TEC Talks Podcast: Jordan Andersen

You're listening to Tech Talks, a podcast by the Technology Education Collaborative.

Tech is an Arizona nonprofit that empowers people with useful information

about the technology they use every day.

Today on our podcast, we have Jordan Anderson coming in from Australia.

Is that right?

Yeah, yeah.

Awesome.

Thanks so much for coming on to our show today.

So today we are going to go through our usual format where we ask Jordan a

series of questions like we normally do on Tech Talks, and then after that,

we're going to have an interesting conversation about different mindsets we

can use when we are writing software.

And I am very excited about that conversation because just a few minutes

ago, Jordan and I were having a little casual chitchat and we already

found a lot of common ground.

Without further ado, I'm going to give Jordan a chance to talk about

himself here for a few minutes.

I'll give him these questions and we will learn more about him.

But first off, thank you, Jordan, for coming onto the show today.

Yeah, thanks so much, Chuck.

I definitely share your excitement.

Really looking forward to this chat.

Awesome.

Yes.

The first question that we got here for you is what is your title or position?

I'm a director at Hermit Technology and Hermit Tech is a tech consultancy

firm and our MO is that everything we do is with radical ethics.

Uh, and so what that means, um, is that, you know, we won't bull anyone

that we chat with or honest, and we could get more into kind of what

that looks like and examples, but yeah, I'm on a team, there are six of us.

We have expertise ranging from data engineering, right through

the data science and analytics.

That's kind of my role.

And my game is to go and help people who need, you know, data and database

solutions to all their fun stuff.

Thanks for explaining that.

I really love that ideology, that mindset, just keeping it very true.

And to the point, no nonsense, right?

A little bit more on to our second question here.

What do you do on a daily basis?

Just like any consultancy, you know, we go out and look for leads, uh, so

that, so that we can find our clients and do some work, really what that

looks like is just meeting people, talk to them and finding out what

they're paying points are.

And it's, it's funny.

We've, uh, we've talked a lot about, uh, how we're going to run the company.

Uh, we have a completely flat structure.

All six of us are directors.

So we trust one another with decisions and, you know, you don't have to check

with anyone because we all believe that we're going to act with each other's

best interests and the company's best interests within our ethos.

So, yeah, it isn't like we go around cold calling with all of that, you know, on,

on a daily basis, I, uh, I focus on writing about my experiences.

Chuck and I got connected through, uh, one of my co-directors, uh, Nick

Suresh, uh, one of his blogs recently went viral and was all over Hacker News.

Uh, and that's just kind of the stuff that we do is that, you know, we write

about our experiences and share our, our honest opinions and just don't, you know,

fluff around and don't hide, uh, you know, how we feel and criticisms.

Um, but really kind of that's, that's the way that we get the message out.

Uh, I guess you can call it marketing, uh, about what we do.

Um, so that's kind of a big chunk we're doing today.

I'm currently contracting for a government agency.

And so, you know, my nine to five right now is actually filled up with providing

kind of solutions architecture services.

They've kind of scaled out of, uh, requirements, not out of choice with

their data and some of their products they're offering to, uh, different local

governments and so, uh, my role there right now, most of my day is, uh, setting

up cloud pipelines and cleaning up some of their, uh, data science projects

that they have a few of their models.

And I'm doing a bunch of, uh, data modeling to, uh, to move them out of

kind of a, I guess, individual data mart type approach with their database

to, uh, to a dim fact model.

So yeah, very technical in the kind of, uh, what I do with during the day.

Um, and it's, you know, it's all part and parcel with keeping my skills sharp.

Uh, but also, you know, those are kind of the services that, that Hermitech offers.

Our next question, what is your favorite thing about your job?

Yeah, the, this sounds cheesy, but like, like helping people.

Uh, and so going in and, uh, you know, the most exciting thing that I've

had in the tech industry is going in and understanding an organization's

challenges, problems, pain points, and then just like the massive amount of

dopamine that I get of, of helping them with that and solving it, you know,

through, through being a nerd and sitting down, writing code for a black screen.

Yeah, it just, I get, I get such a drive out of making things better so that an

organization can, can do the thing, you know what I mean?

Uh, so, you know, I come from, uh, recently I worked in healthcare in,

in the data team, they're developing different products, uh, mostly on a

database, my big role was making data more available to emergency department

teams so that they could get a better understanding of what they're doing

and how they're doing it.

And so I had a great opportunity to work directly with emergency department

nurses, doctors, and data teams.

And it was, it was just such a cool role that I, that I sat in for that period

of time, because like, I just, you know, I stood on the floor when things go

crazy in the middle of the day in the emergency department and, uh, just so I

can understand, you know, what they're, what they're actually dealing with and

why they need the data and what those, those, you know, visualizations really

need to look like so that it helps them do their job.

