The Dysfunctional Developer

Nick Nisi (00:04.975)
fails.

Amy (00:05.912)
Good call.

KBall (00:07.298)
yeah, I'm so out of.

Boneskull (00:08.389)
Have we ever had a problem with that? On Riverside?

Nick Nisi (00:12.098)
in the early days.

KBall (00:12.158)
I have never had a problem with Riverside, but I know that there have been cases.

Boneskull (00:23.44)
I'm recording.

Nick Nisi (00:24.601)
just then I blink out.

KBall (00:24.852)
Go audacity.

KBall (00:29.162)
you need to be restarted.

KBall (00:37.566)
and I guess the other thing we should talk about is we had sort of mentioned maybe these things are going to go to YouTube, but we should be aware of that if, you know, we're doing this, that hey, this video might actually get used. Do we think that's the case? This video might get used, shipped to YouTube.

Amy (00:53.898)
That's fine. Do I need to be recording video then too?

Nick Nisi (00:58.073)
No. If Riverside exports it, then I think we'll be fine. And I think it will. I wouldn't mind it going to YouTube, I just, I do think that the audience is there. Is going there more.

KBall (01:00.199)
Only so much.

KBall (01:12.211)
Totally.

Boneskull (01:15.226)
Or enough.

KBall (01:17.865)
actually

Boneskull (01:17.925)
I'll get over it.

KBall (01:23.241)
All right, shall I just kick us off?

Nick Nisi (01:27.854)
Sounds great.

KBall (01:30.213)
All right, hello and welcome to the very first number one episode of the Dysfunctional Developer. I'm K-Ball. I will be your erstwhile host today, kind of running things around, but I'm joined by some of my friends and we're gonna introduce ourselves and get to know you a little bit so you can get to know us a little bit as we go. Folks joining me today, Nick Nisi.

Nick Nisi (01:54.4)
Ahoy, ahoy. It's been a little dysfunctional so far.

KBall (01:58.6)
Yeah, we're just getting started. We'll expose all of the underpinnings. Also with us today, Chris Boneskill-Hiller.

Boneskull (02:07.761)
Hi.

KBall (02:10.761)
And of course, Amy Dutton.

Amy (02:14.765)
Hello!

KBall (02:17.831)
All right, so as this is our first episode, I thought it might make sense for us to give a little bit of backstory of who we are and how this came to be. Now, some of you may recognize all of us because every single one of us who have introduced ourselves were at one point, some of us for a very long time on the JS Party podcast. And hello and welcome to everyone coming over, the refugees from the sad shuddering of that podcast. So.

I guess the beginnings of dysfunctional go back to late 2024 when we heard from changelog that JS party was going to be discontinued.

Amy, think you're to blame for this.

Amy (03:02.089)
I so. I said I would be a regular and then Jerod announced that the podcast would be no more. So I will take full responsibility for the dysfunction.

KBall (03:14.601)
for the dysfunction going on there. Yeah, so, I mean, this happened. And of course, like two weeks later, Nick and I were out at a conference representing JS party. And so we're there all hyped up. We was like, oh, JS party, I love JS party. And we're like, yeah.

Nick Nisi (03:14.982)
Ha

KBall (03:31.465)
JS party. So about that, what are we going to do? And we got to talking and I think Nick, do you want to like maybe share a little bit about you had been thinking about some of the things that are missing in the developer ecosystem or developer podcast space?

Nick Nisi (03:46.947)
Yeah, just thinking like, you know, I really loved the The formula that we had on js party and like getting to talk to so many amazing developers about their really cool projects and all of that but the really cool thing that I like my favorite episodes were the ones where we were together and I was like we should have More of that. What if we came back with with just us kind of talking a little bit more But also like having guests and things like that

And then like we also kind of all well you and I K-Ball came to the realization Realization that we're doing a little bit less JavaScript day to day at the time I was doing well flow and hack and some of these other proprietary languages and You know like talking less about JavaScript specifics day to day seemed more relevant to like the day to day

goings on of my world and you seem to relate, is that right?

KBall (04:48.712)
Yeah, well, and the other thing that we talked about a lot at that conference and we started hearing from people as we started asking them, like, what do you think is missing was, you know, conferences and podcasts often are talking to the folks who are like doing the cutting edge stuff. That's like super cool. I'm, you know, on the very latest beta release of react and doing this and that and the other. and we go to these conferences or we listen to these podcasts and we're like, this is great. And then we go back to our day jobs and we're still centering divs or word.

doing whatever the equivalent is in our space. And so wanting to kind of take a little bit of that head on and be like, hey, know, software development is not all sunshine and puppies. Some of it sounds like bone skull. It's a little bit more like, you know, dysfunctional. No offense.

