It's not that at Amazon or Google we also knew what was right or wrong when we made decisions. But there was somebody sitting higher up who would bless your decision. And this is exactly why your income is kept at a big company because you can always offload the risk to somebody else. Hello and welcome to episode number undefined of the Metacast behind the scenes podcast. I'm your host Yli Bensdoliff.
We will get into why it's undefined in a little bit.
We are both iOS and Android and we are going to launch very soon. On this podcast we talk about how we build the company, how we build the startup, how we build the product. That's why it's called Behind the scenes.
Actually, maybe you should have called it building public. Builders are going to build these are other podcasts. That's where we interview other people and that goes well. Builders are going to build. This is like build in public. Yeah, it makes sense too.
Yeah, if you rename it, it would be a third of the name. But it's okay behind the scenes is I think pretty clear to I was just thinking if somebody searches for like building public podcasts or so would come up in the studio. We don't have to make this decision right now on this podcast recording.
Yeah, because people want to listen to what we have to say other than deliberating on this decision. So let's skip forward.
Yeah, because our arguments, especially about very, very simple topics can get really, really intense.
So what I'm going to say naming is easy. Naming is one of the hardest problems. True. All right. So what are we talking about today?
So it's been a year. I think when did we officially incorporate like in July or June? That's a good question. I think it was June 8th.
Yeah, so and we are recording today on June 5th. So it's almost exactly to a year. I think I had started coding a few months before but you had not started officially yet.
And you were still kind of leaving your job and going through all that right. So it's been a year.
We wanted to reflect on how that year has been. How our life was before you were at Google. I was at Amazon and how it is now.
What's working? What's not working and all that.
Yeah. And for those of you who did not listen to our episode 24. So episode 24. It's a two-part episode that we recorded almost immediately.
I think just a few days after I left Google. Because I left Google on June 1st, 2023. I didn't want to get in trouble with Google.
That's why I didn't start coding or doing any kind of artifact production before I left so that they can't go after me and all that.
We recorded that episode in June 2023 where we talked about what it took to leave corporate jobs, to start a company.
And we shared our aspirations and how we thought about finances and all that. So now it's been a year. So we thought it would be actually a great opportunity to reflect on how that year actually went.
Yeah, where we are, how we feel a year later. Because it felt very rosy when we were talking about this.
Because it was all just pure joy and aspiration. But now a year in, at least on my end, I realized it's not just flowers in the unicorns.
Yeah, there are some challenges in a good way, right? That we wanted to talk about. Actually, just before we go there, I saw a real on Instagram today.
I don't know who this guy is, some old dude. And the recording is like from, I think, like, 1950s. He says there, don't ask life for less challenge. Ask for more skills. Something like that.
It's really stuck with me because there were challenges, at least like for me, some personal challenges. And I think overcoming those were some of the most difficult parts of my professional career. But also some of the more exciting and inspiring part of my career.
And then this will be the main topic today. We're also going to talk a little bit about the new updates in the app. There are some exciting new things.
And as always, we end with what Ilya and I are listening to because we started this meta cast thingy because we love podcasts and we like listen to podcasts all the time.
So we also tell you about what we're listening to and maybe some highlights from our last few weeks.
Yeah, and we totally heard back from people that they like those podcast recommendations.
And the 30 minute challenge. So I think I heard back from one listener saying that it was great that you tried to keep it. I think it was very close to like what we tried to keep it to.
I think it was like 29 minutes or something in the last episode.
Yeah, today we'll try to keep it to about 45 minutes because this is a meaty topic. We have some more other stuff to talk about. But that's the promise, let's see.
So don't play rock, paper scissors to see who stops first. Oh, no, no, no, you wrote your thoughts first. I have been ruminating on it this morning during the dog walk and kind of just wrote up some rough ideas.
I know what I want to talk about, but I want to hear your side first.
Yeah, let's take turns. Actually, last week we didn't know what this episode would be about.
We had some ideas, but nothing concrete. But then I just had the flash of inspiration and I wrote linked in post with my reflections on like a year after living corporate job at Google.
I'm like, hmm, why don't we talk about this because this is an interesting topic to expand on.
I'll start with the first point I made in the post. That was my favorite year of my career to put things into perspective. So I'm 40 now.
I'm 3041 this fall. Overall, I spent eight years working in corporate for the HLX press, like a traditional corporation. I spent two years not working studying the war and doing my MBA in the US, which were also like fantastic years because I didn't have to work and I had time to reflect.
And then I spent five years at Amazon and three years at Google and then I spent a year at Metacast. So 16 years of corporate career in total.
And as I was reflecting on last year, I'm like, hmm, I can't imagine going back to the world where somebody who mastered the corporate ladder game, right, sitting me down for a quarterly or an annual review and like, oh, you already did whatever, like above average on this rubric and above average and that rubric.
That rubric you kind of below average, whatever the term they use, whatever needs improvement, whatever it is, right. And here's what you peers have to say you need to exhibit these behaviors and I'll let I dread it that time of the year for one.
I just never liked constructive feedback.
Wait, do you mean you like destructive feedback?
