Tech Brew Ride Home - (TWTR SPC) How To Navigate Tech As An Employee W/ @GergelyOrosz

Episode Date: April 16, 2022

Gergely Orosz of The Pragmatic Engineer helps us figure out the strategy and expectations of joining a high profile startup, vs. the expectations and reality of joining a FAANG company. Also: the perils and promise and best practices of joining a startup, vs. the perils and promise and best practices of joining a big tech company. Hopefully, if you are a tech worker, an engineer, a designer, what have you, there will be some valuable learnings for you. Oh, and Chris and I try our hand at Elon punditry. Sponsors: Composer.trade/ride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome everybody to the TechMeme Ride Home Experience for April 14th. I'm sorry, I'm so confused because it's 11 am, which is a very strange and unusual time. But today is also a very big newsday.

Alon apparently wants to really get the edit button, and so it's going to buy the whole company to make that happen. But before we get into that whole conversation, we've got Gurgay, who writes the pragmatic engineer newsletter on Substack, I guess the number one technology newsletter. Is that right? Yeah, there's a number one paid. Congratulations. That's quite the distinction. I'm here to talk to us about a number of things,

one of which is the collapse of fast engineering culture, what the hell is going on with Atlassian. There's a whole bunch of background noise and radiation kind of, I think, happening sort of in the tech space right now. And, you know, you've kind of got your finger on the pulse of it. But before we dive into some, some of the things you've been writing about, talking about. You want to start with a little more of an introduction?

Brian, what do you think? Yeah. So let's start this way. Let's talk about Fast specifically at first. And then I want to talk about going into, if you're a hire at a startup, the risks that could be involved, like a deeper dive into that. And then conversely, a deeper dive into, well, What if I join an established company, a fang company or whatever?

But before we do that, also let me state some prayers here, which is, you know, both of you have worked for startups, have worked for major tech companies. And I have not. I've never worked for anybody except for FedEx for six months. Has it ever interest you or is it that it doesn't interest you? it just never happened. But the reason I'm saying that is not to hi-hat anybody, but to say I want to be sort of, I want this episode to be educational for people that are like maybe going to join a startup

or a major tech company. And so I'm going to be the audience surrogate and ask, you know, dumb questions also because I'm dumb about this. So as I always say to Chris a lot of times, I'm going to play the dumb role because that's useful in this conversation. So, Garge, let's start specifically with Fast. The thing that I shared on the Long Reads last week was... Actually, one more thing, though.

I think Gergey needs to provide a little more background. Oh, yeah. Yeah, go ahead. His experience, working for big tech companies just to sort of set the groundwork. Good idea. Good idea. Yeah, yeah. See, we're doing it on the fly. All right.

Let's do it. Yeah. So I've been a software engineer for, I was a software engineer for like a good, like 10, 15 years or so I worked my way up slowly. So I started, I'm actually original from Hungary. So I started, I worked at a local small shop. I moved to UK, worked at agencies first. And then my first kind of step into a bigger company was at JPMorgan where I worked at a trading desk, which is, you know, like a big company, big money. It's a bank. And then I was lucky enough to join Skype right when Microsoft bought it. And Microsoft left Skype alone. So like for my whole time at Microsoft, it felt like Skype. It was a scrappy startup culture. We were doing all sorts of crazy stuff. And then I joined another startup called SkyScanter.

And then I ended up at Uber. I joined Uber in Amsterdam when there were about 20 engineers in Amsterdam. There was an office of maybe 100 or 200 people. This was the European headquarters. And four years later, we were at about 150 engineers in that location. And my organization unit grew kind of 5X. And then my career also went like this.

So before that, I kind of worked my way from a junior engineer to mid-level to senior to these levels. And then at Uber, I became a manager starting from like a few people. In India and I was leading a group at Uber who was doing payments. And the interesting thing with Uber is we talked about fast. I worked in a group at Uber called Uber Money, which was a large group of maybe like 300 or 600 people. Fast is an Uber money alumni.

So co-founder, head of engineering, head of product, some other people who joined and left, they're all Uber money. It's one of the reasons I was able to cover it so well. I just know so many people there, which was very interesting slash weird. So yeah. Yeah, but so much of what we're going to talk about

is this idea of like different cultures and expectations and things like that. But so using Fast as a way into this conversation, one of the key things here to establish is that until, you know, two weeks ago, Fast was considered to be, you know, one of the rising stars of the startup world. We just like to say a little bit more about what Fast, you know, was. Fast is a fast.

Yes, Fast is, as we've discussed on the show, one of those one-click checkout companies. Essentially Amazon's patent on OneClick. like checkout had expired. Expired in 2017. Right. And that created the opening, you know, for these guys to come in. Exactly.

Yeah. And Fast, I suppose Bolt is probably the leader in the space. But Fast got an investment from Stripe. And so that was one of their sort of claims to, I don't know, prominence as well. And until about two weeks ago, everyone thought everything was good, including as you said in your piece that the people working there thought that, and I think this is a key thing

is people thought that okay, there's tons of people being hired and we're just waiting on another round of funding. We have our main competitor bolt at about what is it, a $13 billion valuation. So clearly things are going in the right direction and then two weeks later everybody's fired and it's over.

And so one of the first questions that I have for you specifically is based on the people that you talked to internally, was it that rapid? Like if you had talked to somebody a month ago today, inside Fast, would they have told you that, yeah, everything's going great guns?

I actually had a friend or a friend of a friend who was considering joining Fast from a year before, and he finally made a decision in November and started in February. And he actually asked my advice, and I told him, like, you know, it looks fine. Here's a couple of flags that I see. But, you know, it's a startup. Like, it's risky. There's all these things. This person, actually, so I talk with this person extensively, didn't really see too much going wrong except for the last few weeks. Like, for this person, the biggest thing, which was not reported, the co-founder went quiet. Hallison, the co-founder, just stopped responding and, like, completely unreachable. And this was the only thing, except for this, they thought the series C was coming. Some people joined in December.

They were told, joined quickly. They put an exploding offer in December because they said the series C is inevitable, and they're going to reprise the shares. And that's when their SVP of engineering joined. That's when their CFO joined. So people were convinced. And also the other thing is people were being hired. So my source told me every week there were new people starting because offers were sent it earlier. And up to three weeks before fast was shut down, three weeks before four or five people started.

So it looked completely normal. And at the same time, because I think this is key to this, this is certainly key to what would be red flags in retrospect and key to probably why they burned through $100 million in a year, they were paying extremely strong base salaries. They were offering extremely competitive stock compensation, right? Again, it felt like they were hiring with confidence, right? They absolutely were. They hired amazing people on paper. Well, I mean, amazing people in general, but their pedigree was incredible. There's a person I talked with who worked at Google before, Facebook before that, on Microsoft before that, who joined fast. And the reason they were able to do it, as you said, the cash salaries were as high as big tech, except you could work remote. And the stock looked really good because they did give a forecast of how much your stock would be worth when there were 12 billion. And both was worth 11 billion. So that's well. look realistic. And again, without looking at the underlying business metrics, everyone was really confident. In fact, I talked with some people later, there was just a really huge positive feeling in the company that you're doing something great. It's just going to succeed, which, by the way, it should be another flag because at a startup, it's a fight to the death. And fast, they were not fighting to that. They were not stressed. They were building all these,

The people who joined later, they were like bar-eacting these massive systems to handle all this load, which, by the way, did not exist. So that was another thing. But obviously, the problem was the business metric was not there and the business was not making money. No one knew except for the leadership and managers and engineers got day, sorry, above L6, so like senior engineering managers and staff engineers above got a daily report of how much the business was doing. And the numbers were really small. They were so small that they were spending more on AWS in a month or close as they were doing in terms of revenue. But engineers did not see this. Well, see, I only know this because of your reporting from your newsletter, but three red flags in retrospect is number one, as you're just describing, they're building out a huge infrastructure for a business that isn't actually coming in.

and then number two, once you get to a certain level and you see the daily metrics, you're like, well, but there's no money coming in. And then number three, something that you pointed out is that when they would talk to people, they would always use the hockey stick growth of the hiring, not revenue, not clients that were signing up for our one-click checkout. It was all about how much we're hiring. So when you combine those things,

you actually did the math in the piece where if you take a reasonable average of what they were paying all the engineers that they hired, it's easy to see how they could burn through $100 million in a month. Absolutely. And to me, the hockey stick is the big one. You know who else used this hockey stick with the wrong y-axis? Hoppin. Hoppin is

the events platform who did really well. Their hockey stick was valuation. So they showed how their valuation went so much faster to $5 billion than anyone else. But I would say one of the biggest red flags, if a company measures itself by headcount or valuation, it doesn't matter. You need to see something that says revenue or customers. Those two are actually VC fundable metrics, right? Because these companies, they're not going to be profitable from day one.

But to get funding, you need to show that. And the best advice I've gotten from a people who've been there and reflected on this, before you join a startup, ask two questions. one, do you have your business metrics defined that tell us if the company is successful? Two, does everyone have access to those close to real time? If the answer is no to either of these, consider not joining that startup because that startup does not have their priorities straight, either they're incompetent or they're hiding something.