Nick Nisi (05:38.404)
Thanks for clarifying, because Sunshine and Puppies is all I hear from Bone Skull.

Amy (05:41.645)
you

Boneskull (05:44.057)
Okay.

KBall (05:45.129)
Ha!

Bear in mind, as we talk about backstory, we should actually explain how some of us met each other, in particular, Amy and Chris. When did you all meet?

Amy (05:59.789)
two seconds ago.

Boneskull (06:01.829)
Yeah, well a few minutes, yeah, but yeah.

KBall (06:05.722)
And Chris, you introduced yourself as the curmudgeon.

Boneskull (06:08.807)
Yeah, essentially, that's kind of the thing that I do on this thing. So I will continue to do that unless somebody has other ideas. I don't.

KBall (06:23.465)
So this brings us back to dysfunctional. We're all dealing with different levels of dysfunction in our day jobs. And maybe for this introductory episode, we can actually give ourselves a little bit more of an in-depth of an intro and talk about what we do and the types of challenges that we face as software developers in the industry in 2025. And I am gonna throw to you, Chris, because I just picked on you. So now it's your chance to shine. What are you up to these days?

Boneskull (06:51.077)
Well, right now I'm in kind of an R &D role. I'm working as a security engineer, a JavaScript security engineer. And so yes, I do JavaScript all the time. I'm up to my neck in JavaScript. It's all JavaScript and very close to the language. So.

What I think is maybe different about my role is that, yeah, it's more of a R &D role. My team is the security lab. So I am poking at the edges of the language and trying a lot of new things. And so my challenges are probably different than the typical developer who is

you know, doing sprints or what have you. That's kind not what my job looks like. Yet, it's, you know, I still suffer some of the same problems as I'm sure you do. All of you do. So that's kind of my background. That's not my background. That's what I'm doing right now. But yeah, there we go.

Did I answer your question? All right, good. None. I don't really touch the web right now. If I do touch the web, I don't touch HTML or CSS.

KBall (08:17.545)
think so.

Nick Nisi (08:19.416)
How many divs have you centered recently?

KBall (08:22.365)
Hahaha

Amy (08:22.805)
You

Nick Nisi (08:23.662)
You're so lucky.

Nick Nisi (08:33.848)
Hmm not to go too deep, but I am curious like since you don't touch the web too much But you are a JavaScript security engineer. Is that node specific or is it varying? runtimes like Deno or Bun or any of those

Boneskull (08:49.083)
Currently it's node specific, but it's not necessarily going to always be that my project right now is node specific.

Nick Nisi (08:57.922)
Awesome.

KBall (09:01.482)
Nice. Amy, do you want to go next?

Amy (09:04.621)
Sure. So I'm currently working as a lead maintainer on the Redwood JS core team. So Redwood is a framework that I guess you could say kind of competes with Next.js and Remix. Those are probably two more popular frameworks, but in the same JavaScript space. So my role, I'm not contributing to framework code.

I feel like framework developers are on a whole nother level. They're building that foundation for somebody else to be able to come and build on top of. And the problems that they're solving are incredibly difficult problems because they're architecture problems. They're things that are undocumented. They're like cutting edge beta react features and trying to incorporate those and prepare the basis for things that other people will build on top of it. But

My role is really to support the rest of the team that is doing that work. So I have tried to familiarize myself as much as possible with other frameworks and I will go speak at conferences and teach people how to use the frameworks. I've tried to familiarize myself with Next and Remix and Astro and SvelteKit just so that I understand all the differences so that when people ask what's so special about Redwood, I can say, well, this is a feature that Redwood offers that these other frameworks don't or vice versa. So it's...

KBall (10:00.329)
you

Amy (10:22.273)
been really fun just kind of getting to experiment with a lot of different things and then teach people how to build on top of the things that we're building.

Boneskull (10:31.824)
And Redwood is, it's an open source project, you're employed by the company making Redwood. Is that?

Amy (10:37.857)
That's right. That's right. So I'm full time. I'm paid, which is good, but it is an open source project. So anybody could contribute. Anybody can open a PR or an issue and make recommendations.

