite button or radio or whatever their ui is to donate enough and you will get a weekly shout out and any amount we'll get you an invite to our slack team where we interact with friendly and good taste having people very taste having yes very very cromulent dave do you want to read our first question yes but not until i google the word cromulent oh adequate all right it's a yeah that's a fancy way of saying it's from the simpsons it's like more than it's a more than adequate way to say the word adequate do you not know the history of this i don't know that one no oh it's a made-up word that the simpsons invented what someone says yes a perfectly cromulent word when someone else says a fancy word and that was not a word at the time

and then it became a real word are you serious from being used in the simpsons yep i love that yeah oh my goodness i don't know how i didn't know that each individual especially modern episode of the simpsons is kind of garbage yet somehow there's an infinite amount of incredible stuff within the corpus of the simpsons as a whole that is a very large corpus yeah it's like how you can find anything in the digits of pi right anyways now i want you to read our first okay let's read this this comes from an anonymous listener who says hey jameson and dave love your show a question for you coming all the way from the netherlands and then he has a cheese emoji which i can confirm the netherlands has some great cheese really yeah i've had some there

it's really good okay i didn't know that was a thing cool yeah they have a i had a kind called very old Superior cheese. It's so great. It comes out of a big wax container that you can keep at room temperature in it, and it's delicious. I'm going to change my title to really good computer programmer. Superior? Yeah. Okay, let's continue. I've started as a software engineer in a gambling company lately, and the moral aspect of it bothers me a bit. And while listening to you talk about the importance of accessibility in the last episode, number 488, I came up with this moral dilemma should a developer push for making a gambling app more accessible for users with disabilities or is it better not to and he has a a smiling emoji with the sweat bead

and then and then he says thank you with a black heart emoji well moral dilemma this is like the trolley problem actually i guess it's not but it in the in as much as they are both moral dilemmas i'm gonna start comparing everything to the trolley problem when it's just a decision i have to make what to have for lunch this is just like the trolley problem in that there's a decision to be made kill the yogurt by eating it oh boy i think gambling is bad for everything in the universe and should not yeah i don't think it's i don't think it's good as a whole for humanity and i think the legalization of sports gambling the united states is pretty bad and has some pretty awful effects but it's so fun i'm pretty down on just gambling in general as a as a thing so

imagine that imagine there's a category of person who today is unable to gamble because the gambling companies have not built screen reader compatible gambling software or their web app is not compatible with keyboard navigation or people who have mobility impairments, should they make them accessible? Will it make them more money? Probably. Just in the same way that now that sports gambling is legal in the US and you can do it on your iPhone, there are a whole bunch of people that gamble on sports that didn't used to gamble on sports. And some percentage of those people will now develop horrible gambling addictions that will ruin their lives before they probably wouldn't have because they wouldn't have gone through the trouble of like finding a bookie and doing

whatever shady underground stuff you had to do okay i feel like this is the same like i guess sure it'll make it more accessible and you'll make more money and people will pay you that money and some percentage of those people with disabilities will now develop gambling addictions so maybe the european accessibility act needs a carve out that says all websites by the year 2029 or whatever they're on to now must be fully accessible unless your website is a net harm for society yeah yeah hmm i am sitting up here on my high horse having never well i think you could you could argue i worked for a giant mega corp that's in retail that some people think is bad for the world so i was going to say having having had the freedom to pick things that i think are at least

net neutral for the world but maybe you could argue that was bad all right so i i don't know the decisions that led you to work at a gambling place but my advice is quit your job oh wow work for a gambling company you're really serious about this i'm serious dude i think gambling is horrible and you can certainly employ people and make money from it and that's bad this is uh this is like the second time in almost 10 years of doing this where you've really come out with a really strong position on on a topic like this yeah the other one was also financially related it was also gambling yeah with a different name yep where you there's a paper that has references to merkle trees but it's actually just gambling it's a little more academic

yeah wow okay and is that the underlying reason why yeah just for those that didn't hear the previous episode you might not know the reference we're talking about cryptocurrency with which jameson is also strongly opposed to and i got some pushback from listeners some of whom are in crypto or like crypto and i disagree with you still but and yet still friends jameson will stay your friend as long as you keep sending that sweet patreon money regardless of whether you work for a crypto company the more i mean i think the bigger moral dilemma is yeah should you work at a gambling company i i don't know i guess i'm just skipping over yeah i mean let's if there's a moral dilemma about making it more accessible