Uh, so yeah, that, you know, again, in a very cheesy way, I just love helping

people with the super technical side of things that we do in tech.

I'm kind of the same vein, you know, I write software because I love it.

And because I just, I get a dopamine rush from solving problems that make my life

better in turn, you know what I mean?

And if I can do that for other people too, that's a win.

Totally.

And I think that's a big thing about, you know, what we do in, in software

engineering, data engineering, the whole bit, right?

Like, like we get that big rush of dopamine and serotonin and, you know,

in a way that it's funny that that's the selfish side of the work that we do.

Right.

And, but yeah, no, it's, um, it's really cool when you can do that.

And you're not just another monkey, you know, fixing a bug that someone created

because it was, you know, just poorly designed, it's, uh, yeah, really pushing

things forward is, is such a fun way to get paid, right?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And you know, the job isn't always fun, right?

It's not always the dopamine rushes.

And in fact, there there's, there's days where probably things are rough and

that's kind of a good segue into the next question, which is what is your

least favorite thing about your job?

If you, if you have any least favorite thing, or if you don't really have any

complaints, what are things you think could be better?

Oh, Jack, don't worry.

I got some complaints and I touched on it, you know, it's, um, one of the, I

mean, just like any other developer, it sucks to have to debug someone else's

code that's, you know, either was poorly designed, rushed to put together, you

know, whatever the reasons were, but, you know, going through somebody's

uncommented, just elephant graveyard of, of lines and lines and stuff like that.

I think, you know, all of us share that disdain.

I'd actually probably have to point to the thing that I dislike the most is

kind of why we started Hermit Tech.

And it's just the systematic waste of time, money, and other resources, and

that other resources, the most precious ones, you know, just the souls of people

in tech shops, right, I'm sure that, you know, all of us have had that experience

where you work somewhere where a manager is breathing down their neck or going on

and on about burn velocity and sprints and, you know, how many story points we're

getting through, and, you know, that becomes a focus instead of doing good

technical work with high fidelity and strong data integrity, right, when, when

the ladder takes a backseat, because we just got to get it out in the next two

weeks sprint, that type of philosophy and pressure, right, and the frustration that

comes along with it.

Like I said, that that's really where Hermit Tech, I guess was the impetus to

actually get us all together and doing the thing that we do is that we've

experienced all that. And again, a bunch of us have experienced the great sides of

being a developer. But it's just the frustration of watching these

organizations getting sold on the worst ideas ever, you know, one of the big

companies would come in working with KPMG Deloitte or any of the other big

firms is that there's this excitement of a project and strategy. And then when the

rubber hits the road, you get, you know, a bunch of kids who are 18 months out of

graduating college, that you know, your organization is forking over thousands of

dollars a day for this thing that just doesn't have any governance or control.

And, and so then as in-house talent, you're stuck with this just absolute

heaped pile of something, right? And so that that's absolutely the most

frustrating part, because then, you know, again, the in-house talent is, is

demanded that they make this thing fixed, fitting a, you know, a square piece into a

round hole. It's just that type of this interaction and transaction throughout the

tech industry, and not just tech industry, like across industries, but with tech and

digital assets. That's, you know, really why we came together to be a bit of a

positive beacon to stop that. So I mentioned that, you know, we're, our

ethos is that, you know, we're radically ethical. And, you know, a big thing that we

do is that, you know, often we advise clients that they shouldn't do the thing,

you know, they contact us like, Oh, you know, we have this idea, this project, for

example, you know, the Red Hot thing, the past three years ago, we want to do a cloud

migration, we got to get to the cloud, we got to get up there, right? We got to, we

got to be serverless. And, you know, the first question we always ask is like, Well,

do you really need to, would it be more effective for your organization, if you

just, you know, reorganize your data, did it in Postgres, posted it locally, because

you kind of already have the infrastructure sitting in a basement somewhere? Like, would

that not just be a better solution to do the thing that your organization wants to do?

And so, yeah, that's, to tie back to your question. Yeah, that's the most frustrating

thing. And, and the six of us, we want to do things better, you know, and do better

by people who use technology, and data to really achieve why they started this

business that they do, be it in healthcare, or transportation, or, or, you know,

agriculture. So yeah, that's the long winded answer of what makes me frustrated.