KBall (10:52.286)
There's, I think a lot of developers who would love to work full-time on open source and get paid to do it. That's great. think when I've been in that situation as well, where a company is running a project, there's a lot of less lovely things about it or dysfunctional things about that type of situation. I'm curious what that ends up feeling like compared to other types of work you've done.

Amy (11:20.193)
Yeah, this one's a little bit different because all of the funding so far has come from Tom Preston Warner. So if you're not familiar with that particular name, Tom co-founded GitHub is one thing, but he has also founded a bunch of things in his career. He started Gravatar, which I didn't realize, or he started the TOML file format. So he is the Tom in TOML. So he has quite the record of experimentation and

open source and things like that. So he sold GitHub and made a ton of money when he sold that to Microsoft. so one of the things that he's done since he has moved on beyond GitHub is that he's taken that money and started a venture capital company. And so he is invested in kind of the who's who of Silicon Valley. But one of the ways that he's given back to the developer community is to say, this is the framework that I wish existed.

And as I build things, this is the platform that I want to build on top of. And so he has funded that out of the generosity of his heart. And so that makes a little bit of a different situation when it's somebody that's not necessarily trying to recoup that cost, or they don't have ulterior motives where they're trying to make money or trying to shift priorities to get the biggest bang for their buck.

Boneskull (12:39.655)
And that is very unusual.

Amy (12:41.302)
Mm-hmm.

KBall (12:43.241)
reminds me of some people I know who work at the Chan Zuckerberg Institute as well, where it's like, yes, we have budgets and we're working for this thing. And also they're kind of just all like downstream of these very, very, very rich people being like, I want this to exist.

Amy (12:48.492)
Mm.

Amy (13:00.919)
Yeah, yes. So it's been really nice. And the nice thing too about working with Tom is that he has opinions and the best sense of the word and that he has experience. He is a developer at heart. And so a lot of the patterns and things that he recommends comes from that experience.

KBall (13:24.669)
All right, Nick, you want to go next?

Nick Nisi (13:26.638)
Sure. So I'm Nick Hoi Hoi and I'm in Omaha, Nebraska. I've been here my entire life. I run the Nebraska JS meetup and have been doing that for over 10 years now. It's still going strong. We didn't die in the pandemic, so that's great. But work-wise, I just completed a year at Meta where I was working on the ads manager, doing a lot of hack code, a lot of flow code, which is a somewhat...

competitor to TypeScript, but only really used it meta. And yeah, I've been doing that for the last year, but now I'm a developer experience engineer at Work OS, where I have moved beyond JavaScript quite a bit. I still do a lot of JavaScript. A lot of their product is written in JavaScript TypeScript. And I support that, but I'm more focused on like external developers being productive with it, which lets me branch out to the other languages that they support.

So I've been doing a lot in Ruby, in Go. I have been picking up Laravel this week, which is pretty awesome actually. I am surprised to hear myself say that I'm a fan of PHP, but I liked hack when I was writing it, so it kind of makes sense. And kind of like Amy, although not really, like we have a lot of open source code at Work OS, specifically like around our SDKs and making it easier to actually integrate in with the product. And so, so far,

100 % of my work has been in open source repos. So I am also getting paid full-time to do open source, but it is specifically on these SDKs and You know answering bugs, but feature requests bug fixes things like that

Boneskull (15:11.193)
Okay, I'm curious. So Work OS, this looks kind of like an auth provider. Is that what they do?

Nick Nisi (15:21.272)
Yes, that's one of the things they do.

But yeah, probably one of the biggest things as well. I've been mostly kind of attached to a lot of the SDK work around AuthKit, which is their open source authorization framework.

Boneskull (15:41.731)
see but is it a little like they seem to focus on integrations like so you know plugging product a into product b is that is that another kind of I was curious okay

Nick Nisi (15:57.059)
Yeah, yeah. I think like through that, like it's kind of geared towards startups to get them into like bigger enterprises. So it's the enterprise operating system.

KBall (16:16.797)
the Enterprise operating system.

Nick Nisi (16:18.787)
I I just froze.

Boneskull (16:19.367)
for small businesses to be able to sell to enterprises because enterprises need all of these, know, SAML and all this stuff, right? That's cool. Okay.

Nick Nisi (16:29.742)
Right.

KBall (16:32.723)
Do you make Samuel seamless? That would be great.

