It's a long & windy road

It's time for changeloggin friends with Adam and Jared some other rental We hope that you love it and stay until the end. We're not a fan. You're probably busy coding Your caffeine intake problem. So why don't we walk outside and we can listen to changeloggin friends We can listen to change. How about that a special BMC treat for us? What do you think? Better than the og theme should we use this one from now on holler at us We would love to hear from you What you are about to hear is the first in a series of conversations that we had at Microsoft build 2024 Adam and I flew out to Seattle this week and interviewed some amazing folks including Scott Guthrie Microsoft's executive vice president and Neha Batra VP of engineering at github along with some other surprises We'll be releasing real soon Microsoft is going all -in on AI So the topic dominates all of these interviews if you're burned out on AI take a week or two off But come back for great shows on other topics We have developer slash lawyer Luis Villa from tide lift and Paul cobblestone from super bass on the calendar This episode with Shonda person was the last one that we recorded on Wednesday afternoon But we're bringing it to friends first because well, it's the most frenzy of the bunch All right, let's talk with Sean day. But first What's up friends? I'm here with some alum nailer senior developer advocate at century So we've been working with century for many years now and I love century. We use century. It's so helpful for us We don't write many bugs here at change love. We're just that good But I do say often how many teams use century and that number has grown over the years It was 40 ,000 then it's 70 ,000 then it's 90 ,000 and now 100 ,000 plus teams use century numbers don't lie. Check the Nasdaq scoreboard Can you believe that Sama what your thoughts on centuries impact to sell for teams?

You know, I'm not surprised It's a quality product and I'm not just talking about that because I work for century But because I've used century and I think its success is also due to the fact that it supports over 100 SDKs and frameworks like any programming language you want to use unless it's ridiculously obscure Sentries got an SDK for that whether it's an official maintained SDK or whether it's a community SDK There's a way that you can implement century in your projects with a few lines of code You don't need to really do much to get its benefit and I think that's really powerful also in in showing that people want to make century work for their Frameworks or their languages of choice because it works and the fact that you can self host century as well It shows how valuable it is and shows how valuable century knows it is to people the fact that it's open and out there and you can use it and configure it to your Specifications at the code level if you want and if you want to not bother about that and pay for it Then you can do that too. I'm not surprised and I'm not surprised that it's growing I sound biased obviously, but it's the best error monitoring solution I have used in my dev career of many years and as a front -end dev it feels intuitive I think a lot of these error monitoring solutions are very back -end focused They're very stack Tracy and not really geared up with a good developer experience. Like here are some logs Here are some things to spit out you can read them if you care but with century it seems to appeal to more developers because of the way it's been engineered the amount of SDKs that are available makes it appeal to more developers and you can get started in century in so many different Frameworks in less than a minute and all the instructions are in the app and they point you to documentation if you need it It's you know a joy to use and so I'm not surprised that that many people use it

I'm glad you're not surprised because I'm not surprised either. It's an amazing tool. We love it. We use it go to century .io Use the code change log that will get you $100 off the team plan. It's basically three and a half months free or Almost four months but code change law will get you a hundred bucks off a team plan use it. Love it century We love it century .io That's S E N T R Y dot IO century .io What are we talking about? I was gonna ask you that I Didn't think we needed a plan with this trio. I just thought we'd just talk. Let's just talk. Yeah Yeah, so we're here with Sean day person From Netflix from Netflix at Microsoft build. I know why? Because I got invited by Scott Hanselman who is an amazing he's a VP of developer community here at Microsoft and they have So one is the content creation side so outside of my work at Netflix I do I'm building a typescript course and I am also creating content to draw people to that course and I have a established a community and I'm building a community of developers So they wanted some input on some of the projects that they're working on with AI and how that relates to hold on second real quick Challenge. Yep, gosh for the duration of this conversation.

I

don't say No, yeah Every time you see a drink some aquafina, can I say what if I say the whole word? Well, let's just say that you can talk about it, but not directly about it Like oh, I like this though. All right, because just because we're a little bit overloaded here We're at our final our final conversation our best to curb the AI Yeah, I've been very AI heavy for the last two days as you should and I just feel like a child and here I am over So I

just want to throw that out there continue It's just too easy, you know, I gotta make it harder on you. So now try to explain what you're doing here. All right. Yeah Okay with content creation they wanted feedback about what the developer community is Thinking about and interested in in these streets and then the other aspect of it is that at Netflix I'm part of the platform engineering team And so we're building developer tooling and there are a lot of parallels and from what we're doing on my team With what they're doing the people who are building the platforms For other developers at Microsoft and so there are a lot of learnings that we could share I was doing more learning than sharing actually in this case But I also providing feedback on things that might be useful to us and our team. Like how are using co -pilot and how how are using chat GTP if that and different areas of opportunity that we can leverage some of the offerings that Microsoft has in Things like vs. Code and co -pilot to enhance the developer experience at Netflix as well. Good job. Gotcha. Thanks