I definitely hear a lot of sentiments that I share in your response to that. One

exercise I always take people through is what I call right sizing, where I say to

them, Hey, let's start with the most bare bones, cheapest single entity possible,

right? A single server, a computer, right? Maybe even a Raspberry Pi, if you wanted

to get really crazy with this. Let's start with a really small thing that's cheap

and easy and answer the question, why won't this thing solve our, our business

needs? Right? What constraints are we going to run into first, such that we

actually need to go to the cloud, or, you know, you know what I mean, when I say

cloud, something more nebulous than just simply one server in the cloud, something

like an AWS distributed architecture or whatever is what I'm kind of getting at

when I say the cloud here. But you kind of get the gist, right? So if when we do

a right sizing exercise, we identify the areas in which we maybe won't have

enough enough disk space, maybe won't have enough RAM, maybe we won't have

enough uptime or high availability. But because we're thinking about this from

the things one server can no longer do for us, we're actually able to get down

and figure out what the customer really, really needs. Instead of them just

assuming they have to go to the cloud, they have to spend $5,000 a month on a

single Redis cluster, they have to do all these other crazy things that just

really aren't necessary to get the job done. Because they're not operating at

the scale that they think that they are going to need to operate at.

Yeah, totally. I mean, the thing that you mentioned there is that, you know,

that that right sizing is a wedge, right to get in, so that you can really get

into that. Well, what is this company doing? What do you guys actually want to

do? Why did you reach out to us? And I think, you know, having that philosophy

is so much more effective, because we can all just say like, Oh, you want to go

to the cloud? No problem. I'm going to set up your, you know, DBT will stop it.

No, we'll use Matillion. And then we'll get you up in AWS and use DBT. Oh, you

definitely need Snowflake, right? And you just just terminology bomb them with all

of the fads of today with with products. But no, you're totally right, Chuck, like

that, that that thing of like, hey, what will actually help your organization? And

why are you bringing us in as consultants as an external group, right? Like, what

are we actually trying to do here, team? And, and let's work together towards that.

And it's such a more fulfilling thing to do. And, you know, I've got a big

philosophy that it that it helps the tech industry as a whole to do things

better, right? Because like, I think we're getting, you know, talking

different C suite people, you know, we're moving more towards a distrust in tech in

general, not just consultants, but like, ah, you know, those software engineers are

taking so long. And, you know, that's been a bit of the rhetoric, always, but I

think it's, it's starting to slide and get a bit worse in, you know, the mid to

big size corporations, particularly you find in Australia, the government,

right? Like, there's a lot of skepticism. And so, you know, we have to not not sell

harder, but like, you know, there's a lot more conversation and you got to say the

right words to gain trust. And it's just been a weird shift over the past, you

know, bit of time.

So the next question that we've got queued up here for you is what is one

practical thing you'd want someone who is considering pursuing your job or your

industry, whatever it is you do, what would you want them to know? And I know

that we've kind of touched on this and maybe a little bit of a ways like kind

of what feeds into your philosophies and your mindset and all that stuff to

someone who is hearing this, what would you tell them if they wanted to get

started? Let's say that there may be a college graduate or maybe just still in

college, maybe even in high school. What would you say to them such that they

could be more prepared for getting into this career path?

Learn to use Git, version control, that's that like, and I start there,

because it's, it's technical, therefore, you know, us nerds, we can, I could do

that, I can go out and read Stack Overflow and read a book and like,

seriously, pick up Pro Git and just like, read the first five chapters and just

start a little project. Like, honestly, like, just just do that. Learn Git

version control properly. That's like the technical side of what people can do on

a more, I guess, broader principle approach. I'm borrowing this from, from

Nick, my co director, like, just take people out to coffee, like, talk to

people, just have a conversation and learn from other people. And, and, you

know, that type of approach, you just, you open up and unlock your ability to

learn so much more effectively, and not just about tech stuff, right, like,

about what challenges people have in the world. And I'm feeling, sounding

hippie-ish, but like, when you start with that, and you get used to learning

from people around you, in your industry and out of, like, you look down

the road, and it just sets you up, you know, in different roles that, you

know, all of a sudden, you're having a conversation with someone who does

hiring, or you get a referral, or, you know, when it starts to look like

that, you find your way in front of something, you know, a CEO, and then

you can have different conversations and have a bigger impact in the

industry. I mean, from a consulting point of view, like, you asked, you

know, what does my day to day looks like? Yeah, like, seriously, a lot of

it is, is asking interesting people, if I can buy them a coffee, you know,

from there, you start, if you want to look at a business and marketing

point of view, like, that's the way that you can, quote unquote, you

know, find leads, or, you know, start building your business, but it's

really just like, talking to people, what about their problems, you know,

what are you interested in? So and I say that, again, typically in the

tech industry, you know, we, we just want to sit and write in front of a

computer, right, we want to write code, we don't want to talk to people.

But you know, it's get out of that comfort zone. And you might, you might

find a passion in what someone else is doing. And then, like we spoke

about, find a way that you can help someone else. And you know, heaven

forbid, get paid for that. So yeah, those are kind of the two things,

learn version control, get really good at Git. And then just just talk to

people in and out of the industry about tech stuff, because it's

fascinating.

