WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.920 The moment you have somebody who is responsible for process only, you get to the point where 00:00:04.920 --> 00:00:10.060 you have too much process and these people's jobs are dependent on running the process. 00:00:10.060 --> 00:00:14.580 So it's not in their best interest to drop the process if it doesn't deliver the value. 00:00:14.580 --> 00:00:18.020 It's not in their interest to simplify the process also. 00:00:18.020 --> 00:00:21.420 It's in their interest to increase the process. 00:00:21.420 --> 00:00:25.640 Hello, hello, hello. 00:00:25.640 --> 00:00:29.640 Welcome to episode 37 of the Metacast podcast. 00:00:30.980 --> 00:00:34.500 Here we have Ilya and me, the co-host. 00:00:34.500 --> 00:00:41.540 Today it's a metasode where we kind of reflect on the last episode and go through some of 00:00:41.540 --> 00:00:44.420 what we're reading and listening to and all that. 00:00:44.420 --> 00:00:45.900 So it's going to be a bit light. 00:00:45.900 --> 00:00:47.480 We'll try to keep it short also. 00:00:47.480 --> 00:00:51.600 Yeah, we'll make it light and enjoyable for ourselves in the first place. 00:00:51.600 --> 00:00:56.700 Yeah, that's the only way to make it enjoyable for others is to make it enjoyable for yourself. 00:00:57.000 --> 00:00:57.500 Exactly, yeah. 00:00:57.500 --> 00:01:02.980 And also, we are recording another episode later today in about, I want to say, four and 00:01:02.980 --> 00:01:03.840 a half hours or so. 00:01:03.840 --> 00:01:10.240 We will have Karl Ulrich, a Wharton professor who teaches innovation, entrepreneurship and 00:01:10.240 --> 00:01:10.660 other things. 00:01:10.660 --> 00:01:14.940 And we are going to talk about, can you teach entrepreneurship to MBA students? 00:01:14.940 --> 00:01:20.800 And also, one of the topics I'm really interested in is, what is the value of MBA right now? 00:01:20.800 --> 00:01:22.040 Like, is it worth doing an MBA? 00:01:22.040 --> 00:01:24.120 So I'm really, really excited for that episode. 00:01:24.120 --> 00:01:28.260 I've not talked to Karl for eight years at this point, and I'm really looking forward to 00:01:28.260 --> 00:01:28.720 reconnecting. 00:01:28.720 --> 00:01:29.900 Cool, cool, cool. 00:01:29.900 --> 00:01:30.280 All right. 00:01:30.760 --> 00:01:33.220 What else are we going to talk about in this episode? 00:01:33.220 --> 00:01:36.280 As usual, things that we are improving this time. 00:01:36.280 --> 00:01:41.640 We want to reflect on the latest episode that we've just released today, actually, episode 00:01:41.640 --> 00:01:42.940 36 with Melissa. 00:01:42.940 --> 00:01:47.160 So yeah, we're recording this on Wednesday, September 20th, and it will come out a week 00:01:47.160 --> 00:01:47.400 later. 00:01:47.400 --> 00:01:49.060 And it's a historic day for us. 00:01:49.060 --> 00:01:54.360 Like you said, it's the first time we're recording two podcast episodes on the same day. 00:01:54.600 --> 00:01:56.880 Yeah, it's going to be a podcasting marathon. 00:01:56.880 --> 00:01:58.860 Stepping up the content creation. 00:01:58.860 --> 00:01:59.900 Yeah. 00:01:59.900 --> 00:02:05.600 Yeah, so we're going to reflect on that episode. 00:02:05.600 --> 00:02:10.340 It was a great episode, but there are some things that we're not sure about, actually. 00:02:10.340 --> 00:02:12.080 And that's why we wanted to just chat about that. 00:02:12.080 --> 00:02:16.100 Also, to make it really light, we're going to talk a bit about the things that we are reading 00:02:16.100 --> 00:02:20.460 and listening to right now, and just share some thoughts and some recommendations. 00:02:20.460 --> 00:02:21.560 Yeah. 00:02:21.640 --> 00:02:25.160 And if that time permits, we want to thrash threads a little bit. 00:02:25.160 --> 00:02:29.100 That app that had a lot of premise, but doesn't seem to be delivering. 00:02:29.100 --> 00:02:31.580 All it's delivering are notifications. 00:02:31.580 --> 00:02:32.860 Right. 00:02:32.860 --> 00:02:34.740 Yeah, the infrastructure works perfectly. 00:02:34.740 --> 00:02:38.560 So the things that we want to improve, right? 00:02:38.560 --> 00:02:43.640 I'll start with the episode 34 that we did, right? 00:02:43.640 --> 00:02:45.920 Or 35, when it was just you and me talking. 00:02:45.920 --> 00:02:51.580 We wanted to chat about all the tech that we are using and talk about our love and hatred 00:02:51.580 --> 00:02:53.120 relationship with the Google products. 00:02:53.120 --> 00:02:57.100 And then we ended up talking for like 25 minutes about... 00:02:57.100 --> 00:02:58.740 I don't even remember what we were talking about. 00:02:58.740 --> 00:03:00.760 What did you talk about? 00:03:00.760 --> 00:03:02.620 I don't remember either. 00:03:02.620 --> 00:03:08.280 But I remember that we were running out of time, but it was hard to maneuver it quickly 00:03:08.280 --> 00:03:10.080 into the other thread, yeah. 00:03:10.080 --> 00:03:11.280 Oh, we were talking about positioning. 00:03:11.280 --> 00:03:15.660 We were talking about positioning and how people think we build a podcast while we are building 00:03:15.660 --> 00:03:24.060 a podcast app and how we said we would repeat this ad nauseum that we are a podcast technology 00:03:24.060 --> 00:03:27.560 company, not a podcast studio kind of thing, right? 00:03:27.840 --> 00:03:34.980 And we also came to the conclusion that this podcast is less of a marketing channel because it doesn't 00:03:34.980 --> 00:03:37.520 really help us drive awareness as much, at least not yet. 00:03:37.520 --> 00:03:40.480 But it's more of a user radio. 00:03:40.480 --> 00:03:43.240 Yeah, community engagement channel. 00:03:43.720 --> 00:03:49.800 Yeah, where people can, you know, see what's behind or who's behind the app and get connected 00:03:49.800 --> 00:03:55.060 to us, actually participate in the process of creating the app by giving us feedback. 00:03:55.060 --> 00:03:58.680 We could discuss it in real time, you know, when the app is public and all that. 00:03:58.680 --> 00:04:02.560 But I was also thinking about when we first started the podcast, we were thinking about 00:04:02.560 --> 00:04:03.680 recording live streams. 