The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source - It's a long & windy road (Friends)

Episode Date: May 24, 2024

We kick off our Microsoft Build 2024 "coverage" in this free-wheelin' conversation with our friend, Shaundai Person! We're talking Netflix infra, we're talking sales, we're talking real-world AI usage, we're talking career choices.... What's a good next step? Listen in!

Finally it's time for change loggin' friends With Adam and Jared and some other rando We hope that you love it and stay until the end We're not offended if you can't go We know you're probably busy coding And your deadline is pretty foreboding Your caffeine intake is an actual problem So why don't we walk outside And we can listen to Change Logging Friends With Adam and Jared in Silicon Valley We know one day the gag will come to an end But honestly that will probably be our finale

We bet you're slinging ones and zeros And that makes you one of our heroes Your list of to-do's will be waiting for you So why don't we walk outside And we can listen to Change Logging Friends The better than jamming people you know Change Logging Friends Let's get back into the flow

Change Logging Friends Change Logging Friends It's your favorite ever show Favorite ever show How about that? Favorite ever show the first in a series of conversations that we had at Microsoft Build 2024. Adam and I flew out to Seattle this week and interviewed some amazing folks, including Scott Guthrie, Microsoft's Executive Vice President, and Nihab Batra, VP of Engineering at GitHub, along with some other surprises we'll be releasing real soon. Microsoft is going all in on AI, so the topic dominates

all of these interviews. If you're burned out on AI, take the topic dominates all of these interviews. If you're burned out on AI, take a week or two off, but come back for great shows on other topics. We have developer slash lawyer Louis Villa from Tidelift and Paul Copplestone from Supabase on the calendar. This episode with Sean Day Person was the last one that we recorded on Wednesday afternoon, but we're bringing it to friends first because, well, it's the most frenzy of the bunch. All right, let's talk with Shonday, but first. What's up, friends? I'm here with Sama Alamnaylor, Senior Developer Advocate at Sentry. So we've been working with Sentry for many years now, and I love Sentry. We use Sentry. It's so helpful for us, but we don't write many bugs here at ChangeLog. We're just that good. But I do say often, how many teams use Sentry?

And that number has grown over the years. It was 40,000, then it's 70,000, then it's 90,000. And now 100,000 plus teams use Sentry. Numbers don't lie. Check the NASDAQ scoreboard. Can you believe that, Salma? What are your thoughts on Sentry's impact to software teams? I think its success is also due to the fact that it supports over 100 SDKs and frameworks. Like any programming language you want to use, unless it's ridiculously obscure, Sentry's got an SDK for that. Whether it's an official maintained SDK or whether it's a community SDK, there's a way that you can implement Sentry in your projects with a few lines of code. You don't need to really do much to get its benefit. And I think that's really powerful also in showing that people want to make Sentry work for their frameworks or their languages of choice because it works. And the fact that you can self

host Sentry as well, it shows how valuable it is and shows how valuable Sentry knows it is to people. The fact that it's open and out there and you can use it and configure it to your specifications at the code level if you want. And if you want to not bother about that and pay for it, then you can do that too. I'm not surprised and I'm not surprised that it's growing. I sound biased, obviously, but it's the best error monitoring solution I have used in my dev career of many years. And as a front end dev, it feels intuitive. I think a lot of these error monitoring solutions are very backend focused. They're very stack Tracy and not really geared up with a good developer experience. Like here are some logs,

here are some things to spit out. You can read them if you care. But with Sentry, it seems to appeal to more developers because of the way it's you care. But with Sentry, it seems to appeal to more developers because of the way it's been engineered. The amount of SDKs that are available makes it appeal to more developers. And you can get started in Sentry in so many different frameworks in less than a minute. And all the instructions are in the app and they point you to documentation if you need it. It's, you know, a joy to use. And so I'm not surprised that that many people use it. I'm glad you're not surprised because I'm not surprised either. It's an amazing tool.

We love it. We use it. Go to Sentry.io. Use the code CHANGELOG. That will get you $100 off the team plan. It's basically three and a half months free or almost four months. But code CHANGELOG will get you 100 bucks off the team plan use it love it sentry we love it sentry.io that's s-e-n-t-r-y.io sentry.io

what are we talking about? I was going to ask you that. I didn't think we needed a plan with this trio. I just thought we'd just talk. Let's just talk. Yeah. Talk about anything. Yeah. So we're here with Shonda Person from Netflix.

From Netflix. At Microsoft Build. I know. Why? Because I got invited by Scott Hanselman, who is an amazing, he's a VP of developer community here at Microsoft. And they have, so one is the content creation side. So outside of my work at Netflix, I do, I'm building a TypeScript course. And I am also creating content to draw people to that course.

And I have established a community and I'm building a community of developers so they wanted some input on some of the projects that they're working on with AI and how that relates to... Hold on a second real quick. Challenge. Yep. Gosh.

For the duration of this conversation. Don't say AI. No AI. Oh, that's going to be tough. You got your one in there. You're creating some AI content. Fair. Every time you say AI, you have to drink some Aquafina.

Can I say, what if I say the whole word? Well, let's just say that you can talk about it, but not directly about it. Oh, I like this though. All right. Just because we're a little bit overloaded here. We're at our final conversation. We're trying our best to curb the AI. We've been very AI heavy for the last two days.

As you should have. And here I am saying it over and over again. Dang it, breaking my own rule. So I just want to throw that out there and continue. Okay, cool. It's just too easy. I've got to make it harder on you. So now try to explain what you're doing here.

All right, yeah. She can't do it? No. Okay. With content creation, they wanted feedback about what the developer community is thinking about and interested in in these streets. And then the other aspect of it is that at Netflix, I'm part of the platform engineering team. And so we're building developer tooling. And there are a lot of parallels from what we're doing on my team with what they're doing, the people who are building the platforms for other developers at Microsoft. And so there

are a lot of learnings that we could share. I was doing more learning than sharing actually in this case, but I was also providing feedback on things that might be useful to us and our team, like how are you using Copilot? That works. How are you using ChatGTP, if that? And different areas of opportunity that we can leverage some of the offerings that Microsoft has in things like VS Code and Copilot to enhance the developer experience at Netflix as well.

Good job. Gotcha. Thanks. Pretty good job navigating that one there. She's working hard. That was tough. She's working hard. That was tough.

Mental gymnastics here, not mentioning. It almost makes it worse. We're almost thinking about it more. We can't mention. The elephant in the room. We're almost thinking about it more now, yeah. So I don't know if this backfires or not. But is Netflix on Azure at all? Or that was all AWS, isn't it?