Regarding Git, I also agree that it's one of the most foundational things

to learn nowadays. It's a little weird at first, right. I mean, I also

was kind of confused with it over, you know, 1015 years ago, I don't

remember exactly when I started using Git, I think the thing that made it

click for me was remotes, and how a repository is basically just something

that can exist across different remotes. And once you learn that,

like, oh, there's GitHub, and then there's GitLab. And then there's,

you know, get tea and all these different source control hosts. But

underneath it all, it's just a Git thing that you're pointing your

repository to. And that's just the remote, something, I don't know, I

just made it made it click for me. And I really hope that other people

can can put in the time to, and most importantly, the patience to learn

it, because it's really not so bad once you get used to it. But I have

met quite a few people over the years who are still kind of struggling

with with the basics on it. And I do my best to try and explain it to

them, because I acknowledge it as a little unusual at first.

Yeah, totally. And like, look, just the I mentioned before, like, learning

a new thing, any new thing, just get a project, get a pet project that

you want to tinker around with, and, and do that. Or, you know, if, if

anyone's listening, and they're, you know, let's say, a few years into

the industry, and you're thinking like, I don't have time, you know, I

don't, I don't want to be from my computer at night or on weekends, I

just do it at work, right? Like, convince your IT department to allow

you to install Git and just whatever you're working on now, just start

version controlling it, right? That's just the best way to learn a new

skill. Because I totally agree with you that, you know, I've worked with

people who've been in the industry for 15 years. And, you know, in a

way, I empathize with them, you know, if you got kids or grandkids, and

you're looking at it like, I don't want to learn a new thing, I know

how to write SQL, and I get paid, so why would I do anything different?

And so, you know, there's, there's going to be a few barriers to that

toward the end. But yeah, like it, like, if you want to learn, just

start doing it.

Those are the main questions. The we've got one final question here

for you. What would you like to share with those who are listening

currently? What are you working on? What passion projects? What are you

involved in? Anything you want to share? I know, we've discussed a

little bit about your consultancy, your firm, and some of the ethos

behind that. But is there anything else you'd like to share?

In terms of the practical stuff? Chuck and I, we spoke before we

started recording about Hetzner and, you know, exploring different

platforms, different tools that are not, you know, the big three that

are not Azure, AWS, and GCP. And so we're playing around with a few

things there. We're looking to develop our own CRM that's, again,

hosted in a bit more of a financially feasible way, be

really light with it, and put together a product that we use

internally, you know, borrowing kind of from from base camp

approach, right, that, you know, we have pain points. And so we're

all in tech, we've got, you know, back end and front end

experience. So why don't we just make something that works for us

and see where that goes. So that's kind of on a product side.

And then we're also big on developing processes. And so, you

know, I hate the corporate term, you know, ways of working, but

really, like, you know, I'm up in in the Gold Coast area in, in

Australia, and the rest of the team is down in Melbourne. And

that's, I gotta check my geography, but like, 2000

kilometers, so but yeah, so you know, we're separated. And then

in Melbourne, all five of them, they're also living in different

areas. And so, you know, it's really like, how do we be

productive with the mostly async dev cycles, and every now and

again, we get together in pair program. And we found that, you

know, pair programming in two, maybe three, where you have an

observer being the third. But yeah, no more than that, if we

actually want to tackle tackle something technical and deep,

we've realized that we got to, you know, talk about it, break

it, break the task down into chunks, and then split off into

into teams and pairs and tackle it. So we were formalizing, you

know, how does Hermit Tech work? Because, you know, it works

really well for us that we've, you know, developed a few other

products and, and solved problems for clients being, you

know, super async. So, you know, can we put together some sort of

a cookbook that other people might benefit from? So yeah,

that's that. Those are kind of the three big things that, that

we talk about that we work on.

Awesome. Okay. Well, that wraps up this portion of our

discussion here. Thank you, Jordan, for going through our

questions. Jordan and I are going to have a second part of

this conversation where we dive a little bit into a little bit

more of the mindset and philosophies of good software

development principles, at least as we see it, based on an

article that went popular that we mentioned earlier called I

will drop kick you if you use that spreadsheet. It's a little

more aggressive than I made it sound, that's for sure. And it's

a great read. So now we'll go ahead and move on with the next

portion. I got to pull this article up. Do you have it up?

So it depends on which one you're talking about the I will

drop kick you if you use that spreadsheet or use spreadsheet

again, that was an older one that Nick wrote. But it's still

got very a lot of positive feedback. The most recent one

that dropped at the end of June was I will compile drive you if

you mention AI one more time or something along those lines.

