201: From FAANG to Fired: The Illusion of Stability in Big Tech w/ Adam Argyle

[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to Syntax. Welcome to a brand new episode of the Front End Happy Hour podcast. Welcome to this week’s JS Party. Live from Ship Shape Studios, this is Whiskey Web and Whatnot. With your hosts, Robbie the Wagner, and me, Charles William Carpenter III. That’s right Charles. We drink whiskey and talk about web development.

[00:00:27] Intro: I mean, it’s all in the name. It’s not that deep. This is Whiskey Web and Whatnot. Do not adjust your set.

[00:00:36] Robbie Wagner: Hey everybody. Welcome to your favorite podcast, grumpy Men Shaking Fist at AI with your hosts, Robbie the Wagner and guest host today, Adam Argyle.

[00:00:49] Adam Argyle: Adam Thomas Argyle, the first this year.

[00:00:52] Robbie Wagner: Ooh, the first. Nice.

[00:00:54] Adam Argyle: No one ever claims the first, unless you’re

[00:00:57] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.

[00:00:57] Adam Argyle: you know, library, uh, in the React [00:01:00] ecosystem. He’s like, I did it first.

[00:01:04] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. That is kind of weird. It sounds fancy to still be the first, even though it’s not as prestigious, I guess.

[00:01:08] Adam Argyle: Yeah. What’s up with that? Where’s Seinfeld? He needs a joke about this. Seems right.

[00:01:13] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Yeah. So we’re gonna have a bit of a different format today. Our questions are kind of just whatever we want to talk about, and we’re gonna drink whatever we want, so there will be no rating.

[00:01:23] Robbie Wagner: It is one I’ve had before. I

[00:01:26] Robbie Wagner: am doing the chicken cock, which is always a favorite.

[00:01:31] Adam Argyle: Just fun to say.

[00:01:33] Robbie Wagner: Yes.

[00:01:33] Adam Argyle: has a badass label with demons on it and a really cool, uh, demon horned, you know, stop around the top. That’s rye whiskey.

[00:01:41] Robbie Wagner: Mine is also rye. If I didn’t say that, I don’t know if I did. I just poured a very large amount in it.

[00:01:46] Adam Argyle: You got twins? See, I got

[00:01:48] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.

[00:01:48] Adam Argyle: now.

[00:01:49] Robbie Wagner: How do I, let’s see. I’m not used to my camera being over here. Yeah. This episode is sponsored by Norland glass Norland glass.com.

[00:01:57] Adam Argyle: Yeah, they’re great.[00:02:00]

[00:02:01] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Have we sent you some? If not, we should.

[00:02:03] Adam Argyle: You haven’t, , but I, I, you know, I listen to the episodes all the time. One was like, Hey, they talked about me again. , And I laughed really hard when you were like, I put it in the top rack dude and just washed it, you know, with the rest of the stuff. And I’m like, that’s totally what I would’ve done. I would’ve done this same thing like it’s a dishwasher.

[00:02:17] Adam Argyle: This is a dish. You put the dish in the washer, uh,

[00:02:20] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. I don’t, I’m not gonna put it in the bottom rack, but.

[00:02:25] Adam Argyle: It should survive there anyway. If everything’s going right for Newland, you

[00:02:29] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Well they are, they’re very thin. So I can see why Chuck is worried, but uh, yeah, they’ve, they’ve held up so far.

[00:02:36] Adam Argyle: Cool. Yeah, they seem nice. It’s nice having cool glasses around. I’ve got like, this isn’t a true, uh, bucket, uh, but you know, it works like one, it’s fine.

[00:02:45] Robbie Wagner: So yeah, not gonna rate this. Just gonna get right in to topics. So we’re very, uh, well first I wanna highlight , the, uh, title that we have here, from Fang to Fired. The Illusion of Stability in Big Tech.[00:03:00]

[00:03:02] Adam Argyle: And then the fast, the fast track to waking and baking every day, which we’ll get to. Um, I’ve been waking and baking with my kids and I just wanna tell you all about it. So,

[00:03:11] Robbie Wagner: Okay, well, we’ll get to that. But yeah. How you feeling, how things been going since the, the big news?

[00:03:17] Adam Argyle: so the big news, uh, yeah, y’all covered it lightly. Uh, my role was eliminated. I wasn’t fired. uh, you know, it wasn’t like I was doing a bad job and they were like, you suck, get outta here, or anything like that. It was more like, Hey, uh, this is my recap after many weeks trying to figure out what exactly it was, it was like, Hey, you’re kind of expensive and you’re in an area where there’s not very many other Chrome people, and we’re trying to eliminate people and you’re just kind of in the wrong spot at the wrong time right now.

[00:03:41] Adam Argyle: So we’re sorry. Your role is gone. You’re welcome though. Oh, and then, so they say this to you and then they basically put you in handcuffs. So the golden handcuffs become real handcuffs. That was a really big illumination for me. I was like, did not expect, ‘cause it used to be cool, you know, like, oh, I work at a fame company, it must be really stable.

[00:03:59] Adam Argyle: I [00:04:00] must turns out the security guy at the building I work at has a more secure job than I do. The people in the cafeteria, bro, have a more secure job than the Googlers do. It’s ridiculous. Anyway, oh, so the golden handcuffs, I was like, I got golden handcuffs and now all of a sudden they were like real handcuffs and I was like, shit, I have handcuffs on.

[00:04:18] Adam Argyle: I was like, oh dude. How did you not know that they were there the whole time? uh, I was reading the email, even the email that you get, I was two sentences in, , and my computer shuts down. ‘cause they got a backdoor. They got a backdoor. They knew. I read the email, they shut it down. And then when it booted, dude, I couldn’t get into anything.

[00:04:34] Adam Argyle: I could get to email and, uh, the careers page. I couldn’t walk into a building anymore. I couldn’t chat with any of my coworkers, nothing. And so, and, and it’s just, to me, it was just ironic. They’re like, Hey, we’re sorry. You know, just like the classic South Park. We’re sorry. , You’re in handcuffs and you’re not allowed in the building anymore.

[00:04:53] Adam Argyle: know, you’re here in the garden, enjoy the garden. It’s beautiful butterflies and leaves. , You’re welcome to find another job , in the [00:05:00] building that you can’t get into. And I’m like, what? you’re gonna look me in my eye and be like, we just eliminated your role, but hey, there’s other roles in there that , you can’t see or get to, but you can try to get one, I guess.

[00:05:14] Adam Argyle: And it was just like, don’t you see how weird this is?

[00:05:16] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, it’s very similar to Amazon. ‘cause there would be, you know, several rounds of layoffs there and like folks would be looking to join another team so they wouldn’t have no job , but they cut off their access to everything. So there’s like, they can’t slack somebody and be like, Hey, like, is your team hiring?

[00:05:31] Robbie Wagner: I need to move over or whatever. Like, there’s no way to verify anything about these people. They’re just like. Gone and Yeah, it’s, it’s really shitty. It’s like I guess the problem is if you don’t do all that, there’s gonna be the guy who like, logs into something, deletes everything. Or like,

[00:05:47] Adam Argyle: SSH pseudo, RMRF, you know, star.

[00:05:52] Robbie Wagner: yeah, yeah.

[00:05:53] Robbie Wagner: I mean, I, I’m not gonna lie and say that I didn’t think about like destroying some Amazon property now and then, but like, [00:06:00] you know, I don’t do it ‘cause I have self-control. it’s, it’s so aggravating the whole state of everything right now with all the layoffs and the like, ai bullshit, trying to get people to be replaced by machines and I’m just not a fan.

[00:06:14] Adam Argyle: okay. So besides like losing the role, I definitely cried. I liked my role anyway, and I was there for a long time and I didn’t, I didn’t imagine for one minute that it was like that, , shaky. So then, , more than just like losing a job, I was home all day, which also wasn’t normal. I, I, I went to the office, so now I’m, I’m just, I’m home.

[00:06:33] Adam Argyle: I’m full-time dad with no job. It was like, a lot of things changed. It wasn’t just like half of my life changed. It was like everything changed. and at first, uh, I was like, well, I’m not very good at taking vacation. This should be great. And then after like a week, I was like, I. Can do this. This is all right.

[00:06:51] Adam Argyle: And then like a month into it, I was like, I don’t wanna work. I don’t wanna work anymore. I was like, tech is stupid. Everything looks stupid. I was like, I hate where this is all going, dude. [00:07:00] I was so, I’m still mad, dude. I’m not gonna lie. I’m still mad. I’m like, the taste for everything is like gross. I’m like, so I’m looking at all the jobs.

[00:07:06] Adam Argyle: I’m like, where is even cool to work, man? Who’s doing it right? You know? I’m like, no one may, maybe, maybe Netflix. I don’t know. They seem to have general, uh, happiness over there. You know, Shopify wanted me to like come in and do ai, NextGen shopping, e-commerce stuff, and I’m like, no, I really, really, really don’t wanna touch that with like a 10 foot pole.

[00:07:28] Adam Argyle: , And so since I’m not willing to go work at like any AI companies, I’m looking around going, well, okay, so what’s left. Anyway, enough to say too is I have friends that are really, really talented people. Took ‘em 10 months to get a job. So needless to say, I definitely panicked at first. I applied to a bunch of places, ran into a Microsoft Dev, check this out.

[00:07:45] Adam Argyle: So my article made me the conduit for everybody’s layoff stories I got some wild ones in my email. One of them that was the most wicked one was a cat was laid off when he was working abroad and lost his visa, couldn’t get home. So he was

[00:07:59] Adam Argyle: [00:08:00] stuck and like, was like in a really bad scenario.

[00:08:02] Adam Argyle: Another person was, uh, he’s like, Hey, so I, I did something awesome at Microsoft 15 years ago and they put my name on a statue was six other people. There’s a stat, there’s a monument at the Microsoft campus with my name on it. The next day I got laid off. I was like, the disconnect between the head and the heart of these fang places is outta control. so needless to say, I quit the panic and I just sort of chilled. and I’m just trying to plant seeds, let stuff grow, not rush it in the kids just, it stays the last day of summer. So you’ll be doing this soon too.

[00:08:32] Adam Argyle: The kids are your home all summer, no more school. And I’m gonna be dad’s school or whatever. I’m like ready do to like dad scout camp. Dad. This camp I’m gonna run. Those camps are also like a thousand dollars per week for a kid. It’s ludicrous. So I’m like, I’m gonna save us a bunch of money. I’m gonna run all these.