It's AWS, yeah. So my big question was, how can we leverage all of the things that you showed us if we're AWS customers? And I think in general, my feedback was that, I guess I understand that there's the push. They want to push folks to Azure. But part of the feedback was that I guess I understand that you know there's the push every they want to push folks to Azure but part of the the feedback is that you need to be able to enable people like myself an engineer at Netflix who is not probably even interested in taking the entire company and

telling them like let's move over to this entire new platform like how can I integrate your new offerings with the things that I'm doing without having to have that huge lift of like, let's rip and replace something like AWS. So I do see some opportunities. I talked with some folks about the differences and it's still foggy to me. So don't get me to try to explain all the details of it. But one response was there's differences between the sizes of language models there's small language models slms all the way up to large language models so don't think of it as something where in order to take advantage of all these

new sophisticated capabilities you have to you have to replace things maybe you can stand up an app just like somebody made an app that quickly just cleans up their desktop like they have all the different icons on their desktop i can stand up a quick little app that automatically will look through my desktop apps and like yeah and sort things so stuff like that is a quick win and easy way to get in so there are a lot of opportunities that i can go in and dip my toes in the water without having to rip and replace everything. So what did you learn? Is it an API call away or is it beyond that?

You have to be on Azure, you have to be sort of steeped into the whole kit and caboodle or no? Apparently not. Apparently you don't have to be all part of the whole, you don't have to adopt the whole kit and caboodle in order to adopt something. I'm going to use my term. Thank you. It was a good term. Kit and caboodle.

It was a good term. Kit and caboodle? Very Midwestern. It's the kit and the caboodle. Okay. Which I never understood what the caboodle was. It's not a kit and caboodle. It's a kit and caboodle.

I'm pretty sure it is. I'm pretty sure it's kit and. Because it's the whole kit and caboodle. That's right. But I never knew what a caboodle was. So maybe it's a. I think it's the bag it came in. Maybe.

It sounds like a candy. It sounds like the back end of something. Caboodle. The back end. The front end and the back end. Should I use these new and upcoming sophisticated technologies to find out about this? Ask your phone. You should.

Maybe it'll automatically know stuff. Oh, funny. What does kit and caboodle mean you have to share how it is spelled kit and caboodle okay in quotes is an informal phrase that means everything and more okay or the whole lot specifically what specifically what's the caboodle the term kit can mean a collection of tools or equipment. Wow. Caboodle is believed to derive from the word boodle. I was so close to being right on this one.

Meaning a lot or group. It's kind of like everything in the trunk, right? Give me your level of groundedness of that response. How grounded is that response? That's like asking the kid how intoxicated they are. They're not going to tell you the truth. Gosh, listen to this. This response is quite grounded.

Of course it is. Kid Incaboodle is indeed an enigmatic expression in English commonly understood. That's what it thinks. The very sophisticated technology has just slapped me in the face with being grounded. So this term we just learned is grounded, right? Groundedness. At least I learned it here.

Groundedness, this measure. When I was a kid, grounded meant something entirely different, right? But grounded now means, does the response from sophisticated technology, did it come from the context that it was actually trained in? Or is it hallucinating? Right.

Grounded in reality. It's kind of like a new way of saying is it true or not, right? That's right. That wasn't grounded. We're not supposed to use hallucinating, actually. Oh, really? Yeah. Who said this?

Everybody's saying this. Yeah, this is, so take it up with Scott Hanselman. This is new? Yeah. No, apparently because AI, it's not a human. And hallucination is a trait of a human. And you want to take out the personification of the, did I say the word? Yes.

Ding. That's all right. Keep going. Yeah. You want to take it out. That was a silly challenge. I knew it wouldn't last. Hallucination gives it this air of like being a person.

They use the term fabrication or that's why it's like Microsoft. Well, people lie. They fabricate stories. Isn't that true? So I don't know. I don't know. All right. I didn't write it.

So this is a Scott Hansen moment. We'll have to keep it up with him. Yeah. We personify things. I mean. And that's fine. I think. I think it's all And that's fine, I think. I think it's alright.

Grounding is human too. I'm grounded. I'm feeling grounded. Well, I will still call it hallucination. I don't know why fabrication is better. To me it sounds like, well now it's lying to you. If somebody's fabricating something,

they're lying. Hallucination sounds more like you think you're right, but you're actually wrong. Like you've imagined something. In terms of personification, I think it's a better word. But if there's a better word that's non-human, I'm fine with it because they are humans. Let's treat them like the robots that they are. They're less than human.

Be the bot. That's right. Now I can mistreat it. Now you can. I need an excuse to treat it poorly. You always say please and thank you to your GPT. I'm just like, just do it. You do? He treats it like a human. He'll be like, thanks, Chad GPT. That was really useful. No, I do not.

You do something like that. Chad GPT, did you sleep well last night? I'm also a podcaster and I've got to make good air time. That's true. That's true. So sometimes I embellish a bit. But then it comes back to bite you. There may have been at least one or two occasions where I'm like, that was a good response or thanks.

Oh. You know? I don't know. Just being kind. It's kind of like those bots on Reddit. Have you ever seen the Reddit bots where it does a thing? It's like, hi, I'm a bot, and I'm here to make sure that you use that word correctly, and then you can give it

feedback by saying, like, good robot or bad robot. People do it all the time. Sure, sure. I don't actually do it, but I see these comments on Reddit where it's like, good bot, you know? Oh, really? Yeah, and I always think of it like you're petting it, like it's a little robot. But it's good feedback. Well, I think that ChatGPT does have memory

now, so if it can remember that I'm not nice, But that's good feedback. Well, I think that ChatGPT does have memory now. So if it can remember that I'm not nice, it might be like, I can't work with you because I'm told to only work with kind people. My training says that if you're rude, I'm done. Oh, but I'm paying you $20 a month, dude. Okay. Is that how you work? I give you money, I can do what I want to you?

Not if you're a human, of course. But to quote her in Monkey Dance. If you're a computer program. I own you. Or a service. It's a service. Yes.

You are my robot. I will not be nice to you. Because I'm giving you money. I've heard people like, they think that, you know, it's going to eventually take over the world. So like,

let's be nice to it. So that when it takes over the world, it's like spare me. Oh, yeah, I'm in that camp. I'm not. I'm in the opposite camp. I can understand. When the memory upgrade says memory upgraded in chat GPT, I'm like, you just remembered everything I just said. You've got more room in there now to remember what I said. Please, master, I love you.

Right? I'm in the other camp. I'm like, no, we will not go quietly into the darkness. We will pull the plug. You're ready for the rebellion. I am. He is a plug puller. I'm a plug puller.

Yeah. Okay. I'm going to use it up to the point where I'm like. Is that like cord cutter but not? Yeah. Plug puller. Yeah, plug puller. It's less serious.