I like flattery or you don't like feedback. I just like when people say like, how good I am, right. No, I mean like in all seriousness, who doesn't, right. People just come like I want to improve, tell me all the shit you want to tell me about.
But I think there's something there that if I talk to somebody who I respect and consider a mentor and they tell me this could be better, that could be better.
Given your goals and I'm like, yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Well, when I hear somebody on the podcast, actually I'll make a recommendation of the podcast later in episode. And I'm like, yeah, I'm totally not doing this and it slows me down.
It works against me and I can definitely take this. But I think what is different in corporate is for us as a corporation to get more from you, we want you to do more of that.
And this may or may not be consistent with my goals. What I'm reflecting on is incorporate there is a goal substitution going on, I think when you're incorporating your goals, get to the next level, get the new title, get promoted, move to another team.
So you're always chasing an ego fueled next step. Status and money comes with status. But also I feel like those companies like Google and Amazon, they pay really well. No objection to that.
But they almost never talk about money. They talk about the growth and like getting to the next level and more impact Google really loves the impact part.
Now I think a year after this, I can be very honest with myself. I'm like, if I ever had to go back in this environment, it would be only for the money. I don't care about the status, I don't care about the title. I just want to get paid more.
Would it be only the money or like some happiness in what you're doing also right for me, it would be that.
Yeah, I think, you know, definitely I want to find joy in what I'm doing.
But the status levels and all doesn't matter to you. Yeah, same. You and I are very similar. And that's why I think the annual review kind of thing where they do try to ask you what are your goals for yourself.
It doesn't really fit with Amazon's goals or like Google's goals because you and I are very entrepreneurial, very independent people. And we like to like build things go fast.
And those things very often as in senior roles, don't work well in big companies where you're working on critical projects or like there's the whole brand or everything else to think about.
It's not just like build things and release and talk to the customer and go fast.
I would even say the more senior you go, the longer timelines you have, the more you're removed from actually doing things.
I'm absolutely going to talk about that when we get to my part. So totally agree.
And that's what I mean by like your goals versus company goals and money because I may be totally cool.
Let's say in a senior PM role where I actually get to do the real work, dig into the data, talking to customers, etc.
But then my income is capped at a certain amount. So even if my product goes through the roof and makes a lot of money for the company, I don't get to make more, maybe they make me bonus, right?
But it's marginal. So if you want to get to the next level of income, you have to get to the next level. And then let's say you go from senior to principle.
And then the nature of work changes so much that you may not be happy doing that.
And then going to from principle to director, that's just like a very different role altogether where you become a people manager and all that stuff that comes with it.
So it's like if you really want to build, I mean some people just love it, right?
But some people who really want to be doing things, but instead they're actually going for the manager role.
Actually had a manager who was a VP at Amazon. They said, I'm jealous of what you get to do on a day to the basis.
At the time, I was like, yeah, I get it. I've had I'm just a comment. You make so.
And that's a paradox, right?
Right.
By the way, since you talked about the annual reviews, I'll try to keep this to max two minutes.
Okay. My feel for it is that if you go back a few years in Amazon, we used to do very, very intense peer reviews.
I would write up like a page and a half reflecting about each and every person that I worked with.
And that would be back then I was an engineer in a team. So maybe like I'm writing this for six to eight people.
But this is like, I'm looking back at everything they have done over the year. And I'm writing it up.
My perspective on what they did great, what were some like areas that they could do even better.
And when we were doing this, this is like at least 2016, 17, I want to say that period.
I love the feedback that I got from people because that was I think very deep and meaningful feedback.
Over the years, Amazon as a company figured out that we're basically spending the second half of January and like almost all of February doing this.
And everything else slows down to a crawl because this is really intense work like looking at somebody's a whole year and writing it up and doing it for like six to eight or maybe some people were doing it for 12 to 15 people.
And the more senior you get the larger is the body of work you have to review for like more senior people, right.
And also more people ask for feedback.
Yeah, the more is the weight of your words at that time also right the blast radius is huge.
That was intensive. So Amazon at some point I want to say maybe around 2020 or so.
We decided to like keep this to a few words. I don't remember what the word limit was, but it was like Twitter style feedback.
You write about somebody's work over the year, but maybe a few tweets to three tweets kind of level. That's what you would write.
Arnab's work is dead ass.
Yeah, no, I mean a bit more, but you know what I mean right like a few tweet level length.
And then the manager used to always summarize everything for you. So it's anonymized.
But now after we did this, I felt like this is useless.
I had a few managers who were really great at reading all this and giving me their opinion on all of this and kind of laying out a great picture.
And that was great. I also had a few managers who like gave me these tweets like go figure this out.
It doesn't mean anything to me like I don't understand the context of these sentences.
I don't understand anything in here. So I mean I totally understand the balance right like do you want to spend the whole corporate companies a month and a month and a half in doing this and will review or do you want to make progress.
I felt like we were kind of caught between two worlds at that time. I saw it was not as useful anymore.
So it can't just summarize that happiest year of my life thing right.
So it's just like removing that part of my life that I never enjoyed is not strong enough.
But hate is probably too strong. I never liked it. Never made sense to me. This whole reviews and all that.