surely there's a bigger moral dilemma about making it yes you're you're kind i think you might be onto something so let's just go with what the person themselves said which is that so the moral aspect of gambling does bother this but this person so that's a given yeah right and yeah i i think if you say should i make my gambling app more available to more people when it's bad and it has moral issues it's kind of like stepping over a a dollar or what's the word straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel i think that's the the phrase i have not heard about that where you're basically like you're already doing if you have a moral issue with this which by the way i don't i don't think i feel as strongly as you do about this topic

jameson so i'll be the i'll just call myself the voice of reason the moderate in this scenario yeah that's like saying i'll be the voice of reason is like a super presumptuous kind of gross yeah listen crazy guy over there it's up to me to say stuff that isn't stupid you can take the anti-gambling position i'll take the reason position and let's just see if we can meet somewhere in the middle oh okay let's set that debate right up from the beginning but so let's just take let's take the question askers position on this which is that this person is bothered a bit by the by the moral aspect of gambling and so yeah it is kind of i think you've hit the nail on the head jameson like if you have a problem with the app that you're working on to

the point that you're wondering if you should make it available to a small percentage of people to whom it's not available today i think there probably is a bigger moral question you should be asking yourself, which is, should I be making it available to anyone? So maybe the answer is you should make it less accessible to every person, regardless of ability or disability. Yeah. How do you put in a CAPTCHA that's like, are you currently, or will you be addicted to gambling if you use this app? Oh, that's a good question. So Jameson, would you be okay if they only provided the service to people who could with high confidence certify that they will never develop a gambling addiction? You know, in this world, I have a time machine and magical flight

powers because it's fake and made up and there's no way to actually do that. So sure. Okay. So it really is the compulsive behavior that bothers you. I believe there are people who gamble and it doesn't ruin their life. I think they would still be better off if they didn't gamble. And I also believe if you quit your job, this company will not go under. The goal isn't prevent anyone from gambling ever i think if it's just about you and like you are worse off for working at this place not not about um let's let's stop everyone from gambling so so i i know i've i kind of have pivoted my interest now i want to explore exactly how you feel about this topic jameson because i'm curious like on a scale of one to ten where i can tell that you have some feelings that approach a

ten on how strongly you feel about this i'm curious if you were to divide this into two parts like the part the act of just wagering money on an outcome against someone else how much does like let's just say there was only one transaction it's just two people wagering on an outcome and they will never ever wager again in their life how much does that bother you as on a scale of one to ten versus someone who will definitely develop a gambling addiction that ruins their life on a scale of one to ten i don't care that much about just wagers in the abstract i think i care mostly about how damaging it is to people who get in deep okay this stuff all right got it and all the incentives are around getting people to gamble more and yeah that combined with the fact

that there are people who will happily well not happily miserably ruin their life to gamble more yeah means it's a it's a powerful combination that results in bad outcomes for the world okay all right i'm glad even though there are like yeah i could go place a prop bet and i it just doesn't appeal that much to me so even if i won i probably wouldn't slide into debauchery i have other forms of debauchery that i would slide into before a gambling addiction but just the fact that yeah you you now hear ads for sports gambling on every podcast you listen to basically and oh yeah i've been meaning to talk to you about a new advertiser that just oh perfect yeah and some of those people are gonna like they'll they'll they'll follow the sas conversion funnel

pipeline and then it instead of it ending at them being a happy customer it ends with them like destitute i don't know ruining their marriage and family and life yeah okay that's how i feel that glad i i'm glad i explored that there to me there is one positive aspect of gambling which is that some of these markets that exist now are i like seeing what people are willing to put their money on to read the future a little bit like elections yeah economic outcomes like will the fed raise or lower interest rates in the next 30 days you know it's actually i find it very interesting now it's probably not worth the cost of having a few people's lives be ruined i feel differently about prediction markets i don't think they're great and i'm sure you could

still get addicted to those but especially like sports gambling or like online casinos or things like that the stuff where the information that you are acquiring is like what is this card or who will they will this person fumble it's not i don't know i don't feel like there's much benefit there versus like what do people think about who the nominee will be for this party i could see that being useful and it has been actually become part of news is like here's what prediction markets think about this also it's wild that prediction markets are also assassination markets where like i predict that this person will not be assassinated oh yeah you just happen to yeah no one has a no one has a secret dark web like assassination list they just have secret