00:04:03.680 --> 00:04:07.100 I think right now the size of our audience doesn't really allow for that. 00:04:07.160 --> 00:04:09.660 And also, I guess the utility of that will be minimal. 00:04:09.660 --> 00:04:11.240 Well, wait, wait, wait. 00:04:11.240 --> 00:04:13.580 So I think this is a good time for an update. 00:04:13.580 --> 00:04:15.940 How many people are listening to our show now? 00:04:15.940 --> 00:04:18.060 Have you been looking at the metrics recently? 00:04:18.060 --> 00:04:25.980 Yeah, on the podcast downloads, like specifically in podcast apps, we get 100, 150 per episode. 00:04:25.980 --> 00:04:30.900 We get more on some of the guest episodes when it's just you and me. 00:04:30.900 --> 00:04:35.600 It ranges between 1940, I think, depending on the topic. 00:04:35.600 --> 00:04:37.000 So yeah, it depends. 00:04:37.160 --> 00:04:40.260 But on YouTube, we have been getting a lot more views recently. 00:04:40.260 --> 00:04:46.380 And the newsletter that you started, you moved it to like talk about the innards of the company 00:04:46.380 --> 00:04:47.700 rather than the podcast. 00:04:47.700 --> 00:04:52.080 And I think that's getting a lot of like new subscribers and people reading it. 00:04:52.080 --> 00:04:54.300 Opening rates and all that are much better now. 00:04:54.300 --> 00:04:54.860 Right. 00:04:54.860 --> 00:04:59.440 Yeah, we have, I think, 298 or something subscribers to the newsletter right now. 00:04:59.440 --> 00:05:00.260 It's almost 300. 00:05:00.260 --> 00:05:05.980 Hopefully, when I post the next newsletter, we'll get some more and we'll cross the 300 threshold. 00:05:06.060 --> 00:05:08.740 Yeah, so that's been going well. 00:05:08.740 --> 00:05:18.940 I think on LinkedIn, I've reached 7,500 followers right now, which is actually really great because it gives that a lot more reach to anything that I write. 00:05:18.940 --> 00:05:22.920 Like previously, I would write something and it would maybe get like 1,500 views. 00:05:23.280 --> 00:05:33.080 But now, because I've almost doubled the number of people who subscribe to my updates, like my latest post from Monday got 15,000 views, 340 reactions. 00:05:33.080 --> 00:05:37.200 So, and I keep getting kind of new followers every day, like 10, 20. 00:05:37.440 --> 00:05:41.200 Thanks to you, I also keep getting, like you post and tag me. 00:05:41.200 --> 00:05:48.540 I don't do anything on LinkedIn or any social pretty much, but I keep getting like random people or not random people. 00:05:48.540 --> 00:05:52.660 Very, very appreciated followers following, yeah. 00:05:52.920 --> 00:05:55.080 So, yeah, so this has been going pretty well. 00:05:55.080 --> 00:05:59.760 I think it will take time to build up the audience, but I think it's been going pretty well. 00:05:59.760 --> 00:06:14.500 But coming back to live streams, I think once we have our app in public and people are using it, I think live streams could be a great opportunity to actually have people connect, join in, ask some questions, offer some feedback in real time. 00:06:14.920 --> 00:06:19.560 We'll probably not let people like talk because there will be random people there. 00:06:19.560 --> 00:06:20.960 Maybe we will, I don't know. 00:06:20.960 --> 00:06:25.480 But yeah, at the very least, they could just say something in chat and we can address questions directly. 00:06:25.480 --> 00:06:30.720 And then anybody can listen to that a week later when we publish the podcast. 00:06:30.720 --> 00:06:35.180 So, but I think for that, we need to have at least five to 10 people ready to join the live stream. 00:06:35.180 --> 00:06:38.980 I don't think we're at the point where we could get five, 10 random people, yeah. 00:06:38.980 --> 00:06:41.400 So, coming back to the randomness of the previous episode, right? 00:06:41.400 --> 00:06:43.840 Yes, before we go to random now. 00:06:43.840 --> 00:06:49.240 Yeah, it was half about positioning and social media and all that stuff and half about technical stuff. 00:06:49.240 --> 00:06:55.160 So, like, if that's the only episode you listen, you'd be like, what the hell are these guys doing? 00:06:55.160 --> 00:06:57.060 It's just like so random. 00:06:57.060 --> 00:06:59.600 So, yeah, I think we need to try to stick to a topic. 00:06:59.600 --> 00:07:04.040 If we have a topic, we should just try to stick to that particular topic, maybe with a little bit of updates. 00:07:04.040 --> 00:07:08.080 Yeah, and then we have an episode like this where we just like chit chat about random stuff. 00:07:08.080 --> 00:07:08.740 Yeah. 00:07:08.740 --> 00:07:13.220 Okay, so before we chit chat about too much about random stuff, let's make a move. 00:07:13.220 --> 00:07:15.540 So, that was the first thing we want to improve. 00:07:15.540 --> 00:07:17.940 The second one, I think you also wrote that one. 00:07:17.940 --> 00:07:18.900 Yeah. 00:07:19.240 --> 00:07:28.560 So, as I was listening to our episode 35 and 34, I'm like, I don't like how it sounds because some of the dynamic of the conversation gets kind of... 00:07:28.560 --> 00:07:34.000 There are some sounds that got swallowed by the sound effect and that's a thing called compression. 00:07:34.000 --> 00:07:37.380 So, it's like if something is too quiet, then you amplify it. 00:07:37.380 --> 00:07:41.460 But if it's something that's too quiet, then it actually might get just cut out. 00:07:41.460 --> 00:07:44.320 And then you end up with like unfinished words. 00:07:44.320 --> 00:07:45.560 Or they sound like unfinished words. 00:07:45.940 --> 00:07:50.700 So, this time I decided that for this latest episode that I will not use compression. 00:07:50.700 --> 00:07:53.480 It's kind of, I guess, a bit of a heresy in this world. 00:07:53.480 --> 00:07:58.720 When you say latest episode like this one that we're recording right now or last week with Melissa? 00:07:58.720 --> 00:07:59.540 Melissa's episode. 00:07:59.540 --> 00:07:59.840 Okay. 00:07:59.840 --> 00:08:00.580 So, 36. 