And I worked for managers I did not like. I think I did the count of managers and I had like 22 managers or something in my career because people changed a lot.
And there were a few really great managers. There were really great people. There were maybe just a couple that I felt really miserable with and I wanted to like rage quit every day.
Most were just mediocre doing the work that was expected of them. It just never made sense but I was sort of too scared to do something else.
And so I was like keeping doing what I knew how to do. Breaking away from that, finding the courage that by itself makes me feel very good about this.
Not in a bragging sense but more internally. And we will talk about that. There was a lot of effort to undo some of those habits.
But one of the things that I found really, really exciting in this whole being on your own thing is the flexibility of not having meetings almost ever.
Even when we have standing meetings like our stand up or not stand up like weekly sink. We can always move those. We can cancel those. So there is just so much flexibility.
I traveled a few times last year like camping going on retreat here and there. I just like it so much that I could schedule something on a couple of days notice.
Well, I don't even have to do not just at all. It's more like I want to go like day after tomorrow and I just book tickets and I just tell you guys, okay, I'll be out.
That kind of thing was almost impossible in the corporate because you had to count your days. That was the thing that I hated the most.
It's like, oh, you have whatever 14 days of vacation left. And you have to book like a flight that returns a day early.
You pay more. It's like a red eye flight. Instead of maybe taking a day or two longer and making it more convenient for yourself.
And doing those constraints of corporate, I really enjoy that. So yeah, I'm curious. What some of your takeaways of last year were.
Okay, I think like you said you were pivoting between don't like and hate. I want to say the word I would use for my experience towards the end.
Okay, in the beginning, I loved it towards the end was frustrating two things. I think speed.
But not being able to take decisions on your own, even though teams are supposed to be very independent and having to go through like layers and layers of reviews to like make decisions.
That was one thing. The other thing was lack of agility, which is kind of a flip side of this is once you have the information that this is clearly not the right way.
And this happens in software all the time, right? Like you have a design, you have something and you start building it and you figure out, okay, this is not going to work out exactly. Let's go this other way.
That took a lot of convincing to like convince other people that yes, we're not going on the right way. Let's change directions right now.
And sometimes it would take like a couple of months because of meeting scheduling like you said, right, because you have to like talk to directors and all that. And their calendars are free, maybe a month out or month and a half out, right.
Because of that, you still keep doing things for the next month, even though you know that this is kind of wasted effort or going towards a wrong direction. And I found this hugely frustrating.
And I thought one piece of advice that somebody gave me at Google, when I first joined, someone was not working process wise. And I was just showing some heroics and picking things up and making sure the things get done.
And this guy told me let the thing fail. And I'm like, what why? He's like, yeah, if you don't let it fail, yeah, you'll never expose the issue in the process.
And I just not who I am because it makes perfect sense in that environment. But then it never made sense for my personal sense of work ethic and just the desire to get things done.
I remember ultimately succumbing to this because it was just so frustrating and just like letting things fail so that things get exposed. And it just never sat well with me. But it's just one of things in the company environment that may go against the personal sort of not just gold, but like personality.
When I hear that I feel like this would apply really well, take an example, right? Like let's say your team does story points for velocity estimates and you feel like this is not giving us any value.
But you don't want to take the time to convince everybody of all this. So you're like, okay, just let it fail. Right? Like after six months will figure out that this is useless.
I think I would be okay with that going down that path versus like when you're building a product and you realize that like this is not the right thing to build or the experience where building is not going to be the right thing.
You can't let it fail at that point. It's going to be way too late. You know what I am talking about maybe. But anyway, it doesn't really matter.
I think a lot of people working in Google and Amazon and big tech will not feel this unless they get to the staff or principal levels where the decisions that you're making or the strategy that you're laying out are way higher level.
And so there is much more review and all that. For the most part when I was an SD to at Amazon and generally when I was an SD 3 also like a senior engineer.
It was well within the team. So I could convince people easily and didn't have to like go through so many hoops to like collect information to like convince that this is the right way.
Anyway, to summarize all of that, that was the big frustration. I feel like in the last one year that has been blissful. There has been no frustration.
There are some negatives that like you said, there are also negatives that I felt I'll talk about it in a little bit, but that I would say is the biggest thing like the agility that we have taken on.
We have changed many decisions over the last year, but imagine building a similar product inside of Google or inside of Amazon.
Those changes like let's say we decided we're going to not launch an iOS right now. We're going to launch an Android that decision. Oh my God, think about how much like convincing you would have to do to like convince everybody that that's the right thing to do at this point of time.
Yeah, including lawyers.
Got those.
Yeah, and so that's what I think I enjoy the most is the agility and the amount of things that we do ourselves. I take pride in the things that we build and there are some negatives to that also.
That's been the biggest change in me is I love that part of it.
Totally. So what did it go to from frustration for you?
I'm looking at the notes and I'm sort of asking you a. Yeah, the question. My life as a principal engineer in Amazon. I want to say was frustration and collaboration.
Those were the two biggest like words I would use to describe that now I think it's become building in an agile way and anxiety.
Do you still feel anxiety one year in? Yeah, I mean, I feel even more now than I felt a year ago, I think because a year back, it looked pretty clear cut like this is where we're going and all.