Nick Nisi (16:36.034)
Once I learn what SAML is, I'll let you know. Kidding. Mostly.

KBall (16:42.664)
Nice. I guess I'm the last one to do an intro. So I'm K-ball. I am currently VP of engineering at a coaching focused startup called Mento. We're small. So the title says VP, the hands still do a lot of coding or the brain still does a lot of coding. Though these days I've dived super far down into the LLM based coding rabbit hole. And so a lot of times I'm getting

a cursor to write code for me asking different things, which is kind of definitely interesting and something we will probably end up talking about on this show since it's a pretty hot topic. No, Nick, no AI coding.

Nick Nisi (17:26.916)
This is an AI-free world. I'm kidding, of course.

Amy (17:28.781)
you

KBall (17:31.645)
I mean, that might be a nice escape because it feels like you can't escape at all these days, right? Like everybody's AI, AI, AI, AI, AI, AI. Like it's everywhere. And I guess to that point, a lot of the software that I'm writing right now is attempting to use LLMs to do something interesting, right? Where.

coaching company, we have a human services coaching business that we support, but we're also building an AI coaching agent that is able to kind of go in and help you in the moment inside of your work environment. so kind of grappling with a lot of the challenges of working in a non deterministic type of situation, working with those different things, working with bleeding edge tools that are changing every week or two.

A lot of the code that I'm writing is either in Ruby or in Golang these days. I'm actually, surprisingly, even though I'm doing a lot of LLM machine learning stuff, not using Python much. And then of course any web stuff ends up being in TypeScript and that sort of thing. But that's kind of the space that I'm living in these days.

KBall (18:47.752)
So maybe now having spoken a little bit about what we're doing, one of the things I've learned through working at a lot of different companies and also now I work as a coach too. So I've coached people who work at a lot of different companies. I don't think there exists such a thing as a fully functional company.

Amy (19:10.349)
You

KBall (19:11.121)
Like they're all screwed up. You just kind of have to pick which, which types of dysfunction you don't mind so much and which ones are going to get on your nerves a lot more or really bothers you. So I, I'm wondering both in the name of the podcast and also kind of putting that on the table, if it might be fun to go around and sort of share a little bit about the ways either our current companies are particularly dysfunctional or certain companies we've left recently are particularly dysfunctional.

looking at you, Nick Nisi, or...

other things along this topic domain.

Nick Nisi (19:50.073)
Yeah, I guess I can kick it off. think I wrote a blog post when I left and I think that like the main highlight that I was pointing out in that is that, you know, you that's like one of the metas, like one of the top tier companies to work for in the Valley and, just in software engineering in general. And they struggle with the same things. Like people rush to get code in bugs get, you know, it's not a bug free repo by any chance, by any.

sense of the word and it's you know not always the most well architected which leads to a lot of rework later on and the main like takeaway that I got from that is not like to put down meta in any way but just they're no different they're just a different scale obviously but same problems

KBall (20:43.347)
And what was it like for you working there?

Nick Nisi (20:47.205)
It was a little dysfunctional. Yeah, we had a lot of a lot of like big product changes and confusion In a lot of ways for a year. I traded in my code editor for Google Docs, which was not as fun, but Yeah, I also got to write some pretty cool code although I didn't use neo vim for like a whole year and it was terrible that was terrible

VS Code is awful. I don't know how anyone does it.

KBall (21:20.393)
I have been unfortunately having to learn about VS code because cursor is a VS code fork and they're once again diving deep into the LLM coding world for a variety of reasons, they're despite being a VS code fork, their tooling around that is still well above any of the NeoVim integrations that are out there or things like that from what I've seen. Nick, you're shaking your head, but I know I've looked at Avanti and it's okay, but it's still

Nick Nisi (21:42.98)
We'll talk about Avanti later. It's pretty good.

KBall (21:50.41)
you know, six months behind at least, I think. But yeah, VS Code is miserable and it's slow and it's got like, the plugins are so unreliable and this that it's like, how do people use this thing?

Boneskull (22:05.923)
I use it.

Amy (22:07.211)
I do too. And I love it.

Boneskull (22:10.904)
I wouldn't say I love it, but there are ways which it could work better for me. That's for sure.

Nick Nisi (22:10.98)
And that's great.