00:08:00.580 --> 00:08:01.180 36. 00:08:01.180 --> 00:08:01.400 Yeah. 00:08:01.720 --> 00:08:03.900 So, I said not use compression at all. 00:08:03.900 --> 00:08:07.060 And I think it came out just great. 00:08:07.060 --> 00:08:09.960 I was just listening to it in my car and I think it sounds good. 00:08:09.960 --> 00:08:11.240 And the dynamic is so much better. 00:08:11.240 --> 00:08:13.940 I haven't listened to the latest one yet. 00:08:13.940 --> 00:08:15.560 I didn't get that feeling. 00:08:15.560 --> 00:08:22.480 But then again, you always have a much more like, I think, tuned in audio receiver inside your head than I do. 00:08:22.480 --> 00:08:23.880 I'm a perfectionist, you know? 00:08:23.880 --> 00:08:24.580 Yeah. 00:08:24.580 --> 00:08:29.620 And I felt like I kind of screwed up that a little bit in the previous episodes. 00:08:29.840 --> 00:08:34.920 And I'm like, instead of just trying to fine tune this compression thing, I'll just get rid of it. 00:08:34.920 --> 00:08:36.120 And it actually sounds good. 00:08:36.120 --> 00:08:39.380 I think where compression is really good is like when you move around the microphone a lot. 00:08:39.380 --> 00:08:44.440 But because we don't, then we speak in pretty much stable volume most of the time. 00:08:44.440 --> 00:08:53.080 So, we can just amplify the volume of the whole thing to the level it's supposed to be without having to use all this sophisticated sound engineering stuff. 00:08:53.080 --> 00:08:54.620 Where do you do this? 00:08:54.620 --> 00:08:58.680 Is this in Descript or Isotope or something else? 00:08:58.680 --> 00:08:59.860 Oh, it's actually a good question. 00:08:59.860 --> 00:09:01.980 I stopped using Studio Sound in Descript. 00:09:01.980 --> 00:09:03.200 It's not good enough. 00:09:03.200 --> 00:09:05.380 It used to save you quite a lot of time. 00:09:05.380 --> 00:09:07.800 It does too much, I would say. 00:09:07.800 --> 00:09:09.540 And then it also applies compression. 00:09:09.540 --> 00:09:10.500 You can't control it. 00:09:10.500 --> 00:09:12.180 Then sometimes you get like echoes. 00:09:12.180 --> 00:09:13.940 I had the chat with support. 00:09:13.940 --> 00:09:16.100 They know about this bug, but it's still not fixed. 00:09:16.100 --> 00:09:17.480 And I'm like, just screw it. 00:09:17.560 --> 00:09:22.040 So, I'm importing this thing in Reaper anyway, in the digital audio workstation. 00:09:22.040 --> 00:09:26.020 But I already have all of the presets from the previous episode. 00:09:26.020 --> 00:09:32.260 So, basically, I just like insert the new files into the old preset, hit export, render, and it's just done. 00:09:32.520 --> 00:09:36.020 But for the video that we put on YouTube, you're taking it from Descript. 00:09:36.020 --> 00:09:38.520 I'm taking it from Descript, but I don't apply Studio Sound anymore. 00:09:38.520 --> 00:09:44.840 I just apply a volume normalization thing just to make sure that all of our volume is the same. 00:09:45.320 --> 00:09:47.180 But I don't do any of those effects. 00:09:47.180 --> 00:09:48.780 I feel like it sounds more natural. 00:09:48.780 --> 00:09:50.820 So, yeah, Descript is not there yet. 00:09:50.820 --> 00:10:00.120 It's very hard to like take this audio output that you did for the podcast and overlay that or merge that with the video, right? 00:10:00.120 --> 00:10:01.000 For YouTube. 00:10:01.000 --> 00:10:03.860 Yeah, maybe I just don't understand the technical stuff enough. 00:10:03.860 --> 00:10:11.000 What I'm seeing is after about 20 minutes, there starts to be a drift between video and audio. 00:10:11.000 --> 00:10:13.260 And then it just doesn't look well. 00:10:13.260 --> 00:10:14.400 And I'm like, screw it. 00:10:14.460 --> 00:10:19.540 I'm just like, we are not at that level of popularity to care about this kind of stuff. 00:10:19.540 --> 00:10:20.840 So, yeah. 00:10:20.840 --> 00:10:21.800 Right. 00:10:21.800 --> 00:10:22.580 Okay. 00:10:22.580 --> 00:10:28.340 And then the last thing I wrote down for improvement, this is actually a recurring thing. 00:10:28.340 --> 00:10:37.340 A few episodes back, I don't know when, we said every time we have a metasode, we'll talk about what we're reading and listening to and all that. 00:10:37.340 --> 00:10:41.800 And I think we did that in that episode and then we didn't do it again. 00:10:41.800 --> 00:10:44.320 Let's start it with today's episode again. 00:10:44.460 --> 00:10:51.060 What brought that about was I was listening to a really interesting podcast and I was like, okay, we have to talk about this. 00:10:51.300 --> 00:10:51.700 Yeah. 00:10:51.700 --> 00:10:57.320 And what we know from our user research is that people discover podcasts mostly from recommendations on other podcasts. 00:10:57.320 --> 00:11:02.540 For me personally, I think it's true for many books that I read. 00:11:02.540 --> 00:11:03.740 Let's talk about the latest episode. 00:11:03.740 --> 00:11:04.560 Yes. 00:11:04.560 --> 00:11:11.220 So, that's the episode 36 with Melissa that we had last Wednesday. 00:11:11.220 --> 00:11:13.660 It came out as you're listening right now. 00:11:13.660 --> 00:11:18.180 We're recording on Wednesday, September 20th and it came out today. 00:11:18.180 --> 00:11:21.560 But yeah, as you're listening, it came out like last week. 00:11:21.940 --> 00:11:30.200 Right after the recording ended and we said like thank you and bye-bye and all that, you and I, we dropped. 00:11:30.200 --> 00:11:31.340 I think we dropped. 00:11:31.340 --> 00:11:40.080 And then I messaged you and like we immediately hopped on another call and we had this discussion that we need to talk about this in the next metasode. 00:11:40.460 --> 00:11:45.120 Because, okay, this is where you take over and do the hard part, yeah. 00:11:45.120 --> 00:11:48.120 First of all, this was an amazing episode. 00:11:48.120 --> 00:11:50.760 I listened to it after I got the edited version back. 00:11:50.760 --> 00:11:51.700 I listened to the whole thing. 00:11:51.700 --> 00:11:53.060 I really enjoyed it. 00:11:53.060 --> 00:11:55.940 I was listening to it again in the car this morning. 