Yeah, it's so good. And like, we laugh about it. But yeah, so

no, those are those are kind of the two. So a quick rundown,

like the spreadsheet one was more around like data

engineering, like, stop shoving everything into, you know, five

megabyte size Excel files and like do things properly. And,

and what does that look like? And a lot of like what we spoke

about in the first segment that like, stop adding to tech debt,

just because your stupid sprint burndown chart looks better,

right? Like, let's do things properly. So that's kind of that

one. And then the I will drive you if you mentioned AI, like

that was God, it was so good. It's just like the culmination

of conversations we've had over the last year of just CEOs

getting absolutely sold on bullshit, right? And just crap

products that, you know, just because you use AI, it doesn't

mean that you're doing anything useful other, you know, you're

just wasting money. So it's a big conversation on like, like,

yeah, more directed towards a C-suite, like, what are we

actually doing? Like, and when somebody says these types of

things around AI, like, when you do like a fucking pip install,

like chat, open AI, like deploy chat GPT as a Gen AI, like,

you're not doing anything, right? Like, it's just but like

a CEO can put that on their on their CV and then, and then, you

know, fade off into the distance and gather a bonus. And so it's

the criticism of that type of stuff. It's like, what are we

actually doing?

Yeah, I got to be honest, it's it's absolutely all over the

place. Everyone thinks they can just plug this thing in, and

suddenly their application can do anything. I even had this

this thought for a little while at first, I wanted to create

something that would summarize your Git commits, right. And so

I thought, well, hey, this thing's a large language model,

right? So I should be able to pass in a diff patch of all the

the commits I did on a certain, you know, basis, and it should

be able to understand this. And so I passed it through like

three or four different production, large language

models, like Claude, GPT, four, and I think a few variants of

Claude. And I got mixed results from all of them. I even tried

to be very specific, like only respond. Exactly. Like only

respond with like a rating of one to 10 on how productive this

commit was. And like, if I'm over here, someone who is kind

of in the industry and is writing software thinking this

stuff, it's no wonder everyone else is also thinking this

stuff, because it seems like and it's advertised as this thing

that can do anything and everything. Right. And why are

we buying into that? Well, because it's new, because it's

novel, because it's very cool to see something being able to

distill the sum of human knowledge into a little prompt

that you can interact with. It's, it's undoubtedly undoubtedly

cool. But at the same time, I think people think, or are

rather being told that it can solve all your problems. What

are your thoughts on that? Is that kind of your perspective

as well?

Oh, yeah, 100%. Right. Like, exactly. Like you just

described, like this, this gen AI thing, like, ah, we're

gonna get AI and it's gonna solve our problems. But no, no,

you're totally right, man. And I totally agree. Like, oh, God,

Nick and I, we were at a conference last year. And it was

a tech conference. And, you know, it was really cool

networking opportunities. And so during one of the events, it was

actually Nick, he got chatting with this group of women from an

e commerce company. And I like somebody somewhere had sold them

on the this idea. And they like carried it, right? Because they

were, they were great at what they do. We talked about

marketing, when we got when we sat down with them, we're

talking about their marketing, and they're just so good at

selling stuff online, and like, what they need to consider and

taking care of their customer, but they were so good at that

stuff. But you don't have to be a software data engineer data

science to do that, right. And so somebody had sold them on

this idea that, you know, AI is going to solve all of their

technical problems. So the first the first interaction, one of

these women had met, had met Nick, and Nick was like, yeah,

you know, data science by trade, and this is hermitag. And so we

do and, and she was like, Oh, great, like, we're, we are going

to get AI to set up and do our analytics, it is going to solve

our analytics problems. And we're just going to get AI to do

it, and it's going to be great. And like, you totally empathize

with this, this woman who's so good in, you know, kind of the

tech industry, because they are e commerce, but you empathize

with her so much be like, Oh, who lied to you? Who brought up

the smoke and mirrors? Right. And so it was, it was, yeah, it

was fun. That was on like, day one. And so like, he met, Nick

met, I guess, one of their like, high high level managers, maybe

she was in the C suite. And then like, eventually, like the two

of us got introduced to their team of three. And Nick was

like, look, like, we just need to sit down to lunch. And like,

we gotta have a chat. And so like, we, we right there very

easily could have just sold them on like, yeah, definitely, we

will set up a gen AI product package, you know, use some fancy

terms that, you know, they didn't know that all they needed

to do is import, you know, open AI. But so like, we, like, we

could have just done the snake oil and sold them on whatever.