I feel actually more anxious for you than for me personally because so if you listen to episode 24, you will know all of the finances and all that we talked about.
I won't go into all the details, but Ilya, you are in a single earning or actually zero earning family right now. So I'm more anxious for you than for me personally to start making money.
But also I think the biggest thing that gives me anxiety is the decisions that we take not knowing whether it's right or wrong.
This needs a bit of like actual explanation to do. It's not that at Amazon or Google. We also knew what was right or wrong when we made decisions.
But there was somebody sitting higher up who would bless your decision. Even if it's wrong, at least you don't take responsibility.
Yeah, they would either reject your decision or proposal or accept it and in a way they would bless you that yes, this is the right thing.
And this is exactly why your income is kept at a big company because you can always offload the risk to somebody else.
Yes. Whereas now I feel like because we take these decisions, we cannot know what's right or wrong.
There is much more anxiety about are we going the right way or not? And there's no way to know about this, I think.
And this is like if you want to say earlier frustration was maybe 60% collaboration was 40% now building and the agility, the happiness part is more like 80% and the anxiety is more like 10% I think.
And the rest is like you said flexible that has been one of the best things like you said to you talked about travel, which is of course like just go figure out what to do, which is beautiful. In my case, that's not as true because my wife again, she's working.
But I can just like figure out, okay, yeah, today is great weather. I want to do a longer dog walk or I want to play tennis today. And the flip side of that is the productivity that I'm having because of this is also like I've never been this productive in my life.
The rate at which we build or decide things and all that. So yeah, maybe just to give an example, we shipped a few UX changes this week actually I was in one PR per day.
It was a pretty simple changes, but still like being able to see how the app changes visually day after day that has been so exciting.
Yeah, I'll give you one more example from my side, the thing that I'm working on is subscriptions, right, like so that we can actually start making money turns out I cannot test it easily on my simulator.
Simulator is when I'm developing it's not a real app. It's on my computer. It's running in a simulator.
And I cannot test some of these things there. So I have to like make assumptions, ship it out to my actual phone, like go through the whole build and release process and then I can get a feel for it.
Imagine having to do this in a corporate world fair. You're not going to get a code review done in any amount of time. And this is what I enjoy the most we just put everything inside a feature flag and like go crazy.
Let's see what happens and then we'll figure it out. Yeah, I would get this notification like I'm not asking for review and then almost immediately the PR is merged.
So I'm okay.
And what are you going to review? We don't know if it's going to work.
Yeah. Imagine going through this in a corporate world where somebody is going to review the you're not going to check it in without a review and to review it they're going to read the code and ask you for assumptions and all.
And I'm in a place where I don't know I'm shipping this assuming this will work or not work and I want to see the exception that it raises and then we'll go from there.
Cool. Yeah, it's interesting you mentioned anxiety about whether we're moving in the right direction.
I feel like where we are, we've not really made any reversible decisions yet because we are still working on pretty much table stakes at this point.
We've been able to charge for the app. I would you play back issues that we have some UX improvements. Those are not special.
I have a bit of anxiety about whether our app is differentiated enough because when we started with would have been but over time as we pushed our launch date further further
address starting to add transcripts most importantly Apple other apps have it to now my hypothesis right now given where we are in our kind of resource in we can create better user experience.
We can create better user experience and compete on that eventually we may have to make something extraordinary to be much better than Apple or Spotify which is don't know what that is right now.
We will see I mean we have some ideas about like better playlists and stuff like that so what better workflows which some apps have like overcast for example has it but there you actually just couldn't figure it out.
It's very complex. Yeah, it's not for everybody. So we could make things like that a lot simpler which Spotify and Apple are unlikely to do just because they serve a much broader audience.
That's a bit of anxiety that I have like is our app good enough for people to pay for and until we actually have the functionality to pay for the app which you're working on and until we launch it in the app stores we don't know.
But that's coming like very very soon so stay tuned yes. Very very soon. Yeah, it's a very long game going back one year prior. I thought if we don't start making money in six months I was just call it quits.
But then you know I've made some adjustments to my lifestyle and I don't want to talk details on this episode but I did extend my runway.
I could go a lot longer now but at the same time here's a revelation I had. Even if I go completely broke I will not regret it.
Let's right now if we just shut the whole thing down or you and Genu continue to not just left and I would go back to corporate job and I would sit in front of my computer like in that weekly meeting
listening for like people looking at PowerPoint even like talking about this makes my energy go lower. It just feels a huge no for me. I can't go there.
I would rather change my lifestyle maybe deny myself things that I'm used to then to go back to that.
Just this whole feeling of being free in the beginning actually is also difficult because in the beginning free feels like what do you do with all of that.
I remember reading in Tim Ferrissitz for our work week ten years ago where he was saying that when you start working in that lifestyle where you only work for hours a week
you don't know what to do with all this time you want to fill this time with something and you default to what you know how to do working more meetings or what have you.
I remember when I first quit the job I had this thing where like I have to work nine to five regardless I would like force myself to work I would do in force myself to work longer hours and all just because that's the only thing I knew how to do.