00:11:55.940 --> 00:11:57.060 It's a great episode. 00:11:57.060 --> 00:12:08.160 I think I personally learned a lot from it in terms of like social media stuff and also just the mindset that she was talking about in terms of working with development shops, contractors. 00:12:08.340 --> 00:12:10.760 Because we thought about contractors, but we didn't really talk to anyone. 00:12:10.760 --> 00:12:15.820 But this was like, okay, she gave us a lot of information to process, which was great. 00:12:15.820 --> 00:12:19.560 You can totally accelerate your like product using that, yeah. 00:12:19.560 --> 00:12:20.180 Yeah, yeah. 00:12:20.180 --> 00:12:26.000 And I know actually people who work for companies like EPAM and other outsourcers over in Eastern Europe. 00:12:26.000 --> 00:12:27.640 You know people in India, right? 00:12:27.640 --> 00:12:29.160 It's like we actually have the contacts. 00:12:29.160 --> 00:12:33.700 And I think she helped us really better understand how we could use that in the future. 00:12:34.180 --> 00:12:50.840 So where I think you and I had concerns is the part where we were talking about equity split and specifically giving equity to kind of co-founders and the difference between the CEO and CTO and how it cannot be an equal split that CEO gets more, all that stuff. 00:12:50.960 --> 00:12:53.800 I think Melissa has a certain position there, right? 00:12:53.800 --> 00:13:04.840 She thinks a certain way that CEO should get more because it's all kind of business and CTO like doesn't contribute as much because business is not just a product, which I think is a fair position to take. 00:13:04.840 --> 00:13:06.320 It's just not how we think. 00:13:07.020 --> 00:13:18.800 And the reason why you and I were talking about this episode is by not challenging, by not arguing with this, it almost feels like we are accepting this and kind of endorsing this position, right? 00:13:18.800 --> 00:13:20.320 Whereas we don't. 00:13:20.320 --> 00:13:26.040 And I think what was not comfortable to me in the moment is when people come to our show, I want them to look good. 00:13:26.040 --> 00:13:27.800 I don't want to argue with people. 00:13:27.800 --> 00:13:28.840 I don't want to challenge them. 00:13:28.840 --> 00:13:32.040 I just want to have like a nice, light, friendly conversation, right? 00:13:32.440 --> 00:13:35.940 But at the same time, this does not represent our way of thinking. 00:13:35.940 --> 00:13:37.060 And I don't think we made it clear. 00:13:37.060 --> 00:13:39.740 And I think that might be okay. 00:13:39.740 --> 00:13:45.060 I was thinking about it afterwards too, where everybody's going to have different perspectives. 00:13:45.060 --> 00:13:54.140 You're not going to like talk about everything about we are going to ask this question and you're going to tell us what are you going to tell us before and all that before we hit recording. 00:13:54.140 --> 00:13:56.920 And like you said, it was a great episode. 00:13:56.920 --> 00:14:00.020 And it's a valid perspective, like you said. 00:14:00.320 --> 00:14:05.100 It's just not the one that you and I also agree with. 00:14:05.100 --> 00:14:08.060 And I have no problems with that, right? 00:14:08.060 --> 00:14:09.500 With the perspective itself. 00:14:09.500 --> 00:14:18.880 I think the uneasiness that I was feeling was how much do we push back on it during the episode recording? 00:14:18.880 --> 00:14:22.960 And if not, how do we like talk about this after? 00:14:22.960 --> 00:14:28.060 And it was just like, while you're interviewing, you also have to listen to what she's talking about. 00:14:28.060 --> 00:14:30.260 You have to think about what you're going to talk about next. 00:14:30.320 --> 00:14:33.920 And there was all of this going on in my head at the same time. 00:14:33.920 --> 00:14:37.720 So it was a bit hard to like manage the episode for me. 00:14:37.720 --> 00:14:44.320 We didn't want to argue or like start a debate on an episode. 00:14:44.980 --> 00:14:52.880 And we did ask some, I think, follow-up question, nudging or trying to understand her viewpoint more and more. 00:14:52.880 --> 00:14:56.100 And I think we did a good job with that. 00:14:56.100 --> 00:15:02.300 But like you said, we didn't have an avenue to like clarify where we stand on it. 00:15:02.360 --> 00:15:06.480 And that's why we thought, okay, this is perfect for a metasode reflection. 00:15:06.480 --> 00:15:07.920 So that's what we're doing now. 00:15:07.920 --> 00:15:08.740 Yeah. 00:15:08.740 --> 00:15:13.220 And I think this is a more generic point that we're bringing up right now, right? 00:15:13.220 --> 00:15:16.440 What if our guest says something that, you know, we think differently about. 00:15:16.440 --> 00:15:18.140 How do we deal with this, right? 00:15:18.680 --> 00:15:21.420 And, you know, one way is just like what we did last time. 00:15:21.420 --> 00:15:24.500 We just say nothing and then do reflection like this. 00:15:24.500 --> 00:15:32.480 But I think what we could have done is we could have just said like, yeah, we actually have a 50-50 split, which I think we said, right? 00:15:32.520 --> 00:15:38.740 And maybe we could say that, you know, we just think about this differently and we kind of appreciate your perspective and our perspective is different. 00:15:38.740 --> 00:15:42.820 But yeah, and our next topic is, and don't dwell on it, just like move on, right? 00:15:42.820 --> 00:15:57.520 But I wonder how like people, let's say like Lex or Joe Rogan, how they, actually, I want to listen more to that to see where they have guests that have conflicting kind of positions to theirs and how they navigate this. 00:15:57.520 --> 00:16:00.720 Lex has some great episodes on this, yeah. 00:16:01.120 --> 00:16:04.960 I mean, obviously he does a great job asking follow-up questions. 00:16:04.960 --> 00:16:10.200 I don't know how long they record for because the published episode itself is like four and a half, five hours. 00:16:10.200 --> 00:16:12.080 Oh my God. 00:16:12.080 --> 00:16:15.480 I think he hangs out with his guests for the entire day and then they record. 