[00:08:47] Adam Argyle: so anyway, I think I answered like five questions you didn’t ask, plus the one you asked, but you know.

[00:08:51] Robbie Wagner: I don’t know, like, I’m trying to think of things that would be interesting to you, like working on CSS obviously. So like, what about the [00:09:00] new, I forget what it’s called. There’s some like new browser that’s like being made from the ground up. Like

[00:09:04] Adam Argyle: Yeah. Lady

[00:09:05] Robbie Wagner: what about those guys?

[00:09:06] Adam Argyle: Yeah, there’s Lady I forget.

[00:09:08] Adam Argyle: yeah. You know, like one of the things too is like, I did my love for CSS in the web existed before the role it’s gonna exist after the role. It don’t really feel like I wanted Dere somewhere else. I didn’t really want to derel, I just wanted CSS to have a, , more people talking about it.

[00:09:23] Adam Argyle: I was like, JS is so saturated with Chrome derel. Where’s the CSS one? And they were like, you do it? And I was like, I can’t do that. I’ve never done it before. And then I did it. Um, and I can’t really, I can’t really switch and go do that somewhere else. Like Mozilla had an opening for Derel, , on Firefox, , and they were like, Adam, you should apply.

[00:09:38] Adam Argyle: And I was like, don’t know if I could just do that. , Maybe I could. I, and so I can still be on the CSS working group. I’m still interested in like frontend type roles and so some of the tools have been like tools that help people write CSS. So it’s like, hey, I know all the modern stuff. I’m really good at making GUIs that interface and teach these people things on the fly.

[00:09:57] Adam Argyle: So it could be a design tool. There’s numerous of [00:10:00] those out there right now. , Even things like, um, I was looking at a job at Brilliant, which apparently, , gives ads all the time, but people are like, Brilliant’s been putting ads all over my YouTube and I was like, I haven’t seen one. But anyway, to me it looks like Duolingo for stem.

[00:10:12] Adam Argyle: So you’ve got the same interface of Duolingo, all the exciting shit going on in animations, but you’re teaching kids science, technology, engineering and math. And I was like, that’s just really cool. And they need a front end interactive developer. That’s all I would do all day. Build the interactives that help educate and teach people to work through the problem.

[00:10:27] Adam Argyle: I’m like, that’s cool. I don’t know if I’ll do it, but you know, there’s stuff out

[00:10:30] Adam Argyle: there.

[00:10:31] Robbie Wagner: I think you and Jay should just make a like consultancy where you just make cool insane CSS shit for people who need it.

[00:10:39] Robbie Wagner: And uh,

[00:10:41] Adam Argyle: We did. He was in town. Uh, and I, I grabbed a one wheel and I was like, dude, meet me at the park. And we one wheeled around the park and I told him some of my wild ideas.

[00:10:49] Adam Argyle: And one of ‘em was, yeah, dude, let’s do up, People think we’re some of the top design engineers out there right now, so let’s leverage that.

[00:10:55] Adam Argyle: Let’s, I don’t know, go make a course, go make a site, do something where it’s just like you and I [00:11:00] owning our content and selling that shit. And then I remembered, you know, I like making stuff, but I hate putting it in a box and then surrounding it with fluffy, fluffy kins, and then putting a little handwritten card inside and then putting it in another box and putting a bow in the box.

[00:11:13] Adam Argyle: And then, oh my God, by then I’m just like, I like making the thing. I don’t like marketing in it. I don’t like selling it. I don’t want clients and customers. I don’t want all the rest of the noise. And so it was just like, oh, I don’t know. Uh, I still think of making a. , Luxury components. So this was like one of my favorite ideas.

[00:11:30] Adam Argyle: Right. They don’t exist. What would they be? Expensive. That’s what they would be. Uh, lots of space. Very

[00:11:36] Robbie Wagner: like the I Am Rich app from, uh, when iOS came out, like it’s just a hundred dollars and it just says You are rich.

[00:11:43] Adam Argyle: you are rich. Oh, I love it. , But they would be like wildly nice components. Very specific too. So not your generic, like this is a combo box for you to do whatever the hell you want with it. I’d be like, this is a badass combo box. You download it and you use it as is. It’s sick. You don’t wanna change it.

[00:11:57] Adam Argyle: It’s too dope to change, you [00:12:00] know? but I’m like, ah, I don’t know if I really want to do that either. Like,

[00:12:05] Adam Argyle: so I dunno. I’m still confused, dude.

[00:12:07] Robbie Wagner: Well, I know there’s a company, I forget who they are, They made a company just to like consult with Apple and make cool shit. So like something like that, like you pick a company that you wanna make stuff for that you like, you know, they have cool websites or whatever, and then you’d be like, Hey, I’m doing that shit.

[00:12:23] Robbie Wagner: Do you wanna buy some of it? And they’re like, yeah.

[00:12:26] Adam Argyle: Hell yeah. I just pitched a team. Uh, they’re called normal from Europe, and, uh, they, , exclusively build non-normal things, so they build future UIs. I, I’ve been obsessed with Fuey for a long time. Fake You are,

[00:12:38] Adam Argyle: you know, you’re watching Westworld and they pull open their tablet and there’s code on there.

[00:12:42] Adam Argyle: I always pause and I’m like, what the hell did they try to fake out the rest of the world with? You know, and I’m looking at the ooey. the most badass Fuey was in Dead Space, the video game. Oh my goodness. That Fuey team was so cool. And so this team, uh, normal, , they just consult and show up to build super [00:13:00] badass future sci-fi ui of all kinds.

[00:13:02] Adam Argyle: And I was like, Hey, I’m here for you. I can push the boundaries of the browser, , in this harm harmony between like, it’s still usable, but it’s also wildly different looking like, let me help you or whatever. I haven’t heard back from ‘em, but, you know, uh, I’m still planting those seeds. I agree. Like finding those cool teams and just pitching ‘em.

[00:13:21] Adam Argyle: Like that’s a fun way to roll right now as I’m in a, you know, I don’t have a lot of risk at the moment. I’ve been saving for years, like I’ve been really good at. Uh, I don’t, I’ve never made a lot of money. Here’s my pro tip, everybody. I’ve been in the industry for a long time. I’ve never made a lot of money, but I’ve saved a lot of money, which makes me feel rich now.

[00:13:36] Adam Argyle: Uh, and I think that’s unique. , Anyway.

[00:13:38] Robbie Wagner: It’s, yes, I have accumulated a lot of debt rather than saving a lot of money. So, yeah, I, I could see where saving money would be useful.

[00:13:46] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Something I’ve always wanted to do, but it’s like I feel like I don’t have the vision of how could I make a thing totally different than it should be on the web.

[00:13:56] Robbie Wagner: Like things like going to the, like a [00:14:00] wa awards, like the a WW awards site and looking at all this stuff. Yeah. And like I would love to like get one of those trophies, like I assume there’s a physical trophy. I don’t know.

[00:14:13] Adam Argyle: You could just make one for yourself. You know

[00:14:15] Adam Argyle: you got the website

[00:14:16] Robbie Wagner: No one would know. Yeah. But yeah, like I think that that could be something you could do.

[00:14:22] Robbie Wagner: Just like make a thing, collect trophies, get accolades.

[00:14:26] Adam Argyle: That would be cool. uh, was in CSS day a couple weeks ago, and Sid Stu Ple, I don’t know how to say her last name. She’s awesome. She has a few of those and she spoke on stage and her most recent website redesign was all scroll driven animations and view transitions. Uh, and you can tell that they’re very good at, , just interactive storytelling.

[00:14:45] Adam Argyle: And so they take those technologies, they make an awards winning site out of it. It’s pretty sweet.

[00:14:49] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. So I guess while we’re on that topic of cool CSS things, we’ll bounce around a little here. , I’m going to be doing a talk at Big Sky devcon. I might get the title wrong. Let’s see, [00:15:00] I think it’s HTML is stealing our jobs. So,

[00:15:03] Adam Argyle: Nice.

[00:15:04] Robbie Wagner: I think HTML has done a good job of making a lot of things that have made JavaScript obsolete, but so has CSS.

[00:15:09] Robbie Wagner: So I wanted to pick your brain, like, I know Carousel is like a big one, , more recently that you’ve talked about, but like, what are the, some of the heavy hitters that I should include? I.

[00:15:18] Adam Argyle: Yeah, so CSS really taking JavaScript’s job, , scroll driven animations for sure. , View transitions is kind of one where a lot of people would pick a single page application, not because they had a audio track that needed to play a cross page navigation, but just because they liked the, the. Few animations, like the between panels, swapping in and out or whatever.

[00:15:37] Adam Argyle: that’s all can be done to the browser now is progressive enhancement, scroll, jam and animations. And I think those two things in particular also are really good for, you don’t need to shove that down everybody’s throat. It’s like if they’re visiting from a browser that can do it, voila, they get it.

[00:15:51] Adam Argyle: If not, then they get, the only bummer is his, the CEO at all the companies I’ve always worked at had like the oldest phone. You’re like, why do you have the old phone? You’re the [00:16:00] one like scrounging millions of dollars out of other people’s pockets and the phone in your pocket is five years old. What the hell man?

[00:16:06] Adam Argyle: So if you have to have your, uh, you know, it has to work on everybody’s phone, especially your CEOs, that can be kind of a hard sell to upgrade. But, uh, those two are good. The custom select stuff is another good one. That’s pretty much all CSS and that can be, uh, wildly powerful and responsive. So no JavaScript for any of that.

[00:16:22] Adam Argyle: there’s things that people don’t know about an H TM l like the data list element. And then like a search input you can say list equals and point to a data list element and it’ll pretty much fuzzy auto complete. and that’s pretty sweet.

[00:16:34] Robbie Wagner: yeah. All good examples. Mine were less, uh, less sexy maybe. I was like, you can do a color picker with input type color,

[00:16:43] Adam Argyle: Yeah. Oh, that one takes data

[00:16:44] Adam Argyle: list also.

[00:16:45] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. But you used to have to like, do tons of JavaScript to make a color picker. So like I, the only way I found that one out was I was like, I needed to.

[00:16:54] Robbie Wagner: Fix some bugs in our color picker at like Amazon for the app. And I was like, this thing blows, like how do I get a [00:17:00] better one? And then it was like, oh, you could just do input type color. And I was like, Hmm, okay, I will do that.

[00:17:05] Adam Argyle: Yeah, that, that one is, uh, just saw some updates too. In Safari. You can now pick transparency and a P three color, and that took years of spec work and H TM L land to get the input type color to support more than RGB hex values. Uh, it’s pretty wild.