Nick Nisi (22:22.542)
There were ways at Meta to use Neovim, but like everything was out in the cloud. It was almost like a code space type situation. And so it was just easier to use VS Code. And I actually used like a plugin that would use my local Neovim install, like in a headless mode, but then run within VS Code. And there were some quirks, but overall, like I got to use a lot of the same plugins and things.

Boneskull (22:49.095)
Wait, so wait, you're in a web browser? No. Okay, okay. Okay, so you're in VS Code and you're like on a remote file system and then you use a plugin that like just throws all that away and uses your NeoVim with whatever you're working on. Yeah, okay. That would be good if you were also in a web browser doing that. That would be interesting.

Nick Nisi (22:53.9)
No, I was in VS Code.

Nick Nisi (23:06.937)
Yes.

Nick Nisi (23:16.28)
Yeah, I don't know that you could.

Boneskull (23:18.329)
I don't know. I'm sure they'll add some way to do it though.

KBall (23:19.496)
you could.

Can you compile VS code to WebAssembly?

Nick Nisi (23:26.986)
It runs, I think you can run the full thing. Like that's what VS Code does, or sorry, GitHub Copilot.

KBall (23:31.591)
I guess, yeah, no, it is a, it is a, it's an electron app, isn't it?

Boneskull (23:35.781)
Well, Metro runs like the core editor runs in the browser. Monaco, Metro Monaco, yeah. Like if you go to TypeScript Lang Playground, that's what you get.

Nick Nisi (23:40.557)
Monaco.

Nick Nisi (23:53.09)
You can also, like on any GitHub repo, just hit the dot on your keyboard and it will open up VS Code for that repo in your browser.

KBall (24:02.164)
Really? I didn't know that. I'm gonna go try that now.

Boneskull (24:11.291)
Wait, why are we talking about VS Code?

Nick Nisi (24:12.58)
You

KBall (24:14.301)
Holy smokes, it does. Yeah, all right. So Nick, what you're saying is all the normal dysfunctions plus VS code, that's what meta was like.

Amy (24:14.701)
dysfunctional things.

Boneskull (24:18.467)
like arguing about editors.

Nick Nisi (24:26.838)
Mm-hmm, which was just another dysfunction.

Boneskull (24:29.831)
and flow which is not TypeScript.

Nick Nisi (24:32.996)
That's right. It certainly isn't.

KBall (24:34.065)
Actually, yeah, do you want to talk about Flow? I mean, I'm amazed they're still using it, to be honest.

Nick Nisi (24:39.819)
Yeah, Yeah inertia They claim that it's not the type script couldn't handle the scale I don't believe that in like modern type script, but I never tried it. So I don't know But they have flow in typescript have different Different opinions about soundness in types. I think that that's the biggest difference and then a few years ago now

Boneskull (24:40.42)
inertia.

Nick Nisi (25:08.034)
Flow just kind of like gave up on trying to be like a public competitor to TypeScript and it's now more of a it's still open source and you can use it but it's like we're gonna gear this towards what we want exactly and So they added some some niceties to it for sure. There's one thing that I really miss that I think that PHP has But like if I want to say like this type is null or undefined It's like this type or null or undefined. I would have to explicitly like type that out in TypeScript but in flow

I can just put a question mark before that and that just means like it might be this type otherwise it's gonna be null or undefined and that's pretty nice. But then the other like major language change that they added was a React specific component syntax which sounds terrible and I don't think that TypeScript should ever adopt it but it was awesome. It saves so much time and so much boilerplate writing when you're writing React components that I do miss that a lot but I also don't.

I also understand that TypeScript should never adopt a React-specific thing.

KBall (26:13.619)
So, I mean, is it something that you could like build a Babel plugin to reproduce and like compile something into a TypeScript based component?

Nick Nisi (26:21.826)
Yeah, probably. Like all it did was you trade out like when you're doing a functional component instead of saying like function wrapper, you could say component wrapper. And then instead of providing like a props object as the first argument with like an interface, like typing it as this interface of props that you pass to it, you just like do all of that inline. So you treat it as if those props were just arguments to the function and put the types right inline like that.

And then it effectively just turns that into a props object that you can use. A destructured props object.

KBall (27:02.78)
Okay. Amy or Chris, you want to talk about what's dysfunctional in your current workplace or a past workplace?