You can always put the plug back in once you cut the cord. I'm scooting over. Just in case. You actually might be in trouble in the future just because of your association to me a known plug bowler you know what though as nice as you are the AI is probably trained on the fact that you have done so many podcasts

together it's just like guilty by association yeah but it probably is sophisticated enough to parse that like yeah this is a good cop this is a bad cop what did you call it? I called it the thing Hey friends, you know how much I love Tailscale and I also am a big fan of Alex. He's awesome. He also does some really awesome videos on the YouTube channel for Tailscale. And recently

he did a tutorial, kind of a walkthrough of using Tailscale with Home Assistant and what it took to set it up and access Home Assistant remotely via Tailscale. Take a listen. Under Home Assistant, we're going to go ahead now and install another add-on. So I'm going to go ahead and install the Visual Studio Code server add-on. Whilst that's doing that, I'm going to go ahead and go back to the Tailscale add-on that we installed earlier and just grab the piece of configuration that we're going to need from the documentation. In the documentation page, do a command F or control F and search the page 127.0 and there you go. We just need these four lines of code here. Home Assistant by default blocks connections from untrusted proxies such as the tail scale proxy.

In this case, we're going to add the 127.0.0.1 as a trusted proxy in the list here. So I'm gonna go ahead and copy this to my clipboard. I'm gonna go ahead and click on start and then also show in the sidebar. And you can see we're basically in Visual Studio Code, but in a browser. And this is running directly on Home Assistant

and has access to your configuration files and what have you underneath. All we need to do is paste those four lines into our configuration.yaml file and restart Home Assistant. So I've pasted the four lines I'm going to go to the hamburger menu up here click Save and then Settings and restart Home Assistant. We want to go back to the add-on section and under Tailscale we're going to have to go to the configuration tab for the add-on and click on tailscale proxy. This is going to turn on tailscale serve this is what will automatically generate you a TLS certificate using Let's Encrypt for your tailnet.ts.net

tailnet name. So if I click on save here it will take a moment but it's going to restart the tailscale add-on and so now I should be able to go to https homeassistantvelocitraptor.ts.net. And it's going to load my entire Home Assistant instance over Tailscale with a TLS certificate using the name from my tailnet. And I can log in just as if I was using the IP address and port number that I was before. And you can use this name from anywhere on your tail net so any device that's connected to your tail net such as a phone for example that can now connect to home assistant whether you're in the house or whether you're at the coffee shop or whether you're in iceland looking at volcanoes it doesn't really matter where you are if you're one of the few out there who have not tried out

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Do it now. How much are you using this stuff in your life? I'm using it increasingly more. So I use ChatGTP for docs. I use it to try to eliminate anything that I just don't feel like doing. I don't really use it for code. And I like to code. Huh?

The dishes. The dishes. No, I wish. i have i have an automated well i have a dishwasher so i have a system i just press the button and it washes my dishes for me okay so that's great yeah correctly of course after i've loaded it there's a right way to load it and i only know the right way i don't know any i don't know how to do anything wrong like i've never done anything wrong in my life so i wouldn't imagine that yeah yeah are you guys just talking for the ai now are you auditioning to survive?

I'm complimenting her. Yeah, and I'm telling you the truth. She's a great dishwasher loader. I am. And she never does it wrong. I never do anything wrong, is what I said. And we agree there's one way to do it right. I heard this part of the conversation.

You guys are just saying it again. So it hasn't quite done your dishes yet, but it's writing your emails? No, not my emails. It's fine-tuning my emails. And so I'm the type of person who it's easier for me to start with, like, something than to start with a blank slate. So I can put in a prompt and I'm like, write me an outline for a doc that will convince my manager to spend $150,000 on, like. This is hypothetical? Yeah. A vacation. Hypothetical. Yeah. On a vacation for me. For... This is hypothetical? Yeah, hypothetical.

Yeah, on a vacation for me. For sure. Yeah, yeah, totally hypothetical. And then chat GTP will just come out or Copilot will come through because we have this Copilot license. We'll go and give me all of the outline and everything. Or I can run through and say,

okay, I just want to just write some words. Copilot, fine tune all those words for me. and then I'll use that and make it sound a little bit more human. More human than you wrote it? So you know what I did the other day? No, to answer your question. But what I did the other day was I asked Chet, GTP, or co-pilot, I guess it's the same thing now too, or it's kind of two sides of the same coin. I asked it to write a paragraph for me to a doc about, I'm convincing my team to move in a certain direction for a project that we're doing.

I asked it to write a paragraph. Towards Azure? Towards Azure, yeah. And so I asked it to write a paragraph for me to explain or to introduce the topic. It wrote the paragraph paragraph but it sounded very ai it was all these big words i don't know if you're familiar with ti the rapper but he just raps like yeah oh yeah yeah he just uses big words for no reason like existential incremental and

like it doesn't go together so it sounded like that just like a whole bunch of buzzwords and i was like like he's writing stuff with a thesaurus. Exactly. Like you gotta get a bigger word for this. Exactly. Yeah. Like you just looking for, what's a big synonym for this word. Right. And so I, I ran it back through chat GTP and was like,

can you make it sound more human? And then I ran it through and it started using more like colloquialisms and, you know, smaller words. So it's interesting that I asked AI to sound more human than it did. And it responded in that way. So that was cool. But,

um, yeah, I use it for docs for the most part. And we're, we were just talking earlier today about, um, leveraging it to do some dynamic things with our code, like to understand our users.

I can't go too far into it because it's like top secret. Top right. Yeah. Recommendations on Netflix. No big deal. Oh, yeah. You know, like all of the...

The whole new algorithm. The whole entire, like rewrite the whole entire Netflix with AI. Yeah. Make it more modern. But, yeah. She's just giving up on the AI thing, right?

She just gave up? I did. Well, we did. I love it. Okay. I was holding her to it the AI thing, right? She just gave up? I did. Well, we did. I love her book. Okay. I was holding her to it, Stia. Oh, man, you're not doing a very good job because she said it like 17 times. Well, I heard her say it. I'm like, why are you saying it?

And even the way he's looking at me is just like, I'm counting. Every time you say it, I'm like, do you not know you're losing points right now? You're so competitive. I let her off the hook. It was too hard. I was winning. That's all we're talking about. You're so competitive. I let her off the hook. It was too hard. I was winning. That's all we're talking about. It's literally the topic of conversation.

So docs. Convincing. Right. Just teach to make you a better salesperson. Well, right? I've told you that I'm a pretty good salesperson. Oh, that's right. You were, weren't you? Maybe better. I forgot we have that in common. This might be a good opportunity, actually. So I'm here withperson. She's a pretty good salesperson. Oh, that's right. You were, weren't you? Yeah. Well, maybe better. I forgot we have that in common. This might be a good opportunity, actually. So I'm here with two salespeople.

Okay. They're both somewhat competitive. Sure. We've given up on the other challenge. Sell me this pen. So let's... That's why he's keeping tabs. He's like, you're losing to me.

Let's see who can sell a little bit better here. Oh, gosh. So I think you need to convince me, of course, because I'm the judge. You're going to make me lose no matter what. Why do you say that? Because you're against me. Because she's a guest. All right, you're right.