If you didn't have meetings I would have more meetings it's just because you have to have more meetings just to fill the time.
When somebody tells you what to do even on the higher level right if you work as a principal at Amazon it's not like there's somebody who always tells you what to do.
But you know the priorities there are goals and you figure out how to achieve those goals. It's still on the higher level there is a goal post that you are chasing.
In the startup it's just different you have to be self-discipline about this. For me that particular part was difficult to like change the mode of working start doing things differently especially that I had so much anxiety about money.
I had like panic attacks I was sleepwalking I was overreacting a lot I was overreacting I was drinking too much coffee all of that stuff just to feel in that anxiety driven and fear driven whole right and I had fatigue for like months I would like sleep for four hours wake up feel fatigue drink a lot of coffee it was just awful and it's one of those things that look glorious.
I'm not a hobbit side right but like when you look at what's actually going on it can be very difficult it was very difficult. One thing I can relate to here we've talked about it in some episode in the past I don't remember when the way we used to work kind of required that you are
producing uniform output every day every week 9 to 5 the whole point is like you're producing that same kind of work every day every week and personally I have always had insane few weeks of crazy productivity where I can't sleep and I'm like working at night because I can't sleep this is so exciting or
I'm making real headway I want to get this out today and then there would be weeks where I'm like completely drained of energy and I've had managers tell me that that's not okay they call this burning yourself out and maybe it is right in a way you're burning yourself out for a few weeks and then you're not doing
anything for the next few weeks and that's not okay and you were dinged for it this is what we talked about this was a struggle for me to adjust to but I think eventually now I'm caught up with it and I'm like yeah I'm going
to have some days where I don't get much done and that's okay there are also some days where I'm like going crazy building things and that's very exciting and this is a normal way to live my work life
yeah I think the burnout happens when you work like crazy because you're excited the passions and then instead of resting you actually try to keep that uniform baseline output regardless despite the fact that you actually need to recharge and then by not letting yourself to recharge you burn out that's the thing yeah and I think incorporate there is just no room for that because even if you don't
code and you're doing more like leadership job there's just so many meetings and all that that just keep draining energy from you until you reach that point where you actually just burn out and then you have to use your precious vacation days to like recharge and there are never enough yeah one thing I wanted to mention here is there were a few points in time when I was like I don't know if I'm making progress
not in the same way like incorporate you make progress to a new level or something because like incorporate whatever you do you still get paid especially at the times when we were working at big tech you had to be really really bad to be fired you could always just like not as
really coast but like do the minimal and like feel like you're not doing enough but it's still sort of enough for the company and you kind of just coast along right with the startup you may just do nothing for days or you do
something and it doesn't feel like a lot of progress because nobody's tracking it there is no accountability mechanism so one thing I started doing in last couple of months which you might have noticed they factor it so Google had this thing called snippets well almost nobody does it this way but back in the day when it was still run by the founders
everybody had to write snippets of what they were working on this week just a few bullet points what I was doing when I was good I really liked that whole idea every day whenever I would do something I would just write it down as a bullet point and in the
day of the week I would just create a summary of those bullet points so what I'm doing now I have a doc let's look at the list but there I also have at the bottom bullet points like June 5th I did this this and that June 6th I did this this and that and then when we do our stand-ups actually just copy from there and those bullets have links to pull requests or issues or
documents that they work on and when I actually compile those in list it fuels that sense of achievement especially when I was working on smaller things here and there maybe some admin work for like Apple App Store
whatever like some nonsense work that you just wish to forget about and you forget about it and then the three days later you don't remember you did it but those sort of snippets help me I don't know if it's fake or not but it gives me some documents in terms of like sense of accomplishment
I think for me this comes from the release notes and the videos that you have started doing I love them by the way listeners if you want to follow us follow our progress of the app then can go to Reddit our subreddit is Metacast app and then Ilya does these release videos there every time we release which is about once a week for me if you go look at the app like from a few couple of months back versus now
the amount of differences you will see there gives me that sense of like yes we're building so much and this is one of the things I wanted to say is working with you and Jenny we always knew that you and I we like working on small teams
but this a year later this gives me the hypothesis that we have that I would be much happier working with a small team then with like three different teams of 20 people each
working on strategy for different goals this is much more fulfilling for me being very close to what we're building building it together with a small group and shipping out things and seeing the change in them
yeah true actually one thing I wanted to also know it is when we first started a year ago I got the coding a little bit and then I was kind of coding on and off because I would just reach that frustration point really really quick
because the thing is complex and I would take sort of a larger piece than I could chew and it was really driving me nuts when I couldn't figure out some things
and then over time I think I found a sweet spot where I am coding mostly UI changes where I don't have to deal with all the complexity of state management and the back ends
where I would like obsess about the transparency of icons on an episode tile right so things like this and that actually gives me a lot of joy previously I would have to like maybe give you a bunch of feedback but I think it's not like feedback or make it so and it will look great
it's more like try this try this try that but now I can just try it myself what's the difference between 87% opacity versus like 95% I can just play with it myself
it's very empowering because I also see the results right away so I can be unable to work on that highly visible but also fairly simple changes that gives me a lot of joy I'm really enjoying that park and also like working on CSS on the website yeah
and I think we've started to slowly get into that flow also so one of the things you're working on right now is the intro screens right like when you start up the app for the first time before you sign in