[00:17:21] Robbie Wagner: yeah. I mean, uh, tailwind is all KLCH now, right on Tailwind four.

[00:17:26] Robbie Wagner: So I mean, I think that’ll push everyone forward ‘cause everyone uses Tailwind, let’s be honest.

[00:17:30] Adam Argyle: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s way nicer to say blue five, uh, than to think about KLCH. Oh crap. Was it the O and the K and the L that I worry about? Or is it the L, the C and the H? Yeah. It’s pretty wild out there for colors.

[00:17:43] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, I think that’s ok. Lch h’s. Biggest problem is like, what the fuck are the values? And like, what does any of this mean? Because I always just think about it as like, what’s the closest text value? And then go to like the converter online and like get the actual value. ‘cause I’m like, I have no idea.

[00:17:58] Adam Argyle: Yep. That’s really [00:18:00] common. Especially, yeah, in tailwind. Yeah. ‘cause you’ll get a hex value from Figma and so then you go find, you’re just like, Hey, tell me the tailwind color. ‘cause my designer’s probably not gonna notice. Right. I didn’t use the color they said. and yeah. Okay. L say it’s the most annoying thing to. Oh, that’s that too. what bugs me about O-K-L-C-H is the hue wheel. So it’s still zero to 360 like everybody else, but it starts at a different red. It starts at a hot pink instead of red. So like HSL, if you say hue, you can’t translate directly a hue from HSL or HWB into the H of the LCH family tree.

[00:18:34] Adam Argyle: They are shifted 10 or 15 degrees or something like that. And that makes

[00:18:38] Adam Argyle: me wanna shake my fist at a color gamut. I know, right? Dang it.

[00:18:43] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. I mean that’s like a, a real world example of this. You know, you travel abroad, every single country’s plugs are different. Why, why didn’t we just say like, these plugs should be the same so I can plug my shit in when I travel around.

[00:18:57] Adam Argyle: Yeah, I mean the same thing happens. You’re assembling [00:19:00] furniture or whatever and you’re like, oh crap, there’s different Philips heads. You’re like, why isn’t there one Philip Head? You’re like, oh, some are fatter, some are deeper, some are shallow, some I’m like, I don’t care. I would like to screw in this screw and stop screwing up the screws ‘cause I’m stripping them trying to find out which bill of head goes in the right thought.

[00:19:17] Adam Argyle: Ah, yeah. It’s really annoying.

[00:19:19] Robbie Wagner: Yes. But at least it’s Phillip’s head. Like, whenever I get a flathead screw, I’m just like, come on guys. And then,

[00:19:26] Robbie Wagner: yeah, I got a, okay, this is really off topic, but, so we have, like these mirrors we put up in the bathroom, right? I. And one of them we got has like two little hooks in the back and you have to like perfectly get two screws in the wall exactly where those hooks should go.

[00:19:43] Robbie Wagner: And then the other one is much better. It’s like it has a giant bar and you mount a giant bar on the wall and you make sure that’s level and then you just hook the giant bars together.

[00:19:52] Adam Argyle: brilliant.

[00:19:53] Robbie Wagner: Every, like when something is that much better, the rest should be outlawed. I should never be able to buy a mirror that [00:20:00] does that shit like, it’s insane.

[00:20:03] Adam Argyle: It’s insane. And, but then like, so I’ve had these same thoughts and it’s often about screws or plugs just like you’re talking about, but then every once in a while when I’m building something kind of custom, I’m like all of a sudden really hyper aware at why the differences are there. And then I’m like, oh shit, we do need a slightly different screw here.

[00:20:22] Adam Argyle: ‘cause the wood is just slightly thinner and if it was the same screw it would split it or whatever. Like different screws. I’m like, all these things have like, and then I start to go back to where I kind of am on the webinar now. It’s like I appreciate the craft. I know the difference between the 10 different screws.

[00:20:36] Adam Argyle: I mean units of CSS. Actually there’s 54 units right now. I know all 54 units. I don’t know

[00:20:42] Adam Argyle: what they’re

[00:20:42] Robbie Wagner: them all right now.

[00:20:44] Adam Argyle: oh

[00:20:44] Robbie Wagner: kidding. Don’t do that.

[00:20:45] Adam Argyle: hey, over half of ‘em are just the L-V-H-S-V-H-D-V-H. This shenanigans going on there with like the long, what is it? The large, small dynamic in logical and physical sizing.

[00:20:56] Adam Argyle: It’s like 25 It’s ridiculous. And then you got the container query [00:21:00] units that all do the same thing.

[00:21:01] Adam Argyle: But anyway, it’s like, I think I like it Sometimes. I’m like, I’m kind of glad we didn’t standardize on like one screw. If there was only one screw, I think a lot of shit would look stupider because we’d have to work around the size of the screw and that sucks.

[00:21:11] Adam Argyle: And so that’s like, like all of our software, we write functions and we have variables. It’s not like we’re using variables created from some mega pack that’s got all the variables. We tried that with functions for a while with like low dash and underscore, and some of that was really cool to have the utilities there.

[00:21:25] Adam Argyle: Well, tailwind’s kind of a utility thing, but it’s got enough enough in there to, to not create the same thing over and over again. And that’s the, the dance of an abstraction, right? It’s like how do you abstract it enough to enable expressive, meaningful use cases, , but also take away the noise and kind of reduce complexity.

[00:21:42] Adam Argyle: It’s really tough.

[00:21:43] Robbie Wagner: low dash stuff, I feel like 90% of it is like, not relevant anymore,

[00:21:48] Robbie Wagner: but like, I feel like the, the last holdout that has, I don’t, I wanna say recently has become not relevant, but I feel like it’s probably been years. I just don’t keep up with everything. , Like deep cloning stuff. But you can just use [00:22:00] structured clone now, I would always reach for it for that. Like, I need to make sure everything’s copied, just use the, the low dash thing. but yeah, I feel like it’s just like all of these things, like, like I wonder if Tailwind will just become a thing in a browser. Like you can just use this stuff. Like, you don’t need to, like, this is the new CSS us.

[00:22:18] Adam Argyle: Could be, could be. , I just thought of another, , H Tm L or CSS is coming for JavaScript is sibling index. In sibling count. So often in a template language will decorate an element with its index, uh, just to stagger an animation or something like that. And having that in CSS means the template or JavaScript or whoever’s responsible right now for doing that won’t need to do it anymore.

[00:22:40] Adam Argyle: CSS can do it dynamically. That’ll be kind of cool.

[00:22:42] Robbie Wagner: I feel really dumb right now, but I, I think, uh, is it, has that, like, is that one of the new things, like the, has selector or whatever?

[00:22:51] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, that, I think I used

[00:22:53] Adam Argyle: logic.

[00:22:54] Robbie Wagner: because like something about like when our player was open on our site, like has open player, [00:23:00] basically like do some other shit.

[00:23:01] Robbie Wagner: I forget Yeah, I do these cool things and then I use it one time and then like the majority of my work is like not fun and cool like that. So I’m just like, so forget all of that. But,

[00:23:13] Adam Argyle: Yeah. What, what is the majority of your work these days? Is it the, uh, are you, are you babysitting agents? Are you babysitting your managers? I mean, what do you, what do you got?

[00:23:21] Adam Argyle: You are in a new job, right? You’re a couple, couple, weeks in since the

[00:23:25] Adam Argyle: parental few months? Well, yeah, yeah. Since, since the leave. Yeah. A couple. Oh fuck. I, let’s see, what did, uh, yeah, I came back June 9th, so it’s now, yeah, a couple weeks. A couple weeks.

[00:23:35] Robbie Wagner: , But yeah, so I’m at HashiCorp now. still doing Ember. I’m gonna try to do Ember until I die if possible.

[00:23:40] Adam Argyle: I think you should, dude.

[00:23:42] Robbie Wagner: yeah, I mean, as long as someone’s using it, just please hire me. Thank you. but yeah, so I’m doing that. I’m on a team called Front End Foundations, so we do like all the Ember updates and like architecture type stuff for like everyone else to enable them to build things. And then the feature teams build the features.

[00:23:59] Robbie Wagner: [00:24:00] So we’re not doing the feature work most of the time.

[00:24:02] Adam Argyle: Oh, nice. Here at the back of the front, dude.

[00:24:04] Robbie Wagner: yeah. Yeah. So we have like a, a mono repo with like 50 packages that we have to be like, all right, I’ve gotta propagate this like dependency update across. Like hundreds of places like dope. Love that.

[00:24:17] Adam Argyle: Whoa. So are you like reading Module Federation, read mes right now. You’re like all of a sudden you’re interested in the module federation. I, I heard that person talk about that one time and I was like, I do not have that problem. wow.

[00:24:29] Robbie Wagner: no. But I have been advocating for like, like a lot of the changes. So like Ember has ber CLI and like a lot of it is blueprint driven for updates. So it’s like, you know, you do this thing, so if you have 50 things using CLI in a monorepo, you probably wanna update them all separately to get the blueprint updates.

[00:24:47] Robbie Wagner: But I’m like, but do you, because like you could put one prettier config in the root and it doesn’t have to change. ‘cause like I can change it there and everything just inherits from it. So I think we’re gonna like move more towards that. But. [00:25:00] As of right now, everything is like, every time you update, you gotta update it in every single package.

[00:25:05] Robbie Wagner: And it’s, and what’s even more fun is we have code owners set up where every single package has to approve that we change it, and then if anything changes and you have to rebase, you have to get the approvals again.

[00:25:18] Robbie Wagner: So it’s like, it was taking months to get stuff merged. And so like once I was there I was like, this is dumb.

[00:25:25] Robbie Wagner: , I need like pseudo permissions for approvals from everyone on our team and if we approve, it can just be merged. So

[00:25:32] Adam Argyle: Nice. Yeah,

[00:25:33] Robbie Wagner: yeah, that’s what we’re doing now because it’s like that was a slog and nobody should have to do that.

[00:25:39] Adam Argyle: no, that sounds ridiculous. Plus that person doesn’t want to be in that hot seat either. , That happened at Google with, uh, releases. You try to release some software and there’d be some cat who doesn’t know who you are, doesn’t know crap about the project, but they hold the button. they have to hit the final button.

[00:25:55] Adam Argyle: And so like, if they didn’t hit it before you launched it, you were like, you’ve had two weeks to look at this button and just push [00:26:00] the button. Like, what are you waiting for? And so you’d have to like, escalate and escalate it. Escalate until like, oh my goodness. Uh, I, I didn’t want to be them. I also didn’t wanna be me.