And then we would have made money off that. Um, but like,

I've been saying, like, hermit tech, we're, we're radically

ethical, like, we just, we're not gonna lie. And so Nick and I

sat down to lunch with with this team. And we just had a

conversation, we're like, look, this is what kind of data is

generally what data science is, you know, like, this is what

supervised model training looks like you do this unsupervised

model training thing. And you know, that's, those are just

kind of two models. And, and so like, we're just describing

like, you need to know something about your thing, for

a data science model to be successful, like, otherwise,

you're just going to get stuff, right? Like, you can do all the

design, the architecture, you can push that into it, you're

going to get an output, but it's just going to be, you know, a

mound of dirt, right? Like, it's going to give you numbers, but

do they mean anything? And so we just kind of put a quick

tutorial and just talk them through. And, and, um, you know,

you and I spoke on our last conversation about really

understanding a company and organizations challenges the

pain points. And so we just asked him, like, what are you

actually doing? And like black and white, just like a lot of

other organizations, that they had analytics set up, they had

some dashboards data being pushed into, like a power bi or

tableau or whatever it was, but like, they just they weren't

confident that having all that set up is was advising them how

to do sales better, right? And like, and like that black and

white, that's what ecommerce is, right? Like, you know, you sell

more of your product, you become more profitable. And they just

they weren't confident that their current setup is doing

that. And so like, very quickly, like, it's not an AI solution

you need, right? Like, you don't need to go through all that,

like, what that is, is just better data engineering. And,

and, you know, they were, you know, small to medium sized

startup. And, and, uh, so, so they, I gathered, they didn't

have a big tech presence in their staff to push those

agendas. And that's fine, right? It's just the reality. And so

when they wanted to shift more into that, of course, like

everything that's on Twitter and all the other platforms and in

the news, like AI is going to solve everything. And so it was

just logical that they came to that conclusion. And, and, you

know, that was a moment of, of, as our, our tech firm that I

feel as though that was a success, right? We didn't make a

penny off that organization, but that wasn't the point that we

really felt like we helped those people. And then the kind of, I

guess, highest ranking manager, it sounds like she's in armed

forces, but no, like they're, they're, um, you know, they're

manager of the, of the three people we spoke to, she's great.

She's like, awesome, I'm going to go online. I'm going to learn

a little bit more about the analytical side, um, see what we

can do with what we already have in house. And it was just like a

really positive experience and interaction that, you know, we

kept in touch with them and ensure that she, you know, went

on to learn a little bit more about how to do analytics with

what they already have. And so like circling back that, geez,

like, yeah, you know, people get sold on this idea that AI is

going to solve all the world's problems and it's going to steal

our jobs. Like, you know, those of us who know any programming

language know that's just not true, but unfortunately the

people who hold the purse strings and who are in charge of

layoffs and who are in charge of hiring or make the decisions to

go out and get one of those really big firms that will come

in and promise the world, and then send you someone who's

fresh out of college to do their gen AI agenda and their

technical strategy. Like that, that's the big problem, right?

Those people that make those type of decisions in

organizations just, just aren't aware of, of the reality of it.

And I think that is a big power of, of that article that, that

my colleague Nick Suresh, um, put out the, you know, I will

pile drive you if you, if you mentioned AI one more time, is

that like, we just hope that that message, the reality of

things starts to reach the desks and ears and eyes of people who

are making decisions in our industry, because I think that's

where we're going to start, you know, getting a bit of a change

away from this red hot thing that is AI, um, into something

that's actually going to help an organization, you know, achieve

their mission statement and move towards their goals.

Awesome thoughts. And I I'm going to ask a question here

that is a little devil's advocate sort of, um, I want us

to put ourselves in the shoes of these folks that kind of have to

say these things in a certain regard. And to expand upon that

a little more, if you are a CEO of a company, at least in the

U S and you're publicly traded, you are legally responsible for

ensuring that money comes into the company at all costs, right?

You're responsible for the growth in accordance with the

shareholders needs. I personally struggle with this a

lot, so I'm not expecting any or any perfect answer rather. How

do we reconcile the legal demand for a CEO to, to bring in as

much money as possible with the simple reality that the stuff

isn't as magical as it is being made to sound. I mean, isn't,

isn't a CEO sort of obligated in a certain sense to lie basically

is, is kind of how the system is set up. I mean, shouldn't they

be trying to extract the money at just the right thin, fine

line, such that consumers are happy enough and everyone is

happy enough, even though they are indeed being lied to. I

mean, I, I don't like it, but that's kind of how it's built.

Would you agree with that?

Well, you bring up a really good point of line that you had in

there, you know, that like, isn't it the responsibility to

CEO to lie to everyone and like, at the surface it's, and not

just at the surface, you know, I've been in organizations that

like people who just bought into that, right? Like, like the

movie, don't look up, like it's a lot of just, don't talk about

the thing, right? We don't talk about Bruno here. He's kind of

thing. Um, I, I see it more, you know, people are compelled to

lie. Um, and to oversimplify it, you kind of, you know, how, how

these CEOs in two different camps, right? You have the ones

who are aware and they know, and, and again, you know, what I

agree with you, what you said is that I feel they are compelled

to, to, um, shape their message that maybe bends the truth or

maybe, you know, full of lie. And, and it's a hard place to

be in, you know, like I got a lot of empathy for CEOs of those

kind of publicly traded mid-sized companies, a lot of

pressure. And you're right. Like, right. Like if they don't

make money, like people's livelihood, it's not even just

within their own company, but people, you know, bought shares.