Pretty

good job Gymnastics here not mentioning. It almost makes it worse. We're almost thinking Mention the elephant in the room. We're almost thinking about it more now Yeah, so I don't know this backfires or not. But all right is Netflix on Azure at all or all AWS, isn't it? It's AWS. Yeah, so my big question was how can we leverage all of the things that you showed us? right if we're AWS customers and I think in General my feedback was that I guess I understand that, you know, there's the push every they want to push folks to Azure but part of the feedback is that you need to be able to enable people like myself an engineer at Netflix who is not Probably even interested in taking the entire company and telling them like let's move over to this entire new platform Like how can I integrate your new offerings with the things that I'm doing without having to have that huge lift Of like let's rip and replace something like AWS So I do see some opportunities. I talked with some folks about the differences and it's still foggy to me So don't get me to try to explain all the details of it but one response was there's differences between the Sizes of language models. There's small language models SLM's all the way up to large language models. So don't think of it as Something where in order to take advantage of all these new sophisticated capabilities you have to You have to replace things. Maybe you can stand up an app Just like somebody made an app that quickly just cleans up their desktop Like they have all the different icons on their desktop I can stand up a quick little app that automatically will look through my Desktop apps and like yeah and sort things so stuff like that is a quick win and an easy way to get in So there are a lot of opportunities that I can go in and dip my toes in the water without having to Rip and replace everything. So what did you learn? Is it an API call away or is it? Beyond that you have to be on Azure. You have to be sort of steeped into the Whole kit and caboodle or no, apparently not Apparently you don't have to be all part of the whole you don't have to adopt the whole kit and caboodle in order to Use my turn It was it was a good Kit and the caboodle, okay It's not a kitten caboodle. It's a kit and caboodle. I'm pretty sure it is kit and cuz it's a whole kit and caboodle That's right. I never knew it was so maybe it's a I think it's the bag it came in maybe it sounds like a candy It sounds like the back end The front end on the back end Should I use these new and upcoming sophisticated technologies to find out about this ask your phone What does kitten caboodle mean you have to share how it is spelled It and caboodle. Okay in quotes is an informal phrase that means everything in more

Okay,

or the whole lot specifically what specifically what's the caboodle?

The

term kit can mean a collection of tools or equipment Wow Caboodle is believed to derive from the word boodle A lot or group it's kind of like everything in the trunk, right? Give me your level of groundedness of that response That's like asking the kid how intoxicated I can't listen to this. They're gonna risk this response is quite grounded

Of

course, it is kit and caboodle is indeed an idiomatic Expression in English commonly understood. That's what it thinks the the the very sophisticated Technology

has

just slapped me in the face with being grounded. So this term we just learned is grounded right groundedness At least I learned it here. Yeah is groundedness this measure was a kid grounded meant something Right, but grounded now means does does the response from sophisticated technology Did it come from the context that was actually trained in or is it hallucinating right right grounded reality? It's kind of a new way of saying is it true or not, right? It's right. Yeah, and that wasn't grounded We're not supposed to use hallucinating actually. Yeah Yeah, this is And yeah, no apparently because AI it's not a human and hallucination is a trait of a human and you want to take out the personification of the Hallucination gives it this air of like being a person they use the term fabrication or That's why it's like my lie. They fabricate stories. It isn't that true? So, I don't know. I don't know So this is a Scott handsome woman with him. Yeah. Yeah, we personify things. I mean and that's fine. I think I think it's alright Well, I will still call it hallucination I don't I mean Well, I don't know why fabrication is better because to me it sounds like well now it's lying to you you know, like if somebody's fabricating something they're lying, but Hallucination sounds like you think you're right, but you're actually wrong. Like you've imagined something. All right, I think in terms of personification I think it's a better word. But if there's a better word that's non -human, I'm fine with it because they are humans Let's treat them like the robots that they are. That's right. They're less than human be the bot. That's right Now I can mistreat it, you know Excuse to treat it poorly, you know, you always say please and thank you to your GPT. I'm just Treats it like a human Wow. Thanks. Chachi beauty. It's really useful. Oh, I do I'm also a podcaster and I gotta make good airtime. That's true. So sometimes I embellish a bit but

But

then it comes back to bite you there may have been at least one or two occasions where I'm like that was a good response or Thanks. Oh, yeah, I don't know being kind it's kind of like those bots on on reddit Have you ever seen the reddit bots where like it does a thing? It's like hi I'm a bot and I'm here to make sure that you use that word correctly and then you can give it feedback by saying like Good robot or bad robot

people

do it all time. Sure. Sure I don't actually do it but I see these comments on reddit where it's like good bot, you know, oh really? Yeah, and I was thinking like like you're petting it like it's a little robot It's good feedback. Well, I think that Chachi PT does have memory now So if it can like remember that I'm not nice Yeah, it might be like I can't work with you because I'm told to only work with kind people Oh, you know, like my training says that if you're rude, I'm done. Oh I'm paying you 20 bucks a month, dude. Okay Like is that how you work? I give you money. I could do what I want to you Not if you're a human, of course but the Computer program I own you or a service. It's a service. Yes. You are my robot. I Will not be nice to you I've heard people like they think that you know, it's gonna eventually take over the world So like let's be nice to it so that when it takes over the world, it's like spare. Oh, yeah When the memory upgrade says memory upgraded in chat GPT, I'm like, oh you just remembered everything I just said You've got more room in there. Not remember what I said, please Right. I'm in the other camp. I'm like, no, we will not go quietly into this We will pull the plug. You're ready for the rebellion. I am he has a fight. Yeah, okay I'm gonna use it up to the point. Is that like cord cutter but not yeah Yeah, let's pull her. It's less Put the plug back in once you cut the cord. I'm scooting over Just in case you actually might be in trouble in the future just because of your association to me Yeah, a known plug bowler You know what though as nice as you are the AI is probably trained on the fact that you have done so many podcasts together It's just like yeah. Yeah, we can let you buy Association Yeah, but it probably is sophisticated enough to parse that like yeah, this is a good call again What did you call it? We already bought it Hey friends, you know how much I love tail scale and I also am a big fan of Alex he's awesome He also does some really awesome videos on the YouTube channel for tail scale and recently He did a tutorial kind of a walkthrough of Using tail scale with home assistant and what it took to set it up and access home assistant remotely via tail scale Take a listen