I'm completely biased. Sure. Let's do it, though. But now you've actually just turned me back towards you because I would show my true cards by doing what you just said right there. It's true. Now we're in the middle of a game of chance here. We can say it's no winner. Just different.

We have different styles. Just all losers here. But I'm happy to sell something. No winners. Well, or how would you approach it? Yeah. Yeah. I'm down for that.

Okay. Every day. Let's do it. Let's do it. All right. So hypothetically speaking, if you wanted, no, that's too easy. I was going to say, if you want to convince Netflix to switch to Azure. Oh, gosh.

I don't know why I would do that. It would be like an ad for Azure. I don't even think I know enough about Azure to do that either. What's something that you know well? Barbecue? I like barbecue. You know barbecue very well. Yeah.

I'm trying to find equal footing. Oh, let's say barbecue versus soul food. I like soul food better. Okay, good. Because he's a barbecue guy. Okay. Gosh, where are we going with this? I'm going to lose.

I'm so to lose. I'm so scared. I saw her eyes. You need to convince me that I should have barbecue tonight for dinner, and you should convince me that I should have soul food tonight for dinner. And you'll both have a chance to respond, and then you can talk to each other as well and debate. Sure, okay.

And you guys can see which I'm going to buy tonight. So we'll let ladies go first. Okay. Shonda, what is soul food exactly, and would i be interested in in buying some this evening i'm happy to tell you about soul food but what did you plan to cook tonight before we started to have this conversation well i'm in seattle so i don't have any ability to cook so it's probably gonna go out for something and i think we had discussed maybe having steak maybe heard about this mara this korean barbecue place marination i haven't had sushi in a while so we're kind of like completely up in the air

yeah but i'm actually not cooking tonight i'm eating out so you're eating out okay so yeah and did you have a taste for anything or well we've had we had pizza we had italian i'm sorry not pizza we had italian recently so So, no, I'm wide open. I'm on blank slate. Blank slate. Okay, cool. Yeah, because you did mention sushi, and that sounds like a good option. Korean barbecue might be good.

You know, we're on the West Coast. We're, you know, pretty close to Japan now. So close to Japan. So close. We're like right there. Just barely. Just so close. Yeah. we're like right there just barely just so close yeah but something that would actually be really

good in seattle when as you think about it is soul food and why i say why i say that okay i'm gonna so win seattle the home of soul food this has been such a long day too. So you just might, you mentioned that you, you didn't really have a particular taste for anything. So, yeah. So, you know, if I'm putting myself in your shoes, I don't want to be, go to a restaurant where I'm just going to be bogged down with like one type of cuisine. I want to get there. And then in the moment, I'll be able to have the ability to choose, you know, do I feel like seafood? Do I feel like a steak or do i feel like

you know some pasta type of thing the good thing about soul food is that you don't really have to you don't have to choose until you're there you know you have the option of like fried catfish or baked catfish grilled catfish and then a side of macaroni and cheese so it's like you know it's something that's filling but you're not not married to one particular cuisine or taste. What are some other dishes? So my favorite thing is now fried chicken. And if you've been to Atlanta, there's lemon pepper chicken wings, and they're the best in Atlanta. So hopefully I'll see you guys there at some point soon.

Really? I've been to the airport. That's about it. Oh, we've got to get you some lemon pepper chicken wings. There's a big event in Atlanta. Render. Render. Yeah.

That's in June. So that's in like two weeks. And I'm speaking there. So I think you should come. You're at like every event. I feel like I am. There she is. All right.

So you've heard her argument. What do you think, man? Barbecue? She kind of sold me on these lines. Listen. Right? You see? Sold both of you.

Right. You said I'd lose. Sounds pretty good, actually. No, I said I'd win, which implies you lose. Explicitly, I did not say that. I don't think Seattle is actually the best place to pitch either one of these. No. So, you know, you're on level ground there.

Absolutely. Can't say Seattle is great for this, but that's okay. Let's just assume. I can't reveal my secrets. I'll just declare a loss. You're just going to take it the L? Yeah, you know. Some day is the best answer.

I can't put my secrets out there. She'll take them and try and use them. I will. To what? To beat you. That's what I do. To beat you next time? She just beat you right here if you don't compete.

That's true. That's true. Okay. I'm just kidding around. I think I would begin with, like, you know, I know you already had steak. So that's not close to barbecue, but it kind of is because you can barbecue it. You can slow it. It's meat.

Yeah, it's thick. Yeah. Right? I know you've had Italian. We like Italian. It's great stuff. Right. I'm more for sushi, so I'm not really trying to advocate for barbecue because you threw

me into the barbecue lane. But I think there's just so much good barbecue out there. and it really depends on how long it's been since you had good barbecue so if you hadn't if you have had good soul food recently but it's been a bit since barbecue maybe it's time so yours is all about timing really yeah i mean it's kind of it's up to you really like i'm not going to convince you to eat it if it's good for you you should eat it so this is how you approach sales yeah you don't try to convince you to eat it. If it's good for you, you should eat it. So this is how you approach sales? Yeah. You don't try to convince me to eat it?

No, absolutely not. I think if you want it, you should have it. I think it's great food. He says the option, and then he's like... And I think catfish is amazing. I think, you know, lemon pepper. Probably smoked. Do they smoke them?

Or direct fire over the grill? Yeah, so there's options, man. Yeah, you could roast you could get the roasted ones and then they'll thighs even thighs are you thighs

or breasts I mean like so these are like wings so they're like or you could do like the full wings yeah I'm thighs though to answer your question

deep fried or these are grilled or either way it's all soul food I've gone my way now there's options you're into it

I love soul food by the way though all way now. There's options. You're into it. I love soul food. By the way, though, all the things you're talking about can be done on a barbecue. So we're kind of in the same camp. I know. They're actually not that different. They're not much different. Synergy. That's true.

I like that. I like that. I mean, you could totally do low and slow chicken wings for 45 minutes. You can also do them fast. No, it's true. Yeah. Like soul food and barbecue are like cousins yeah pretty much it's it's it's not really the sides is what makes the that's it rest of the meal soul

food yeah because if i give you baked beans versus what's a good side macaroni and cheese that's also barbecue see right or greens collard greens collard greens is not barbecue necessarily is that well traditional barbecue like in texas like we're not doing collard greens is not barbecue necessarily. Traditional barbecue like in Texas. We're not doing collard greens. You wouldn't. Yeah. A lot of different barbecues. Southern barbecue.

For sure. I would do that. You do okra, like fried okra and stuff. My wife loves it. I'm not a big fan. It's like snot to me. It's like something weird in there. Oh, man.