dark web prediction markets for will this person be alive or not interesting well it's a simple answer then clearly we answered the question yeah i think we've answered it if you have a moral problem with something then expand expanding the reach of that moral problem to a percentage more audience is not your question it can be hard to get a new job especially right now and i think you can do stuff you have moral problems with and not people are multifaceted but i i don't know i just have feelings about this all right well let's take those feelings and carry them on to another ethical question would you like to read our next one i would love to this is from a listener named ari marie who asks what are some good ways to research positive or sorry prospective employers

to see if they have a strong commitment to ethical and human values what are good questions to ask prospective employers during an interview how can i be a developer and do what i love and know that i'm not making the income inequality greater how do you develop a lens to look at a company and discern its positive impact how do you know if you're making the world a better place oh it's very very easy you just go to the company's website that their marketing team made and read the messages on that site yeah and believe everything they have any announcements about fundraising usually those will tell you if it is making the world a better place yeah and wouldn't you know it usually is yeah that's almost every single website will say our mission is to make

the world a better place yeah so there you go question answered question answered yeah ask ask them i feel like there's a huge swath of sort of middle of the bell curve businesses where i don't think they're explicitly i don't know if you're making nail clippers in a factory i don't think you're necessarily making the world a better place or worse place you're just making a thing that people want to buy and i suppose that's vaguely positive i'd say so maybe maybe they like make the nail clippers out of orphan children or something in some way that it's it's very complicated james and then we have to weigh the lives of orphans against unclipped fingernails and yeah what if it's one orphan per billion nail clippers that's a pretty good trade yeah now boy

that's hard that's hard math i think we're these are the kind of questions you need to ask in the interview how many orphans are used up to power your sass service oh my gosh or your sass your sass business what was i gonna say yeah i think there's a bunch you could just vaguely gesture out and say i don't know they're selling a thing people want and that seems vaguely neutral i would say selling a thing people want is not vaguely neutral i would say that it's if anything pretty positive yeah yeah that's fair now that vaguely there are corners of that space where it's not positive like if you're selling something people want like gambling to people with gambling addictions i mean their revealed behavior says they want it i mean their revealed preferences

say they want it but they don't really want it there's probably a lot of companies like yeah and then there there are like non-profits or b-corps or some companies at one end of the bell curve who are explicitly making it part of their mission to not just make money by selling a thing people would like to buy but do some good in the world and i think you could probably make a B Corp and have it be a horrible place that makes income inequality greater, but probably on average, less likely than just your average random company. And then there's the other end of the bell curve doing things we may or may not have talked about already that are just, I think, worse for the world. So I think it should be fairly easy to look at a business and see

where it falls. And what do you know? It's a bell curve. Most of them will probably fall in the vague middle of selling a thing people want to buy. Yeah. I've also found that it's very hard to learn anything substantive about a company in the interview process, especially a big company, because these companies are, the interview processes are designed to withhold that kind of information from you. And it takes a long time on the job to really pick up on the things that really happen within a company. I also think a big company, I don't think a big company can be ethical. I think people inside a big company can be ethical, but the company as a whole is going to pursue profit and it's not a super useful question to ask about i don't know i

keep thinking of random specific companies and then i probably shouldn't name specific company names but like is this an ethical company i i don't know i think it i would more look at do they build stuff that i like or is the out is the output something i could look at and say i'm glad I helped contribute to this. Yeah. Especially if you're talking about impact on the world, I think that's one way to look at it. If you're talking about the internal vibes of like, do people act with integrity internally? I think that is essentially impossible to discern from the interview process at a big company. You know, this question asker brought up one topic of income inequality. And I think, you know, that reveals something about your values. And I think there's

probably a bunch of people who would rally around that issue and say, yeah, that issue is really important to me. But there's also a bunch of people who would say, no, that issue is not important. Or it's anti-important. I would like to increase income inequality by becoming super crazy rich myself. That's right. There's a bunch of people who would say that. And so I think probably step one here is make a list of the issues that you care about. And this is both an opportunity to help arm you with information you want to find out about companies. And it's also a good just like a good general thing to do as a human being what's that great quote the unexamined life is not worth living yeah i like that thought where you you go hey i'm going to