Well, I do want to come back to that because I do want to go down your list of suggestions for joining a hot startup. But essentially, there's no way we can speculate in terms of the founders and their motivations. And although there's an now infamous 20-minute VC episode that is live that people can listen to. But do you, based on your conversations with insiders, I've heard this too, that people loved the culture, loved the people they were working with, and loved, and felt like they were doing, good work. And so is in theory, is this a situation where the founders drank the Kool-Aid as well and were convinced that, okay, our main competitor is already over a $10 billion

valuation. All we've got to do is raise this series C. It's all going to be fine because we're going to get $400 million in our next round. So let's just hire, hire, hire, go full hog. Like, is this not it's not fraud, it's maybe just incompetence in the sense that they also were overly excited? Yeah, so like this is a thing where I think

some people compared us to the fire festival, which ripped off, like, actual people paid their money. And in this case, you know, like that did not happen. The people who were hired, they got a great salary, they got paid. And the Fast Festival employees did not get paid. So everyone got paid.

they were drinking the Kool-Aid, yes. There is a question, I think the only question goes back to the competence of the founders. Like, what founder is someone who cannot calculate their own way or who does not, you know, is able to forecast a fundraising? And that's it. Like, I think it's safe to say the founders are incompetent in running a business. Because if someone, if the employees have to find out the last minute that the money is all gone, that is not a good business.

I think that's just fair to say. It's incompetency on the founder to not see that you're burning that quickly, even if you feel like that there's a must of ranking. I mean, the founders should be the metrics. And the board. And the board. And the board. So founders and the board, yes. Right.

Right. Chris, please jump in here. Yeah. I mean, I think, I mean, this has been very useful to sort of, you know, one, sort of go through some of these, you know, the red flags and some of these issues and concerns are, you know, around burn rate and in runway, of course. I pinned a tweet to one of my favorite tweets from John Borthwick, which of course is, I think it's what is the animation. Regardless, there is a dog essentially assembling a train track as the train is speeding down the track. And that is what he describes as entrepreneurship. And I think in many respects, that's true.

And if you're blitzkilling startup, there is this almost this need to like keep building and burning and driving. I mean, think about like a rocket launch and the amount of energy that it takes to sort of, you know, get into the atmosphere and the gas that's burned at, you know, a certain level until you reach, you know, cruising altitude or, you know, outer orbit or something. In startups that do have product market fit, and I think Uber is a good example of this, you know, you do need to be spending a shit ton of money. I mean, the reason why some of these companies raise is for that purpose, because they want to essentially take over the market as fast as possible before anybody else can. I think it's a really, really challenging dance to figure out what the right level of aggressive and, like, super aggressive burn is relative to being super savvy and having the right level of metrics that's tracking your progress and your success. Yeah, but conversely, hiring at the top, listen, I, I don't know how you attract that talent without actually putting that. That's true. That's true.

Right? So the only point I wanted to make is what you're describing or what FAST was doing is the inverse of the lean startup model. You know, they were going big. Right. But okay. So what I'm trying to do. Okay. And I want to set this up before we get into some of the advice and the tips.

Because I think that this is very important to understand from a macro. I don't know, like sort of economic context, right? You have a bunch of consumer software, social web, social media stuff, very, very cheap to build, essentially, especially, you know, in the era of AWS. Then you move into a world where you're building software for the real world. And by that, I mean Uber. Like, Uber was one of the first that really kind of brought a lot of the mechanics of digital technology, you know, through the iPhone and through GPS into being able to manipulate the real world

and book a car. And so the amount of people and engineers that you needed on the ground to be building these systems and adapting to local laws and regulations and to have these sort of remote distributed decentralized teams out there in the world that were quite autonomous, you know, that did require a huge amount of money. Fast, in contrast, is entirely SaaS-based. And they were building software. They weren't really interacting with the real world. Yes, they were doing payments and payments, you know, and fintechs are typically quite expensive. But there's a essentially trying to do one-click checkout for the web, which, you know, I was hard to say, but having worked on Open ID and identity solutions back in 2007 through 10, I mean, there were existing technologies and solutions. And yes, there are, you know, product challenges and adoption challenges and doing the integrations, you know, was always hard. But you don't need, at least, you know, again, I don't know. I wasn't at fast. The same level of money to execute on that opportunity. However, you need a ton of money if you want to hire the top talent and blitzscale.

So my sense and feeling, looking back on this, is that, you know, Fast had so much Uber DNA that like the Uber folks kind of brought that mentality, right, to ASAS environment. And, you know, it's interesting because Dom, Fast CEO, his previous startup was Uber-like in that it was called Toe and it was based in Australia. And he had built out this network. where, you know, if the government, I guess, wanted to tow a car or something, they would, you know, use his service essentially to book an Uber-style tow truck and then, you know, go and, I don't know, like, tow the thing or something, right? So that also had real-world aspects. So if you're used to spending for those types of environments and then you bring that into the software world, then I can start to see how some of those distortions in spend would happen. I also can see how if you have a lot of Uber, you know, like DNA, in the company that when you go out to investors, you use the same Uber playbook and pitches to justify how much you're spending. And I think that's one of the things that it's important to look at when evaluating and thinking about these companies. Like, what are they solving for?

Where are their real costs? And when their product actually hits the market, is that market the real world? Is it the virtual world? Is it, and how do you sort of think about that from the headwinds that the company might be facing? Okay, so I'll step back, but I just wanted to add that. Yeah, Chris, I'd like to respond to that because both of us worked at Uber, right? Exactly, that's right. We overlapped in 2016, so. Yeah, and there's a huge difference between Uber and Fass, and I think Fass doesn't realize.

So I worked at Uber starting from year five or year six, depending on how we look at it, but five years later, five years after the first engineer was hired, and I talked with a lot of, I talked with the first five engineers extensively to understand what they did. and unlike the first two years of Uber was very different than the first two years of fast. Uber was always very cheap in hiring people, sorry, they paid them well, but you could only hire an engineer

if you had a revenue target. We had to say, even when I was there in 2016 and 2017, later this changed, but I had to make a case. Basically, if I said I can make $10 million with one engineer, I got it approved. If I said I can make a million dollars with an engineer, it did not get approved. Uber was always very efficient and very,

focus on only hiring people who brought in revenue. My sense is that, first of all, like some of the people who fast hire, they were not early Uber, like not like early years. There were a lot later. They joined in when Uber was big. It was as big, you know, it was more similar to Google in many ways where you were more disconnected. You were used to, we were used to longer term plans. That's one. And I feel the company might have cargo culted this like, oh, let's pretend to do these things. But one thing that they missed that Uber did not miss and some of the other startups that early on scaled up, including Netflix, did not miss. Those companies all tied hiring to revenue.

You only hire the person to bring in more revenue or more customers. And that did not seem to be there. I think, you know, people believe that they're building something bigger. They don't have to worry about it. So, you know, that's interesting. Yeah. I think that's, that's, that totally, I think, actually tracks and, and adds more depth to what I'm trying to point out, you know, which is that oftentimes the last company that you were at or the last couple companies you were at will inform the way that you approach and solve problems. And so if you

were part of the Uber rocket ship, right, then you would bring some of that hustle, some of that fastest, some of that ownership, some of the cultural values, you know, to the new company that you find yourself at. And it kind of becomes a set of heuristics that you use to, you know, solve problems. You're like, oh, I solved this problem before, this other company. But I think that your point is really well taken, which is around discipline when, you know, hiring and bringing people on that you know are actually going to, you know, hit the bottom line in a very positive way. And I think in a fast case, I'm not even sure that they had necessarily like product market fit, right? Because on the one hand, yes, Amazon, of course, in the one-click checkout thing, you know, powered a lot of their business.

It's not too dissimilar from Uber, you know, getting into the idea of mobile one-click, you know, book a car kind of ideas. But you have to build the entire service apparatus around that that takes advantage of it and actually creates an elegant solution. And the fact that that fast had to rely on third parties implementing and adopting its solution and couldn't, I imagine, I don't know, go deeper into the customer experience is probably one of the reasons why there was, you know, won so much hiring, so much headwinds, and also that you couldn't, I don't know, it just felt like that visual that I was describing with the dog, you know, building the railroad tracks feels like they were like, oh, just around the corner, we're going to,

you know, make a new investment and it's all going to work out. And all the money that we spent on this is going to be fine and we're going to keep the rocket going when in fact the fundamentals were completely flawed. Absolutely. Plus one other interesting thing, I guess, is two things. One is there's this joke. If you want to wreck your startup, hire some hire somewhere from Google because, you know, there's this notion of that they'll come in and they'll expect what's their either they'll expect what's at Google or they're going to build out whatever is at Google. For example, a lot of early, a lot of Google hires in management, they're going to put a performance review framework in place wherever they go. It doesn't matter. It's the same as Google.

and you don't need that at startup. That's one. But the other is there's an exception to this, which is Replit. Replit is a startup. They're kind of a coding playground, so you can code through the browser and you can run your code, debug your code. It's got like billions of runs

and tens of millions of people are using it. This company, they hire from Google and from Facebook, but guess what? So this company is valued almost a billion people. They have, I think, 40 employees, 4-0. So there are the startups which leverage, highly leverage really good people, but they hire very, very few of them. And they're scaling very carefully to not go over cash flow. But I would worry about any startup, which is hiring in bulk from big tech without market or without a good reason, as you said, Chris.