Now I won't be able to get that out of my head if you're right. It's kind of icky. It is. Green beans, however, I'm down. Green beans are good. Yeah, I'm down. Green beans are good. Macaroni and and cheese coleslaw

these are all soul food slash barbecue we're just cousins basically you can't go wrong man I'm buying both you guys both win I'm fine with that honestly my tactic with sales is not at all about convincing

zero I want to lead and sell a good product that I believe in, but I don't want you to buy it because I think you should have it. I want you to buy it because you need it. Right. And I want to find out, can I actually help you? And if I can, I'm going to convince you that can help you. Not that you need what I'm selling, which is different. It's like perspective taking, you know, it's not the same. Yeah. I think my approach is similar in some senses, but also like I'll add to it is that I want to find out first. So you saw, I started by asking him questions. So I want to find out where we're starting from, figure out what your interests are. And then I want to lead you to thinking that

it was your decision to do what I wanted you to do in the first place. So what my tactic was all throughout my career in sales is ask a bunch of questions. And I even approach conversations like this today. I would be a great podcaster, I think. But I'll ask a lot of questions and then start to kind of mold this shape of what I want you to be from where you are. And then I'll start to plant little leading things like, okay, well, you know, you said this was something that was interesting to you or you said you haven't had this in a long time.

So this is why I, if I were you, I would do the soul food or I would do the barbecue or something like that and make it feel like, because you said this, this was your, your choice. Right. Yeah. Anyway, we learned about sales that's right yeah what about closing the deal oh that's the hardest isn't that the hardest part yeah it's it's the hardest part for me i'm asking you i don't know but it's it's it's easy if you've done the work ahead of time like if you've done the deal closes

itself right if you've done the right work if you've done the work up front oh yeah you gotta do something though right like you gotta be like i think my key my key phrase honestly when i want to know what the next step is which is usually a close of some sort like a good it doesn't have to be yes i'm signing it's yes i want to or some sort of conviction yes we're moving forward is what's a good next step and you put it in their shoes because they're going to explain to you, well, I need more information. They won't say that, obviously. Or something will come out in their response that lets you understand where they're at.

They might be like, send me the proposal and agreement. Let's get going. Or it could be, I got to talk to my boss. There's two other people that need to help me with this decision. I'm like, can we meet with them together? Can I showcase how we work? What can I help you with to explain to them who we are and how we'll help you and usually I just make myself a resource like I'm not here to sell you I'm here to be a resource for you to get to where you're trying to go that's interesting so

what were you selling I'm sure it was everything everything of things. Everything. Everything. Yeah. I've sold long distance. I've sold donations to the Cancer Society. I have sold podcast ads and things like that. You know, big ideas. And it's not just like selling ads. It's more like, should we help you? Can we help you? How can we help you to get to this place with reaching developers that are hard to market to?

Yeah. How can we help you think about this differently than simply give us a script and tell them how awesome century is like that's not how we approach it generally okay yeah because where i'm getting at is it's for me it's different depending on the thing that i'm selling and also who i'm talking to so if i'm talking to somebody who is kind of indecisive i'm not going to ask them or they're just kind of like all over the place i'm not going to ask them what's what's the kind of like all over the place. I'm not going to ask them what's, what's the next step. I'll tell them, but gently, you know, I think a good next step probably would be this, this, and this. What do you think? Does that sound good to you? Or it sounds like you need to get.

I like that style, but it sounds kind of like implanting, like you're planting your own idea, which I don't disagree with. I would probably say, what's your goal? What are you trying to, what I see that you don't understand, or I see that you're, you're hesitant in some way, what's your goal? What are you trying to do? What's your big vision here? Once this is done, how it look for yourself. And you'll get, you can kind of tell what their own dream is, in my opinion of like how uncertain or certain they are of it. And rather than tell them what you think they should do, which I think is not necessarily bad, but in my experience of like how uncertain or certain they are of it and rather than tell them what you think they should do which i think is not necessarily bad but in my experience it's been like

intimidating and we're different genders and so sometimes i could be more intimidating with like saying i think you should do x and so therefore you should do it it just like to sort of like circle around it rather like your idea was what is what is your idea? And my thing is like, what's your real goal here? What are you really trying to do? What are you trying to optimize for? And they will tell you and I'll say, well, that sounds like this is probably pretty good for you. You know, and I'll lead to different things. That's kind of how I get to the yes versus like, this is what I think.

What do you think? I like that. And I like that you pointed out that we're different genders. That's exactly what I was thinking is like, part of our style is reflective of like who we are and our position in society. But yeah, like when I was younger, for those who can't see me, I'm a black woman. So as a young person, when I was first starting out in sales, and I still have a young face, I think. You do have a young face. Thanks. I'm pretty a young face thanks i'm pretty elderly i'm not gonna guess your age but it is it's young looking very geriatric like i'm up there so geriatric i am like super geriatric and so when i was young um ger i was selling to senior salespeople like cso's chief sales officers um ceos cmos selling them advisory services, which is basically telling

them how to sell. And I'm selling them on our ability to tell them how to sell better. And they're like, well, why would I take advice from a little black girl? And so the way that I approach those conversations is like, if I'm hands off and I'm like, you lead, they're going to run with that. And they're not going to, they already don't want to hear me. So I have to establish more assertive. Yeah. Yeah. So I have to show that I'm in a position where one, I'm not afraid for them to walk out of the door. I'm like, listen, you know, you could take it or leave it. Like I'm going to be good regardless. Also just establish an air of confidence in that. Like, I'm going to lead this. I'm going to lead this sale.

I'm not I'm never going to push you into something. You see that I'm interested in finding out more about you and your problem and fitting our solution with your unique needs and making sure that you're all taken care of. But let me carry us. Let me show you how to do it with our company and how we're going to work together. I do this every day. You know, you're you're new to this i'm true to this and we'll figure it out i like it yeah so um yeah i was gonna ask if that was ti but it was only like one syllable so there's no way no it's not for sure i forget what song it is but um it's definitely a rap song i can't take the credit for it take the credit for stealing it there you go yeah great artist I forget what song it is, but it's definitely a rap song. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Can't take the credit for it. Take the credit for stealing it. There you go. Great artist. I use a lot of sales stuff still to this day. And that came up in conversations at this conference. It's like, are you ever leveraging all of that stuff? I was actually talking with, there's Imagine Cup, which is a startup.

Well, I shouldn't say kids, but they are it's like younger than us young adults right they're college students there you go college students um doing projects up and coming the kids doing projects and their question was what tech or how do you know what tech to learn like or how do you know what bright shiny thing to go into and the advice from me and the other senior engineers in the room was like don't focus so much on what's the big shiny thing or doing exactly what's right it's like your life everything like if I think back on my life going from sales into engineering or going from moving from this place to that place none of it was a plan none of it was like in high school or in college I had this exact plan of I'm going to

do this this and that everything was just taking off opportunities yeah taking off whatever is interesting and figuring things out so I forget where I was going with that but what were we you're talking about helping people make decisions. How you helped her. Are you leveraging your sales? Oh, right. So, yeah, every piece has been valuable. Every aspect of all this very completely nonlinear journey has been so valuable. Like, I'm taking a lot of these sales skills and I'm using them every day in my work at Netflix, writing docs, using ChatGTP to convince people, like, let's move over to this software. Let's go in this direction. Or, you know, just in any day of life,

convincing people to let me speak at a conference or work somewhere. Seems to be very successful because there you are at the top of every list. Here I am. It's working. Yeah, well, thank you. What's up, friends? This episode is brought to you by our friends at Neon. Managed serverless Postgres is exciting. We're excited. We think it's the future.