Um, there's a lot of, you know, paying the mortgage and putting

food on the table, uh, type things at risk for a lot of

people. And so like, I got a lot of empathy. Those are, those

things are hard. Um, so like we'll park that. Yeah. It's

really hard, right? Yeah. And so like we'll park that that's kind

of like, let's say one oversimplification of, of our, our

CEO. Um, but then the other one is just like the scorpion,

right? Like the, the snake oil selling, um, you know, uh,

smiling teeth type, take CEO that will gladly lie, you know,

and, and ride out there two to five years as CEO as company,

um, bring in the AI, make it happen, tell everyone, go and

press conferences and then, and then jump on their, on their

boat and sail into the sunset before the house of cards comes

tumbling down. Right. And, and like, I've seen it before I

joined Hermit Tech. And then definitely, you know, a big, a

big offering we have is, um, uh, to be PG about it. We unscrew

the, uh, migration, right? Like we, we, we go in and we fix the

mound of stuff, a mound of garbage that's been left by

previous C-suite and previous consultants. And, you know, we

go in and we're like, all right, well, like we can dismantle this

and, and fix it for your organization. So you don't go

under, but yeah, like there's, there's definitely that second

archetype of just like, great, do it, do the Gen I, Gen AI, you

know, import open AI, make the thing happen. We won't tell

anyone that it takes a competent engineer two weeks to set

everything up, including documentation, but we're going

to roll it out. We're going to bring up the red carpet. It's

going to look great. We're going to cut the ribbons. Um, I need

to take the bonus and, you know, um, take off it's, it's, you

know, that type of thing. Um, again, we spoke in our last

conversation about how Hermit Tech, we do, uh, radical things,

radically ethically, like we just not interested in working

with organizations that have that latter flavor. Right. Um,

and so to, to circle back to your devil's advocate question,

like, yeah, definitely it's hard, but I think that, you

know, you can, in those two situations, you can make money

for your stakeholders again, to oversimplify in one of two

ways. One, you can sell the snake oil and you can, you know,

get a big consultancy firm in that will send juniors to dump

whatever they can do and walk away or the former CEO who's

aware and does have to play the game. You know, you can,

hopefully that CEO has a better understanding of the needs of

their organization. And that's the person we like sitting down

with to really understand their pain points and, and get a full

appreciation of what the business is and how we can help

their bottom line by, you know, automating stuff to remove

manual work so that those same staff members, they don't get

laid off their time and brain powers freed up to do more

effective things. Like a client that we were talking to, they

they'd highlighted that they do so much manual transfer, like

copying rows and columns from this spreadsheet into that one

and then push it into that software. Then that software

churns and spit something out into another CSV and they go in

and select specific rows and then they move it into the next

one. And so like all of that, yeah, let's, we can automate

that, you know, Perpetek will go in and automate that so that

those people that do the, you know, control C control V,

instead of doing that, they can be refocused on their analytical

work and do the creative stuff so that that company can serve

their clients more effectively with what they actually do,

right? Like they don't like their mo isn't to copy and

paste. Their mo is to provide deep insights that are valuable

to their clients from the data that they receive. And so that,

again, going back to your question, like, well, how do you

make money? How are you responsible to stakeholders and

being publicly traded? Like, you can go that former route. It's

not easy. And there are definitely pressures that the C

suite and, you know, co founders go through that are

like enormous. And part of why I'm not interested in going that

leadership path, you know, but like, there is a way there. And

we've worked with awesome companies that see that and, and

have been successful of improving how things work inside

by doing it, you know, properly.

Love it. Yeah. So just to kind of summarize, right, that the

approach is controlled by scope, right? You make the

choice of whether you're going to choose to work with a company

that is acting in a manner that they're clearly intending to

deceive or not. And you seek out those who prefer to operate in

reality, right? And what I mean by that is the approach that you

and hermit tech take is that you're going to connect real

principles, what actually matters, what can be

accomplished with what the business is trying to do, right?

And you're trying to dissuade them from hearing all this other

nonsense. That is the snake oil peddler. That is the, the

corporate exec that is lying to them just to boost their

shareholder value, right? So you are grounded in reality, and

that is your approach. And one would really, really, truly hope

that a grounded in reality approach would scale in time, no

matter what company you're at, right? Because eventually the

rubber is going to meet the road. If you are, say, I don't

know, Tesla, and you're lying about how good your, your cars

are, eventually one would hope that that truth would catch up

to you. Do you know what I mean? So that's kind of the, the

thing that I'm hearing from, from you guys is that you want

to really keep the scope focused so that you're within the

bounds of reality. Does that kind of catch the essence of

how you guys look at things?