Yeah. All right. This is a perfect time to mention some of the advice that you had in your piece for if you're joining a hot startup. because then we'll seg into, okay, you don't want to take the risk of joining a hot startup, go to established tech company. But the first thing that you say is you can ask for numbers. And that's not the first thing you said.

The first thing you said was do your own research. Actually, because didn't you, you actually, someone reached out to you from Fast to be hired and you Googled around about the founders? Fast as Uber money. right? Like, it's a, I know people. And the people, the person who reached out to me, I know that person I trust them. But then, I did some research and I found this article on the founder,

which showed that, in my reading, it showed that this person did not have really problems with going to, morally questionable things like selling personal information. And I decided I would not work at a place, which is CEO, and also his last company won bankrupt.

And well, I guess, you know, surprise. That can happen. But, yeah. Anyway. Last performance is not. not always, you know. Like, I decided that I did my research and I didn't like what I saw. I also didn't like the name change.

And this was me. I did my research. My point is, if you don't do your research, don't blame it on anyone. But that's the point is that a simple Google search, you found the founder changed his name. The founder had these questionable things in his background. And so you're like, that's not for me. So, number one, simply do your due diligence. Which, getting back to the thing that I said first, which was asked for numbers.

is again, if you're someone that is interviewing at a startup, you could put on a venture capitalist hat and evaluate the company's chances because what are you going there for? You are going there for the potential for life-changing money if this company is successful. But Brian, just be careful about that because the things you're going for as an investor, right, and making lots of money absolutely can be one of your reasons for joining us. motivation, right? But if you want to get early enough into something where it is going to be life-changing, you know, fuck you money kind of thing. Right, right. You've kind of got to be so early as to be unclear that the thing's going to work out, in which case, if it doesn't,

hold on, if it doesn't work out, then you do need to be choosing for the people and for the experience and for all the things that go into actually working on something that you really, really, you know, care about, right? Like, okay, and I, and I, I'll grant you that and I'll give you the nuance way to say it. Yes. Exciting idea, exciting team. people that I love putting a dent in the universe. All that is great. At the same time, your career is finite. And so you do have to put on a certain hat that says, is this a strategic good move? And the key that I think, Gerge says when you ask for numbers is you can interview the

interviewer. You can ask for, yes, you can ask for show me some numbers on. a piece of paper that give me some graphs show me the show me the hockey stick but let me look at what the y-axis like that is okay to do right but you've also got to be pretty savvy like one to know the right set of questions two to understand aspects of the business now maybe that should be the case when you you know go to work for anybody but but but at the very least if that is something that turns them off that would be something that would be interesting to learn i mean you know like It's interesting because, like, when, again, I talk with early Uber, like, top five employees, they have no clue.

Yeah, that's what I'm wondering. They like the idea. They like the people. Yeah, like, is this realistic. So there is an element of like, you can't really do it. And especially, I think it depends on what level you are, right? Like, the more senior you are. So if you're a software engineer where you can, you're absolutely employable, whatever happens, sure, you know, just take a risk.

You like the people, do it. But you don't need to do too much good diligence. is if you're a director of engineering or a VP of engineering and your kind of late career, you absolutely need to do these things. And maybe the people did do it. I'm still surprised that they managed to get the CFO of Venmo join as their money was running out.

Right. And someone from Octa. Yeah. SVP of engineering from Opta, which again, like, you know, those people, like for them, it will be a little bit more painful, but clearly they'll have a good network. I mean, also at the same time,

we should give kudos to the founders for selling this. Right? Like they managed to attract really good people who had a lot of other options and they chose it. So I don't know how they did it. But in this case, this start didn't work out. But the founder charm clearly was there, which did go for the company. I think we should acknowledge that. And this company didn't work out.

So like it might not seem positive. But a lot of companies work out because the founders can attract people like Fastass. Okay. This is how I want to seg. into the reverse side. So this is thinking about I'm an engineer or any sort of employee, whatever,

and maybe I'll join the hot new startup. Maybe I leave a fang company to join the hot new startup. But I'm going to read from your piece. You say, base salary is the risk-free component of any compensation offer.

Equity is less risky for publicly traded companies. However, public equity has its own risks. So the risk here for fast, for a startup, is that it goes to zero. So let's talk about, and then we can talk about culture and things like that when you join an established, maybe even publicly traded company. But this is for both of you, actually. So what are the risks in terms of if I were to join

any publicly traded company today it is in terms of like the stock options that you get how much of the risk is in like if you're Facebook is down what

30% from its highs 40% or something like that yeah yeah like six months yeah so what happens if you're if you get an offer from Facebook like what what what's sort of thinking, and this is for anybody, either of you, would go into that. Are you betting on a bounceback? What do you think about established companies, especially public traded? So this used to be an easy answer a few years ago. Here's the thing. A lot of software engineers

are incredibly lucky. Software engineers are one of the few professions where you get executive level of compensation for not being executives. Any other industry you look around, the people who are getting these type of ridiculously high offers that senior software engineers do are all executive directors somewhere. But software engineers are in demand. That's where we're getting it. That's one. The other thing is, most of us software engineers have no clue how this works. In the last eight to 10 years from 2010, the thinking was you join up a fang, a Facebook alphabet, Netflix, Facebook, Apple, Netflix, Google, or Amazon. And they were called fang because up to 2015 or 2016, their stock growth was very strong and it kept on and the thinking was the soft will only go off you join them you get a grant

it'll be higher that this was our kind of very simple thinking and it kind of worked it's like moor's law it it worked until until it didn't and now it's starting to not work so now software engineers need to realize that if you're getting a large equity package an executive level equity package if you want to make the most of it you need to think like an executive or an investor which goes back to actually you know like i would recommend uh software engineer listen to to you know like read the visa resources. I subscribe to the newcomers letter and I track all these things because it's, you know, I can try to give some quick advice, but it's all the same. You need to understand like how the market works, why it's up, why is down when interest rates goes up. Why is that

bad use for late stage companies? These kind of, it's, it's all the same. Except you're not, so, you know, like, you're now a stock investor in whatever company you're at, which is a situation a lot of engineers are not used to. We were used to tech this going in one way, and that was obvious. Yeah, I mean, I think the thing that's kind of both challenging and interesting about this conversation and the timeliness of it, you know, one, of course, there are macro market trends that are, you know, changing. And that, you know, for a lot of engineers or a lot of people in the tech world, we haven't necessarily experienced, you know. I mean, there was, there was like a lot of crazy stuff happening in the 80s, you know, when I was in

grade school, that may be coming back again. And I, I don't have any context for those things. And so when it comes to making some of these decisions, to Brian's point, I mean, there is a calculus or calculation that you can make. But at the end of the day, you are essentially making a set of informed bets based on your life stage, based on your goals, based on what you're trying to achieve, based on the lifestyle that you want, you know, based on a number of different tradeoffs. And you kind of have to take a stab at where you think, you know, one, you're going to have the most happiness. where two, maybe you know, you're thinking about your risk tolerance based on where you are in your career based on people who may depend on you, you know, whether you want to, you know, have a family or contribute to those things and how much, you know, a like the startup lifestyle

will enable or disable the type of life that you actually want to lead. You know, and this is kind of why I was pushing back on Brian's point about making a purely, I don't want to say rational, but purely economic decision about where you go to work. You're going to have to get up every day, hustle super hard, deal with schedules that are out of your control and all sorts of other things to sort of make this thing that doesn't exist turn into reality, as opposed to going to maybe an established player or a fan company

and dealing or working in a place where there's a lot of established procedures and there's clear culture and there's documentation in theory and maybe it's not super maintained. but at least there's trappings of it, whereas in a startup, you're just building all the time. You don't have to have time necessarily to do all the documentation. So, again, like, I guess part of the thing that I think is really important in thinking about this, and you sort of alluded to it, Gerge, that in joining Uber early, of course, there were things that you sort of knew or could imagine working on or happening.

But, of course, there's a whole host of things that are completely unpredictable or very hard to predict. I mean, the number of things that were trying to kill Uber as it was, you know, coming into being were legion, you know, and it really, it sort of did kind of create this early culture that was really resistant to a lot of those outside, you know, forces and to that negativity. I don't know, although I was going to say, I don't know how that tracks or applies to a place like Fast, where clearly people both saw dollar signs as well as the opportunity to be in a culture that, you know, gave them a lot of flexibility and gave them a lot of support. and it probably was like an amazing kind of opportunity. I mean, if you were there early enough and fast, you were like, I'm on another rocket ship, like this thing's going to be, you know, super meaningful and super valuable. And then, you know, in a matter of moments, the whole thing dissipates.