come up with the values that matter to me and i'm going to think deeply about these i might even write them down and see if i can actually justify them to myself and say like you know let's just i think it's an opportunity to really say i'm going to build a foundation here that i know i can stand on which i'm not i'm not accusing this question asker of not having done that but i'm saying this kind of question is an opportunity to do that for sure. And then I think there's two aspects of each company that you want to evaluate. The first one is internal culture. How do things get done around here? What are the behaviors that are considered normal? And the bigger the company is, the more variety you'll find and the harder it'll be to pin that down to one single answer. But for

a small company, you can pin it down nicely. I mean, I've worked for quite a few small companies and a few really big ones. And I can say at the small ones, there definitely are cultural aspects that are super clear to everyone who works there and you just got to figure out like am i cool with this and and i think that's a hard one to pin down especially during the interview process but go to lunch with a few people who work there and ask them like so you know how do things get done around here like what what really is the way things happen and that that will start to reveal some of those things i'm just thinking more about this develop a lens to look at a company some companies do either genuinely or as a pr marketing ploy associate with causes or service of some kind

often that shows up in recruiting material though because they they want to kind of show hey we care about i don't know we we go volunteer at this place every every month or something so maybe there's something explicit like that or maybe you can ask them about that yeah i know that this is a deep rabbit hole i will avoid diving down it but there's also a way to say i can find meaning in what i do with the money i make from this company and as long as i find somewhere to work that i'm okay with then i maybe maybe they don't have the strong commitment to a cause i particularly care about but they're not actively harmful or against it then i can i can work there and use the money to support that cause maybe that doesn't feel as meaningful though it seems like this person's

explicitly looking for employment that supports beliefs that they care about yeah i don't know i think this is making me realize i'm somewhat mercenary yeah and i kind of i think most people are don't look for yeah it's it's hard i find reasons why the place i work fits fits these criteria after you discover that it pays your bills yeah i work in ed tech right now and it does feel nice to work with schools and feel like i'm making them more efficient but i don't think that's why i chose the job in the first place it is a nice motivator though and a thing we think about at work but i was looking at other places that weren't in ed tech also yeah you probably didn't yeah you certainly didn't single it out and you know i had i had one of my kids this week

asked me what's the thing you love the most about working at your company and i'm and i was thinking to myself like i like a lot about this company but the thing i would certainly miss the most would if I had to lose it would be the paycheck like just realistically like you could take away a lot of the aspects of my job and I would be okay with it but if you took away the paycheck I'd be like I will no longer work here yeah and so the thing I like most is that I work there yeah and they pay me yeah and so I think a lot of times when people ask this question that they really want to know outside of the pay How do you pick a company that has positive impact?

Completely off the dome, no prep at all. This is making it sound like I have a lot of prep. I don't. Anyways, disclaimer. Insert whatever disclaimer you want in front of this. I feel like I see, especially at big companies, there are sometimes projects or teams devoted to specific issues or causes, and they're often motivated or staffed by people very motivated about those issues.

I also would be terrified to work on that team because they're usually not profit centers. They're usually cost centers. Terrified because you might lose your job in a downturn? Yeah, like this company was made to sell goods and services, not plant trees, but they have a tree planting team because it helps them lobby the government and recruit. And someone is going to someday look at a spreadsheet and say, I don't know, I think we can just cut this team and still make the exact same amount of money. There's a name I just came up with for teams like that, that I haven't used in the past, but I think I'll use in the future. And that is called, that's a luxury team.

Yeah, yeah. It's a team you can afford when things are good. Not be on one of those. But only if the paycheck is the number one thing for you, right? Well, yeah, I guess if you want to work for free, say, no, no, no, don't worry. I will work for free. That will terrify them even more probably, actually. Have we answered this question?

What are questions to ask? Yeah, I think, well, there's one other area. I think you need to explore and that's outcomes. And this, I think is going to be very challenging because businesses tend to be complex creatures that don't just have one thing they do and not everything they do is good and not everything they do is bad. And so it does become a bit of a calculus where you say things like, yeah, I want to work for this mega corporation. Basically any company you work for with more than about a thousand people is going to have some bad aspect to it, to the business, you know? And so I think you are going to have to, boy, I just,