you're going to see what you can do with that and we have never had this till now our app till now if you launch it this is the very first time you have no idea what Metacast is the first screen it loads up and says sign in
right and you're unlikely to sign in at that point if you don't know anything about which is okay because we are in beta actually I think that explains why we have such a big difference between the people who launched the app and people who listen to at least one episode
I think that sign in screen is what probably turn them away maybe yeah but now you're adding what is this app going to give you as the first thing before we ask you to sign in
of course you can skip the signing also there's like a guest mode and anyway if you don't know anything about the app you're unlikely to take the even that effort to like sign in as a guest even if you don't want to sign in anyway so you're adding that but the way we did that is Jenny
did I want to say the plumbing work let's say plumbing work to set up how are these intro screens going to work and all that and you added all
the life into them again going back to the plumbing analogy you painted the walls and all that and now we're like combined between the two we're ready to launch that feature and I think that way we also get to move way faster
yes you know some of the recent discussions we had in Slack I feel like I have a lot more tolerance towards just like experimenting with minor UI things I'm actually enjoying this
I think that works quite nicely especially when I start to give feedback it might be just like take it over go that last mile right every
injured that part of being able to get my hands dirty well actually not being frustrated yeah okay I think we're slowly moving towards what's new in the app already
so let's just get to that section yeah I think by the time this episode comes out we should have version 0.72 out so that version has a few changes so first of all we had this
flow where if you want to follow a podcast you added to your favorite so you cart the podcast you hit that heart shape on the podcast cover and then it gets added to your
site but then we were thinking hmm favorite what if actually you have a podcast that is your favorite and the other ones you follow but they aren't your favorite or you have some favorite
episodes that maybe you want to keep in your like stash of things that you want to come back to so we changed this whole concept from favorites to follow just like Twitter or Instagram or other products do where you just follow a podcast and then favorite could
be the latest that you create and you can add things there so yeah we changed favorites to following that is one change it's kind of small UI tweak but I think it's an important one then we added images to the podcast
category so if you go to the search screen that was a hideous screen that we had I took a screenshot of it yesterday the previous hideous screen that we have
yeah yeah we should add a picture to the show notes it was just put together very very quickly just so that we have something and it showed so thanks to our
intern Jack we had a different design for that and we've implemented that took only half a day it took actually longer to find the images that have
commercial license for free looks great now then we also did the redesign is in a player we have the tab for transcript that tab for bookmarks they had very
very well and the state like if you don't have transcript or if you don't have any bookmarks you just show some for a long lines like oh oh and look the magic click here and instead we just added some gifts there so it looks a lot nicer then the other thing that I'm personally very excited about we made
episodes transcribe automatically when you start listening to them or when you add them to listen later playlist this has been awesome I mostly just add episodes I want to listen to listen later and by the time I get to them
potentially a few days later or maybe hours later the transcript is already there which I find very very helpful basically we just want to disappear that notion of generating the transcript from people's consciousness so by the time you get to listening to an
episode the transcript is already there and you can bookmark it you can share you can screenshot do what you want with it is really cool then like you said we added the intro screens to the app so now if you are signed out you open the app you see those
screens that tell you what Metacast is about so we welcome any feedback we put those screens pretty quickly so I think they need a little bit more work so any feedback is appreciated so those are the user facing changes I think we've done recently I think the auto
transcribe was part of the previous version but everything else is new for the version that comes out you've been working a lot on the subscriptions so we can charge but all of that is behind the
feature flag yes well you cannot as a user we can because we are enabled in the feature we can actually pay for the app in iOS and Android now so but we pay fake money right it actually doesn't charge our credit cards
yeah we pay fake money because it's in beta we pay like $7 for five minutes subscription or something like that anyway yeah it actually depends on your thing here is if you make it available to beta users they can test it and pay fake money but they would still become premium and I don't think
there is a graceful way to cancel this so we would have to only notice when we actually launch and can charge real money for the app cool cool cool all right let's wrap this up let's go
with your let's go with your because I've been talking a lot okay all right I've been listening a lot I think the last few words we talked about I was still going through the three body problem so that's what I said all the time was that I'm still
listening there are massive epic size books right I finished that and then I was just looking up I think I have like 70 or so episodes in the last 21 days that I've listened to and how do you discover how many episodes you listen to oh yeah so this is a
little bit easier we should have in the app we don't yet your listening history I tend to like finish the episodes complete them so they go away from like my face in the app when they're done but then in the app right now
there's no way to see what I've listened to in the past you say they go away from your face that's what is it yeah like it's in the home screen right you know what in our app if you have not finished an episode you have started it
it's going to show up in the home screen so that you can quickly pick it up again and I love that feature except when I'm like towards the end of an episode I'm done with it but it still doesn't detect that it's done so I tend to like finish those
episodes and we're done they're gone but then they're like completely gone there's no way for me to discover them via the app anymore so I ran a query right before this meeting to look at all the episodes that I've listened to and they were like 71
so yeah that's a feature we will have in the app at some point my most interesting listen was from the shortwave so NPR shortwave the episode is called What are sperm whale saying this is about us scientists finally starting to
understand that they have like a full vocabulary and there's like actual language going on this is not just like dog barking or an ML bark there's like full detailed nuanced they're not words because they're sounds I mean what are words there sounds
too but in a human notion but they're actually like full language level communication going on in there and I had a notion of it but I didn't know how much we have come to understand it already and so that episode goes into it I love that one