And all of your financial plans and aspirations and hopes that you thought we're going to, you know, turn into something once the company was worth $12 billion, it becomes worth nothing. And so all of those plans that you had made and all those considerations and calculations, you can go back and you can check your math and you can, you know, reconsider. the decision that you made, but you made a bet and you placed your bet, and this is how the card's turned up. And that is just part of like the startup game. So I think it's, if you want comfort and security, obviously a much larger, you know, boat, like an aircraft carrier going with Fang isn't going to rock that much. But you're also not going to get the highs, you know,

of getting into, you know, a turbojet or something and having that experience. I feel we're kind of going full circle. So like six or seven years ago, where, startup L Jackson published an article saying why you should work for startups and his point was I think it was like don't don't work for service for the money because you're not going to get any money just just accept that you're not going to get a debt your option will be zero right like he said go there for the experience go there to grow a team grow there how to learn to manage because you're grow crazy until the startup goes bust or something happens and actually a fast that's what happened with a lot of people. So I know some people, even from Uber, who joined them, like,

it seems to me it's enough positive for them. They got a lot bigger responsibilities. They hire teams. They grew. They created product lines, and you can argue on how much revenue you had the product. But they did all this stuff. And if you go to a startup and you're okay with your options being word zero and you're getting a positive from there, you might be a lot better off, actually. And as startup old Jackson said, which I think is still true, the, like, if you want to make the most money with the lowest risk, go to a public trade company. Do it. Like, that is the way to do it. The work will be more boring. It's hard

to get in there. But that's how it worked. That's how it always worked, by the way. It worked with IBM or, you know, when Microsoft is a risky thing. And you have to get lucky with the companies. So as I really like Chris, like think about your risk appetite. And that my two cents is honestly, like, think about like people's careers as long these days. Few people retire. If you think that you're going to have a 40-year career, it's cool to do a few years in a startup, like knowing that you might not have made that much. You figure out when that might be a good stage for you. Maybe you first save up some money.

Maybe you don't need to do that. But my strong thinking is that work at a startup and work at a large tech company. And once you've done the two, you're going to know so much more about your strengths, your weaknesses, and you'll be a lot more employable. Now, to Seg a little bit, you've also written eloquently about joining an established company from an engineering perspective and showing up and feeling like, whoa, this is not on an engineering quality level, this is not what I thought it was. and there's lots of things that I could go into in this one, but just give me your thoughts as an engineer. If you go the route of joining an established company

and feeling like either the culture or the quality of the engineering is not, if you're thinking, well, this is a safer bed or this is a more established thing, but finding when you get there, it's maybe more chaotic than you expected. What is your high-level thinking in terms of, from a software engineer perspective, you show up and you're like,

man, this kind of seems like a cloud show, which I didn't expect? My thinking overall is you need to keep an open mind. So when you go into a startup, that's, you know, I was joking how Google engineer goes into a startup doesn't really end well, especially Google engineer who's been at Google for five or 10 years because they have a way of thinking.

But if that engineer goes into an open mind, I know to expect chaos at a startup, they'll be fine, right? And they'll adopt better. Same thing with large tech companies. From the outside, somehow we all idolize them. And, you know, they don't make too many mistakes. And we somehow think they're a lot cleaner. And by the way, a lot of teams are like that.

But usually, like, everyone I talked to, I had someone who actually joined Twitter and they told me, oh, my old startup, like, we used to have 15-minute continuous deploy. I pushed the code in 15 minutes in production at Twitter on their team at six hours. And they're like, what happened? I got an upgrade on title, I got a lot more money. I feel I'm back in Stone Age. The point is, go in there with an open mind because you're going to learn things and you don't understand the history.

Like that company was a startup at one point and it turned into something else. So the best thing, the best thing that happened to me is like, you know, go with a low ego. Don't try to bring in all these, like people have these ideas that everything must be great and there must be great tests and linting and all of it. these things at big startups. The biggest mistake they do, when we hired a senior and Uber, they will come into it and in the first month, they would want to fix our cold quality because they felt that as a big company, we should have that. And we didn't need it at that time. So going with an open mind, help your team. First, like, pick up the

rhythm. Like the number one suggestion I have is start working the way people are working, even if it makes no sense. And a story I keep telling myself, which I wasn't there, but it's a really good story. In the early 2000, when Facebook was growing like crazy, they hired Kent Beck, Kent Beck. And Ken Beck created extreme programming and he was a huge test-driven development fan. He might have created test-driven development development. I'm not sure, but he was part of it. He's the Agile Manifesto guy. And back in that time, for software development, like everyone did what Kent Beck was safe. So he shows up at Facebook and he organizes a test-driven development talk and people can attend these talks and no one shows up. And then he realizes that,

Facebook does no unit testing, which went against every conventional wisdom at the time. And he kind of sucked up his pride. And he started to work the way they worked and realized that Facebook is just different to every company because Facebook didn't need unit tests because they used customers to test for them at scale. The point is, like, just, you know, let go of your, for the first few months, just keep an open mind, like, you know, turn into sponge and just like go with the flow, take things in. you'll be so much better off for it. The same thing happened for me at Uber. I was shocked at how bad things were, but I was like, well, you know what? It's the world's most valuable company at the time I was there. They must know something that I don't. And I learned a few things. And I was able to see later what they were missing. So, yeah, don't expect the world.

It might be shiny, but it's not gold. Well, again, this piece, I could go down the list of the things that you recommend. It depends on what team you land on. If it's a prototype team, the quality of the engineering doesn't matter. If it's before product market fit, a similar thing. One of the things, and this is my last thing,

Chris, you can jump back in. I heard that. For someone, again, I've never been in this situation. One of the things that I feel like, if you haven't been a part of a big organization before, I'm going to read this from your piece. When products start to miss the business metrics that they should hit, they become at risk for their headcount getting reduced or being shut down altogether.

People think that established companies that you can't lose, but at the same time, that's not how it functions. There could be succeeding and failing startup cultures, inside all of these product things. And so if you're expecting stability, you can't necessarily, that's not necessarily what you will find, depending on what team or what product you show up to work on, right?

Absolutely. As you said, I feel large companies are a mix of startups that just have better funding. But they do get shut down, and especially what you don't see. And okay, last advice is like, work at a startup, work at a large company, They become a manager at one point when you have the opportunity because you start seeing stuff. As a manager, you are afraid of your team being shut down and people might not get fired.

Sometimes they do, but of them being sent to do something else. There is fear. There is fear of failure. It's not as strong necessarily as a startup, but there is that thing. And you will do stuff that makes no sense, but it makes perfect sense once you understand the context. The large company context is just very different. They're not stupid. it's just different, and it takes a little time to understand the same way as, you know,

learning a language, the grammatical rules look stupid at first, but once you learn it, you realize there's a reason for it. Yeah, I mean, just the thing that I want to add to that is, and I think this does happen as you mature, I suppose, that you start to build up some level of respect and consideration for, you know, like, I don't want to say like your elders, but the folks who came before and we're solving problems. And what I find oftentimes in younger startups, you know, is a certain hubris and arrogance and ignorance, which sometimes is completely necessary in the startup game in order for people to get started to say, well, you know, the way you do something is so stupid.

You know, like we have all these things now. We have AWS. We have like, you know, like sunk infrastructure that is now part of, I guess, the solution space that wasn't there when a lot of these companies were being started and being founded. And so they were built with a different set of assumptions and solving for a different set of needs and requirements. And oftentimes at a breakneck pace where they were just solving for that momentary problem. And they weren't thinking necessarily about the long-term implications. And then there are these huge rewrites that often times are contemplated and considered and then

executed on, which then can take years and years and years that actually never materialize because you're trying to sort of solve problems from a different era with a different level of urgency, and you're trying to also anticipate everything that could ever happen, almost like in a legalistic way, and it's just not possible. So I think it's important, I guess I'm building on what you're saying, to come in with that sense of respect and awareness that the experiences that you have had as someone who's not part of that culture or did not build the thing or the scaffolding. there is a new recipe or a fusion perhaps to occur, but coming in and just blowing everything up because you're like, oh, I don't like the way you do these things.

And like you said, like, oh, I used to do these things at Google. And so therefore, that's the way to do it correctly is actually quite wrong because the nature of the environment and the skills even of the people who are part of that environment need to be part of your kind of consideration framework for making changes. So it's actually much more important. Actually, I'm curious how you approach this. Gerge, like, from a listening and learning perspective while also needing to build and execute. You know, one of the things that I remember that was, I guess, famous for Facebook in the earlier

days is that on your first day, you had to commit something and launch it to get you into the cadence of how fast Facebook moved, right? And that was in opposition to other places and other cultures where you had either a waterfall software development method that was very slow and considered and you had to like write all these tests and make sure the thing didn't go down because the systems weren't built for that level of fault tolerance. But Facebook came along and said, no, no, no, we want to actually move much, much faster. And like you said, we're going to test on live users. And hey, if it breaks, no problem. Move fast and break things. And so they were trying to retrain their culture, or at least train up a culture that had

a bias for action as opposed to a bias for consideration. So how do you, I guess, sort of advise, you know, engineers to take that approach where they are being evaluated at how fast they need to execute. And at the same time, you don't, you don't want to actually bring in all your known patterns into this new space, which, you know, in which they might be inappropriate or just not really well calibrated. Yeah. So if you're working at like companies that actually have good onboarding, which, which actually, for example, on Uber, we miss it a lot on. You know, if you're lucky, it's easy because you're, you're, you're, you're told to ship on week one. And a lot of companies, by the way, all the better run companies, they do this whole thing of like

ship on the first week or try to do it even earlier. Yeah. And then that's easy. I have seen this at Uber the longer someone takes to actually ship their first change in production and just contribute to a project the worst they're going to be off because they're going to be starting thinking about stuff they'll draw up like we had a staff injury who joined

and started drawing up architectural diagrams because didn't have anything else to do for months and then you know India got fired because this person didn't understand what's going on but like if you don't have this you know you're not as lucky to be told to just keep your heads down because at Uber even for the most

senior engineers, at least. We try to tell them just learn. Like, just do the stuff, like, do the coding, even if you're not going to be coding like 90% of the time later on, just do all these things. The best thing I can do, like, there's this book called the first 90 days, which I recommend to every software engineer. And it's everyone when you join a company. In the first three months, people, like, decide how they're going to look at you. And after the next year, no matter what you do, they're going to remember your first 90 days. So the best thing you can do is at any company that you join is just be productive. and play by the rules of how they're doing.