00:16:15.480 --> 00:16:16.100 Yeah. 00:16:16.100 --> 00:16:30.380 So I think talking about the episode itself, I think after the follow-up questions, I understood the position that in their company, the CTO came in much later, 00:16:30.520 --> 00:16:40.040 like a year after, like a year after, and I think it's a very different CTO, CEO role than what we are doing. 00:16:40.040 --> 00:16:51.480 Or in fact, what we did even in AWS was very different from what she was talking about, where the CEO, or if you will, the product manager or GM in a big company, 00:16:51.480 --> 00:16:57.260 or a CEO in like our size two, three people company, very soon to be three people, by the way. 00:16:57.260 --> 00:17:12.340 The CEO is the person making all the decisions, looking at the strategy and how to change, how to bring that strategy about into a smaller step roadmap, how to look at what you have delivered, iterate from it. 00:17:12.340 --> 00:17:14.580 And what's the next step and what's the next step and all that, right? 00:17:14.580 --> 00:17:24.220 And if I may like kind of try to paraphrase what she was trying to say to her, the dev team or the CTO was like, 00:17:24.220 --> 00:17:34.300 I am the person, the CEO is deciding all of this, the product, and you're the one implementing it versus in the way that you and I work. 00:17:34.300 --> 00:17:36.580 And this is the same way we worked in AWS. 00:17:36.740 --> 00:17:40.140 I think most engineering teams in like AWS were like this. 00:17:40.140 --> 00:17:41.880 It's much more of a partnership. 00:17:41.880 --> 00:17:49.500 The engineering team, the UX designer, the product manager, they all work together to define what the product is. 00:17:49.500 --> 00:17:55.460 They all work together to understand how people are using the product and how to refine it and all that. 00:17:55.460 --> 00:18:04.080 While the product manager is the person in charge of like laying out the strategy and breaking that strategy down into what are the next chunks? 00:18:04.080 --> 00:18:05.760 How are we going to go about it? 00:18:05.760 --> 00:18:13.040 But they do that with a lot of collaboration with the engineering team, UX designer, and lots of other roles in there. 00:18:13.040 --> 00:18:21.540 Yeah, I think the different framing here is, I don't know if I'm correct or not, but my perception is that I think Melissa comes from a more traditional kind of business background. 00:18:21.540 --> 00:18:26.260 And she approaches a technology business like a traditional business. 00:18:26.260 --> 00:18:32.320 So there is a person who is an entrepreneur, and then this person hires people to implement their ideas. 00:18:32.320 --> 00:18:38.200 I think that's how pretty much probably most businesses work, except for kind of deep, deep tech startups, right? 00:18:38.200 --> 00:18:43.000 Whereas I think we've cut our teeth in tech, in Amazon in particular, right? 00:18:43.000 --> 00:18:53.060 Where the product itself is so sophisticated technologically that you can't just come and tell engineers what to do because it's just too complex. 00:18:53.360 --> 00:18:55.500 And you have to work in partnership, like you said. 00:18:55.500 --> 00:19:01.620 And I think also, both in Amazon and in Google, PM is an engineering function. 00:19:01.620 --> 00:19:03.760 I think Amazon is kind of, I guess, maybe a bit of a gray area. 00:19:03.760 --> 00:19:05.560 But in Google, they have different ladders. 00:19:05.560 --> 00:19:07.320 There is an engineering ladder. 00:19:07.320 --> 00:19:07.940 Not ladder. 00:19:07.940 --> 00:19:10.180 Oh, man, I forgot how exactly they call it. 00:19:10.180 --> 00:19:13.300 But it's like PMs are part of the engineering group of roles. 00:19:13.300 --> 00:19:15.720 Actually, design is also part of the engineering group of roles. 00:19:16.080 --> 00:19:19.940 Whereas marketing is its own kind of business function or some other kind of vertical, right? 00:19:19.940 --> 00:19:28.580 In Amazon, too, wasn't there like a PM technical and a PM like external services and something like that? 00:19:28.580 --> 00:19:33.260 And a PM that you could have, let's say, in Amazon Books or Amazon Business. 00:19:33.260 --> 00:19:35.040 That doesn't have to be technical. 00:19:35.380 --> 00:19:36.200 Actually, you're right, yeah. 00:19:36.200 --> 00:19:42.660 And at Amazon, PMs tend to eventually report to an engineering manager or engineering director. 00:19:42.660 --> 00:19:43.880 Or it could be a product director. 00:19:43.880 --> 00:19:46.600 But still, it's not like these are two parallel tracks. 00:19:46.600 --> 00:19:51.300 They all converge at some point at like level 7 or level 8. 00:19:51.300 --> 00:20:02.680 And they would be like either a senior manager or director of engineering more frequently or like a product director who also has significant engineering chops from the past. 00:20:02.680 --> 00:20:04.560 Usually, that's how it happens, right? 00:20:04.880 --> 00:20:06.220 But I know what you mean. 00:20:06.220 --> 00:20:10.740 Like in the past, when I worked at a bank, too, it was more like the traditional approach. 00:20:10.740 --> 00:20:12.580 It's like they come like, here's the work to do. 00:20:12.580 --> 00:20:13.240 Like do the work. 00:20:13.240 --> 00:20:14.320 Yes, yes. 00:20:14.320 --> 00:20:16.040 Here's the business people. 00:20:16.040 --> 00:20:20.420 They will write out like specifications and like this is what requirements. 00:20:20.420 --> 00:20:23.360 And the engineering team goes and builds it. 00:20:23.360 --> 00:20:26.400 And I hated that, which is why I'm here now. 00:20:26.400 --> 00:20:28.600 There's no partnership, yeah. 00:20:28.600 --> 00:20:34.100 So actually, somebody asked me about like whether Google or Amazon has a business analyst 00:20:34.380 --> 00:20:36.280 or system analyst kind of function. 00:20:36.280 --> 00:20:41.500 Basically, a kind of function that transforms requirements from business into technical specs, right? 