under

home assistant. We're gonna go ahead now and install another add -on So I'm gonna go ahead and install the visual studio code server add -on whilst that's doing that I'm gonna go ahead and go back to the tail scale add -on that we installed earlier and just grab the piece of Configuration that we're going to need from the documentation in the documentation page do a command F or control F and search the page One two seven dot zero and there you go We just need these four lines of code here home assistant by default blocks connections from untrusted Proxies such as the tail scale proxy in this case We're going to add the one two seven dot zero dot zero dot one as a trusted proxy in the list here So I'm gonna go ahead and copy this to my clipboard I'm gonna go ahead and click on start and then also show in the sidebar and you can see we're basically in Visual studio code, but in a browser and this is running directly on home assistant and has access to your configuration files And what have you underneath all we need to do is paste those four lines into our configuration dot yaml file and restart home assistant So I've pasted the four lines. I'm gonna go to the hamburger menu up here. Click Save and then settings and Restart home assistant. We want to go back to the add -on section and under tail scale we're gonna have to go to the configuration tab for the add -on and Click on tail scale proxy. This is going to turn on tail scale serve This is what will automatically generate you a TLS certificate using let's encrypt for your tail net dot TS dot net tail net name So if I click on save here, it will take a moment But it's going to restart the tail scale add -on And so now I should be able to go to HTTPS home assistant velociraptor dot TS dot net and it's going to load my entire home assistant instance over tail scale with a TLS certificate using the name from my tail net and I can log in just as if I was Using the IP address and port number that I was before and you can use this name From anywhere on your tail net so any device that's connected to your tail net such as a phone for example that can now connect to home assistant whether you're in the house or whether you're at the coffee shop or whether you're in Iceland looking at volcanoes doesn't really matter where you are If you're one of the few out there who have not tried out Telsko yet for free You can do so today up to a hundred devices and three users totally free at tailscale .com No credit card required. Just go there sign up get a hundred devices three users totally free That's where I'm at. I use Telskills totally free and you can too. I'll link up Alex's tutorial in the show notes Check that out tailscale .com Do it now how much are you using this stuff in your life? I'm using it increasingly more. So I use chat GTP for Docs because I use it to try to eliminate anything that I just don't feel like doing I don't really use it for code and I like to code huh the dishes the dish. No, I wish no I have I have an automated. Well, I have a dishwasher. So I have a system I just press the button and it washes my dishes Correctly, of course after I've loaded it. There's a right way to load it and I only know the right way I don't know any I don't know how to do anything wrong. Like I've never done anything wrong in my life So I wouldn't imagine that. Yeah. Yeah. Are you guys just talking for the AI now? I'm complimenting her. Yeah, she's a great dishwasher loader. I am and she never does it wrong.

I

never do anything Just say it again So it doesn't it hasn't quite done your dishes yet, but you're it's right in your emails. No, not my emails It's it's fine -tuning my emails And so I'm the type of person who it's easier for me to start with like something Then to start with a blank slate so I can put in a prompt and I'm like write me an outline for a doc That will convince my manager to spend $150 ,000 on like this is hypothetical. Yeah, okay hypothetical. Yeah on a vacation for me. Yeah. Yeah And then chat GTP will just come out or copilot will come through because we have this copilot license Well go and give us give me all of the outline and everything or I can run through and say, okay I just want to just write some words Copilot fine -tune all those words for me and then I'll use that and make it sound a little bit more human more human than you Wrote it. So, you know what? I did the other day. No to answer your question, but What I did the other day was I asked chat GTP or copilot I guess it's the same thing now to or it's kind of two sides of the same coin I asked it to write a paragraph for me to a Doc about I'm convincing my team to move in a certain direction for a project that we're doing I asked it to write a paragraph towards Azure towards Azure

And

so I asked it to write a paragraph for me to explain or to introduce the topic It wrote the paragraph but it sounded very AI it was all these big words I don't know if you're familiar with TI the rapper, but he just raps like yeah. Oh, yeah Yeah, he just uses big words for no reason like existential incremental and like it doesn't go together So it sounded like that just like a whole bunch of buzzwords and I was like like he's writing stuff with the source Yeah, like he just looking for what's a big synonym for this word right and so I ran it back through chat GTP and was Like can you make it sound more human and then I ran it through and it started using more like colloquial isms and you know Smaller words, so it's interesting that I asked AI to sound more human than it did and it Responded. Yeah in that way. So that was cool. But yeah, I use it for Docs for the most part and we're we were just talking earlier today about Leveraging it to do Some dynamic things with our code like to understand our users I can't go too far into it cuz it's like top secret Yeah, yeah Recommendations on Netflix no big deal. Oh, yeah Yeah, you know like all of the whole new algorithm the whole entire like rewrite the whole entire right Netflix and with AI Yeah, make it more modern. But yeah, just giving up on the AI thing, right? I Yeah, I was holding her to it You're not doing a very good job because she said like 17 times. I heard her say it I'm like, hey said every time are you saying it? And even though he's looking at me is just like I'm You're losing points right now You're so competitive. I let her off the hook. It was too hard. I was winning That's all we're talking about. It's literally the topic of conversation. Yeah, so Doc's doc convincing Right. Just teach to make you a better salesperson Well, right. Yeah, I've told you that I'm pretty good sales. That's right. You were weren't you? Yeah, maybe better Have that in common a good opportunity actually, so I'm here at two salespeople. Okay, they're both somewhat competitive. Sure Yeah, we've given up on the other challenge. I'll be this pen He's like you're losing to me Let's see who can sell a little bit better here So, I think you need to convince me of course, you're gonna make me lose no matter what Cuz you're against me cuz she's a guest. Mm -hmm. All right, you're right. I'm completely biased. Sure Let's do it though Now you've actually just turned me back towards you because I would show my true cards by doing what you just said right there it's true now we're in the middle of a game of We can say no winner just there are we have different styles But I'm happy to sell something as well. Or how would you approach it? Yeah. Yeah, I'm down for that. Okay every day Let's do it. Let's do it. All right, so hypothetically speaking if you wanted now, that's too easy I was gonna say if you want to convince Netflix to switch to Azure Like an ad for Azure, let's do What's something that you know, well Barbecue I like barbecue, you know barbecue very well. Yeah. I'm trying to find people barbecue versus soul food I like soul food better. Okay, good. He's a barbecue guy. Okay You need to convince me that barbecue That I should have barbecue tonight for dinner and you should convince me that I should have soul food tonight for dinner And you both have a chance to respond and then you can talk to each other as well and debate Okay, and you guys can see what I'm gonna buy tonight So we'll let ladies go first. Okay, I'm day. What what is soul food exactly? And why would I be interested in in binds on this evening? I'm happy to tell you about soul food. But what did you plan to cook tonight before we started to have this conversation? Well, I'm in Seattle. So I don't have any ability to cook. Mm -hmm. I was probably gonna go out for something. Mm