And don't appear too smart. So, you know, like save those things. So what I recommend to people is, first of all, start a note and make a note of everything that you can see being improved or not making sense. It's going to be a document by questions and observations. And for the questions, just ask people, be super curious. What happened? How did it go?

You know, talk to the old timers. Why did you do it? But hold yourself from, like, just make a note for all the things that you want to suggest, but don't suggest anything just yet. Ship stuff, like as fast as you can, you know, like, overdue your onboarding, do it faster, get nosy into other projects, and just help people, but, you know, do it in their way. And after two or three months, if you've done this, you earn respect.

Because what a lot of people forget is your team needs to respect you to listen to you. But once they listen, once they see that you can actually do stuff the way they do, you know, you're kind of like one of them that you picked up the pace, Like if they see you as a peer, then they'll start to listen to you, especially if you're a really productive peer who now starts to help people. This is an approach that I've seen work every single time. The problem that gets in the way, the more experienced people are, the smarter they are. And the more they feel that they need to do changes on day one, which starts resistance. And it goes into politics, which is people's influence.

You know, you're not going to know dynamics on the team until you've just kind of worked side by side and people trust you and they tell you the real scoop and all those things. So this is the one thing I know always works. There might be some other ways. And, you know, Chris, I'm interested if or Brian, if any of you have. But that's what I've seen consistently. And this is a combination of be curious, be humble, and put in the work. In the first, like, few months, just focus on helping the most that you can, you'll put away your pride. And then later, you'll have all these opportunities open up for you.

That sounds like good advice to me. I'm going to ask a question again from being naive for, have never been. been in this situation. And this is for both of you. How much does cohort or generational stuff matter? Like even in your piece you're talking,

you know, there could be a team that has been brought on by acquisition, right? And then there's the team over there when it was only eight people and they've been through the wars and they're all veterans and things like that. So this is, again, for both of you, in your experience, to what degree,

when you're in a big company, is it sort of like, well, you weren't there at the beginning or, well, you came over here from that acquisition or you, you know, like how much of it is like this sort of click style thing where it has to be siloed because we do it this way over here, we do it that way over there, like how much of that can be actually sanded down or does it, based on your experience,

kind of always operate independently? I mean, it sounds like you're talking a little bit about ossification and also territoriality. And, you know, I'll just like, yeah, okay, politics. Like, I'll tee a few things up. You know, and then, Greg, I'm obviously curious to hear your experience. Like, I think it really depends on the team to some degree. And it also depends on kind of like the ultimate culture that you're moving into. My experience at Uber, you know, was such that, like, well, one, I mean, the team that I was on was quite young.

We were at the developer platform team. And so we were, you know, figuring out a lot of things. There was a lot of internal churn from people moving from one team to another. And so there was no ossification in that sense. There was a lot of dynamism. There was a lot of confusion. There was a lot of chaos. And so the, and I think I was actually quite, I don't want to say like unprepared,

but, you know, relative to my experience at Uber, which was, you know, it did feel like you were a part of a photilla. of just many large, seasoned, you know, kind of organizations with obviously like a ton of money and certainty behind them. And so when you were taking, you know, big risks and bets, you know, you always had the core business to kind of fall back on in some respects, whereas Uber was fighting for its life and its existence, at least throughout the period that I was, I was there, and had to really prove something to the world. So in that sense, it was more like, hey, we are, you know, kind of jogging slash running forward, once you join the team, like, hurry the hell up and start doing stuff and start doing stuff that seems useful. If someone, you know, is, I don't know,

like, I don't know why I'm thinking about sort of like a like a war deployment or something, but, you know, like, if you're going to be part of like the team that drops in, you know, behind enemy lines or something, like, you've just got to like learn on the go, you know, ask the right questions, observe, kind of constantly be checking yourself and making small incremental kind of contributions here and there. And then finding those opportunities where you see a space that you can, you know, kind of establish, you know, what you're doing in a way that shows that you've learned kind of what the priorities of the organization are, what your team's priorities and needs are, and you can contribute in those ways. I didn't, there were certainly

managers at Google, you know, that were quite territorial. And I would say in some ways, maybe, you know, personally insecure, you kind of wanted to steer away from them because they weren't really motivated to help you to grow, to learn, and to achieve. Whereas in other teams that I've been a part of where that there was a kind of eagelessness, you were brought in. And as long as you contributed and made an impact, you were, you were cool. You know, you kind of went along with it. But Gerge, how was your experience?

So what I see is, like, one of the biggest differentiators that I see is talking about the modern, like, well-run startups and companies, every company works in the way that there's a team and they have a mission. And they kind of, like, they're not told exactly what to do, but they're told what metrics they should care about and, you know, like, what, what things to move? Every team is like this. Now, if you're in an organization where your team has a lot of free space ahead of them,

basically they have five or ten times more work than they can handle. It's going to be a great place to work in the sense that there's going to be no politics because everyone is stretched as hell and they'll be, everyone will be happy for you to help. Like, you can approach anyone and say, can I help? and they'll be like, yes, take on this, please, or, you know, help me with this. If you're at a place where the team does not have as many things to do, they might actually have more people than work to do, there's going to be a lot of politics because people will be elbowing and they're going to try to work on this project by themselves or to claim that

they've done it to get a promotion and all that stuff, it becomes more toxic. And like there's managers, depend, you know, there's people on the team. But the biggest two things I've seen, I've seen this at Uber, I've seen it on my team. when I joined, we had so much stuff to do, and it was a great time. We just had a reunion and everyone talked about that year where we had so much to do. And we all had huge impact. Like people made millions of dollars by shipping a buck fix. And then later, the same team, we didn't have as much stuff to do.

And we started to kind of, you know, like there were too many cooks in the kitchen. So I think that's the biggest difference. And that's a great reason to join a startup, by the way, because the big company, yes, you might make more money. You might be more stable. but you actually just might feel that you're not, like you're kind of doing like one-tenth of the work that you could be doing. At a startup, you have the base salary and the equity might be turning into nothing, but you're not going to have any problem.

Like you're, and it's such a good feeling when you feel that everyone is giving their best and you've kind of achieved something more than what you thought you would as a group and yourself. So I think that's a big difference I've seen, and that's the difference between old Uber and like later in my life. Gerge, the pragmatic engineer newsletter is the number one technology newsletter on Substack. So I'm going to plug that for you right now. I'm not kicking you out of here because we're going to talk about Twitter and Elon Musk in a second.

And actually, I will ask you what you've been hearing from Twitter employees about that. But is there anything else you want to plug aside from the newsletter? That's it. So feel for just subscribe to the newsletter. It's free to do so. I also have a YouTube channel where I talk about things, and you can find everything at Pragmatic Engineer.com, from job board to companies that I invest in. I invest in some developer to startups. It was great to be here. And yeah, I'm excited now. My newsletters

slash blog sometimes shows up and tech me, which is awesome. Well, listen, look, you've got incredibly valuable stuff on there. So let me do this. and to the degree that you're comfortable doing it, let's go ahead and seg into the news of the day, man. What have you been hearing from people? Before we get into debating Twitter's existence and stuff like that, specifically, Gargay, what if you have, have you been hearing from people inside Twitter?

And actually, you know, Chris, you might know people like that as well. what are Twitter people thinking about what's going on right now? So I'm talking with engineers mostly obviously that that's who I talk with. And there's like two groups of people. Well, one thing that they share, they know nothing and they're just refreshing the news. And this is kind of understandable because they're, you know, the board cannot share anything with them. But there's a big frustration of like we know nothing and we're getting all our information

from the news or directly from Twitter or Elon on whoever. and they are worried a little bit of what will happen because now a POSL takeover is on the table. You know, it could happen, right? And they're worried about if this happened, you know, they're not speculating. The biggest questions that they have engineers is assuming Elon took over Twitter,

would remote work work stay? And some people who are remote work fanatics are worried if this happens, they're going to leave. And some people who have friends at Tesla are a bit worried about what the culture could change assuming you know you must take so over. Tesla has a very different culture. You know, like again, both in terms of pace structure, people are doing well there,

but it's not, you know, it's not mentioned the same thing as Spank. And the last one, people fear for the culture. Right now, Twitter engineers at least have a super positive culture, very strong emphasis on diversity and inclusion. They all feel supported. They don't feel stressed. They feel there's a good work-life balance. They're fearing if Elon comes in, you know, he's going to be.

push people, they're going to throw out diversity and inclusion on the window. So there's a lot of uncertainty, and I think people are just afraid of potential culture change because a lot of people want to Twitter because they liked this positive culture. That is exactly what I wanted to talk about. And again, Gerge, if you stay with us, you're completely welcome. If you need to go, I know you're in a different time, so you're free to go. When I was thinking about this after I posted the show today, and Archie's whining on the background for some reason.