00:20:42.000 --> 00:20:53.820 And I told them that, in my opinion, in the product organization where you like build a product, where your business is a product, having an analyst like this is a dysfunction because it's like a proxy. 00:20:53.820 --> 00:21:02.680 You have to have your product manager who is kind of on the business side and your engineering team who is more on the technical side just work together in partnership. 00:21:03.140 --> 00:21:07.640 And basically, that kind of analyst function just gets shared. 00:21:07.640 --> 00:21:08.700 You don't need that proxy. 00:21:08.700 --> 00:21:13.660 By the same talking, project managers are a dysfunction, in my opinion, like in small teams. 00:21:13.660 --> 00:21:19.760 Let's say a team of 10 and you have a project manager, that is a dysfunction because projects are managed by individuals on the ground, right? 00:21:20.260 --> 00:21:21.320 Same with like Scrum Masters. 00:21:21.320 --> 00:21:27.380 Like the moment you have somebody who is responsible for process only, you get into the point where you have too much process. 00:21:27.380 --> 00:21:31.640 And these people's jobs are dependent on running the process. 00:21:31.640 --> 00:21:36.200 So it's not in their best interest to drop the process if it doesn't deliver the value. 00:21:36.200 --> 00:21:36.940 You know what I mean? 00:21:37.160 --> 00:21:40.560 It's not in their interest to simplify the process also. 00:21:40.560 --> 00:21:44.240 It's in their interest to increase the process. 00:21:44.240 --> 00:21:44.740 Yes. 00:21:44.740 --> 00:21:49.300 Yeah, and hire like an assistant project manager to help them with that process. 00:21:49.300 --> 00:21:49.520 Yeah. 00:21:49.520 --> 00:22:01.660 I mean, you and I clearly, we subscribe and we've been like molded or influenced by the Agile Manifesto and Pragmatic Programmer, those kind of books and all that, right? 00:22:01.660 --> 00:22:02.940 I totally agree. 00:22:03.060 --> 00:22:15.220 Like if you need a person to translate what the product manager and the engineering teams are saying to each other, then neither side understands what the other side is doing. 00:22:15.220 --> 00:22:15.880 Yeah. 00:22:15.880 --> 00:22:22.520 And I think this is probably what Melissa was describing early in her career when she did not have somebody technical like on staff. 00:22:22.520 --> 00:22:27.080 She was managing the contractors herself and that was difficult. 00:22:27.540 --> 00:22:37.260 Yeah, because I think she said something like, I expect you just tell them what to do and they give you a deliverable and it just wasn't working because software is kind of a bit different that way. 00:22:37.260 --> 00:22:41.640 It's very similar to construction or like renovation kind of projects. 00:22:41.640 --> 00:22:47.440 If you've ever done even the simplest things in your house, like I had like gutters installed in my house. 00:22:47.440 --> 00:22:50.940 It's a very simple job compared to like building something or I don't know. 00:22:51.100 --> 00:23:07.700 To be fair, I think even in software, there are probably lots of places where you do need that it is so complex that two sides, the product side and the engineering side, or maybe there isn't a product side at all. 00:23:07.700 --> 00:23:13.520 Or maybe it's business and engineering, don't know how each other work and you do need a person. 00:23:13.520 --> 00:23:27.820 We are in a bubble, but we also prefer to live in this kind of a place where you build things together in partnership in a way that you understand what the other person is doing and how it works and all that. 00:23:27.820 --> 00:23:28.560 Yeah. 00:23:28.560 --> 00:23:31.780 Actually, sometimes people ask me like, should the product manager code? 00:23:32.040 --> 00:23:40.420 And my answer is always no, but if you take a course, let's say in Python, like spend just, I don't know, 10 hours in this, right? 00:23:40.420 --> 00:23:51.220 And you will eventually, inevitably be in a situation where you bang your head on a wall trying to fix a bug that's supposed to be not there, but it is there. 00:23:51.220 --> 00:23:56.080 And it ends up being like some very simple, stupid thing, but it takes you like a whole day to figure it out. 00:23:56.520 --> 00:24:00.740 And that's what your engineering partners are dealing with every single day. 00:24:00.740 --> 00:24:11.380 And when you do this yourself, just as a course, you will build empathy as to like why software engineering is so hard. 00:24:11.380 --> 00:24:16.880 So like you don't have to code, like do your job, but like to build a relationship, yeah, spend a few hours. 00:24:16.880 --> 00:24:23.880 I think Melissa said something like this too that I really liked was, it's just move this button from here to here. 00:24:23.880 --> 00:24:26.200 Why does it take so long, right? 00:24:26.520 --> 00:24:27.660 Oh my God. 00:24:27.660 --> 00:24:34.000 I mean, it's a bit of a detour, but I've been coding all day on Monday or Tuesday, when was it, right? 00:24:34.000 --> 00:24:34.880 In Flutter. 00:24:34.880 --> 00:24:41.740 And because it's this asynchronous model of programming, which I never really did before. 00:24:41.740 --> 00:24:45.400 And also like Dart is new to me, like Flutter is new to me. 00:24:45.400 --> 00:24:50.300 Like, I guess I know enough to just be able to like write some logic, like figure things out a little bit here and there. 00:24:50.620 --> 00:24:51.960 But it's very slow, right? 00:24:51.960 --> 00:24:56.400 Because some of the concepts, they just don't translate from, let's say, C++ in the Dart, right? 00:24:56.400 --> 00:24:56.840 Or in the Flutter. 00:24:56.840 --> 00:25:00.660 And I've just been banging my head on the wall. 00:25:00.660 --> 00:25:07.020 And well, I've done more refactoring than coding at this point after I like see APR and you're like, okay, do it here, do it there. 00:25:07.260 --> 00:25:11.640 But there was like a very simple thing that I needed to do, which would have been like super simple in any other language. 00:25:11.640 --> 00:25:13.820 I just need to initialize the initial state. 