[00:26:08] Adam Argyle: This was like a crappy scenario to be in. Like no one’s happy.

[00:26:12] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. I mean, I just ping them directly. I wait like one day and I’m like, Hey, have you looked at this yet?

[00:26:19] Adam Argyle: Oh dude, that’s should start using AI to just be annoying at work. Just like that. Be like, oh, every day. That wasn’t me. No. You, you wrote me today and asked me to hit the button. No, I didn’t. You did? Oh, no. That was my agent. Yeah. I, I had one of my ai Yeah, it’s set to do that every day. Yeah. Yeah. It’s gonna do that every day at this time.

[00:26:37] Adam Argyle: Un until you hit the button. Well, hey, can you turn it off? Nah. No I can’t. ‘cause I need you to hit

[00:26:42] Adam Argyle: that

[00:26:42] Adam Argyle: button. So

[00:26:46] Robbie Wagner: Oh yeah.

[00:26:47] Robbie Wagner: So, yeah. Let’s, let’s talk about ai. So I know that you’re not the biggest fan. so what do you think it’s good at currently?

[00:26:56] Adam Argyle: there’s plenty of things it’s good at, which is really frustrating, , because I’m like, I’m like [00:27:00] torn, on the whole thing. And I also just, just to preface this, I, I’m trying this stuff. With like a good intentions and I, I try all the models, I try all the tools. I’m currently preferring windsurf over, a cursor and Google’s fire base studio and like I, I, uh, or Zed, I like, I like Z so I, here’s, I’m weird, IZ for my personal website, I use Windsurf for like, yeah, don’t tell David.

[00:27:26] Adam Argyle: He was like, come work on the tool. And I was like, no. And he’s like, why not? I’m like, dude, I’m not touching it. I’m not touching that stuff. I’m not into feeding the beast that is just the copycat machine that doesn’t ask anybody and it just vomits out mediocrity. I’m sorry bro, not here for that.

[00:27:41] Adam Argyle: And he’s like, it does. Anyways, we got in an argument, , he’s still a friend, but like, okay. So I’m like, I’m using this stuff and I used it a lot of Google dude. I was training. Um. I did interviews with people and would take all of the conversations and transcripts and trained a model to answer questions for higher ups about like, who was I interviewing and what were they [00:28:00] struggling with.

[00:28:00] Adam Argyle: I used, , research models tons. So people like right now, they’re like, oh yeah, if you don’t like ai, I haven’t tried to research things. I’m like, I’ve tried to research things a lot of times, and the amount of times they lied about the dates that something was supposed to have come out was out of control.

[00:28:13] Adam Argyle: I had to stop using it. It just would lie. And it was a really big document that I didn’t know which sentence was a lie and which one was truth. So you have fun sifting through that, or, you know, dealing with the ramifications of submitting it like it’s real. okay, so some successes. So let’s, yeah, let’s start there.

[00:28:28] Adam Argyle: I really liked using the live screen one, , so that Google had a model that would, you’d stream your, your screen to it, and you, it could then teach you about anything. Basically. , You could open up any application. You didn’t need to be in cursor. You didn’t need to be in. Your terminal. You know, like right now, AI is trapped in a lot of places.

[00:28:44] Adam Argyle: Trapped in a sidebar. This thing, read your screen. You could open up a brand new app or like a design tool or whatever and be like, Hey, I need to make a gradient that looks like this. And it would be like on the right. So same thing. That was pretty cool. It also lied and failed. but it would, I would watch [00:29:00] Japanese, uh, YouTube videos of people building front ends and they’re like talking it out.

[00:29:03] Adam Argyle: And I would get a live translator on a video that didn’t have captions. That’s cool. , I said earlier all the research and stuff that I did and I was packing that into, , notebook lm. That was cool because it cited its sources and they were real people with real comments with real data. That’s cool. with coding, the most success I have with these things, okay? ‘cause they’re non-deterministic. So this is, this is where I start to kind of go off the rails, I like that it can create scripts, easy scripts that do creatable things. , For example, today I had it build a script that automates me creating a new post or a new note on my personal website.

[00:29:35] Adam Argyle: Up until now, I’ve been copying and pasting from a template. So today I had an agent, create a script that automates this. So now I can just from the command line, be like, I’m gonna make a new post. And it’s like, what is it? A note or a blog post. I’m like this and it’s like, what’s the title? I’m like this.

[00:29:47] Adam Argyle: And then just does the cloning for me and adds the dates and all this stuff. Like automates some tasks for me. Scripts are a really good thing because you can come back to them a month later and your model didn’t update and your model doesn’t have new [00:30:00] whizzbang features. That means it doesn’t know what the fuck it was doing back then.

[00:30:02] Adam Argyle: You can like resume where you were. It’s a script. It’s like a definitive thing that you got out of it. So I, I like to use AI to create functions specifically like functions that are fine at pure functions or scripts. It goes really poorly for me when I start having it do sweeping things. And this is where everyone’s like, you tried the wrong agent.

[00:30:22] Adam Argyle: I’m like, dude, I’m trying. All the agents need to shut up. They all will be like confident hot garbage. And

[00:30:28] Adam Argyle: here’s the, okay, do people, people love? Dude, I like your shifting to your seat, like I’m about to get into this. Okay, so everyone loves this. The meme where it’s like CSS walks into a bar and a stool falls over in another bar.

[00:30:39] Adam Argyle: Have you heard that joke?

[00:30:41] Robbie Wagner: No, but that’s amazing.

[00:30:42] Adam Argyle: It’s awesome. It’s such a good joke. And so I’m like, y’all, that’s ai. I prompted to ask for it to get me a drink, and it made a drink, but it also knocked over a bar stool in another bar. You’re like, these things they don’t know what they’re doing. and I don’t know why everyone’s so willing to babysit things.

[00:30:58] Adam Argyle: That’s like, one of the things I, I’m [00:31:00] not a man. I didn’t like being, I’ve been a manager many, many times and I’m a parent now. I don’t wanna babysit things. I wanna trust people and I want good, hardworking people to do good work. That’s the premise of like being a professional. And here we are. Many people are like, happy to have five morons doing long term tasks for them, that they’re just like in the back of their seat, just like chilling, sipping on whiskey or whatever, like telling these five agents over and over again.

[00:31:25] Adam Argyle: Try again, try again. Read the air, try again. I’m like, I can’t believe you’re willing to sit there for hours. but I interviewed people that would do it for eight hours a day. They were like, I don’t write code, but I will sit here and prompt for eight hours to get this done. I’m like, my God, I would never,

[00:31:38] Adam Argyle: So anyway, there’s a small rant, dude, you take it over. Take

[00:31:41] Adam Argyle: the

[00:31:41] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Okay. So I have a lot of opinions because for the past, like two weeks I’ve been trying to rewrite this, uh, ember, add-on ember data model fragments, which lets you like inside a ember model or ember data model, I guess. Like you can have another thing that’s like an object and [00:32:00] it’s called a fragment, and it’s like kind of a model light.

[00:32:03] Robbie Wagner: So it did a bunch of bad things, a lot of transforms and stuff it shouldn’t have done behind the scenes. And so it was just stuck, like it won’t work past a certain ember data version. And so it’s my task for like the next couple quarters to make that work. and so I was like, all right, I’ll try it myself.

[00:32:19] Robbie Wagner: Like naively, I know nothing about this add-on. I know very little about Ember data, but like, I think I can figure it out. And so I did a bunch of stuff. I did have a few successes, like getting things updated, removing a few crufty old things, and then I just hit a wall and I was like, okay, fuck. Let’s see what AI can do for a while.

[00:32:35] Robbie Wagner: And so I started with like, chat GPT, just like, Hey, like this is what I got. What do you think? Like, what should I do? And it was like, you know, here’s some suggestions. And um, I did, some of that didn’t really work, but like, I don’t expect a lot out of chat. GPT, like I, I think Claude is much better at code.

[00:32:52] Robbie Wagner: switched over to Claude and I was like, look, forget everything I’ve done. Let’s start, let’s start fresh from the main branch. , Alright, what do you think I should do? Let’s even go into [00:33:00] research mode

[00:33:00] Adam Argyle: Yeah. Make a

[00:33:01] Robbie Wagner: this. Yeah.

[00:33:03] Adam Argyle: Be a senior swe.

[00:33:04] Robbie Wagner: yeah, this is, this is what, what I have now. And like, here’s the new thing and how I, how it works.

[00:33:10] Robbie Wagner: Research some shit. And it was actually impressive with the research. It was like, here’s like 250 websites I looked at and like the reasons I think it should go this way. And the document it wrote sounded very compelling and correct. So I was like, sweet, let’s do that. And then it like failed at implementing it over and over and I was like, wow, you suck at implementing this.

[00:33:29] Robbie Wagner: But I think the problem, ‘cause I paired with like the guy who’s in charge of Ember data today is that it was fundamentally wrong in his plan, but I thought it was right because like, I don’t know, So it’s like very confident that its plan is right, and it makes it sound very like, oh, I know all this and this and this and this and this, but it was just wrong about like four out of the five like things.

[00:33:50] Robbie Wagner: So it just kept not being able to make the test pass because it was just not using the right stuff. And so then I was like, all right, I’m gonna switch to Klein, install that in

[00:33:59] Robbie Wagner: VS.

[00:33:59] Adam Argyle: used [00:34:00] Klein. Yep.

[00:34:01] Robbie Wagner: like start, start bleeding my money away. Let’s do this here. So it’s like 2 cents, 2 cents, 2 cents, 2 cents until I’m up to like $26 and I’m like, bro.

[00:34:11] Robbie Wagner: You’re not gonna get this right. Fuck you. Like I’m not doing this anymore. Like I was cursing at the fucking AI ‘cause I just could not get it to work. And yeah, I think all of that is to say like, I think it’s actually really, really bad at taking a thing that exists and like migrating it to a new thing that’s like fundamentally different and understanding how things work.

[00:34:33] Robbie Wagner: I think what it can do is like regurgitate some react code and some tailwind classes that like build you a website. I think it can do that, but it’s like really bad at anything that takes more thought. And then it’s also really good at scripts and RegX and stuff. Like you mentioned, like anytime I need a red X or like a thing, a script that’s purely back in, nothing’s gonna be visual.

[00:34:54] Robbie Wagner: Just like do some shit. It’s like I got you and I can trust that. ‘cause I know it can validate [00:35:00] itself and work. But yeah, anything in between is just like not there.