The thing that I was thinking about was if you're the Twitter board and you're going to do the fiduciary duty sort of thing, et cetera, et cetera, there's all sorts of reasons which we could get into, even like specific financial reasons why they probably can't answer his letter yet. But one of the things that you would say is we can't accept this proposal because we have a certain culture here. We have a certain, we have talent that expects a certain culture and a certain way of doing things. And what is clear, and he said, I listened to the TED talk today, is he wants to change that.

He wants to change how Twitter functions and what Twitter's mission is, essentially. And so I'm almost wondering, I think there's 100% chance if it already hasn't happened that the board will reject this offer. But I almost feel like there's no way that this can go through because of things like that. And by the way, Gargay had to bounce. So I'm asking this of you, Chris, and whoever wants to raise their hand to talk about this. Yes. God, there's so much to sort of, I don't know if this is like armchair quarterbacking or contemplating like the changes that could happen as a result of this. I mean, I feel like the thing that I saw when I saw the news today, you know, where he's like, look, you either accept my, you know, 5420 offer or I bounce and I take, you know, and I sell my 10% stake and then, you know, the stock tanks or something as a result.

I mean, it's a very not just like aggressive, but sort of obnoxious and yet maybe necessary move. It feels like this game of chicken is kind of about saying, look, like the. direction that Twitter has been on is one that doesn't really jive with how Alon sees the nature and the purpose and the utility of Twitter. And that is probably the deepest, you know, concerning or open question as to, well, what does he really think about it? How much does he, or what are the parts that he does appreciate and what of the culture, you know, that is and has been, I think, being built up over the last several years at Twitter are, you know, what parts of those are relevant and what parts need to be removed. And I don't know, ultimately.

if, you know, he... Go ahead. Well, that's my point, is that if you were the board and you, I think there was an all-hands an hour ago or a couple hours ago or something like that, and you hear that, look,

there's a revolt. Then your fiduciary duty is the asset that this company has aside from, you know, the advertisers, aside from the community, aside from the users, is the talent. And if the talent is like hell to the no, then there's no way you can accept this. Can I tell you one other detail that I've heard from Wall Street folks, which is, interestingly,

they don't necessarily have to respond because if you read the letter legalistically, I'm not a lawyer, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. He has to state in there that he doesn't. I made the joke in the title of the show today that financing secured. He doesn't actually have the financing. So they don't actually have to respond to this. Somehow he has to essentially get liquidity and maybe sell a bunch of shares from. Right. So this is not yet a, and everyone says in the headlines, it's not a binding thing

because it can't be binding until he can prove to them that he has the money to make this happen. I don't know. I probably derailed what. what you were saying. Well, I think so what you're asking, I mean, in a way is whether or not this game of chicken that I've described is actually real and whether it is likely to actually go through. And what you're saying is, well, if he doesn't even have the money or can't get liquidity or there isn't some private backer that shows up, you know, that's willing to put down

the money to make it a real offer, then the board may not even need to consider it and they can just move on. If, on the other hand, he is somehow able to marshal that level of resources and, you know, do what he said. Then it could go forward. And then they have to actually respond to it. I think what we're broadly asking is, you know, what would the nature of change be, you know, at a platform like Twitter? Yeah.

And what would those changes look like? What are some of the changes? You know, like, what do you answer that question for me? What do you think he wants to change? And I know, I don't know if you listen to the TED talk as well, but. I've not. I don't. That was today?

Yeah. And he kind of didn't. Oh, edit button for sure, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, okay. If you had to, if you had to pundit this, what do you think that he would want to change to Twitter? Look, I mean, obviously we can't get into Alon's head or what he really wants to do. He's clearly someone who cares a lot about freedom of expression, not being sensitive. censored, you know, having the ability to kind of do whatever he wants. As we talked about before,

if you remember when we had the Tesla guy on, I think literally that's his YouTube name, right? I was sort of bringing up the point about how Alon like is specifically like neurotypical and as a result is able to see things from a very different, I would say, unclouded, you know, perspective that doesn't care so much about kind of like the current politics or whatever. And so I think he's so effective at the things that he, you know, works on because probably like Zuckerberg, you know, that I have Soron effect where he starts to focus on it and is able to execute simply because he's able to ignore a lot of the, I don't know, whether it's like niceties or the politics or whatever that a lot of humans tend to obsess themselves with as opposed to thinking like long

term. And so the way that I would frame this question is in 10 years time, what is Twitter and how is it being used? And, you know, wild speculation. You know, if Alon wants us to become a multi planetary species. And he also wants to spread human consciousness throughout the galaxy. I know this is going to sound completely ridiculous and stupid. And I swear I haven't taken a gummy or anything like that yet. But like Twitter could be the kind of communication platform for this interplanetary species as a decentralized protocol. And this is something that I know, Jack Dorsey obviously has cared a lot about. It seems, and I don't want to, again, I don't know anything and this is all speculation and like who cares about Christmasina speculating about

things. But if it's true that Jack and Alon have been talking for some time and talking about what happens next and talking about, you know, crypto and Bitcoin, clearly they have a lens on where they think these things can go and are probably thinking through some of the implications of what could be unlocked if these things were, you know, successful. And we didn't have to worry about the current situation or the current, I don't know, rules and laws and all these. things that exist. So my question is how does a project like Blue Sky, the initiative to decentralize Twitter, become successful? And it doesn't seem to me that with the incentives that are driving Twitter's business, i.e. advertising, that a project like Blue Sky has a clear path

to success and to even launching, frankly. Like, in whose interest is it for Twitter to become a decentralized platform and protocol? I don't know that it's the advertisers. I don't know that it's VCs. I'm not sure that it's anybody's, except for a broad society. But yeah. Well, right, exactly. And so if you're thinking like long term, the only way in which that could possibly happen is if an individual like Elon Musk buys the company, takes a private, and then makes that decision as the owner of the platform. Right. So if Jack Dorsey has been having this battle with Elliott, you know, management, and then, They want Dorsey to get 300 million users or whatever it is. And they have all these requirements from a business perspective for him to turn this thing into something else, you know, to be somewhat competitive, you know, with a Facebook or Google. And they're like, well, you know, that's not either what Twitter should be, nor is it kind of like the whole, you know, germ of this idea.

Like that, like ruining it with ads, turning it into another AOL or Yahoo, isn't really the way that we want to go. You know, that, okay, that's again, back to the fiduciary duty thing is, you know, Elon has said a couple times that, well, he's doing this as an investment, although he didn't in the TED Talk today, but I didn't look, you know, don't hold Elon to anything. I mean, that's an investment. Like, like, there's not to be money that comes out of it or control. Right. No, but in the in the letter to the board, he says that I can unlock the value. Do you see money?

The value doesn't have to be monetary, just to be clear. But continue. Sorry, continue. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Okay, well, no, I was actually asking the question of if, and I know we're talking about billionaires and the equivalent of- You have that level of money.

It's like, what are you going to do except try to at least change the world in a way that, you know, you think is ultimately- Well, that's the Matt Levine argument, which is, this is just his favorite game and he wants the game to run the way he wants it to run. But, okay, let's, let's devil's argument that, because people, look, all of us. You and me and everyone in the world has been like, you know, Twitter is so amazing and it's so under, not undervalued, under exploited. Twitter definitely like punches above its weight in terms of its usage and adoption in terms of cultural power. Without making as much money as it should based on its power. I mean, if you're evaluating its success based on how much money it should throw off, right?

Okay, well, that's what I'm trying to say is like, do you see an Elon Musk argument? that I can do this and I can turn Twitter into a $300 billion company? I suppose the question is how and what is it doing to make that money and where is that money coming from? Are you charging all the users? What would you, yeah, how would you change it? Like, how would you get it more sticky? How would you? Look, I mean, Twitter has a number of monetization projects that are going on right now. And it is unclear to me that any of them are successful. It is unclear to me like any projects that are currently on the web are going to rival what Google did with its search ad business or what Facebook is doing with its attention business, you know, attention advertising versus intent advertising. Like those are the two major things.

People come to a platform like Twitter to express and to share and to see what's going on in the world. Now, granted, maybe there's a news angle to it. But like even like CNN and CNN Plus, right, which wants to charge, you know, access for its news. And they got, what, 10,000 signups over two weeks. And they were spending, I don't know, I saw ads across all the platforms that I'm on, tried to get people interested. It just seems like the product market fit is not there. People have an assumption about how content should be free.

And so, you know, whereas with Twitter, that's the fucked up funny thing about Twitter. Is the product market fit for news on Twitter is the greatest thing. And you just mentioned the ad business. with Google, which is the most insane business model. But in a similar way, what Twitter is for news, for certain people, and not for everybody, because otherwise they'd have a larger monthly active user base. But it is so completely perfect. And so bringing up CNN Plus is interesting.

It's almost like this is where, this is how news has to live. this way. Yeah, it's interesting that you're talking about news because there is like the news industry and then there's like news, right, which is the phenomenon of new information that hopefully is valuable and useful and has a perspective.

You know, actually our good friend, Alex Cantorwitz, was having a conversation with Antonio Garcia Martinez on his recent podcast episode. And they were talking about this dynamic of, you know, what is journalism? And I think it's really, really valuable to put that conversation into this container because there is news and there's the things that are like constantly going on that are like, you know, causing us to kind of like go mental because of how much our attention is being, you know, attacked and then monetized, right? So you're putting things in front of people who are, you know, constantly kind of being blared at.