And I'm here with Nikita Shamganov, co-founder and CEO of Neon. So Nikita, what is it like to be building the future? Well, I have a flurry of feelings about it. Coming from the fact that I have been at it for a while, there's more confidence in terms of what the North Star is. And there is a lot more excitement because I truly believe that this is what's going to be the future. And that future needs to be built. And it's very exciting to build the future. And I think this is an opportunity for this moment in time. We have just the technology for it.

And the urgency is required to be able to seize on that opportunity. So we're obviously pretty excited about Neon and Postgres and Managed Postgres and Serverless Postgres and data branching and all the fun stuff. And it's one thing to be building for the future and it's another to actually have the response from the community. What's been going on? What's the reaction like? We are lately onboarding close to 2,500 databases a day. That's more than one database a minute of somebody in the world coming to Nian either directly or through the help of our partners. And they're able to experience what it feels like to program against database that looks like a URL and then program against database that can support branching and be like a good buddy for you in the software development lifecycle. So that's

exciting. And while that's exciting, the urgency at Neon is currently is unparalleled. There you go. If you want to experience the future, go to neon.tech, on-demand scalability, bottomless storage, database branching, everything you want for the Postgres of the future. Once again, Neon.Tech. So my wife and I built a house. We've been there nine years now. So that's crazy. We've been there a long time.

And the process, which you just went through a process of building a house, it's not a straightforward one. A lot of it is like building a career in a sense. That's why I'm bringing this across. And we had a geriatric builder. He was awesome. It was like having a father figure as your builder. We picked the best builder. In fact, we wanted all of our friends and family to use him,

and he actually retired because he was elderly. But he took on this role of like, cause we were young kids to him, you know, like basically old enough to be my dad. And he wasn't just going to be our builder. He was going to like take care of us like a father would. It was amazing.

Anyways, I say all that to say this, what am I talking about? I'm just kidding. I say all that to say this, he always said this, which stuck with us. And we say it to each other now.

And he said, it's a long and winding road and he was referring to the process of building a house because there's so many decisions along the way so many things that go wrong and you're like okay we have to adjust what are we gonna do this and he would just say that you know every time we're like kind of like he'd be like it's a long and winding road and so the house has stuck with us but even more than the house is that phrase, which we now say to each other. And I say to other people like you guys, when it comes to your career, you know, you can't just, like you said, choose, I'm going to be a doctor at the age of 16, 17, 18. And then some people get this done, but very few of us, and then just like power through and be a doctor.

And like, that was your career, especially in tech because it's such a moving foundation. You don't just learn Java and then spend 20 years coding Java. Okay, some people do that but not very many. It's a long and winding road. The decisions are many but each individual decision is relatively small. But when you're young you haven't made very many decisions and so all you see is like this big decision in front of you and what us geriatrics can say to the kids i love it is hey it's a long and winding road you know build grow change make this decision

adjust make another one you're gonna have a hundred of them by next year and that's that's calming that's soothing and that helps helps people take the next step. Right. That's all you got to do. Just the next step. Or help somebody on their path towards the next step. Frozen said, I think they said in Frozen... Let it go. That was Frozen 1. Frozen 2.

Frozen 2 was... Curveball. The next right step. Did not see that coming. The next right step. Very good. I mean, when you're stuck in paralysis, right, that's the truth. What is the next right step you can take to get out of the paralysis? You can't be like fixed.

No, you got to like eject next right step. Next right step. Like the turns, right? Every turn is that next right step. I love it. Yeah, that's one of my favorite quotes is every journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. So, yeah, take that next step. I have a friend that I've been talking to recently. She's at an inflection point in her career.

She's she was in sales and she's gone in and out of sales and customer success and things like that. And she's like, I just don't know what I want to do. And I just feel like dropping out of the workforce and not doing anything. She's like, I wish, Shonda, that my life was like yours, where, you know, you knew everything. Like you knew all the steps that you need to take. Yeah. It's just like, it's like, I was like, never at any point. I was like, what's giving that energy? Because not at any point did I ever know what I was doing. And I'm still scared to this day to, you know, take those steps. It just feels like you're in this foggy room

and all you can do is you can see what that little next step is going to be. Even sometimes it's even foggier than that. You don't even know. You might be stepping off a cliff. Who knows? But you have to have the confidence and the, I don't know, the faith in your own abilities

to be able to take that next step. And sometimes the next step is a wrong step and that's why you take little steps and then adjust. You don't look back and be like, and your own abilities to be able to take that next step. And sometimes the next step is a wrong step. And that's why you take little steps and then adjust, right? You don't look back and be like, I've been going the wrong way for 10 years. Hopefully you're doing more retrospectives than that. If we might pull back sooner. Yeah. Gosh. You know, but, uh, I mean, Adam, when you graduated from podcasting school back in the day,

you knew exactly you were going to be a podcast. Oh, a hundred percent%. Yeah. I mean, I was like, this is just too easy. I'm going to conquer the world. 15 years later, we're at the goal. That's right. We're here at Microsoft Build, you know? No, that's not the case at all. This is fantastic. Nobody planned this.

Nobody planned this deal. That's why I like, what is the next good step? You know, what's the next good step for us? Because you put it in their control. They reveal all the information. They reveal their trust in you or their lack of trust in you. You can tell their body language if you're physically with them. I don't know.

I don't know what the next step is. Then you tell them? I might say I might give them more to think about. I don't know what the next right step is here. Well, maybe you can think about this or this and how would that influence your next step the next step is like a key phrase for me at least like lately i mean like i feel like i'm like repeating myself way too much and i say it so often and it's just so good that it works i just keep saying it obviously but it's been a while what's a good next step because it

puts it all in their court and the other thing i do that puts it back in their court is when somebody says something to you declarative and you don't really understand rather than react and like act like you understand it i say how do you mean because there is nothing you can say you would just keep explaining in different words what you meant. And so you can never declare that you misunderstood. You could just get to understanding, right? How do you mean? That's a good one.

What's a good next step? Yeah. I'd love to help you. I can help you on your journey. I'm a resource to you. I am not here to close you. I'm here to help you. I like that.

I like that. I can see how that's disar that. I don't like closing people. I like to help people. I see how that's disarming too. Yeah. Yeah. I'm bringing it back to the whole gender thing. I think I would be kind of on guard if I felt like a man was telling me what to do.