[00:35:04] CTA: This just in! Whiskey.fund is now open for all your merch needs. That’s right, Robbie. We’re hearing reports of hats, sweaters, and T-shirts, as well as a link to join our Discord server. What’s a Discord server? Just read the prompter, man. Hit subscribe. Leave us a review on your favorite podcast app and tell your friends about our broadcast. It really does help us reach more people and keeps the show growing. All right, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

[00:35:37] Adam Argyle: Here’s a site that, or a scenario that. I thought was a, I thought it was a good use case, but also it, this would be poopy if you were, if you, it cost you money. I needed to add ca like a web cache, API. So it’s like a new web cache, API, it’s in Dino.

[00:35:51] Adam Argyle: , My site has been service-side rendered for the past couple years. I wanted to add cash. I’ve been waiting. They released the API API’s already been. Anyway, I’d set three different agents [00:36:00] on the task in three different branches and monitored each of them three different models and was like, okay, I’m gonna see, I’m just doing a test.

[00:36:08] Adam Argyle: I wanna see which one does it best, blah, blah, blah. I also wanna learn from like what they’re doing, and then picked the one that worked the best or whatever. Long story short, all three of them barely finished the task after. I like really had to be like, fix the air, here’s the air. And I had to like ba handhold the little baby thing through the whole task, whatever.

[00:36:24] Adam Argyle: But each of them produced very bloated. Solutions. And the thing for me was, is after I’d reviewed the three different bad versions, I wrote the fourth one and one fifth the size. I knew every line of code and it was a flawless victory. And I was like, I wish people weren’t vibe coding their way through successes.

[00:36:46] Adam Argyle: I think it’s important to maybe rubber duck with these dorks and let the dorks screw it up for you three times. Go learn from their dorky dork moves and then you go look like a pro or whatever. but no one’s doing that. Everyone’s YOLOing this shit to prod all [00:37:00] day. It’s crazy to me like I pity the fool and I’ve already met a couple that have had this has happened to them, but I pity the fool that like built a tower of cards on here with prompts and prompts and prompts.

[00:37:09] Adam Argyle: They don’t understand anything what they’re doing. They just prompt and ask and they accept. I’m like, I don’t know. I just want, I want the result. Is this gonna be it? And is it this, you know, the tool’s like, yes, this will be the result. So you hit accept, and getting themselves into scenarios where. they’re gonna be completely stuck one day, completely painted into a corner.

[00:37:25] Adam Argyle: Whether or not that means the model stops responding because services are down, or it means that they’ve literally got themselves into something that’s so feeble, so broken, so delicate. it’s now entirely too far gone. You know, there’s no refactoring this, there’s no new AI model that can come make sense of this trash.

[00:37:42] Adam Argyle: It is just trash. You have trash software. I think we’re headed towards a future of more software than ever we’ve ever had before. More mediocre experiences than we’ve ever had before, and more trash than we’ve ever had before. And I don’t like that future. That’s part of the future. I don’t wanna contribute to, I’m like, there’s good sides to this.

[00:37:59] Adam Argyle: Yes. But the [00:38:00] people out there touting this stuff and selling it like it’s great, are the ones touting mediocrity and trash and throwing people’s professions into the garbage and copycatting them without saying thank you or giving them any attribution and they’re destroying the universe. I’m like, this crap is a little too far for me to support it while I like my little custom functions and sometimes my decent auto complete, I don’t like the other 90% of what’s going on.

[00:38:24] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.

[00:38:24] Robbie Wagner: it’s really fucked up. I did like the tweet from, uh, I forget the guy’s name, but Sam Altman had tweeted something about like deep seek when it came out or whatever, and being like, oh, you just ripped off all our shit, whatever. And the guy was like, oh, did the guys take your work and not give you attribution and no pay man?

[00:38:41] Adam Argyle: I loved it too. I loved it so much. Yeah. Also when Sam was like, stop saying please and thank you, and I was like, you just told me what to do. I’m, I’m pretty much that like 8-year-old kid. I’m like my kid right now. I’m like, you told me not to. Oh, does that cost you money, Sam? Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m gonna go say please and thank you over and over again just to like attack [00:39:00] you.

[00:39:00] Adam Argyle: I guess it’s like a, he like exposed an attack vector. I was like, this is awesome.

[00:39:04] Robbie Wagner: yeah. I haven’t posted the clip from the most recent episode of this show yet, but it is a clip about like, I wish nothing but failure on Sam Altman and like expounding on that. I’ll, I’ll post it soon. I’m excited for it.

[00:39:18] Adam Argyle: Awesome. And I posted the human centi pad from South Park, uh, which was from 2011. And just the, oh man, it’s so good. And I just like to personified how models were trained. They just got trained on all of our dumb shit we put on the internet. I’m like, you really want train some super thing on all of our internet contributions?

[00:39:35] Adam Argyle: I was like, that was a bad choice from the start. Uh, I tried DIA today, which is ARC browser’s new AI integrated browser. And so the whole play, like how much did you follow ARC in their, their like, pivot here.

[00:39:49] Robbie Wagner: I heard all of the drama and I still use ARC and it still works great for me. I guess I’m in the minority on that,

[00:39:55] Robbie Wagner: but

[00:39:56] Adam Argyle: still use ARC and it works great for me too. So you’re, I, you and I are together. , [00:40:00] There.

[00:40:00] Adam Argyle: But there the pivot was because they had a lot of happy users, but not enough. They wanted a browser to take large market share and they found that their specialty browser was too small of a market share, and so they pivoted to Dia.

[00:40:14] Adam Argyle: And so I opened up Dia today DIA’s pretty much Chrome tabs back, back to tabs at the top. And just like cursor, there’s a sidebar with Chad in it and I was like, this is your play. This is what you think my fucking mom is gonna use. I was like, are you joking me? It’s like this is even more narrow of a use case than where you came from.

[00:40:36] Adam Argyle: And I’m like, if you think the future of interfaces is sidebar chat now, I’m like, you are wrong. In fact, I’m gonna go as far right now as to say that IDs are not the future. We’re probably moving towards a state where like the terminal is probably a better spot. Or even these ones that read your entire screen all the time, like embedded

[00:40:53] Adam Argyle: chat experiences is stupid.

[00:40:55] Adam Argyle: Yeah. Sponsored by Warp. Hey Warp. You’re actually, I think you’re in a huge advantage space right now. I think [00:41:00] Windsurf and Cursor, these are all gonna fight for. For fragments of what is eventually gonna be your pie because you are the terminal. , And that’s really, you need to execute commands.

[00:41:09] Adam Argyle: You’re already there. , They’re simulating using you. You’re already there and you’re already more prepared for this than they’re, I think that’s a really interesting, that’s there’s your hot take for today’s. I think, , terminals will take the coders, , over time and not vs. Code forks, I think vs.

[00:41:24] Adam Argyle: Code forks. Like the $500 billion, whatever dorks just spent on cursor was a moronic choice. Oh my goodness. They were already dying. I was like, cursor’s dying. Everyone’s using Windsor already. You just bought the dying one. You dorks.

[00:41:36] Robbie Wagner: No, they bought Windsurf.

[00:41:37] Adam Argyle: they bought windsurf. I thought they bought cursor. Oh shit. Well, windsurf is the better one.

[00:41:41] Adam Argyle: Okay.

[00:41:42] Robbie Wagner: it is, and it’s, it’s, I don’t know why it’s better. I can’t really quantify the betterness. It’s just like, it feels better when I hit Tab. It does more better things than Cursor does. Like they both kind of work, but like, yeah, I don’t understand why it’s better. It just is.

[00:41:58] Adam Argyle: this is always gonna be, I’m a [00:42:00] front end person and so I’m gonna argue this all the time, but you could get in two types of cars. They both have identical engines, identical distance that they can go, et cetera. But one, you get in and it’s like, mm, plush. You grab the steering wheel and you’re like, damn, you, you say that to yourself, you know, you look at the colors and you’re like, just of the, the hud, you’re just like, damn.

[00:42:20] Adam Argyle: And then you get in the other car and you’re like, alright. You know, feels like a, it feels like an accord, you know? That’s great. and then you’re like, well, which one do you want? And you’re like, I want the one. I said, damn, when open it. So you open, yeah. You open windsurf and you don’t say damn to yourself, but you’re like, damn, something.

[00:42:34] Adam Argyle: Something’s here. , And it is, I think it’s mostly color and spacing. It’s like little stuff. Yeah. It smells better. anyway. DIA sucks. Oh, hold on. The whole thing here is Dia sucks. Yeah. I used Dia and I was like, I like the browser company. I thought they were doing cool stuff and I’m like, DIA’s. Not the way.

[00:42:50] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. I’m, I mean, we should have the folks on from there and just, uh, see what, what their opinion is. But like, yeah, I think they were doing great

[00:42:58] Robbie Wagner: stuff and it, there [00:43:00] was another good, , tweet about like that whole thing, the, the, uh, snippet from the Silicon Valley show where it’s like, did you know you could ask for less money?

[00:43:10] Robbie Wagner: And he is like, wait, I could ask for less. I wouldn’t have had to like. Do all this shit and like, you know, my company would fail. Like, yeah, like that’s what they should have done. Your thing. That’s a chrome reskin, which is arguably a much, much better chrome reskin. ‘cause I love a lot of the stuff they’ve done, but it is not worth $500 million for sure.

[00:43:28] Robbie Wagner: So yes, you could have probably just been like, Hey, maybe this is worth $10 million, a hundred million dollars, whatever, and you know me as the CEO, I’ll make 1 million, 2 million instead of like 10 million, 50 million, whatever. But no one does that. They’re all just like, how can I make the most money? And maybe you could just be happy with big piles of money instead of insane piles of money.

[00:43:51] Adam Argyle: Dude, seriously. I, I think the arc browser is a perfect example. I agree they shouldn’t have shot for the moon and then shoved AI [00:44:00] in there just to take more money. Here’s a fun little side note. As an Amsterdam a few weeks ago, , ran into a lawyer who specializes in software specifically like banking software and like high value money transaction software.

[00:44:13] Adam Argyle: all his clients were Bitcoin for four years straight, five years straight, until AI hit. And then all of a sudden all his clients were AI clients. And six months ago, every single one of his AI clients stopped and they all went back to Bitcoin. And the reason was AI is making no money. It is soaking up money faster than they’ve ever absorbed money before.

[00:44:34] Adam Argyle: And it’s, and it’s not returning, at least with Bitcoin, there was a, a way that money could circulate. There was like a, a, at least something resembling income was transferring around, even though some of them felt like Ponzi schemes. Also, I love how like, crypto tokens and then we have AI tokens.