I don't think most people can afford the luxury of making a list of all the pros and a list of all the cons in terms of the outcomes that this company creates and apply a formula and say, I will only work at companies that clear a certain bar. Because at the end of the day, we are all in a little bit survival mode when we're looking for an employer. And so you take the jobs that are available, and sometimes those are jobs that they are good enough you know and and maybe it's not the thing that that most motivates you and most does the most good in the world but but it is something that pays the bills and you can be proud of your work there i i'm just thinking through i feel like i'm being very pessimistic i think you can find a

place that seems to align with your values and the outcomes you want to see in the world and it can still be a job you don't like um i'm thinking through co-workers people i've worked with that feel particularly values driven in their employment choices and they have on average similar tenures at employers than folks that are less values driven or or kind of i don't know it's not charity it's it's some other word that is like charity that i would altruism maybe yeah less driven by altruism and more driven by i would like a job that's entertaining and pays me money helpful i i don't i just see people enter these companies and then bounce out and it seems like they bounce out at the same rate and for the same reasons as people that don't look for employment

with altruism so i i guess i would caution you don't assume that the company is perfect just because it aligns with values that you care about and often they they might have more problems because we care about making money is this powerful incentive that finely tunes a lot of parts of your company. And if you care about other things, you might remove that incentive

and allow some other dysfunction. You're swapping out dysfunction sometimes. Interesting. Well, I just have two more brief comments I'll make on this question, and then I'll be happy

to wrap it up. Then we can debate whether or not this podcast is a net good for the world, but based on how many orphans have to give their lives to each episode, but we'll cover that later.

So the first one is an anecdote that I heard over 25 years ago. I was working as an intern at a company, and I was talking to an employee of that company who was responsible for putting tobacco products and alcohol products on the shelves of convenience stores. This person told me that they were very much opposed to the use of these products, but that they, quote, had to put their ethics on hold for the workday. and I was I honestly I was aghast at that comment and I I hope I didn't like make them feel super bad for that but but I told myself in that moment I will never work for a company where I feel like I have to set aside values just to go to work from nine to five Monday to Friday and then the rest of my life I can feel good about what I do so that that troubled me so even though I've I think Jameson you and I have both been maybe a little bit dismissive of this idea that you have to find

a perfect company. There is a line for me where it's like, look, I'm not going to go into business in certain areas. And I really don't want to have to work somewhere where I have to do the mental gymnastics to make myself feel like a good person from nine to five on Monday to Friday. It is a luxury belief though, too. I recognize I have been lucky enough to be able to say no or not consider some types of opportunities because I know I'll be able to find something else and not everybody is in that state. Having said that, I think that this question is a good question about how can I find a company that does a good in the world? But I think there's actually a much better question you can ask yourself. And that is, regardless of where you work and regardless

of the circumstances you find yourself in, the question I would ask is, what can I personally do in the circle of my influence to have a positive impact? Because I think you individually can have a much bigger impact on the individual people that are in your circle than this company ever would to those individuals. Yeah, sure, their company might affect more people, but it will usually affect more people to a smaller degree. But you, yourself, you can make choices every day that either make the lives of those around you better or worse. And I think that that's probably the much more important question and the one that you will probably feel way better about answering well toward the end of your life, then which businesses did I work for? Interesting. Yeah,

I think, I think it makes sense. I think I agree with you. I'm just thinking, I mean, how do you develop a lens? I feel like we didn't answer the question directly, but hopefully we gave you, hopefully we gave you some ideas of what to think about to help you answer the question for yourself. All right. Which is what, what you really want when you ask us a question, you want us to tell you how to answer it yourself right right i don't know i i guess this is a good segue into whether or not this podcast isn't that good for the world it makes me happy and i'm part of the world so i'm gonna say yes i personally had to burn a lot of electrons to make this work i thought you're gonna say a lot of orphans i was getting really worried one could say that

those electrons became orphaned thanks to this podcast you you destroyed matter i just dislocated them away from their family rearranged it yeah all right i think that means we've answered the question all right what can people do if they want their own questions go to soft skills.audio and click the ask a question button where you can fill out our handy dandy form give us as much or as little personally identifying information as you like don't give us too much we don't want it and please keep those questions coming we get so many questions every week we love every single one of them and we would love to have more of them um it's actually the only retirement plan i have is i expect to cash those in for credit for dollars when i turn 59 and a half and i become

eligible to do that without penalty i thought yeah well this shows that maybe a generational difference i expect to use them as bartering chips in the apocalypse once once it's all burned down i can hand out these printed out spreadsheets of questions yes all right thank you for listening we'll catch you next week week next week we'll catch you next week thank you