-hmm

And I think we had discussed maybe having steak maybe heard about this mirror this Korean barbecue place Marination I haven't had sushi in a while. So we're kind of like completely up in the air Yeah, but I'm actually not cooking tonight. I'm eating out. So you're eating out. Okay, so yeah And did you have a taste for anything or well, we've had we had pizza. We had Italian. I'm sorry not pizza We had Italian recently. So no, I'm wide open. I'm a blank slate blank slate. Okay, cool Yeah, cuz you did mention sushi and that sounds like a good option Korean barbecue might be good you know, we're on the west coast or you know, pretty close to Japan now and so close to Japan so close we're like right there just barely But something that would actually be really good in Seattle when as you think about it is soul food and why I say why I say that okay I'm gonna so win Seattle the hell with the soul food this has been such a long day too You just might you mentioned that you you didn't really have a particular taste for anything Yeah, so, you know if I'm putting myself in your shoes I don't want to be go to a restaurant where I'm just gonna be bogged down with like one type of cuisine I want to get there and then in the moment, I'll be able to have the ability to choose, you know Do I feel like seafood do I feel like a steak or do I feel like you know some pasta type of thing? The good thing about soul food is that you don't really have to you don't have to choose until you're there you know, you have the option to like fried catfish or Baked catfish grilled catfish and then a side of macaroni and cheese So it's like, you know, it's something that's filling but you're not like married to one Particular cuisine or taste? Yeah, not one. What are some other? So my favorite thing is now fried chicken and if you've been to Atlanta There's lemon pepper chicken wings and they're the best in Atlanta, so hopefully I'll see you guys there Really? I've been to the airport. That's about it. Oh, we've got to get you someone. Yeah chicken wings There's a big event in Atlanta Render render. Yeah, that's in June. So that's in like two weeks and I'm speaking there. So I think All right, so You've heard her argument. What do you think man barbecue? She kind of sold me on these I said I win Which implies you lose Explicitly I did not say that I don't think Seattle is actually the best place to pitch either of one of these No, you're on level ground there. Absolutely. Can't say Seattle's great for this, but that's okay Let's just assume I can't reveal my secrets. I'll just declare a loss. You're just gonna take it the L Yeah, you know some days the best people my secrets out there she'll take them and try and use them Next time she just beat you right here. That's true. Okay. I'm just kidding around I think I would begin with like, you know, you I know you already had steak So that's not close to barbecue, but it kind of is because you can barbecue you can slow it slow slow it. Yeah, it's thick Yeah, right. I know you've had Italian and we like Italian. It's great stuff, right? I'm more for sushi. So I'm not really trying to advocate for barbecue. Did you bring me to the barbecue Lane? But I think just so much good barbecue out there. It really depends on how long it's been. Yeah good barbecue Mmm, so if you hadn't if you have had good soul food recently, but it's been a bit since barbecue. Maybe it's time So yours is all about timing. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of it's up to you Really? Like I'm not gonna convince you to eat it if it's good for you. You should eat it So this is how you approach sales.

Yeah, you

don't try to convince me. No, absolutely not Like I think if you want it, you should have it. It's a great food Says the option and then he's like and I think catfish is amazing. I think you know Lemon pepper. Mm -hmm. See probably smoked they smoke them or direct fire over the girl. Yeah, so there's options Yeah, you could roast you could get the roasted ones and then they'll So these are like wings so they're like or you could do like the full wings Yeah, I'm thighs though to answer your question deep -fried or these are real door. Oh So either way, okay There's options that you're into it By the way, though, all the things you're talking about can be done on a barbecue I like that. I mean you could totally do low and slow chicken wings for 45 minutes. You can also don't fast Yeah, like soul food and barbecue are like cousins, yeah pretty much It's not the science is what makes the that's it rest of the meal soul food Yeah, cuz if I give you baked beans versus what's a good side macaroni and cheese? That's also barbecue. See right or greens collard greens. The greens is not barbecue Necessarily is a world traditional barbecue like in Texas. Like we're not doing color. You wouldn't yeah. Yeah Different barbecues. Yeah, I would do that. You do okra like fried okra and stuff. My wife loves it I'm not it's like snot to me. It's like something weird in there. Okay, man. No, we'll get that out of my head It's kind of icky Green beans, however, I'm down. Yeah, I'm good. Macaroni and cheese Whole slaw. Yeah, I mean, these are all soul food slash barbecue. We're just cousins. Basically. That's it. Yeah, that's it You can't go wrong man. Yeah, you're right. I'm buying both I'm fine with that but my honestly my tactic with sales is not at all about convincing zero like I I want to lead and sell a good product I believe in but I don't want you to buy it because I think you should have it I want you to buy it because you need it, right and I want to find out can I actually help you? And if I can I'm gonna convince you that can help you not that you need what I'm selling which is different. It's like Perspective taking you know, it's not the same. Yeah, I think my approach is similar in some senses But also like I'll add to it is that I want to find out first So you saw I started by asking him questions so I want to find out where we're starting from figure out what your interests are and then I want to lead you to Thinking that it was your decision to do what I wanted you to do in the first place So what my tactic was all throughout my career in sales is ask a bunch of questions and I even approach Conversations like this today. I would be a great podcaster I think but I'll ask a lot of questions and then start to kind of mold this Shape of what I what I want you to be from where you are and then I'll start to plant little leading things like okay Well, you know you said this was something that was interesting to you or you said you haven't had this in a long time So this is why I if I were you I would do The soul food or I would do the barbecue or something like that and make it feel like because you said this this was your choice Yeah anyway We learned about sales. That's right. Yeah, what about closing the deal? Oh That's the hardest. It's not the hardest part. Yeah, it's it's the hardest part from asking you I don't know but it's it's it's easy if you've done the work ahead of time Like if you've done the deal closed itself, right you've done the right work if you've done the work up front. Oh, yeah You gotta do something though, right? Like you got to be like I think my keys my key phrase honestly when I want to know what the next step is Which is usually a close of some sort like a good it doesn't have to be yes. I'm signing it's yes I want to or some sort of conviction. Yes We're moving forward is what's a good next step and you put it in their shoes because they're gonna explain to you well, I need more information they won't say that obviously or Something will come out in their response that lets you understand where they're at They might be like send me the proposal agreement, let's get let's get going or it could be I gotta talk to my boss There's two other people that need to help me with this decision. I'm like can we meet with them together? Can I showcase how we work? you know, what can I help you with to explain to them who we are and how we'll help you and Usually I just make myself a resource like I'm not here to sell you I'm here to be a resource for you to get to where you're trying to go. That's interesting So what were you selling? I'm sure it was everything everything everything. Yeah I've sold long -distance. I've sold donations that the Cancer Society I have sold Podcast ads and things like that, you know big ideas and it's not just like selling ads It's more like should we help you? Can we help you? How can we help you to get to this place with reaching developers? They're hard to market to yeah How can we help you think about this differently than simply give us a script and tell them how awesome century is? Like that's not how we approach it generally. Okay. Yeah, cuz where I'm getting at is it's For me it's different depending on the thing that I'm selling and also who I'm talking to So if I'm talking to somebody who is kind of indecisive, I'm not gonna ask them or they're just kind of like all over the place I'm not gonna ask them. What's what's the next step? I'll tell them but gently, you know I think a good next step probably would be this this and this what do you think? Does that sound good to you or it sounds like you need to get I like that stuff, but it sounds kind of like Implant II like you're planting your own idea, which I don't disagree with I