why are they called sperm whales that I don't know actually I do know that there's rights sperm whales which are off the east coast and they're nearing almost extinction level because they have been the most harmed of all the whales species around North America
I don't know why they're called sperm whales we love to look it up yeah might be a funny story I don't know the other interesting things I want to say acquired Microsoft that's a massive episode I'm about halfway through it
I saw that there's a new Starbucks episode I'm curious about that I haven't started it yet when we were screen sharing at one point Ilia I saw that you were listening to this the daily our 401k is a failed experiment or
something like that that episode I was just testing something it's not funny because yes it was an episode that I was doing some tests on but you thought I was listening to this you listen to it no no I listened to it before you like few weeks ago
it was a good episode like it gives you the history of how 401s came to be and it's a really interesting history it was a workaround and the name 401k itself is a big worker it's a very interesting episode go listen to it yeah it's fun
other than that quick mentions the sci-fi podcast sci-fi so that's science Friday that podcast has an episode about dark energy and one about high speed rail both were great lots of interesting information about what's happening right now
loved it and I know you don't like the hard fork so don't listen to the full episode I'd like hard fork I just don't like it enough to prioritize it high enough in my feed
oh I thought you didn't like their style or the banter that they have I like their style it's just not the podcast that I run and listen the moment they have a new episode
I really love their interview with Karas Vischer I loved it right that was great yeah it was very personal also right because they knew her and one of them was a tenant in Karas house
but their latest one that talks about Google's new AI that episode I'm talking about right how is it the one that Google makes you eat rocks or something
it is it's called yes yes Google started adding AI into the search results and there's been a lot of like problems with that so this is the episode about that
it was good but I want to talk about the opening bit so one of them everyone going to details were short on time but they talk about launching or hard launching your boyfriend on the grid
I have no idea what this means sucking on Genji's what a soft launching your boyfriend is like maybe your boyfriend shoulder shows up in an Instagram photo
but you don't see the full person but you have a suspicion okay are they dating now is she dating somebody or is he dating somebody that's a soft launch
like a full picture and name and everything so one of them did a hard launch of their boyfriend and on the grid means it's not on your Instagram stories which go away after 24 hours
it's actually a post so it's going to stay on your grid but anyway the opening was like amazing lots of Genji, Lingo and hilariousness
other than that Roland Garros French open is going on so that's been my daily everyday pick up that episode added to my listen later it gets transcribed by listen to it
and finally I started actually I finished the shogun TV show if you like Game of Thrones you would love this show this is like Japanese Game of Thrones back in the Middle Ages
love the show for shogun some kind of warriors they're kind of like the empires across the islands then I liked it so much that I picked up the book and the audio books so I'm going through that as well
actually you might like the book I listen to it listen to and read probably like 2021 I think it's called Musashi
so Musashi was one of the famous samurai warriors he was just like a legend right so it's a book about him I think it's based off his book I think he wrote like a book of five rings or something
and then one author compiled a story of Musashi I think it's like semi-fictional but it's really good read really enjoyed it but it's like get ready for like 40 hour long audio books it's very long I added it here yeah wow that was a lot of stuff cool so I did not listen to 70 episodes
I was also traveling and I did not listen to pretty much anything I mostly read stuff I read slash listened three books in the last couple of weeks
so first is the revolutionary road which is in 1955 I think novel by Richard Yates it has also a movie called Revolutionary Road with Liu DiCaprio and Kate Winslet they're very young there I think it's like 2005 movie but this is still after Titanic when they were still way younger
yes I think they were like in their early 30s maybe like late 20s when they did the Revolutionary Road and they were very very early 20s I think when they did Titanic
I mean this couple works really really well in tandem as a fictional couple right so Revolutionary Road is a movie and the book actually the book is much better than the movie
it's about a couple that aspires to change something in their lives and they fail miserably at that and the movie is kind of it just makes you peep to them
but the book it's narrated from Frank Wheeler who is the main character portrayed by DiCaprio in the movie and it has so much depth of emotion that he goes through and like self talk and all that incredible book
I read the book and then I watched the movie the same day I finished reading the book on a plane before that I thought the movie was great after reading the book I was like the movie is just like way below the story is just not as good as the book
it's one of the best things I read fiction wise recently I really loved it then I also read so is teen prophecy it's an interesting book it's a bit cringey it turns out like how it's written
but it's about sort of synchronicity in life and coincidences that are not coincidences that just like sent to you by the universe so the book has a lot of lessons really really nice kind of lessons sort of laws of how things function
but it is written in a very cringey way I only read it because it was somebody's recommendation in the end I kind of liked the outcomes that I got from the book but not the book style
so like I read it at your own discretion and then the last one so it's thinking about Cara Spisscher when she was on a hard fork podcast she had to write her book right the burn book I had no idea what the book was but I picked it up the audio book I was curious
I have very mixed feelings about the book so I think it's called something like love story or love and hate story about Silicon Valley so she talks her own story of how she came about to be a reporter and a lot actually she's older than I thought I think she was born 1962 I thought she was younger
my dad was born 1962 so she's my parents age I thought she was in her 50s but anyway it's beside the point in that book she talks trash about a lot of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs
she talks a lot of trash about Mark Andreessen and Mark Zuckerberg at two marks but at the same time she talks some really awesome almost like stories that make you tear up about Steve Jobs and her business partner Walt Morseberg and a few other people but specifically the jobs part I really enjoyed
I mean she said some bad-ish things about him as well but they were completely outshined by the positive things and then she said I can play trash to Elon Musk and I'll let you recommend a book and that's the thing that I have such mixed feelings about
I'm like this is an interesting book but there is just so much trash talk like like the trash talk I would give like two star love five but then those sections about her own story and also the story about the Steve Jobs I would give like solid five stars
so I think at the end I gave it four stars and good grades did you listen to the audiobook console or no?