You know, I call it like information waterboarding, which we actually choose to do. I mean, that that is like the TikTok kind of experience. And there's a difference between that, which is designed to just kind of like, you know, provoke and keep you, you know, kind of engaged versus, you know, reporting and newsiness in journalism, you know, which I think you and I do, and I think you do much more so in some of the reporting and the context setting and the remembering on behalf of the listeners and the audience. And so to think about what Twitter is and what Twitter becomes and how Twitter functions in society, like it is an information like a circulatory system. So if it were to decentralize, then the question becomes, well, what is Twitter the company actually doing, right? Is it the one that defines the protocols and sets the rules? Well, that's the type of governance. I've said for years that Twitter should be a protocol.

Twitter was a protocol. Twitter started as XMPP. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It should be like any email or whatever similar protocol. And again, this is what blue sky is doing. So it is coming full circle. And then again, so the question. that I'm trying to ask and frame, right? We went off our target a little bit with asking about

what is the value of news. And, you know, like Bezos bought Washington Post, right? Is that a big moneymaker for him? Maybe, maybe not. I'm not sure. I saw a great tweet where it was like Bezos buying the Washington Post. Meanwhile, like, buying Twitter is so much more effective in this stage. I don't know. Well, it depends on editorial, right? And I think that that is one of the big questions. Like, is it similar to a Bezos buying the Washington Post and being more or less hands off? But then you do have this question, well, where does the money come from? And will negative coverage come out of the Washington Post about Bezos's initiatives?

And I believe that the Washington Post folks try to at least say, you know, Bezos is hands off. Like he's not in the newsroom. He just, you know, believes in supporting journalism, et cetera. But then you have on the other side a lot of folks who are really concerned about, again, that news industry, like capital and capital I, which has its own set of interests, which, you know, previously as the fourth wall, you know, seemed to have more independence or integrity or something, you know, back in like the, the, was it, the news muck, muckraking days? And it feels like some of that has been either neutralized or the power of those platforms to define the nature of the conversation what goes on there. Like once you are in the inside, once you're a Jack Dorsey or in Alain Musk, you see how the news determines how you speak. I mean, we've had this conversation about future.com and Andreessen Horowitz, right? Once you get to a certain stature, You no longer want these platforms to sort of, or I guess the news media, the news industry, to be able to speak on your behalf. You want to have that free. I mean, we are engaging in a lot of free speech right now, and it's amazing.

Like, no government is going to come in and censor us. But if we wanted to get this out to the world through the news media, the news media says, well, you guys are not interesting. And so we're not going to put it out there. I think that even the conversation we just had with Gerge, like, he is his own sort of journalist. He is talking about the engineer's experience. Where is there an engineer that is writing for a major news? publication about the engineer's experience, right? It doesn't happen. So you have to have that independent media. And that's what Twitter largely is, you know, in 280, you know, bursts and

and so on. So I don't know, like, I guess I think that whatever it is that, you know, Alon thinks that he wants to do with Twitter is probably quite different than the conventional types of things that we would think that he would want to do. You know, it's, it's, I guess I would be hopeful, and maybe I'm naively hopeful, that the changes that he would want to, to make are more along the lines of kind of validating a decentralized system, which is what he did with, he didn't make it decentralized, but certainly with space, you know, the way that I always grew up thinking that space was something that only governments did. And he, you know, proved that private companies actually are much more effective and efficient at it. And then he did the same thing

with electric cars. Electric cars used to be shit, you know, like they used to be like the, was the leaf or the whatever the Toyota thing was. And it got like 12 miles, you know, to a charge. And he proved that that also wasn't the case. So is there a different version of Twitter that we can't even imagine? I think there probably is. And the fact that Twitter is still more or less the same as it was in 2006, you know, there's been plenty of time to try a lot of experiments and do different things. And, you know, as, who did I see this, I think Ryan Sarver tweeted about why, you know, there hasn't been a lot of innovation on Twitter's because there's been just so much drama over the years that it hasn't been able to focus on just, you know, shipping and getting things done.

So two more questions and then we'll wrap this. And listen, you can completely decline this one and we'll move on. But have you been hearing from anybody inside Twitter? I've seen some tweets of people sub-tweeting and obliquely talking about stuff. But do you have a sense of how people inside Twitter are feeling about the last week or so? I mean, I think it's, you know, it's incredible. You can decline. I'm offering you the opportunity to decline. I don't think I've I've heard anything that's, I'm mostly actually what I'm seeing is actually on Twitter. There's a lot of

people who work at Twitter who are tweeting about what's going on and about the sense of dread or fear or like, you know, like what does this mean? And for, for I, you know, I've never worked at Twitter and I don't have like that many insights about how the company kind of operates or functions today. But I got to imagine in the last couple years, the company has probably come together, or people who work at Twitter have come together in a way that's very different than it was previously. Certainly, you know, with remote work and everything that happened with Black Lives Matter and with just cultural moments, you know, that happened on or with Twitter and where the internal culture of Twitter seem to want to become a lot more inclusive and a lot more

aware of the negative experiences of the bullying, you know, and the responsibility. that these platforms had to address some of those concerns. I mean, a lot of the innovation ironically, has, or I don't know what I'll say like ironically, but maybe finally has been about making Twitter a more inclusive and, you know, safer space for a lot more people and a lot more voices. And that is new.

And, you know, I don't know if, if Alon wants to roll that stuff back and go back to the way it was before, if he wants things to be more like, you know, Reddit or like the Memoirs or like Discord or like these other kind of, you know, CD places on the internet. internet. I mean, I hope that's not the case, but certainly given that he's kind of like, you know, the meme lord and the troll in chief, maybe that's the way it would go. And so for people at Twitter, they're like, we have come so far and made so many improvements from a, you know,

cultural perspective and for finally taking these interpersonal, you know, kind of concerns more seriously and the role that technology can play in them, that I got to imagine that they're like really worried that their last two years are, you know, possibly for not. That's, that's why I think this is a dead rubber thing. At least, you know, to the degree. Again, read Matt Levine and he'll tell us how a full hostile bid could happen. I want to real quick, because I did see internally how the folks at Ted managed to put Elon's thing up for free for people today. What was the surprise? I think he said like there was one more thing or something.

Did I, do you mean Elon said that? No, no, no, no. Chris Anderson from Ted. seem to imply that there was going to be something after the Elon talk. Oh, well, I don't know, because by the time that happened, I was preparing for this. Yeah, so I don't know. But I got to say, I saw internally them scramble and, like, put it together, and I was outside and I still could watch it. So, like, holy shit, the fact that they put that video together that I could still stream.

That is, yeah, impressive. Yeah, and I saw them doing that this morning, like, well, we've got to take this behind the paywall. I was like, okay, God bless you guys did it. All right, Chris. My last question for you about this, and this is serious, I have, this is the question that I thought of last night when I first heard about this. And I've thought about this personally. What would, what do you think could change in Twitter to make you stop using it? And you want me to go first so you can think about it?

Sure. Yeah, if you have some thoughts about it. Yeah, go for it. the thing that concerns me, you know, if the talent leaves or whatever and things go bad or whatever, and I don't know, Elon could buy it and shut down all our accounts and say, fuck you, everybody. Then we've got no choice.

The thing, because, you know, one of the things, I woke up to all the people being like, well, if Elon owns this, I'm out and things like that. And I don't take that seriously because, you know, whatever. But the thing that I have valued Twitter for for my 15 years on there is that the people that I've curated that I trust, this is my best outlet to them. And so if they were to leave or a certain percentage of them were to leave and they would maybe go somewhere else or whatever, but that would be the thing. because the bottom line is, it's the social graph for me, but it's the information graph. And again, I may be a special case because this is what I do for a living.

But like, if there were a certain percentage of people that were like, fuck this and the same way that people left my space and things like, then I would have to go to where they were because what I value is their information flow, right? Yeah. So that's, I make. Maybe there would be a period of time where I would still have Twitter, but then go to wherever everyone else went or something. So I'm just curious, is there something that you think could break Twitter for you? You know, one thing just to maybe, you know, clarify, like, what happened to MySpace was, you know, a couple things.

And I don't think that it was that people were like, fuck this out. It was more like there was a better thing. And MySpace was stagnated. And also, like, I mean, like. Facebook came along and made a clear, you know, space. Right. And all the people that you cared about went somewhere else. And that's kind of what I just said. Sure. I mean, well, I think for me, and you've suggested this, like, that would be a lot of people. You know, I, let me see. As of now, I don't even really check this. But, you know, I follow 8,000 people, right?

I clearly don't see 90% or probably 95% of what people post. But the things that I do see, I do find incredibly valuable and interesting. It is my watering hole. It is how I stay connected. It is how I see the future. I follow 2200. Yeah. Right? Like, I understand like what's going on.