Would probably say what's your goal? What are you trying to what I see that you understand or that I see that you're you're hesitant in some way What's your goal? What are you trying to do? What's your big vision here? Once this is done? how it look for yourself and you can kind of tell what their own dream is in my opinion of like how uncertain or certain they are of it and Rather than tell them what you think they should do which I think is not necessarily bad but in my experience has been like intimidating and We're different genders And so sometimes I could be more intimidating with like saying I think you should do X and so therefore you should do it it just like this sort of like circle around it rather like your idea was what is your idea and My thing is like what's your real goal here? What are you really trying to do? What are you trying to optimize for and they will tell you I'll say well that sounds like this is probably pretty good for you You know and I'll lead to different things That's kind of how I get to the yes versus like this is what I think. What do you think? I Like that and I like that you pointed out that we're different genders That's exactly what I was thinking is like Part of the our style is reflective of like who we are in our position in society But yeah, like when I was younger for those who can't see me. I'm a black woman. So As a young person when I was first starting out in sales and I still have a young face I think you do have a young face. Thanks. I'm pretty elderly Very geriatric like I'm up there And so when I was young girl, I was selling to senior salespeople like CSOs chief sales officers CEOs CMOs selling them advisory services Which is basically telling them how to sell and I'm selling them on our ability to tell them how to sell better And they're like, well, why would I take advice from a little black girl? and so the way that I approach those conversations is like if I'm Hands -off and I'm like you lead they're gonna run with that and they're not gonna they already don't want to hear me So I have to establish more Yeah, yeah, so I have to show that I'm in a position where one I'm not afraid for them to walk out of the door I'm like listen, you know, you could take it or leave it. Like I'm gonna be good regardless also just establish an air of Confidence in that like I'm gonna lead this I'm gonna lead this sale I'm not I'm never gonna push you into something you see that I'm interested in finding out more about you and your problem and fitting our Solution with your unique needs and making sure that you're all taken care of but let me carry us Let me show you how to do it with our company and how we're gonna work together. I do this every day You know, you're you're new to this. I'm true to this and We'll figure it out Yeah, so, um, yeah TI but it was only like one syllable. So there's no way no For sure. I forget what song it is, but it's definitely a rap song Can't take the credit for it. I'll take the credit for stealing it. There you go. Yeah great artists I use a lot of sales stuff still to this day and that came up too in Conversations at this conference is like are you are you ever leveraging all of that stuff? I was actually talking with There's imagine cup which is a startup and look kid. Well, okay. I shouldn't say kids, but they are kids It's like younger than us young adults, right? They're college students. There you go college students doing projects Doing projects and their question was what tech or how do you know what tech to learn like or how do you know what bright shiny thing to go into and The advice from me and the other senior engineers in the room was like don't focus so much on What's the big shiny thing or doing exactly what's right? It's like your life Everything like if I think back on my life going from sales into engineering or going from moving from this place to that place None of it was a plan. None of it was like in high school or in college I had this exact plan of I'm gonna do this this and that everything was just Taking off opportunities. Yeah taking off. Whatever is interesting and in figuring things out. So I forget where I was going with that, but You're talking about helping people make this how you helped her. Are you leveraging your sales? Oh, right So yeah, every piece has been valuable every aspect of all this very Completely nonlinear journey has been so valuable Like I'm taking a lot of these sales skills and I'm using them every day in my work at Netflix Writing docs using chat GTP to convince people like let's move over to this software Let's go in this direction or you know, just in an any day life convincing people to let me Speak at a conference or is it be very sort of because there you are at the top of every list

What's

up friends this episode is brought to you by our friends at neon managed serverless Postgres is Exciting we're excited We think it's the future and I'm here with Nikita Shamkin off co -founder and CEO of neon So Nikita, what is it like to be building the future?