00:25:13.820 --> 00:25:16.620 I'm still not sure if I actually have understood how to do it. 00:25:16.620 --> 00:25:17.980 It's not the language. 00:25:17.980 --> 00:25:20.100 It's because of the asynchronous model. 00:25:20.100 --> 00:25:23.280 The reactive model, that's what's making it hard for you. 00:25:23.280 --> 00:25:24.360 Because you don't understand. 00:25:24.680 --> 00:25:31.280 The thing I would say is when last week you decided, right, that this is the thing you want to work on. 00:25:31.280 --> 00:25:39.080 And I told you, right, like, okay, there's going to be a lot of new stuff because there's UI work and like asynchronous state changing and all that. 00:25:39.080 --> 00:25:47.120 And you actually did a way better job of picking it up than I thought. 00:25:47.120 --> 00:25:54.480 I thought it would take you like at least a week to wrap your head around like what's happening where and how the state is changing and all that. 00:25:54.480 --> 00:25:59.140 But you had like after two days, you were like, okay, I have a banner showing up here. 00:25:59.140 --> 00:26:00.560 And I was like, wow, that's cool. 00:26:00.560 --> 00:26:00.780 Yeah. 00:26:00.780 --> 00:26:01.800 Yeah, that's what I mean. 00:26:01.800 --> 00:26:05.820 Like, I guess I know enough to be dangerous because of all of the past experience. 00:26:05.820 --> 00:26:13.920 But yeah, let's say like if you are new to programming at all, like zero, I would say like picking up something like Flutter, that would just like completely. 00:26:13.920 --> 00:26:15.600 That would be hard. 00:26:15.600 --> 00:26:16.900 It would be very hard, I think. 00:26:17.120 --> 00:26:17.300 Yeah. 00:26:17.300 --> 00:26:25.080 But I think the other perspective on this is you don't need to be coding as a product manager. 00:26:25.080 --> 00:26:40.560 But if you do know the basics, especially something like Python or some shell scripting, something like that, you will start to realize how many more things you can accomplish just by yourself rather than waiting around for like an engineer to do. 00:26:40.560 --> 00:26:57.180 For example, in the last eight years that we've worked together now, there have been many instances where you would like go script something up yourself or take the data and run like a Python script or do some regression analysis and all that. 00:26:57.400 --> 00:27:03.300 And if you had to wait for like an engineering team to do all that, those things would never get prioritized. 00:27:03.360 --> 00:27:14.360 And I think this is where you don't need to be coding to push code out into production, but you need to know what's happening and that'll make you a much better product manager. 00:27:14.500 --> 00:27:21.400 Also, if I ask you to do that, like some of those scripts, you would have done it in a much less hacky way than I did. 00:27:21.520 --> 00:27:25.920 Like what I did in half a day, you would probably spend like a week doing, it would be like bulletproof and all that. 00:27:25.920 --> 00:27:27.480 I'm necessarily bulletproof, right? 00:27:27.480 --> 00:27:30.200 And then for me, it's like, I just need to get the job done. 00:27:30.200 --> 00:27:32.060 I don't care if it fails every second time. 00:27:32.060 --> 00:27:33.540 I can just restart it. 00:27:33.540 --> 00:27:39.820 So I can afford to do it at a much lower quality than somebody for whom it's like a full-time job. 00:27:39.820 --> 00:27:42.620 Anyway, so what are you listening to our number right now? 00:27:42.620 --> 00:27:44.760 Because we have five minutes left. 00:27:44.760 --> 00:27:54.920 Okay, so I wrote this because Walter Isaacson, he is a author who has written a lot of famous people's biographies. 00:27:54.920 --> 00:27:55.880 Steve Jobs is a good one. 00:27:55.880 --> 00:27:58.540 Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein. 00:27:58.540 --> 00:27:59.600 Ben Franklin. 00:27:59.600 --> 00:28:01.520 Ben Franklin, yes. 00:28:01.520 --> 00:28:05.620 The latest one is the Musk one that came out. 00:28:05.620 --> 00:28:08.620 However, I'm not reading the actual book. 00:28:08.620 --> 00:28:12.060 That's going to be more like a project for me, I think. 00:28:12.060 --> 00:28:13.700 It's a pretty big book, right? 00:28:13.700 --> 00:28:15.340 I mean, his books are like a thousand pages. 00:28:15.340 --> 00:28:18.500 Yeah, and I really love the Steve Jobs one. 00:28:18.500 --> 00:28:20.040 So I really want to read this one. 00:28:20.040 --> 00:28:22.720 But it's going to take some time to get through it. 00:28:22.720 --> 00:28:24.860 So instead, I was listening to... 00:28:24.860 --> 00:28:30.680 Lex had an episode with Walter Isaacson recently talking about this and many other things. 00:28:30.680 --> 00:28:31.720 It's four and a half hours. 00:28:31.720 --> 00:28:33.840 I listened to about an hour of that. 00:28:33.840 --> 00:28:41.620 And the hard fork, New York Times hard fork, they had a really awesome episode about it this week. 00:28:41.620 --> 00:28:43.060 I just listened to it yesterday. 00:28:43.260 --> 00:28:51.180 The thing for me from this is, like many other people, I also was like in awe of Elon Musk. 00:28:51.180 --> 00:28:54.440 Something changed in him recently, right? 00:28:54.440 --> 00:28:56.760 And this book... 00:28:56.760 --> 00:28:59.700 Well, I haven't read the book, so I won't go to say this book. 00:28:59.780 --> 00:29:10.380 But from what I heard about Walter Isaacson talking about Elon Musk and about the book in these two podcasts, it tells you what changed and why that changed. 00:29:10.380 --> 00:29:13.440 And I think it's going to give me empathy for Elon Musk. 00:29:13.700 --> 00:29:15.380 I think it's hard to be Elon Musk. 00:29:15.380 --> 00:29:16.880 It's hard to be Mark Zuckerberg. 00:29:16.880 --> 00:29:19.600 I don't think it's easy to be any of these people. 00:29:19.600 --> 00:29:23.340 But I think it goes into... 00:29:23.340 --> 00:29:27.580 Like, we know that Elon Musk is very mercurial, right? 00:29:27.580 --> 00:29:29.100 He has mood swings all the time. 00:29:29.580 --> 00:29:40.660 He is often, if not often, sometimes very cruel to people, publicly or privately, inside Twitter, inside SpaceX, or sometimes on Twitter itself. 