So if even 500 of those 2200, depending on who they were. Well, actually. So, but actually one thing that's very important is that there are a lot of other people who I do not follow. Who those, you know, if those are those 500 people, you know, those people retweet and they share content from other people who I don't actually follow. directly. So there's a discovery angle and like a sort of a flow of information across multiple networks that ends up finding me that I think is very important. So I guess to try to answer your question, you know, not only would there have to be sort of like a mass exodus, but, you know, Twitter would need to cut off access to, you know, the web, you know, that you couldn't publish,

you know, like it's, I think one of the reasons why I don't find Facebook to be compelling and I literally, you know, don't go there anymore and I really barely go to Instagram anymore, you know, is because the nature of the content has become, well, certainly on Instagram, one, a lot more commercial. So everyone's there trying to make a buck or sell something. This is so interesting. Keep going. This is so interesting. Yeah.

And it feels more extractive than it is generative. I honestly feel like, you know, as much as there's stupid shit that happens on Twitter, every now and then, I have an authentic, honest engagement with someone that is, you know, surprising and affirming and useful. You know, on Facebook, it's sort of talking to the same people who you already know and are connected to. And I guess for me, it is the value of the exposure to new ideas or to new perspectives. It's that constant repunishment that I find so useful. It's that. It's the, it's also the real time, which was also the thing that, you know, back on the day Zuckerberg was afraid about with Twitter, you know, threatening what he was doing.

But that's the key point. I like you go on Facebook maybe once a month, and especially if I've got pictures of the kids that I want to show to, you know, the residual social graph that I have there. It's interesting that you say that Instagram to you is so, it's so empty because it's, what did you say it was? It was more commercial and more transactionally. Yeah, yeah, transactional, transactional, that's the word.

No. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go, no, go. Well, I was just going to say, like, the purpose or the intent that I find for people sharing on Twitter, you know, as much as there's like dunking and other stuff, you know, like being clever and things like that, you know, the, the, the tersness and the format and the content lends itself to an incredible dense amount of information that can be consumed relatively quickly. You know, even though, you know, there's the statement that, you know, an image is worth a thousand words or whatever, I find that reading content on Instagram. Instagram is actually much less efficient because I get through far less of it than I can on Twitter. And so there is a level of, I don't know, composition in crafting terse, succinct, you know, sort of info chunks and bytes that, I don't know, just like allows me to diverse information in a way that sort of really fits into my brain. You know, every now and then I'll pop into TikTok and you really have to kind of like work to

get to the meaning or to get to the value. It's so funny. TikTok is almost the inverse because it's almost like a lean back social network. Am I wrong about that? No, I mean, you're totally right. I mean, it's actually even better than TV because the content, you know, really is not going to be, you know, any longer than 30 seconds to like three minutes. And if you're bored, you know, it's like channel surfing, but you just like flip your finger and it's just going to keep showing you things that are kind of maybe adjacent. And then every now and then we'll pop in something that's a little bit random. Like, why to me that is kind of, again, self-chosen information waterboarding that's like, you know, somewhat pleasurable. And yet you can't kind of get out of it. Whereas I think Twitter,

and again, this is not about singing the praise of Twitter specifically. It's about how it functions in my life as a source of information from a plurality of sources. No, that's exactly what we're saying. Like, why? Okay. Something that you said about that, like the vitality. And again, I have a specific job where I need to know the news. But then even before I had this job for 15 years, the vitality and the immediacy of the information that Twitter could give to me. And listen, we're different types of users. If you look at the monthly active user numbers,

we're a subset of a subset of a subset. But it is people that believe in Twitter know that it is the greatest, product market fit for what they do and what they're interested in. And I do wonder, it is possible for those people because they are so committed and engaged with the product that you wouldn't have to tweak it very much for them to abandon it. You know, I'm saying. I do. And it feels a little bit like you're kind of like having sort of a roundabout conversation about MPS, you know, where it's like, how bad would the product have to be free to leave it? And what I think is really valuable. That's literally the conversation we're

like. Right. Like to think about is the origin of Twitter. And, you know, this is the crazy thing that I don't, I don't know how to like think about this in alternative, you know, kind of like the multiverse where there are multiple Twitters. It's like the Lokiverse, you know, where there's just like lots of very, very different expressions. And in some ways, it has happened, but they haven't really been interoperable. Like Casey Newton was on a space this morning talking about a plurk and talking about, you know, like, like, oh, God, what was the other one? Well, I mean, Path was around for a little while. There are a number of expressions of different social media platforms that have come out, even in the mobile era, that have not really sustained or maintained

as well as or as long as Twitter, you know, has. And even if, you know, Alon is pissed that, you know, many of the top users on Twitter no longer come here to post anymore, there's still, you know, sort of a core, you know, based of, you know, granted an aging user base, I suppose. But nonetheless, like we're still a significant, you know, segment of, of the first era of social internet users that have a lot of, I don't know, you know, life and vibrancy, you know, kind of like left in how we use these platforms. I guess the thing that I was just thinking about, you know, with regards to other platforms like Snapchat and TikTok, is the move to visual, lean back communication and the use of video for expression. And the layering and the nuance

that goes on in those formats is just entirely different than Twitter. And I think for a lot of people, I don't know how the cold start is for people today, but if you were to start a new Twitter account, how bad is it relative to someone, you know, who's been on the platform for, you know, 12, 13 years? But also, why would you be, why would you be starting a Twitter account? Go start a TikTok account? Like that's where I'm saying something different. This is the problem.

Okay, go ahead. Like, like for Penny, for example, right? Like for your kids. Like, if they're going to, you know, yes, they will start on TikTok, they will bypass and probably never come to Twitter. So what does that mean? What does that mean for the platform for its longevity, for its purpose? Or do you come to a certain point in your life or to a certain age where the format and the content and the ways of interacting on Twitter are actually exactly right and exactly what you want? And I don't know.

You know, like Twitter is such an interesting, I mean, Facebook, in contrast, has changed the types of media objects that it supports. And it's moving rapidly into a future that is fully immersive, you know, fully 3D. I can't even imagine how I'm going to publish like in that space. Whereas Twitter is the most basic, the most primitive, you know, fortune cookie-sized pieces of content that are really easy for anybody that, you know, can type on a keyboard can boost.

It's a Zen cone, you know. Exactly. which is a poem. But yeah. What are your final thoughts? Yeah, my final thoughts would be this. I'm willing to bet that this is going to be a lot of Michigan's about a bunch of stuff,

and nothing's going to really come of it. But it's the first time that I've thought, of one of these things going away. Well, no, that's not true because TikTok could have gone away a couple years ago or whatever. But like, wait, what do you mean? Oh, oh, he could have gone away because of the whole Trump China thing. Yeah, exactly. So it's just one of those things where like in the way that in the way that if you were a Gen Xer coming up with baby burmers and like, well, there's rock and roll and there's three channels and things like that, like.

This is a situation where I'm like, hey, six months from now, like, what will Twitter be like? Where we felt for 15 years that Twitter is in the firmament. And, you know, like, so this is one of those times where I'm even more than TikTok because I'm not on TikTok. So, you know, again, the kids experienced that more than me. But like, I'm like, could this be completely transformed? a year from now? I mean, I think the real question that you're alluding to, and the reason why this moment is so important,

you know, is because first, you know, Jack is no longer there as the, you know, founder, CEO, calling the shots, deciding whether Twitter should or should not change. You've got a new CEO come in who really, I don't know, has a pretty low profile overall, you know, and Alon comes in and is like, you know, this whole thing could be different and could be changed.

and for all the complaints about the slowness of Twitter's innovation and change over the years, suddenly you have someone who may be on the precipice of being able to push the button that says Twitter is going to be completely different and... And it could be better for Twitter as a business. Correct. And it could be awful for everyone who uses it today. And that may also be completely necessary for Twitter to survive for the next five or 10 years because the media landscape is changing, because advertising is changing, because the things

that will allow Twitter to persist may not be around or as abundant in those next five to 10 years. So that I think is like that gives me a lot of pause. Obviously, you know, you and I love Twitter. We use Twitter all the time. We find great value from it. If Twitter were to go away, like you sort of, you know, we're suggesting like a TikTok sort of like it just up and vanishes or it's outlawed, what would I do? I don't have a great answer. And maybe we'd go back to RSS and blogs and email and or maybe, you know, we have to blow the thing up in order to make it a decentralized, you know, system. You know, I don't know. But it's, if anything, it's pushing me to think differently about, I guess, the longevity of the platform and what purpose it serves, you know, going forward.

Yeah. Specifically, the longevity of Twitter, you know, no one's going to be able to, as Elon said on the TED thing today, Mark Zuckerberg, the 17th. You won't be able to fuck with Facebook a thousand years from now or whatever. But like, yeah. Well, listen, Chris, you have a podcast platform now. So anything you want to plug before we go?

Oh, wow. No, but, you know, like for anybody who's in the Bay Area or San Francisco, I am going to be going to a Republic happy hour. I don't often talk about my day job on this show very much. much, but I do have a day job. I am a product lead. And that's at Republic. I will pin a tweet to my profile about that. If you want to come by and say hello, I'm actually going out in the world, you know, which doesn't happen very often. So go see Chris. He's a nice guy. Yeah, you know, come say hi. And we can grab a beverage or something. Otherwise, you know, Brian, this is great.

Anything you want to plug or anything you want to say? No, I'm going to put together the non- squeaky chair. So we'll have a next week. So excited for that. Cool. All right. We'll go take care of your All right. Later, everybody. All right. Thanks all. We'll talk to you guys later. Bye.