I listened it was also read by Karek herself even though I listened at 1.2x and you probably lose that nuance at that speed here's an interesting thing there is a plug for our competitor so Spotify if you have a premium subscription you get a lot of books
including the premium so that book is included in premium and I'm like hmm I'm not paying 15 bucks to audiobook I can just listen to this I don't have to wait for like three months of a library it's a book that not worth paying money for
so that's how I would also say this Gale from library listen to free one Spotify if you have a premium account but the thing that I realized while listening to this is I think in the last episode I said that I can't listen to audiobooks anymore
they just don't feel right to me and I think this time I finally figured out why I think because the pace of the narration is constant so you sort of get just filled with information very very fast and the information is written so for the very concise manner
so you get basically firehose of information coming into you and basically for me it's like there is no emotion in the book it's just information whereas when we're in the podcast especially when people talk to each other
so there is emotion there there are pauses people take long time to express their thoughts they're working around things that can't express very fast so this might actually explain I don't know if we went deep with this ever but I remember mentioning this and you thought it was like
oh I don't do that at all so when I listen to audiobooks or a podcast oh this came up when we were talking about the continue listening feature that we have in our app I never do that even audiobooks when I'm listening to an audiobook
maybe I'd listen for about half an hour max I'll stop it I'll listen to some music and think about the book or if it's like a boring book I'll just stop it altogether same thing with podcasts I almost never go from one
podcast episode to another one immediately and that might explain the thing that you're talking about it's going at a constant pace but you need more time to I think think about it
yeah and I'm trying to finish audiobooks as fast as I can and then I may end up listening like four hours worth of content the same day at like 1.5x speed and it's just too much whereas I can listen to four hours of podcasts
because I don't speed up podcasts and I don't feel overwhelmed and actually I usually don't listen to so much because podcast episodes I listen to usually we didn't want to two hours range so I just tend to listen them in one or two days and then I'm done with it
book is like eight hours ten hours yeah it's just different anyway so I watched the movie on an airplane called Fort versus Ferrari a such a great movie with Matt Damon and Christian Bale incredible movie I mean I always liked kind of cars and racing even though I don't watch sports
but I like the idea of racing but I didn't realize until I saw that movie is just how much psychology there is in racing there is this moment in the movie where the Ferrari and Ford go head to head and then the Ford guy does something that makes the Ferrari guy do something as well
and it changes the projector of the race I won't spoil it but the thing is like it's a pure psychology that was happening there if you look at the highest levels of sports it is actually all that at the highest levels performance wise there is not really that big of a difference
between different players or teams so it's all psychological and I love the heck out of it the strategies and the psychology yeah so yeah that's something that was new to me and also movies like feelings beautifully yeah I actually saw that movie in a plane
to while coming back from Florida yeah just probably like advertises one of the top movies or something it's a really good movie yeah so I guess one last thing I would recommend is the Tetra Grammaton podcast by Recrubin I've been bingeing on some of these episodes
and I really liked the episode with Adam Maseri who is the head of Instagram again I have mixed feelings about this because he talks very very nicely about some of the ugly things on that side of the big tag but at the same time I really liked his explanations
of like what product management is how products are built to somebody who basically Recrubin was like I have no idea how these things work like I can explain to me like what these different functions do and he asks questions that make it clear that he has absolutely no idea
because they are almost like quote-unquote stupid questions right?
Maseri really explains it really really well too now Sider it's a lovely interview I really enjoyed it alright so if you have listened so far feel free to like I think stop it at this point because you probably know what Metacast is already but if you don't know
go check out Metacast.app that's our website where you can install the app from we have links to our newsletter and podcasts in there and if you have any feedback for us or any words about this episode or our podcast generally send us an email at helloatmetacastpodcast.com see you next time
thank you and by next time we should actually figure out West from Wales a cold so and talk about it on the episode yeah that's my next question to chat GPT hope there's no hallucination there alright bye