00:29:40.880 --> 00:29:42.900 It almost feels like he's up for a fight. 00:29:42.900 --> 00:29:55.140 But this book tells you his personal relationships growing up as a boy, what kind of led to this darkness in him and how he tries to understand the darkness. 00:29:55.140 --> 00:29:59.140 And sometimes how he uses the darkness to, like, produce something amazing. 00:29:59.140 --> 00:30:00.460 Yeah, it's interesting. 00:30:00.460 --> 00:30:01.120 I want to read that book. 00:30:01.120 --> 00:30:03.160 Yeah, I have this episode also on my list. 00:30:03.160 --> 00:30:04.440 I need to listen to that. 00:30:04.680 --> 00:30:14.100 I'm really interested in listening to the book because what Walter says at the end is he asked Elon Musk not to read the book. 00:30:14.100 --> 00:30:18.240 So I'm really, really curious how this is going to end. 00:30:18.240 --> 00:30:22.540 But if you don't have time to read the whole book, I would say listen to the Hard Fork episode. 00:30:22.540 --> 00:30:32.700 That'll give you a really good, like, synopsis into what's going on in Elon Musk's head and what has led to it that he has this kind of, like... 00:30:32.700 --> 00:30:34.600 It's like different personalities altogether. 00:30:34.680 --> 00:30:36.780 Yeah, so we do have to wrap up. 00:30:36.780 --> 00:30:38.380 We have a meeting starting in 30 seconds. 00:30:38.380 --> 00:30:42.680 So therefore, we are not allowed to overrun our recording time. 00:30:42.680 --> 00:30:48.160 But maybe we'll just spend a couple of minutes in terms of, like, listening and reading stuff. 00:30:48.160 --> 00:30:49.180 Because you mentioned darkness. 00:30:49.180 --> 00:30:54.980 About a month ago, I re-watched the entire Star Wars feature movies. 00:30:54.980 --> 00:30:56.940 I think it was nine or ten movies. 00:30:56.940 --> 00:31:02.180 I started from the very first one, 1977, and all the way until whatever. 00:31:02.180 --> 00:31:04.060 I think Rogue One was the latest one. 00:31:04.240 --> 00:31:08.680 You watched them in the storyline order, not the release. 00:31:08.680 --> 00:31:10.920 No, I watched them in the order they were released. 00:31:10.920 --> 00:31:17.180 I'm like, if I was, like, 60 years old, and I watched this thing for the first time when I was, like, a child, right? 00:31:17.180 --> 00:31:18.660 Well, not a child, maybe, like, an adolescent. 00:31:18.660 --> 00:31:20.680 How would I perceive the entire story? 00:31:20.680 --> 00:31:22.880 Yeah, so you started with episode four, yeah. 00:31:22.880 --> 00:31:23.820 Episode four, yeah. 00:31:23.900 --> 00:31:28.060 And I think the first three movies came out with, like, three years difference or four years difference between them. 00:31:28.060 --> 00:31:29.920 77 or something, yeah. 00:31:29.920 --> 00:31:31.940 Yeah, 77, I think, 80, 83. 00:31:31.940 --> 00:31:35.840 I was born in 83, so I did get to watch them in the release order. 00:31:36.320 --> 00:31:39.680 But then I think there was a break up until, like, late 90s, I think. 00:31:39.680 --> 00:31:52.580 But watching them all in sequence within two weeks gave me a lot of appreciation for the story and for the world-building skill of George Lucas and, you know, other people that were involved there. 00:31:52.980 --> 00:31:58.320 Also seeing, kind of, the actors, like, I forgot his name, but the guy who played Luke Skywalker in the first movies. 00:31:58.320 --> 00:32:06.040 And he was also playing himself, I think, in whatever, The Last Jedi, I think, was, episode eight, I think, where he is a much older gentleman. 00:32:06.040 --> 00:32:10.400 He was, like, 20-something in the first movie, and then he was, like, maybe 60 or something. 00:32:10.400 --> 00:32:14.260 So, yeah, it was very, very interesting, very touching. 00:32:14.260 --> 00:32:25.460 But also, they have a lot of, like, interconnected things in the movies that if you watch them, like, with a three-year interval between them, you may not notice them. 00:32:25.460 --> 00:32:33.380 But then you watch them, like, the next day, even though there is, like, a 20-year gap between the movies, they make a reference, and you, like, you get it right away. 00:32:33.380 --> 00:32:38.240 And, oh, my God, like, I love this whole thing so much. 00:32:38.240 --> 00:32:41.560 I gained a lot more appreciation for Star Wars. 00:32:41.560 --> 00:32:42.440 I'm a big fan. 00:32:43.000 --> 00:32:45.020 And, yeah, I just want to wrap some feathers. 00:32:45.020 --> 00:32:46.520 I tried to watch Star Trek. 00:32:46.520 --> 00:32:47.420 I didn't like it at all. 00:32:47.420 --> 00:32:49.100 Same. 00:32:49.100 --> 00:32:56.240 But to me, I also don't like Star Wars, episode one and two too much. 00:32:56.240 --> 00:32:59.740 Jar Jar Binks, those ones, they're, like, so hard to get through. 00:32:59.740 --> 00:33:00.140 Yeah. 00:33:00.140 --> 00:33:04.900 Anyway, what I was going to say is we're two minutes late. 00:33:04.900 --> 00:33:10.420 We need to drop, but we are overdue for a sci-fi talk episode. 00:33:10.600 --> 00:33:13.540 We did one back in, like, episode 7.5. 00:33:13.540 --> 00:33:15.340 Like, we released a bonus episode. 00:33:15.340 --> 00:33:18.280 This conversation makes me want to do another one. 00:33:18.280 --> 00:33:21.040 And there's so much to talk about recently. 00:33:21.040 --> 00:33:22.880 So, yeah, let's do it sometime soon. 00:33:22.880 --> 00:33:23.620 Yeah, absolutely. 00:33:23.620 --> 00:33:24.440 All right. 00:33:24.440 --> 00:33:25.480 So, we got a wrap-up. 00:33:25.480 --> 00:33:27.000 It's a chicken wrap. 00:33:27.000 --> 00:33:28.620 Or dinosaur wrap. 00:33:29.780 --> 00:33:39.480 Yeah, you'll have to link in show notes to make sense of what you're talking about because I don't know if most people will go to what dinosaur rap you're talking about. 00:33:39.480 --> 00:33:45.380 Yeah, anyway, it's a wrap and at least episode 35 for more details about dinosaur raps. 00:33:45.380 --> 00:33:47.340 Yeah, bye. 00:33:47.340 --> 00:33:48.060 Okay, bye.