[00:44:51] Adam Argyle: We’re like counting tokens. Like how many tokens did you spend on that request? And like the deep research ones are now like 200,000 tokens. You’re like, all I lost was a question and you’re gonna charge me [00:45:00] for all those tokens. It’s like, why are we in this world dealing with tokens? And everyone’s like, the crypto token bad, the AI token good.

[00:45:06] Adam Argyle: I’m like, all tokens suck. It’s just get outta here. Come on. They’ve even sucked at full tilt. I don’t want my tokens. I don’t wanna have quarters. anyway, just like rant over about tokens, but like, , apparently investors are finally, finally noticing. That AI is not lucrative. That you can, you can try as hard as you can to shove it down throats because that’s basically what’s been happening.

[00:45:29] Adam Argyle: No one’s asking for this much AI everywhere yet. It’s everywhere. They’re try, they’re trying to shove it into our face. I’m pretty sure. They just love how much they’re tracking us. Think of how much information we’re giving them. They used to know what tabs we visited, but they didn’t know what we did on ‘em, you know?

[00:45:44] Adam Argyle: And now they know what we want to do there because like people in DIA are like, I want to compare these two products because I’m interested in a wedding party and blah, blah, blah. It’s like, and they’re like, oh, tell us more about your data. We will sell it. Even if it’s anonymous, I shall make money. I’m [00:46:00] just like, dude, what are we doing?

[00:46:01] Adam Argyle: It’s just crazy.

[00:46:04] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, and I mean, even if you ignore the fact that they’re trying to delete all jobs and screw everyone over, like it’s really bad for like energy efficiency and the world, like there’s not enough water that exists on the planet to cool enough AI to like do everything so. Maybe we shouldn’t do so much.

[00:46:25] Adam Argyle: Yep. Yep. It’s wild. It’s, yeah, it’s not making any money. It’s eating up resources and you have these higher ups.

[00:46:31] Adam Argyle: So the Shopify person last week or whatever was like designers. You’re now all just designers. If you were a UX designer before Mm, you’re now a designer. If you were a graphic designer before, you’re now a designer.

[00:46:44] Adam Argyle: If you, all of you are under one umbrella because you now have the power of ai and AI A allows you to be a poser in any, any profession that you desire. You can, you can now be a fraud and feel the, the, [00:47:00] the weight of imposter syndrome at a new level you’ve never felt before. I. With just a prompt. So if you’re not a UX designer, you are now, just ask for it to act like one and now you shall be it.

[00:47:11] Adam Argyle: And our whole company, you are all now a conglomerate of posers. And I was like reading this and I was like, oh my God, this is crazy. To me, specialty is really valuable. Like how could you just go generalize your entire crew? I’m like, that’s super fucked up. , And then you have like multiple CEOs doing this.

[00:47:28] Adam Argyle: The only people with bonus for AI are the ones that think they’re getting shit cheaper. Dude, in Silicon Valley you had the conjoined triangles of success or whatever it was like. And they’re looking at it going, well, we can do it cheaper. Dude, I think AI is almost like a new offshore concept for a lot of CEOs where they’re like, we used to take, ‘cause it was expensive to have US-based engineers.

[00:47:47] Adam Argyle: Let’s go offshore. it’s cheaper, it’s not as good. Well, sometimes it’s good, you know, whatever. we’ll deal with it. And they’re just doing that now to ai. They’re like happy to get cheaper even though it’s not better. That’s a little [00:48:00] controversial, but

[00:48:00] Robbie Wagner: well, they’re doing some of both because a lot of the phenomena companies are being like, how can we hire everyone in India and also add ai? And it’s like, so it’s like they take, it’s like AI is like reviewing their stuff and like helping them be faster and they can pay them a lot less than someone in the

[00:48:18] Robbie Wagner: states.

[00:48:19] Adam Argyle: that’s sad. See,

[00:48:20] Robbie Wagner: whole. Yeah, it’s, it’s all dumb. I mean, I guess maybe some people are benefiting from that, so good for them if they are. But yeah, it’s, it’s just like we’ve lost the whole idea of people being specialists and caring about their craft and like having any kind of seniority, like now you’re just, you know, if you know a little bit about code, maybe like a few months of experience, just go to town and it’s like, yeah, that’s, I think everything is going to like, hit the fan at some point.

[00:48:49] Robbie Wagner: There’s gonna be like, I’m, I’m waiting for the first bank to be like, Hey, new, new bank website, vibe coded. And then like, all the money’s gone and it’s like, oh fuck. [00:49:00]

[00:49:00] Adam Argyle: Yep.

[00:49:00] Robbie Wagner: something is gonna happen there. And then there’s gonna be all of us that are like, we actually know things. We can fix this for you for a hundred million dollars.

[00:49:09] Adam Argyle: Yeah, last year I was pitching, uh, when AI was first coming out. I was like, oh God, I already know what a good business idea is. It’s like you’re the ai, you’re the AI fixing SWAT team. So we’re an agency. There’s five of us. We specialize in fixing the shit you didn’t pay enough for that you used AI for, so we’ll show up.

[00:49:26] Adam Argyle: We’re gonna cost a lot more than you paid originally. Or

[00:49:29] Adam Argyle: you could

[00:49:29] Robbie Wagner: But it’s still tokens.

[00:49:30] Adam Argyle: But it’s seriously, for every one minute,

[00:49:36] Adam Argyle: , for every minute, it’s this many tokens. Dude, I heard a really good comparison. It said A code is not an asset. , It’s a liability. So we now have AI is producing liability at a rate that people can’t actually be responsible for. And so, you’re right. Banks, companies, these folks are, that’s what I meant, like the, the imposter syndrome is gonna catch up to you where you can’t fake being these roles for too long before he ca come on, we saw, [00:50:00] catch me if you can.

[00:50:01] Adam Argyle: He can’t. Oh, I love that. I thought about that today. Like remember, he fakes being a pilot. He fakes being a copilot. That’s what copilot is. I honestly am really upset. I’m really upset that the marketing has been so good about ai. ’ cause I’m like, I don’t want a confident asshole sitting next to me making suggestions, but for some reason you call him a copilot and you make it sound like I’m in control.

[00:50:22] Adam Argyle: And all of a sudden it’s like, I want him around or whatever. And I’m like, damn, the marketing of this was so good. I hate that the marketing is good. copilot is such a good term for what he’s not. ah,

[00:50:34] Robbie Wagner: it should be more humble. I think if it were like, Hey, I think maybe this might work, but I actually don’t know about X, Y, Z. could you give me more information? Instead of being like, oh, you write, here’s the real answer right now. Got it. Fully done, like. It just needs to be a little more humble, and I think there’s room for that.

[00:50:52] Robbie Wagner: Like I don’t understand why it needs to, I guess it’d be bad if it was like, I don’t really know. Then like investors would be like, oh, we shouldn’t have invested in [00:51:00] this one. It doesn’t really know, but like, I don’t know. It’s, it’s all dumb.

[00:51:05] Adam Argyle: Yeah. No, you’re totally right. I wish it was a little bit more humble too.

[00:51:08] Adam Argyle: , You know, the only time it’s humble is when it, like, it makes a plan. It’s so funny. The plan stuff is, so the agent thing is so funny here. Everyone’s like, dude, you just tried the wrong model. I’m like, no, I didn’t. It’s just like back in Bitcoin where they’re like, dude, you’re on the wrong chain.

[00:51:21] Adam Argyle: I’m like, I’m not on the wrong chain. It’s not that the next chain is not the chain that will solve all the problems. Just like the next model or the next agent, or the next MCP server is not gonna solve all the problems going on right here. but it’s like you have, uh, these agents that will create this plan, just like you said, robust looking plants that sound really, really, good.

[00:51:38] Adam Argyle: And then they get stuck on like step two and you’re like, well, your plan was really good, but you can’t seem to get by step two. So in step two you’re in there like, Hey, you’re trying to chat. Nice to it. At least I do. Like, I’m like, I don’t know that robot overlords might come for me one day.

[00:51:50] Adam Argyle: I don’t like cuss. I do cuss at, uh, calling things where it’s like, press one or press two. Like, fuck you, fuck. Just give it to the

[00:51:56] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, because that gets you a, an operator.[00:52:00]

[00:52:00] Adam Argyle: but with like agents, I’m like, try to be nice to these things. , And I’m like, Hey, you know, it looks like your solution produced an error. Uh, oh, here, I’ll go ahead and paste you there.

[00:52:07] Adam Argyle: Here’s the error. And it’s like, oh my God, you’re so right. I can’t believe I screwed up like that. Let me fix that. And then it’s like, here, I fixed it. And you’re like, actually you knocked over a stool, , in the bar next door. Like you didn’t fix the bug. You added more bugs and you’re breaking other shit that I didn’t ask you to touch.

[00:52:21] Adam Argyle: I’m like,

[00:52:22] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Today I was actually getting output that was like, oh, you’re right. Those tests are failing. Here’s actually a special case in the like implementation, not the test code where we go if it’s any of these test cases, just say true. And I was like, no, you fucking dumb ass. I was like, we’re trying to actually test it, not build in test specific code.

[00:52:45] Robbie Wagner: That’s so dumb.

[00:52:46] Robbie Wagner: ,

[00:52:46] Robbie Wagner: But

[00:52:46] Adam Argyle: that is so funny. Um, I read a article too, someone saying, Hey, AI is cool. Use agents, but don’t let it write your tests, which is like the opposite of

[00:52:54] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. I would only let it write my tests. Yeah.

[00:52:56] Adam Argyle: but this, this, this person made a good argument and they’re like, Hey, the [00:53:00] tests are like the most definitive version of the contracts you expect the software to do.

[00:53:04] Adam Argyle: If you don’t even own that and you give that to the, the co-pilot in quotes, , the confident moron that gets and makes stuff up, like you are giving some of the most important parts of your code to the thing that has no idea what anything means. Like this is where you need to shine as a human is in the tests.

[00:53:21] Adam Argyle: And I was

[00:53:21] Adam Argyle: like.

[00:53:21] Robbie Wagner: I guess that’s true. If the test were bulletproof, then you know that the implementation has to work because it passes the test. So I, I can say that argument.

[00:53:30] Adam Argyle: Yeah. What do you think about the argument about, um, so I’ve seen both sides of this. This is what’s so exhausting about following ai right now too, is it’s just like the people are taking wild swings and every direction, every week we have a new model that promises the world anyway.