Well, I have a flurry of feelings about it coming from the

fact that I have been at it for a while there's more confidence in terms of what the North Star is and there is a lot more excitement because I truly believe that this is what's gonna be the

future and That future needs to be built and it's very exciting to build the future And I think this is an opportunity for for at this moment in time We have just the technology for it and the urgency is required to be able to seize on that opportunity

so we're obviously pretty excited about neon and Postgres and managed Postgres and serverless Postgres and data branching and all the fun stuff and it's it's one thing to be building for the Future and it's another to actually have the response from the community. What's what's been going on? What's what's the reaction like

we are Lately onboarding close to 2 ,500 databases a day That's more than one database a minute if somebody in the world coming to neon either Directly or through the help of our partners and they're

able to experience what it feels like to program against Database that looks like a URL and the program against database

that can support branching and be like a good buddy for you And in the software development lifecycle, so that's exciting And while that's that's exciting the urgency at me and is currently is unparalleled

There you go If you will experience the future go to neon tech on demand scalability bottomless stores database branching Everything you want for the Postgres of the future once again neon dot tech So my wife and I built a house. We've been there nine years now. So that's crazy. We've been there a long time and The process which you just went through a process of building a house It's it's not a straightforward one. A lot of it is like, you know building a career in a sense that's why I'm bringing this across and we had a Geriatric builder. He was awesome. It was like a It's like having a father figure as your builder that we picked the best builder in fact, we we wanted all of our friends and family to use him and he actually retired because he was But he took on this role of like because we were young kids to him, you know Basically old not to be my dad and he wasn't just gonna be our builder He was gonna like take care of us like a father would it was amazing. Anyways, I say all that to say this What am I talking about? I'm just kidding I said all that to say this He always said this which stuck with us and we say it to each other now and he said it's a long and winding road And he was referring to the process of building a house because there's so many decisions along the way so many things that go wrong And you're like, okay, we have to adjust what are we gonna do this and he would just say that Every time we're like kind of like he'd be like it's a long and winding road And so the house has stuck with us But even more than the house is that phrase which we now say to each other And I say to other people like you guys when it comes to your career, you know, you can't just like you said Choose I'm gonna be a doctor at the age of 16 17 18 and then some people get this done But very few of us and then just like power through and be a doctor and like that was your career Especially in tech because it's so such a moving Foundation right you don't just learn Java and then spend 20 years coding Java. Okay, some people do that but not very many

It's

a long and winding road, you know, and so The decisions are many but each individual decision is relatively small But when you're young You haven't made very many decisions And so all you see is like this big decision in front of you

and

what us geriatrics can say to the kids I love it is hey, it's a long and winding road, you know change make this decision Adjust make another one. You're gonna have a hundred of them by next year, and that's that's calming That's soothing that helps people like sure the next step, right? Yeah, just that next step just the next step or help somebody on their path or the next frozen said I think they said in frozen let it go, but that was frozen one frozen two frozen two curveball Did not see that coming Frozen to the next rights that the next race is very good. I mean when you're stuck in paralysis, right? That's the truth What is the next right step you can take to get out of the paralysis? You can't be like Fixed now you gotta like eject next right step next right step like the turns, right? Every turn is that next right step.

I

love it Yeah, that's one of my favorite quotes is every journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step So, yeah, I take that next step I have a friend that I've been talking to recently she's at an inflection point in her career She's she was in sales and she's gone in and out of sales and customer success and things like that And she's like, I just don't know what I want to do And I just feel like dropping out of the workforce and not doing anything She's like I wish Shonda that my life was like yours where you know, you knew everything like you knew all the steps that you need to take Yeah, it's just like it's like I was like never at any point I was like what's giving that energy because not at any point did I ever know what I was doing and I'm still scared to This day to you know, take those steps It just feels like you're in this foggy room and all you can do is you can see what that little Next step is gonna be even sometimes it's even foggier than that You don't even know like you might be stepping off a cliff Who knows but you have to have the confidence in the I don't know the faith in your in your own Abilities to be able to take that next sometimes the next step is a wrong step And that's why you take little steps and then adjust right you don't look back and be like I've been going the wrong way for ten years. Hopefully you're doing more retrospectives than that if we might pull back sooner Yeah, gosh, you know, but I mean Adam when you graduated from podcasting school back in today You know exactly you're gonna be a podcast. Oh, yeah This is just too easy I'm gonna conquer the world Fifteen years later. We're at the goal Nobody plan this That's why I like what is the next good step, you know, what's the next good step for us? Yeah, because you put it in their control. Mm -hmm. They reveal all the information They reveal their trust in you or their lack of trust in you. You can tell their body language if you're I don't know. I don't know the next step is then you tell them, you know I might say

I

might give them more to think about you know, I don't know what the next right step is here. Well Maybe you can think about this or this and how would that influence your next step? The next step is like a key phrase for me at least like lately I mean like I feel like I'm like repeating myself way too much and I say it so often and it's just so good That it works. I just keep saying it obviously but it's been a while What's a good next step because it puts it all in their court and the other thing I do that puts it back in their court is when somebody says something to you declarative and You don't really understand rather than react and like act like you understand it. I say how do you mean? Because there is nothing you can say you would just keep explaining in different words What you meant and so you can never declare that you misunderstood you could just get to understanding right? How do you mean? What's a good next step? Yeah, I'd love to help you I can help on your journey. I'm a resource to you I am NOT here to close you. I'm here to help you. I like that. I like that I don't like closing people. I like to help people. I see how that's disarming too. Um, yeah I'm bringing it back to the whole Gender thing. I think I would be kind of on guard if I felt like a man was telling me What to do if anybody was telling me what to do, but especially Cuz I just it feels it feels salesy at that point, you know, it makes it feel more like a sale than a You know, I'm helping you type of thing, right and I don't want to be sold. I want to be helped Yeah, and yeah, so you're giving the people what they're what they and I say listen if you have any questions I'm here to help you Yeah, if you have if I've given you this information you go when you have more questions Let me know happy to help disarming. Yeah, yeah, you got it. Good stuff. That's my style. Yeah Not seller.