Amy (27:11.629)
Let's talk kind of the opposite end of that. So prior to Redwood, prior to the consultancy that I joined full time, I ran my own company for seven years. And I think a lot of people look at that as like living the dream. This is going to be the perfect situation because I'm a solo person doing my own thing. I get to call the shots, but it's there's still a lot of dysfunction even there because even though you are

kind of calling the shots. In my case, I still had clients that I had to answer for. And at a job, you have maybe one stakeholder if you're just reporting to your boss or your manager. But if you're trying to run your own agency, you have seven maybe at a single time that you're trying to answer to. And there's a lot of dysfunction there. And the hardest part that I had to grapple with was the fact that I got myself in this situation a lot of times.

KBall (28:06.323)
That's right. All the dysfunction you could point back to yourself, right? You're like, yeah, that was me. Yup.

Amy (28:09.695)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you have to own it and claim it and figure out how it's going to be different from there. But it's not always perfect. Freelance doesn't mean freedom. There is some nice things about having a full-time employer and the fact that you can shut down your computer at night and not have to worry about you can go on PTO because when you're doing your own thing, if you're not working, you're not getting paid. So that was kind of the trap that I fell into.

KBall (28:40.97)
feel like I've been wandering back and forth between that and a job for like the last, I don't know, seven years or something like that. Like I'll go and do something independent and then I'll get a job and then I'll do something independent. And like, I love hate both of them. Right? Like there's a lot of things I love about my job right now.

Amy (28:48.183)
Mm-hmm.

Amy (28:57.996)
Yes, yes.

Nick Nisi (28:58.02)
You

KBall (29:04.84)
And also I find myself on Sunday night being like, why do I have a job that I have to wake up in the morning for? Why am I not independent again? You know, it's, they all, it all has, I was gonna say it all sucks, but it doesn't all suck. It's all glorious and it all sucks. Like there's trade-offs to each.

Amy (29:09.174)
You

Amy (29:23.201)
Yes, for sure.

Nick Nisi (29:26.98)
So we should all just be gardening, right? That's your takeaway?

Amy (29:29.965)
You

KBall (29:31.781)
independently wealthy, I think is the way to go if you can track that one down. Except I was reading some guy's blog who had like sold a company for a shit ton of money and he was like totally aimless. He's like, I don't know what to do anymore. Like I don't have to work, but then I'm miserable. And then if I work, I'm miserable. Like what do I even do? So I feel like actually the answer might be that there is no situation in life that is perfect and you figure out how to make it work.

Nick Nisi (29:34.574)
Yeah.

Boneskull (30:05.169)
So I work in open source. I've done open source for...

maybe the past eight, nine years or something. And so I'm always, you know, I'm living that dream. That dream is let's get a job and you contribute to open source full time and you get paid for it. And that's the dream and that's what I do. And that's cool. There are things that are really awesome about that, but the thing that sucks about that is most companies open source,

is way deprioritized. It's like, you know, they depend on these open source projects and so they start contributing to these open source projects and then they're like upset when the open source project is struggling and well that's because the open source project is under resourced and so like

that's where it's been for so long where I'm in this company and I'm trying to do good work but I am just one person and I can only do what I can do and for some of these projects that are...

just incredibly important to these companies. Like they can't like find the budget for like more than one or two FTE right? And and it's I mean yeah I mean I get that I'm not I'm not selling you know I'm not making anybody any money but it's it's just like

Boneskull (31:52.931)
It's so foundational to their technology that it's just, it blows my mind. And I was always in a place where I would, you know, really, really enjoy what I'm doing and care about this thing. And I want to succeed, but I can't because, well, nobody else does, right?

There are other companies that depend on the same open source software, yet they won't put their own headcount on it, right? And so that's kind of the thing, is there are a few projects where they are well resourced, and you're really lucky if you work on those, but I feel like most of those jobs, you know,

contributing to open source full time. You're just, you're working on this thing that, you know, may or may not be owned by the company that you work for and it's not making the company any money. And so you're just kind of, you're kind of on your own. And yeah, that's, that's kind of the dysfunction.

KBall (33:19.497)
And this is, think, the pro-con of the working on open source for a company that pays for it, whether it's at Redwood or honestly the folks working on Flow or React at Facebook. Like both of those projects were, I guess, re-asked less now because the team has diversified out into now Vercell is the one calling a lot of the shots there, not just Facebook, but they were open about it. They're like, you know what, this is open, but also we're making decisions based on Facebook's needs. And

that kind of on one hand you're like that sucks for an open source project like I don't I want that to be that's not open in the way that I want it to be open and on the other hand you avoid some of what bone skulls talking about here because you're like this project is actually doing things based on the company's needs so people are going to care about it and resource it.