[00:53:43] Adam Argyle: there’s a debate about whether or not taste is going to be valuable in this, in this new phase. , You know, and, and now, now, now since this is all just a, a prompt away, , music, , art, it’s a prompt way. It’s all about taste. And so some people say it is all about taste and other people say taste [00:54:00] is now irrelevant.

[00:54:01] Adam Argyle: Do you have a hot take on the, the aspect of taste in this age of, AI.

[00:54:07] Robbie Wagner: Do you mean like knowing if the, like if it generates art, is it good art?

[00:54:12] Adam Argyle: Yeah. Or having the words to ask for good art or the eye to evaluate the result that you got,

[00:54:18] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, I do think there’s some of that.

[00:54:20] Robbie Wagner: , And some of it is not like super tangible, but it’s like I do all of the art for this show. Like it is all from chat, GPT. and it gave me a good one today, but it also gave me a, a not that great one.

[00:54:34] Robbie Wagner: so like I can tell the difference, but I also don’t care that much. ‘cause it’s all just like, who’s really looking at this art that much and like, whatever. but I do think there’s some of that, like, you know, knowing are, are the colors in this art? Like, are they complimentary? Does it like give you the same tone that you are expecting for people to like evoke, you know, feelings when you see this or whatever.

[00:54:52] Robbie Wagner: Like, I do think there’s some of that. And if you don’t have any of that, then you wouldn’t know if it’s good or not.

[00:54:58] Adam Argyle: That [00:55:00] is very much where I stand as well. I had, , talks I wanted to give that I was just like, I just wanted to teach people the words so they could ask for something good. Because if you sit down and I, I’m like, Hey, look, I’m not trying to stop you from making UI, , with these tools. Um, but I do wanna give you words so that you can ask for better ui.

[00:55:15] Adam Argyle: If you don’t know the words, you’re never gonna get it. You’re only gonna get me mediocrity unless, uh, you have the ability to articulate what you want. And some of that stuff comes down to like, yeah, ask, ask for text wrap, balance on your headlines. If you don’t ask for it, you won’t get it. So, uh, so taste, taste plays into the result.

[00:55:34] Adam Argyle: , ‘Cause you won’t get what you don’t ask for, in some cases. But see the, the other side of the argument with people being like, well, once these models are good, see this is again, once the models are better. they will do that.

[00:55:43] Adam Argyle: But I’m like, to me, I’m maybe,

[00:55:45] Adam Argyle: and I’m like, regardless, you should know the words of what makes art good, what makes music good, what makes like a UI

[00:55:51] Robbie Wagner: Knowing that the border radiuses can’t be the same. Exactly. Because there’s like math involved in the, the nested border. Radiuses.

[00:55:59] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. [00:56:00]

[00:56:00] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.

[00:56:01] Robbie Wagner: , Did you, I don’t know if this was streamed or recorded, did, but did you see Ken Wheeler’s, react Miami talk about like, AI music making.

[00:56:10] Adam Argyle: no,

[00:56:11] Robbie Wagner: I don’t know if it was recorded, but he was basically like, the problem with AI is it doesn’t have riz.

[00:56:17] Robbie Wagner: You can be like, make me music. And it’s like, do do do do do do do, do. And it’s like, he’s like, all right, I’m gonna tell you, if you put, if you put the snare and the bass drum on the same beat, a baby could die. And it still does it, it’s like, it just won’t, like, it can’t get that like funky beat, you know?

[00:56:35] Robbie Wagner: Like it just won’t do it the way you ask. , But then he put it in like, one of the, the better, I don’t know, music, AI things. And it, it did have Riz, but he was like asking, you know, chat GT and all, all the models to like, make music and it wouldn’t, wouldn’t do a good job. But like the specialized ones are doing a better job, I guess.

[00:56:52] Robbie Wagner: But, yeah, I think a lot of that is like, you know, if you don’t know what sounds good, then like, how are you [00:57:00] gonna know like, oh, this, this made music. It’s in four, four time. It’s got like. consistent beat, whatever. Like, maybe you like that, but maybe it’s not the best option.

[00:57:08] Adam Argyle: Yeah, and I think that’s a lot of these higher up executives seem to, they don’t have the taste. They’re interested in results. And they think results come from functionality, not beauty, which is again, like why Windsurf was somehow magically better than Cursor was a beauty feature,

[00:57:25] Adam Argyle: not a functionality feature.

[00:57:26] Adam Argyle: but you know, it’s so hard to articulate these things to, to folks that high up. they’re just on a different level.

[00:57:32] Adam Argyle: Okay, I want to, uh, pivot before we hit the hour, uh, and explain what, so everyone’s like, Adam, you said you’re waking and baking with your kids. So you’ve heard the term Wake and bake, right?

[00:57:41] Robbie Wagner: don’t know that I have, but

[00:57:42] Adam Argyle: shit. No wonder you keep looking at me like it’s not that funny. Okay. So wake and Bake is what stoners do. , If they’re like a, like

[00:57:49] Adam Argyle: a hardcore stoner, wake up, get baked. Yeah. So wake up, turn over from your bed, hit the bong, blow it out, and be like, and that’s how I start my day. And so when I [00:58:00] say I’m waking and baking with my kids and you’re not responding, that’s why I’m like, why isn’t he responding to me saying I’m, I’m smoking weed with my children in the morning?

[00:58:07] Robbie Wagner: I assumed it was actual baking.

[00:58:09] Adam Argyle: That’s what it is. Dammit. And that’s the problem, is you are on the, you’re on the innocent side of this. And this is how my mom was too. So I used to tell my mom all the time, I’m like, mom, I, I wake and bake every Saturday. And she’d be like, that’s so sweet. What are you baking? But I was really baking.

[00:58:24] Adam Argyle: That’s the thing. I bake up a Dutch baby or a puffy pancake like every Saturday.

[00:58:28] Adam Argyle: And I wake and baked this morning with my kids. And that’s why I was, , I wanted to tell you. ‘cause I’m, that’s just funny. That’s, to me, that’s like a funny phrase to say. It’s like I’m waking and baking, uh, with my children.

[00:58:38] Adam Argyle: But they asked me for a puffy pancake for the last day of school. So that’s everyone. I don’t wake and bake. I am green, green friendly, but you know, I, within reason anyway,

[00:58:48] Robbie Wagner: Maybe not the first thing when you wake up. Yeah,

[00:58:51] Adam Argyle: find it’s a little cloudy. Yep.

[00:58:54] Adam Argyle: Oh, funny. But I, I wanna hear a little bit about your twins. , I’ve got a friend with twins. They’re six months old about, I’ve hung, I’ve hung out [00:59:00] with them for the past, you know, four or five months bouncing ‘em on my knee, making ‘em smile and shit. How’s twins for you? Dude?

[00:59:05] Adam Argyle: , Give us a lowdown of the

[00:59:07] Robbie Wagner: it is a lot of work. We’re having a lot of trouble with a couple of things. One, they have like acid reflux going on, so like they’ll like drink half their bottle and then like, just yell at you forever ‘cause like it hurts to drink more and

[00:59:20] Robbie Wagner: whatever. yeah. So there’s a lot of that and like, they’re never really full enough to like sleep long enough because of that.

[00:59:26] Robbie Wagner: And so like

[00:59:27] Adam Argyle: Come on, babies. You got like one task when you’re a baby, which

[00:59:29] Adam Argyle: is

[00:59:29] Adam Argyle: to

[00:59:30] Robbie Wagner: know. Just you just have to drink milk.

[00:59:32] Adam Argyle: I know my kids did the same thing. One of ‘em had a lip tie and he couldn’t get a suction, you know, like another kid like Yeah. Like, would throw it up halfway through and you’re like, dude, keep it in, man.

[00:59:41] Adam Argyle: Like, it’s

[00:59:42] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. They also have, uh, like tongue ties and like, they’re not the worst tongue ties, but yeah, they’ve, they’ve got problems with, with all of that. So yeah. It’s, it’s not been perfect, but they have been getting better. we got a, like four and a half hours stretch of sleep last night, which was a amazing, but yeah, [01:00:00] it’s, it’s just so much, like they can never, both at the same time be chill is like the biggest thing.

[01:00:05] Robbie Wagner: Like with one baby, you can be pretty confident that at some point you’re gonna like, calm them down and you get a few minutes to relax, but then you’re like, oh, thank God you’re quiet. And the other one’s like, here you go. Like,

[01:00:17] Adam Argyle: Dang.

[01:00:18] Robbie Wagner: it’s, it’s been rough, but I think it’s like to be expected with newborns.

[01:00:23] Robbie Wagner: Like I know with our, our first son, like he. Was kind of a handful until like maybe three months. And then by six months he was like, really great. Like six to 12 months was like the sweet spot. So I know there’s, there’s light at the end of the tunnel and we’re gonna be getting there, but it’s, it’s been, uh, a lot of work so far.

[01:00:40] Adam Argyle: Dang. Yep. I can imagine. , I, I have two kids. We didn’t have them at the same time. , I can’t imagine having two at once. , It sounds like tons, but also, it’d be cute to watch. So are they identical or what is I, I

[01:00:53] Robbie Wagner: They are.

[01:00:54] Adam Argyle: Oh, shits okay. So, uh, have you labeled one? How do you, I heard a funny story the other day of like telling ‘em apart.

[01:00:59] Adam Argyle: [01:01:00] They, they make someone switched up their socks one day and they got them back from like a babysitter and they were like, hi, which one is? Then they were like, what do you mean? And they’re like, well, we put special socks on the babies to know which one is fucking which. And they were like, oh shit, we didn’t do that.

[01:01:12] Adam Argyle: So they guessed, bro. They guessed and they didn’t know for two years or some shit like that. , But they guessed right. I guess. So. That has a happy ending. How are you dealing with this situation?

[01:01:21] Robbie Wagner: a, I heard a similar thing where like they had, like the old cloth diapers on and they had like colored like, , safety pins to hold them there.

[01:01:30] Robbie Wagner: And then they, like, they put them in disposable diapers and gave them back to them. And they were like, wait, who the fuck is who? But like, , so we have, we painted, uh, it’s Arthur and Henry.

[01:01:39] Robbie Wagner: We painted Arthur’s toenail and they both have, anklets on. So if the anklets were to fall off, we have one painted toenail to like know who’s who. But, ‘cause yeah, it’s like, it’s really nerve wracking. They have social security numbers and everything. Like you can’t just be guessing who’s who,

[01:01:54] Adam Argyle: totally.