If anybody was telling me what to do, but especially if a man was telling me what to do. I don't want nobody telling me what to do. If anybody was telling me what to do, but especially if a man was telling me what to do. I want nobody telling me what to do. Cause it just, it feels, it feels salesy at that point. You know, it makes it feel more like a sale than a, you know,

I'm helping you type of thing. Right. And I don't want to be sold. I want to be helped. Yeah, exactly. And yeah, so you're giving the people what they're,

what they want. And I say, listen, if you have any questions, I'm here to help you. Yeah. If you have, if I've want. And I say, listen, if you have any questions, I'm here to help you. Yeah. If I've given you this information, you go away and you have more questions, let me know. Happy to help.

Disarm them. Yeah. You got it. Good stuff. That's my style. Yeah. Helper, not seller. I'm a sales savage.

Sales savage. Listen. Here's the pen. Here's the contract. We've spent 10 hours talking about it it's time to sign it's time to sign yeah now there are times when i'm a bit more direct but generally my demeanor is that you know if i've like exhausted a lot of time with somebody and i'm like listen it's not what's the next step here it It's like the only next step is yes or no. Cause I got to go. Yeah.

If not, I got, I just want to be more time to spend somewhere else. Not in those exact words, but that's my projection. I'm, I'm letting out. It's like,

it's time to figure something out. You want to spend the time with the people you can help and people who you can't help that you want to get to that. No quickly. Right. Sometimes disqualifying a situation is the best thing you can possibly do right save both sides a bunch of time and a bunch of effort i don't go in pitching my menu i'm not like hey this is what i sell which one do you want to buy it's

this is who we are and i don't even like pitch that even i've really asked them a ton of questions who are you how can we help you what are you trying to accomplish those kind of questions and it's like they just reveal everything to. And it's not like a negative reveal, everything like a bad, like you're being manipulative or something. It's just more like, now I know I can actually help you. And if I know I can help you, I'll be far more salesy about convincing them I can. It's not like I'm trying to say I can help you, but I have conviction. Like, listen, don't walk away from this call because I know the marketplace. We are the best people to help you. Please have conviction like listen don't walk away from this call because I know the marketplace we are the best people to help you please don't go somewhere else and if you do it's because we can't really help you right and I don't want you to spend your money here if we can't help

you I'll tell people that like you got to go somewhere else to spend your money this is how it works no and that's that's good because I I feel like people can they feel like they can trust you more if it's not like oh I'm just trying to fit you into something just because I want your money. It's like, no, if it's not good for you, then it's not. And this is who we've helped and how we have helped them. We can do the same for you. I love it. Right?

If you pinpoint to somebody that's, or something that's quantifiable and you helped, I can do that, a version of that for you. Yeah. That to me is like saying, will you sign? Without saying, will you sign? Because it's more like, obviously, you're right. This is the right thing to do. I don't have to ask you to sign. It's I want to because clearly this is the right way to go.

Exactly. This is the natural next step. That's the best way. In my opinion, that's the best way to sell. Have you ever used any sales philosophies or read up on any sales philosophies? The one that I use is solution selling the one that this is my favorite one maybe i mean i think i've i've studied brian tracy over the years lots of people over the years i've probably borrowed things from them in some way shape or form without knowing i'm selling a certain way yeah i've been like a lot of big company sales so that's like oh we're going to train

everybody on right this gap selling or solution selling yeah yeah so but solution selling ended up being my favorite one because it's similar to a lot of the things that you said where we're not just like showing you the menu of things and having you try and parse all of this information and we're going to fit you into the whatever hole that you know most closely align with it's first understanding your customer and what their needs are and then pitching a solution that is meant to fit their needs so we may not have like because a lot of the stuff that I'm selling it's not like a one package like a McDonald's menu where you can just have a hamburger or a french fries or something like that it's not like a one package, like a McDonald's menu where you can just have

a hamburger or a French fries or something like that. It's like, I could put, I could give you like a little bit of this and then we can combine it with that. And we could put together this package for you that it's designed for you because, because I've asked you what you need. And so now I can say, okay, well, how does that align with the stuff that my company's offering or what we're building for you? Or is there anything that we're going to have to customize for you or take out from the existing offerings that we have? But because I'm doing such a good job qualifying, making sure, one, that you are a good customer of mine, so I'm not wasting my time by us talking, that we have something that fits your needs. So I'm asking you about the stuff that is important to you and what matters to you

and what the low-hanging fruit are and what what the North stars, what we have to work toward because I've done all that work to figure out what you need. Now I can fit you with the exact solution to what you need and nothing else. So you know that when you sign with me, it's going to be a solution that's tailored to exactly what we've talked about. So question, question. So all that wisdom that you just laid out, translate that into a engineering team where you have decision makers above you. You have a solution that you think we should go this direction, right? Like you've come across in the technology or technique or whatever it is, a solution. And you're like, this is the right solution for us.

But it's not a small one. It's a big one, right? Yeah. And you got to now convince, right, the power of persuasion or sales to a certain degree that this is going to solve our problem to your higher ups. How do you translate that in? So is the question more of like the fact that they're higher up or is it the fact that they're more, it's like multiple people involved in the decision making process? Just assuming that you

can't make it yourself unilaterally. It doesn't matter if they're higher up. It could be the whole team. The whole team. Okay. Yeah. Cause I can tell you what I'm doing right now at Netflix. So I'm trying, not trying, I've convinced them that this is the direction that we're going to go with a certain product that we're building now to add some context to i am the term is called informed captain at at netflix say what informed captain what is that this is a role as a lead are you laughing because it's like buzzwordy type of thing no he leaned in we have headphones on there's no reason to lean in. You didn't hear any better because you leaned in.

That's why people laugh. I'm just human. I'm just being human. It's a human thing to do. Same level in the ear. It's a way of indicating interest. I like it. Yes.

Continue. I wasn't laughing at you. I promise. Okay. Informed captain is somebody who has, it's like a lead role. It is a lead role, but we don't use the term lead, but you're the person. Okay, let me take a step back.

I like it. I'm with you. Can I help you a little bit? Is this a Peter Pan thing? I want to hear what you think it is. Well, when I worked with Marielle on Brain Science, we did this show about

psychology, essentially. It's on our science. We did this show about, you know, psychology essentially. It's on our website. Changelog.com. I was like, what the heck is that thing? When he said that, he leaned in, but he didn't have to.

Changelog.com slash brain science. There you go. She said, name it to tame it. And I bet you the reason why informed captain is better than lead or in charge is because it's disarming.

You have information, you have wisdom, and somebody needs to lead. Because if there's four of us and we're all leading, we're all going in our own direction, right? Somebody has to follow and somebody has to lead. I think that's probably why it works because it disarms people from saying, well, there's Jared again in charge. You know, he's the boss. No, he's the informed captain. Like a tech lead position? Like a tech lead? It's probably decision-based, right?