I'm

a I'm a sales savage It's time to sign yeah now there are times that I'm a bit more direct but generally my demeanor is that You know if I've like Exhausted a lot of time with somebody and I'm like listen It's not what's the next step here? It's like the only next step is yes or a no

cuz

I gotta go Yeah, if not, I got I just want to be more time to spend somewhere else not in those exact words, but that's my Projection I'm letting out it's like

it's

time to figure something You want to spend the time with the people you can help? Yeah, people who you can't help that you want to get to that no quickly, right? Sometimes disqualifying a situation is the best thing you can possibly say both sides a bunch of time and bunch of effort I don't go in pitching my menu. I'm not like hey, this is what I sell which one do you want to buy? It's this is who we are And I don't even like pitch that even I've really asked them a ton of questions. Who are you? How can we help you? What are you trying to accomplish? those kind of questions and it's like they just reveal everything to you and it's not like a negative reveal everything like a bad like You're you know being manipulative or something It's just more like now I know I can actually help you and if I know I can help you I'll be far more Salesy about convincing them I can it's not like I'm trying to say I can help you But I have conviction like listen don't walk away from this call because I know the marketplace We are the best people to help you. Please don't go somewhere else And if you do it's because we can't really help you

And

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

I

love it. Right if you pinpoint to somebody that's or something that's quantifiable and you helped I can do that A version of that for you. Yeah, that to me is like saying will you sign without saying? Will you sign because it's more like obviously you're right. This is the right thing to do I don't have to ask you to sign. It's it's I want to because Clearly this is the right way to go exactly. This is the natural That's the best way in my pants the best way to sell