[01:01:55] Robbie Wagner: yeah.

[01:01:55] Robbie Wagner: But they’re, they’re pretty much identical. Like, we keep looking for things that are [01:02:00] different and we just, like, we haven’t really found a lot yet. The one thing that is different is they, their heads turn different ways, but you can’t rely on that. Like, like they’re, they’re very, you know, they want to face different directions,

[01:02:12] Robbie Wagner: but like, what if, what if they decided they don’t want that?

[01:02:15] Robbie Wagner: Like, you can’t be, you can’t be like, that’s the, oh yeah. His head’s to the left. That’s him.

[01:02:20] Adam Argyle: Right. He’s looking west. To some reason he is drawn to the west, you

[01:02:23] Adam Argyle: know? Uh oh. That’s bizarro. Wow. I love it though. Some of that stuff sounds, , oddly fun at the same time. It’s like a, it’s a certain type of torture where it’s like, it’s fun and I love it, but also it’s stressful.

[01:02:36] Robbie Wagner: yeah. Well, I have to say, I, I feel similar to, like you said earlier, where it’s like, like when I took, I took four weeks of leave and, uh, I was like, I don’t really need, ever need to work again because like, you know, it takes all of my time to like deal with them all day. But now that I have to work, it’s like we can’t deal with this on our own.

[01:02:57] Robbie Wagner: Like, I feel like we’re gonna have to get a part-time nanny at some [01:03:00] point or something. ‘cause

[01:03:01] Robbie Wagner: it’s just, yeah, it’s, it’s a lot.

[01:03:04] Adam Argyle: And you’re working remote.

[01:03:05] Robbie Wagner: Yes, thank God. Yeah. Amazon was like, oh, I’ll be in five days a week. And I was like, , are you gonna promote me like to the level I was supposed to be when I was hired? And they were like, oh, hell no.

[01:03:13] Robbie Wagner: And I was like, all right, I’ll see you later.

[01:03:15] Adam Argyle: Damnit such a cold move from these big companies to do that.

[01:03:19] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Oh my God is so stupid. It was actually extra fun. ‘cause like, sorry, I’m just rambling here. But like,

[01:03:25] Adam Argyle: Dude, do the dad ramble? I’m asking you for it. I’m like, let it out, man.

[01:03:29] Robbie Wagner: HR was like, oh yeah. , Like, why, why did you leave? And I was like, do you want to hear? And so, so I like, I was like, oh yeah, you know, I’m not gonna name names or anything, but I was like, you know, this culture is toxic.

[01:03:39] Robbie Wagner: This stuff is bullshit. I can’t get promoted, whatever. they were like, huh, okay. And they like followed up with these people that I did name names to them. I’m not gonna name names publicly on the podcast, but like, they followed up with all these people and they were like, seems good. Amazon, best employer on Earth.

[01:03:53] Robbie Wagner: See ya. Like, and I was like, okay, cool. , So like, everything that I mentioned was just like disregarded. But, uh, [01:04:00] that’s, that’s how it is.

[01:04:01] Adam Argyle: Yeah, I got a bunch of smoke blowing up my butt too by people that, um, they were like, oh, they’re just saying we, we appreciated you, blah, blah, blah. And then later I hear that they, they knew and didn’t stop it, you know, but they

[01:04:12] Adam Argyle: told me they didn’t know, and just like some cold stuff. And I was like, dang.

[01:04:16] Adam Argyle: okay, well, I’ve, uh, got a new amount of trust for some and less trust for others. Uh, we’ll just move.

[01:04:25] Adam Argyle: Yeah. Tech is just a, oh God, I thought I would, , I thought I would live forever. like I, I, I’ve been in love with tech since I was like, really young dude. Uh, I loved digital screens.

[01:04:35] Adam Argyle: I loved making stuff for this black mirror over time. And then now as a, I’m not like ready to go live in the woods or anything like that, but. I, and I kind of have developed like a lack of love for my Black Mirror for multiple years, but it’s like especially strong now with ai. ‘cause I feel like AI is this, we, I’m sorry, I’m bringing it back.

[01:04:54] Adam Argyle: AI feels like this push where it’s like, please love us still. We all see you slowly getting [01:05:00] rid of your Black Mirror Social networks, losing their, their entertainment value. Uh, you know, even YouTube’s like all this stuff that you were watching us for, you’re realizing that your personal lives and your inner communication with other humans is more important than the Black Mirror.

[01:05:13] Adam Argyle: We don’t like that. We would like you to come back to the Black Mirror. So we’re creating this new, thing that makes the Black Mirror better. And I’m like, whoa. , It’s almost like the Black Mirror knew it was dying and this is like, its dying. Push is this thing that wants to know everything about your interactions across the Black Mirror to make your Black Mirror experience even better.

[01:05:35] Adam Argyle: And I’m like. This has smelly shit written all over it, you

[01:05:39] Adam Argyle: know?

[01:05:39] Robbie Wagner: yeah. the more connected you are, the less happy you are, in my opinion. Like I think back to the days when I was like, you know, playing in a band had a flip phone, I. Maybe got online to do some MySpace here and there. Like that was when I was happy. When you’re like, Hey, let me look at everything on Twitter for like an hour straight.

[01:05:59] Robbie Wagner: It’s like, no one’s happy [01:06:00] doing that. Like we’ve come way too far and AI is making it way worse. And maybe we should just pivot way back the other way, but no one’s gonna do that. ‘cause we can’t, ‘cause we’re all scared to death. We’re gonna lose our jobs and we gotta use ai. ‘cause if we don’t, we’ll lose our jobs, so.

[01:06:14] Adam Argyle: Well, and we have CEOs telling us, oh, we didn’t even talk about the, the moment we’re like, employee reviews now are including AI in them. Or people are like, Hey, so we see that you didn’t have as many prs that used AI as Bob. Bob submitted 50 prs with AI this quarter. They’re crushing it. And you’re like, those prs were all pieces of shit.

[01:06:35] Adam Argyle: 50 prs. They’re amazing. And

[01:06:37] Adam Argyle: you did did two. You’re just like, what’s up Bo? What’s up

[01:06:41] Adam Argyle: Billy?

[01:06:42] Robbie Wagner: worked.

[01:06:43] Adam Argyle: Yeah. You’re like, yeah, mine worked. And they’re like, we’re not counting working prs. We’re just

[01:06:47] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.

[01:06:47] Adam Argyle: of prs.

[01:06:48] Adam Argyle: Oh my

[01:06:49] Robbie Wagner: oh man. Uh, we had, I don’t know the guy’s title yeah, we, we had a meeting where they were basically like, yeah, we have GitHub copilot for everyone at HashiCorp, and we’re only using it like [01:07:00] 25% of the time, and those people are the ones that are doing it right. And I was like, are they though, like,

[01:07:06] Adam Argyle: Well.

[01:07:07] Robbie Wagner: yeah, like it, it increases speed by 40%.

[01:07:10] Robbie Wagner: Well, maybe speed and if you’re counting it in like terms of like code output line by line. But if you’re talking like things that work, uh, I don’t think it’s really that relevant. I, I agree with you that I think it’s a great like rubber duck sounding board. I think it’s really good for that to like get me unstuck.

[01:07:28] Robbie Wagner: But yeah, I don’t think it can really code.

[01:07:30] Adam Argyle: Yep. It’s got designers. I have designer friends, the same thing. They’re being mandated to , well to use AI in their design process. There’s CEOs that have been caught using it also, where it’s like, Hey, you sent out a letter. We all know you used AI to write it. We’re losing respect for you.

[01:07:44] Adam Argyle: And he’s like, dang it, that was supposed to get me respect. Question mark. You’re like, what did you think was gonna happen? Dude, this is just a wild, a wild scenario we’re in. and I, I kind of hope the bubble’s bursting, but honestly, I feel like the, I. I feel like the minority [01:08:00] here, and I’m like worried. I feel like the old man.

[01:08:02] Adam Argyle: Yeah. Shaking fist at

[01:08:04] Adam Argyle: AI Cloud. And I’m like, why? And it’s up there going, because all of you love me. And I’m like, Woohoo. And then you’re like, oh shit. Everyone, every podcast and every article I read is touting how AI is making them better, stronger, faster than I’m fuck. What do I not know that they know?

[01:08:19] Adam Argyle: I swear. I’m in the grounds, I’m in the

[01:08:20] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, I think they’re doing less complex things, is the thing.

[01:08:25] Adam Argyle: Yeah. I th I

[01:08:26] Adam Argyle: think they’re lying.

[01:08:27] Robbie Wagner: I think some people are really, really good prompt engineers. That’s like a new job. Like if you can really get that prompt right and really get to understand what you want, that’s another skill that like some people have that I don’t, maybe, but I think those people are very rare and I think for most of us, you really need to know what you’re doing still or it’s not gonna work.

[01:08:48] Adam Argyle: I. Yep. I met a kid last week. They, they were like, I am the first prompt engineer at the company, uh, because I’m still in school. but I submitted two prs that were all vibe coded and now I’m the lead vibe coder at the [01:09:00] company. And I was just like, that’s really great for you. And then I’m like, I’m like biting my hand as I’m just like, dude, you are gonna get, something’s gonna punch you in your face.

[01:09:08] Adam Argyle: It’s gonna be like your coat is gonna come back to haunt you so hard right now. I can’t even, ah, but I’m like, enjoy your temporary success butt hole.

[01:09:16] Adam Argyle: Uh,

[01:09:20] Robbie Wagner: All right, well, we’re over time. , This has been fun. Is there anything you would like to plug before we end?

[01:09:25] Adam Argyle: nah, y’all, this show is great. , I think you have more recognition than maybe you, you think you do. I’m always happy to hear my name in here. Happy to be a stand-in co-host and I appreciate you. I appreciate you, uh, in a lot of ways and I’m, I’m assuming you’re a killer dad, so dude, keep rocking that shit.

[01:09:38] Adam Argyle: You’re doing great.

[01:09:39] Robbie Wagner: Thank you. All right. Thanks everyone for listening. If you liked it, please subscribe and we’ll catch you next time.

[01:09:44] Outro: You’ve been watching Whiskey Web and Whatnot. Recorded in front of a live studio audience. What the fuck are you talking about, Chuck? Enjoyed the show? Subscribe. You know, people don’t pay attention to these, right? Head to [01:10:00] whiskey.fund for merchant to join our Discord server. I’m serious, it’s like 2% of people who actually click these links. And don’t forget to leave us a five star review and tell your friends about the show. All right, dude, I’m outta here. Still got it.