I think that, um, people can choose the reality. And so

truly getting like some people's reality is consciously rung

consciously is to peddle that snake oil. But I think I think

the big thing is, you know, having the opportunity to choose

reality and choose your direction requires a good,

thorough, deep understanding of what your organization, what

your company does. Right. And I think that, you know, that work

and, you know, you can say, like, oh, you got to stay in

touch, you got blah, blah, blah. Like, you really need to get an

understanding of where, you know, down to your core, down

to the core of the company, where does this shit want to

sail? Where should it sail? And then within that, what do your

crew members want out of this? You know, and I think like, you

know, a good, a good CEO is going to have a real good feel

on all of those levels. And I'm like, we're talking about mid

size organizations, like, that is impossible when you start

pushing over 1000 plus employees, right? Like that

becomes very hard for the leader to get in touch with everyone on

the floor. But yeah, that's probably more the thing, you

know, again, being in touch with what your organization wants to

do, then you can start choosing your, your reality.

Jordan, is there anything else that you wanted to add in? Like,

do you want to share any, any interesting conversations with

people that you've had, or perhaps Nick has had since these

articles went relatively popular here on the internet or anything

else you'd like to share with us before we close up this

conversation?

Yeah, definitely. Since Nick, one of my co directors, since his

writing has gone so far, especially most recent ones,

we've realized how many people are experiencing the same things

that is in Nick's writings and reflection of that things that

we talked about at Hermit Tech and, and our previous

experiences, like it's wild, how many people have reached out and

said, thank you for writing these things. Now, I can point

people to a blog, instead of me, you know, telling them how

things should be, right. And, and so it's just that referral

to, to gain support for doing things in the right way. It's

been wild how many people are in a similar position. And, and

that's where we feel that the way that we're doing things at

Hermit Tech can be successful as our own company, you know, for

the six of us to move forward and make a living out of this

thing, but also that through people out there that we can

help that, that we align with in those things. So, so it gets

like, you know, for people listening that, if you're

frustrated at work with, you know, those burned down charts

and getting things done by the next sprint, or, you know, if,

if you're the manager, and, you know, there is pressure to make

sure your burned down chart looks good and, and all those

things, but like the way that you're doing things, you feel

like there's too much, just spinning your wheels. There are

a lot of people out there in all different levels from the

C-suite down to, you know, your, your software engineers, never

in between, that, that share those frustrations. And, and,

you know, I think the best way forward is to connect with one

another. A great way is, is through reading blogs and making

comments and, and sharing your opinions on these things, or

writing your own blogs, putting your own thoughts out there,

because there's so many people that we're just, because of the

tech age, you know, all of us are sitting in our own home

office or in a cafe or sitting on our phone on the subway,

having these same thoughts, and we're so physically

disconnected, like we can connect with one another. And

this is how, you know, Chuckie and I are having this

conversation. So I guess, I guess like a parting message or

remarks is that like, get out there proverbially on the

internet, read stuff, write your own stuff, publish it, put it

on, even if you want to do it on LinkedIn, whatever, like, get

your thoughts out there. If you feel like they're gonna piss

someone off, that's okay. Because if it's frustrating to

you, there are enough people in this world, that somebody else

probably has a similar opinion. And you know, if you're moving

towards a better way of working in tech, that's less

frustrating and less soul sucking. Like, I think it's a

good thing to be mentioning or explaining how frustrated you

are about these different things, because I think there

become to an understanding. And then we can start making a plan

of doing things better in our tech industry.

Well said, did you guys get any hate mail for anything that you

guys have posted recently? Like the, the AI post, I'm guessing

had some interesting responses, I imagine?

Just like, go on Hacker News, have a look for the blog, I'm

trying to find the best way to find it. Anyway, like, check if

you linked to the blog, like have a look, the comment section

is just awesome on fire. And even at the top of his blog, he's

got posts of like reviews, and there's a link to all the

reviews, and he just grabs like a bunch of the hate mail and he

posts it and says, really, it's so good. It's amazing. So yes,

if you want to if you want to good chuckle, or if you hate all

of these ideas, and you want to be around people that have the

same deal as you like, don't worry, like Nick has posted a

link to them on his blog. So cool.

Well, thank you so much, Jordan, for your time. It's really been

a pleasure talking to you. It's really been awesome hearing

about hermit tech and how you guys do things really absolutely

I'm privileged to have been able to talk to you today. So thank

you so much for your time.

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