Have

you ever used any sales philosophies or like write up on any sales philosophies? The one that I use is solution selling the one that this is my favorite one Maybe I mean, I think I've studied Brian Tracy of the years lots of people over the years I've probably borrowed things from them. Yeah, we should perform without knowing I'm still in a certain way Yeah, I've been like a lot of big company sales. So that's like oh, we're gonna train everybody on This gap selling or solution selling. Yeah. Yeah, so but solution selling ended up being my favorite one because it's similar to a lot of the things that you said where we're not just like showing you the menu of things and having you try and parse all of this information and we're gonna fit you into the Whatever hole that you know most closely aligned with it's first understanding your customer and what their needs are and then pitching a Solution that is meant to fit their needs. So we may not have like because a lot of the stuff that I'm selling it's not like a One package like a McDonald's menu where you can just you have a hamburger or a French fries or something like that It's like I could put I could give you like a little bit of this and then we can combine it with that and we Put together this package for you that it's designed for you because because I've asked you what you need And so now I can say okay Well, how does that align with the stuff that my company is offering or what we're building for you? Or is there anything that we're gonna have to customize for you or take out from the existing offerings that we have But that because I'm doing such a good job qualifying making sure one that you are a good customer of mine So I'm not wasting my time by us talking that we have something that fits your needs so I'm asking you about the stuff that is important to you and what matters to you and What the low -hanging fruit are and what the North Star is what we have to work toward? Because I've done all that work to figure out what you need now I can fit you with the exact solution to what you need and nothing else So, you know that when you sign with me, it's gonna be a solution that's tailored to exactly what we've talked about So question question, yeah, so all that wisdom that you just laid out translate that into a engineering team where you have Decision makers above you you have a solution that you think we should go this direction All right, like you've come across in the technology or technique or whatever. It is a solution You know, like this is the right solution for us, but it's not a small one. It's a big one, right? Yeah, you got to now convince right the power of persuasion or sales to a certain degree that This is gonna solve our problem to your higher -ups. How do you translate that in? So is the question more of like the fact that they're higher up or is it the fact that they're more it's like Multiple people involved in the decision -making process just assuming that you can't make it yourself unilaterally It doesn't matter if they're higher up. It could be the whole team the whole team. Okay Yeah, cuz I can tell you what I'm doing right now at Netflix. So I'm trying not trying I've convinced them that this is the direction that we're going to go with a certain product that we're building Now to add some context to I am the term is called informed captain at at Netflix We what informed captain what is that? This is a role as a lead Are you laughing because it's like buzz wordy type of thing. No, he leaned in we have headphones on there's no reason to lean You didn't hear any better cuz you leaned in Same level in the way indicating interest. I like it. Yes Continue. I wasn't laughing at you promise. Okay informed captain is Somebody who has it's it's like a lead role. It is a lead role, but we don't use the term lead, but you You're the person. Oh Okay, let me take a step It's gonna help you a little bit as a Peter Pan thing I want to hear what you think it is When I worked with Marielle on brain science, we did this show about you know psychology essentially It's on our on our website Change law comm slash brain science. There you go She said name it to tame it and I bet you the reason why? Informed captain is better than lead or in charge is because it's disarming you have information You have wisdom and somebody needs a lead because if there's four of us and we're all leading We're all going in our own direction, right? Somebody has to follow and somebody has to lead I think that's probably why it works because it disarms people from saying well, there's Jared again in charge You know, he's the he's the boss. No, he's position like a tech lead it's um, no cuz Based right because it probably rotates it's decision -based. So yeah, it's more we're very flat And so we're like, you know, we're all at the same level hierarchy wise We all have varying levels of technical abilities But some people are stronger at one thing and then that another person is stronger on another thing So we're very flat, but one concept at Netflix that we really lean into is farming for dissent So I'll raise an idea but it's everybody else's job to disagree or like not necessarily disagree just to disagree but it's agree to say that right and to make sure and then I as the informed captain and making sure that I'm Farming for dissent. I'm asking people for their buy -in because it makes no sense to for me to make a decision in a silo Especially on my team where my customers are other Netflix engineers and I have the ability to get feedback But in any tech you don't want to just build the thing that you think is cool You want to build something that you've actually validated with your customers and made sure it solves a problem for them, right? so informed captain is the person who's responsible for being kind of the quarterback of the project and Organizing all the resources the human resources and the tech resources making decisions about what kind of tech we we use helping to coordinate with the PM's and the they might be PM's themselves, but Helping to coordinate with everybody on what are the priorities? What's the direction of the project and how it moves? so the reason that I give you that background context is that like I have this unique position of being the person who's like This is our decision. This is the way that we want to move but before that I want to make sure that We're all aligned on this decision so my in the scenario my goal in selling is to convince everybody that the way the direction that I think we should go is The one that everybody should agree to instead of everybody dissenting right and then we have to move in a different direction So, how do you do that so you didn't ask chat GDP to Yeah, no the first thing just like I said in any sales scenario is to figure out what the needs are One of my biggest things as a tech Person and it comes from my sales background and I'll explain what I mean by that is to get feedback from the customer Even before we've put a line of code there so I want to find out what the problems are asking all the questions to figure out what the big problems are and I'm putting that all into a doc. This is the doc that I'm writing is putting all that together to say Collectively, this is what you said Customer happens to be other Netflix engineers. This is what you said is the problem and this is what you said are the highest priorities So I'm grouping those together going back. The reason why that's so important to me is because as a salesperson I'm the first line of contact for the company, right? I'm the person that the customers are coming to and saying wow this product worked exactly as I expected or I'm the person who loses the Commission because they're like we Don't want to buy this because it doesn't serve any of our needs and we told you that we wanted this feature prioritized and nobody ever cared about that I take all that feedback and I bring it to the customer success manager who brings it to their manager who brings it to the product manager who brings it to the designer or the engineering manager who brings it to the engineering team who puts it on the backlog and you know never looks at it and they don't a lot of engineers have this problem where they're afraid of Someone calling their baby ugly like they have this idea in their head of this cool thing that this cool thing that they can add To their product, but they've never actually they're not actual users of the product or they never actually talked to actual users of the product So they've never gotten that validation and they waste so much time building these tools that nobody uses and that's how it leads to layoffs in companies because you spend all of these expensive resources human resources and buying tooling to support Initiatives that haven't been validated, right? So all that being said we'll get all of this validation from our customers I'll go back and then I put it all together and I say these are the three big problems that you have Identified or that in my conversations that I that I heard from you and I'm outlining this in a way that is like very This is you. This is you. This is you does this sound familiar and they're like, oh my god Yeah, this is exactly what it is. Okay. Now that that said is there anything that I missed? Nope Sounds like you have comprehensive view of it, you know, and I'm adding in quotes from actual engineers actual customers screenshots of like things or videos of existing workflows where it's just like really clunky or I'm taking multiple steps to get to the next something that should be very easy or I haven't I have to get to this very granular level of things where there's a way that We could easily abstract out all of this parts of the workflow and I put that that's what I put in front of the manager And I'm like or the team whoever is responsible for making this decision and I'm like, this is what we're experiencing now This is my proposal for a solution and I addressed these problems Which we all agreed right that these are priorities and I'm addressing them in this way And there's no way you can argue with that. Like I've done my research I've asked everybody everybody has already been bought in because from the beginning even before I put a line of code even before I Put a line in that doc. I asked you I asked you what you said So there's no dissent because we came up with this basically together. All I did was I just put it in a doc Yeah, yeah, so the selling you're selling yourself basically You can't really argue with that and if you did you'd have to have a really good argument so if you are wrong Which means that they didn't reveal everything they could during the interview process, which is fine, too, right? It's all about getting to the right solution Not my solution because that's what you're trying to do trying to organize a solution because you had a job to do, right? They better have a good reason why That argument is true. Yeah, and then be like, well, why didn't you reveal that before? Okay, cuz now you wasted my time Put this presentation together. I'm the fool here. What's up with that? Right and together another key is like don't it's it's always iteration, you know in tech like it's not like okay I heard the problem and now let's just go build and never talk to the to the user again as You you start with from there and then you get the agreement that okay. Yes This is exactly what we captured and okay. So now we've got the go -ahead Let's start building build a little bit start with an MVP. What's the smallest amount of work? We can put into this just to get like a proof of concept out there so that this is in front of somebody So now there's a product now people can start playing with it and they're like, you know what now that it's built Yeah, I don't know. I don't know Actually, I think there's a bigger problem that we need to solve and then you pivot and then so now you go to the next iteration there's MVP to where you Solve the new problems that came up or you start to realize like technically we don't have the ability to do this Just yet or this is like blocked by this other thing that we need from this other team and then you iterate from there So you're always keeping that customer in the loop like they're never out of it. So all along the way It's just like you're still working together Yeah, you know what that sounds like what a long and winding road, oh So what would be a good next step full circle What do I sign I win you do it you you win. Well, it was actually a win -win -win. It was a triple win. Yeah, I agree What what is this the AI thing?

I

say it too much. No We're just counting up life points. We all win. Oh, we all do it. I win. Yeah, you win. Okay Guests 100 % yeah, we like you a lot. That's why you're sitting here. That is winning. I think that's winning. I like it Right. Oh, yeah. I am winning. I am winning. Okay. Thanks. Thank you Shonda. This is thank you. It has been awesome Bye for my friends

There

you have it a free wheel in conversation with the one and only Shonda person Connect with her online. She's Shonda pretty much everywhere. That's sh a you and da I and Stay tuned for more awesome convos from build. We've got Scott Guthrie. We've got Mark Russinovich We've got Eric Boyd and more. These guys are longtime Technologists who are at the top of their game. We can't wait for you to hear from them Thanks, once again to our partners at fly dot IO to the amazing break master cylinder. Seriously What do you think of that new jingle does it get stuck in your head as much as it does mine? We'd love to hear from you and thanks to our friends at sentry Use code changelog when you sign up and save on our bucks off the team plan. That's just too easy Next week on the changelog news on Monday the legendary Scott Guthrie on Wednesday and Louis Via right here on changelog and friends on Friday Have a great weekend hit us up with a five -star review if you dig what we're up to and let's talk again real soon