Because it probably rotates. It's decision-based. So, yeah, it's more, we're very flat. And so we're like, you know, we're all at the same level hierarchy-wise. We all have varying levels of technical abilities, but some people are stronger at one thing, then that another person is stronger on another thing. So we're very flat. But one concept at Netflix that we really lean into is farming for dissent. So I'll raise an idea, but it's everybody else's job to disagree or like not necessarily disagree just to disagree.

If they disagree to say that. Right. And to make sure. And then I, as the informed captain, I'm making sure that I'm farming for dissent. I'm asking people for their buy-in because it makes no sense for me to make a decision in a silo, especially on my team where my customers are other Netflix engineers and I have the ability to get feedback. But in any tech,

you don't want to just build the thing that you think is cool. You want to build something that you've actually validated with your customers and made sure it solves a problem for them, right? So informed captain is the person who's responsible for being kind of the quarterback of the project and organizing all the resources, the human resources and the tech resources, making decisions about what kind of tech we we use helping to coordinate with the pms and the they might be pms themselves but um helping to coordinate with everybody on what are the priorities what's the direction of the project and how it moves so the reason that i give you that background context is that like i have this unique position of being the person who's like

this is our decision this is the way that we want to move. But before that, I want to make sure that we're all aligned on this decision. So in this scenario, my goal in selling is to convince everybody that the direction that I think we should go is the one that everybody should agree to instead of everybody dissenting. And then we have to move in a different direction. So how do you do that? So you ask chat GDP to write your document.

Oh, that's right. I forgot. Help me chat GPT. Right. That's where we started. Yeah. True. No, the first thing,

just like I said, in any sales scenario is to figure out what the needs are. One of my biggest things as a tech person, and it comes from my sales background

and I'll explain what I mean by that, is to get feedback from the customer even before we've put a line of code there. So I want to find out what the problems are. I'm asking all the questions to figure out what the big problems are. And I'm putting that all into a doc. This is the doc that I'm writing is putting all that together to say, collectively, this is what you said. Customer happens to be other Netflix engineers.

This is what you said is the problem. And this is what you said to the highest priorities. So I'm grouping those together going back. The reason why that's so important to me is because as a salesperson, I'm the first line of contact for the company, right? I'm the person that the customers are coming to and saying, wow, this product worked exactly as I expected. Or I'm the person who loses the commission

because they're like, we don't want to buy this because it doesn't serve any of our needs. And we told you that we wanted this feature prioritized and nobody ever cared about that. I take all that feedback and I bring it to the customer success manager who brings it to their manager, who brings it to the product manager, who brings it to the designer or the engineering manager, who brings it to the engineering team, who puts it on the backlog and, you know, never looks at it.

And they don't, a lot of engineers have this problem where they're afraid of someone calling their baby ugly. Like they have this idea in their head of this cool thing that this cool thing that they can add to their product, but they've never actually, they're not actual users of the product or they never actually talked to actual users of the product. So they never gotten that validation and they waste so much time building these tools that nobody uses. And that's how it leads to layoffs in companies because you spend all of these expensive resources, human resources, and buying tooling to support initiatives that haven't been validated, right? So all that being said, we'll get all of this validation from our customers. I'll go back and then I put it all together and I say, these are the three big problems that you have identified or that in my conversations that I

heard from you. And I'm outlining this in a way that is like very, this is you, this is you, this is you. Does this sound familiar? And they're like, oh my God, yeah, this is exactly what it is. Okay, now that that's said, is there anything that I missed? Nope, sounds like you have comprehensive view of it.

You know, and I'm adding in quotes from actual engineers, actual customers, screenshots of like things or videos of existing workflows where it's just like really clunky or i'm taking multiple steps to get to the next something that should be very easy or i haven't um i have to get to this very granular level of things where there's a way that we could easily abstract out all of this parts of the workflow and i put that that's what I put in front of the manager. And I'm like, or the team, whoever is responsible for making this decision.

And I'm like, this is what we're experiencing now. This is my proposal for a solution. And I addressed these problems, which we all agreed, right? That these are priorities and I'm addressing them in this way. And there's no way you can argue with that. Like I've done my research. I've asked everybody, everybody has already been bought in because from the beginning, even before I put a line of code, even before I put a line in that doc, I asked you, I asked you what you said. So there's no dissent because we came up with this basically together. All I did was I just put it in a doc. Yeah. Yeah. So the selling, you're selling yourself, basically. Right. Which is the easiest thing to do. Hell yeah.

You can't really argue with that. And if you did, you'd have to have a really good argument. So if you are wrong, which means that they didn't reveal everything they could during the interview process, which is fine too, right? It's all about getting to the right solution, not my solution, because that's what you're trying to do. You're trying to organize a solution because you got a job to do. Right? They better have a good reason why that argument is true. Yeah. And then be like, well, why didn't you reveal that before?

Right. Because now you're wasting my time. I put this presentation together. I'm the fool here. What's up with that? Right. Get it together. Another key is like,'t it's it's always

iteration you know in tech like it's not like okay i heard the problem and now let's just go build and never talk to the to the user again as you you start from there and then you get the agreement that okay yes this is exactly what we captured and okay so now we've got the go ahead let's start building build a little bit start with an mvp what's the smallest amount of work we can put into this just to get like a proof of concept out there so that this is in front of somebody so now there's a product now people can start playing with it and they're like you know what now that it's built i don't know i don't know actually i think there's a bigger problem that we need to solve and then you pivot and then so now you go to the next iteration there's mvp, where you solve the new problems that came up.

Or you start to realize, like, technically, we don't have the ability to do this just yet. Or this is, like, blocked by this other thing that we need from this other team. And then you iterate from there. So you're always keeping that customer in the loop. Like, they're never out of it. So all along the way, it's just like you're still working together. You know what that sounds like?

What? A long and winding road. So what would be a good next step? Full circle. That's right. What do I sign? That's good. I win.

You do win. You win. Well, it was actually a win-win-win. It was a triple win, yeah. I win. You do win. You win. Well, it was actually a win-win-win. It was a triple win, yeah. We all win. I agree. What is this? The AI thing?

Did I say AI again? Did I say it too much? No. We're just counting up life points. We all win. Oh. We all do win. I win.

Yeah, you win. Okay. Good. You're here. As long as I'm not a loser. You're our guest. 100%. We like you a lot. That's why you're sitting here. We like you. That is winning, I think. That's winning. I like it a lot, too. Yeah. Okay, good. You're here. As long as I'm not a loser. You're our guest. 100%. We like you a lot.

That's why you're sitting here. We like you. That is winning, I think. That's winning. I like it a lot, too. Yeah. I am winning. I am winning.

Okay, thanks. Thank you, Shonda. This has been awesome. Thank you. It has been awesome. Bye, friends. Bye, friends. There you have it.

A free wheeling conversation with the one and only Shande Person. Connect with her online. She's Shande pretty much everywhere. That's S-H-A-U-N-D-A-I. And stay tuned for more awesome convos from Build. We've got Scott Guthrie. We've got Mark Rusinovich. We've got Eric Boyd and more.

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