Nick Nisi (34:10.052)
You could always try extortion.

Boneskull (34:10.308)
Yeah.

Boneskull (34:15.149)
it was the project in particular was one that was that's owned by the OpenJS Foundation and so it's not something that I mean for all intents and purposes yeah if the more if you put people on the project and nobody else is working on it then you have control of project but still

you can't just do whatever you want, you don't own the trademark, stuff like that, and it's a little different if you do, but certainly projects, and I'm thinking in like the, what's the big foundation, the cloud,

Cloud Native Foundation, like those projects are well resourced and they are for the most part, I mean yeah, it's their foundation on projects and so they're kind of the commons and like, am I just like doing the wrong software? Maybe that's what it is. Maybe it's just JavaScript. Maybe JavaScript doesn't get...

doesn't get that sort of investment as a Kubernetes. I don't know. But I'd like to learn more about what makes Cloud Native Foundation tick like that.

KBall (35:53.373)
think this is a time right now when a lot of people are.

not the happiest in their jobs because it's hard to find a new job right now in the tech industry. I know a number of folks that I've coached have ended up going through that and people who've never had trouble finding work, having to hit the pavement, taking months to find things, it's really challenging. And so the flip side of that is if you have a job, a lot of times people feel like, okay, I'm stuck here. I'm like,

hard to find something, I'm just going to hunker down even though it's not great. I'm curious.

what you all do when you're in these like less ideal situations to kind of get by and make it okay for yourself. Cause I think that's something we all have to face. every job is dysfunctional in some way. And sometimes you're feeling great. And sometimes you're feeling trash. Like how do you get through it? And what do you do to keep yourself going?

Amy (36:58.072)
think side projects have played a big part for me, just trying to build the things that I wanna build or design the things that I wanna do and either releasing that as open source or just having my own personal software. mean, it makes a big difference in being able to call the shots. You were talking about running your own company and being a solo developer versus working somewhere. The side projects kind of give you a taste of both because you can be calling the shots while you're also employed.

bringing in income. So, and the nice thing is it kind of gives you a little bit of margin to experiment because you're not worried about how funding is gonna happen, that paycheck, taking care of your family. You can just do it to satisfy your own craving.

Nick Nisi (37:48.677)
Yeah, I agree that that's a really great way to do that because it gives you that confidence boost in a lot of ways and if you don't have time for that one way that I've found to kind of do something similar but within my current role is to look for areas where I can make small wins because it's like it's like starting up the flywheel, know, like a small small push here and there I start feeling like I'm actually useful and it just

starts that spinning until I'm actually like going and I'm like it's it's more about like the way I feel rather than the way that I maybe I'm perceived but also maybe not I think about that every day so yeah small small little wins

Boneskull (38:36.135)
Side projects is something I have done in the past in that situation and Yeah, if you if you hate what you're working on so much and

for me I burnt out because I would work on this horrible thing all day and then I'd go and work on open source which has its own set of demands and like you know for fun and you know it became a second job right but

Happily, I have not had a situation where I hate what I'm working on at my job for quite a while. It's, you know, more trying to get over the fear of being laid off because I have been laid off several times in the past several years. And, you know.

how I react to that happening and I don't know it's like getting getting laid off and and then all of a sudden whoops how am I gonna make money is is nobody nobody finds that easy right and so it's coping with that I think and during the times where I was

not employed. certainly, besides the job hunting again, it's like side projects. Pick up a contracting job here or there. Try to...

Boneskull (40:23.207)
Just, mean, I love programming enough that I will obviously just kind of do it for fun if I'm not satisfied. so it did give me some, I guess, freedom to just kind of hack on whatever I wanted to because nowadays I am probably too old and too jaded to want to work a whole lot on an open source project after a work day.

But yeah, that's kind how I survived it. It's just like, okay, I just gotta, I gotta, I'll contribute to these projects I like. I have some ideas. I'll just work on these things and, you know, keep my skills up or whatever.

KBall (41:10.257)
actually be curious, and I don't know if the rest of you have grappled this is with this as well. I think that fear of being laid off is something that is a part of why a lot of folks are unhappy right now. And you said you've you've sort of worked on ways to manage that. Have you found any ways that work or that really help?

Boneskull (41:27.343)
I mean, I mean, for me, just stay busy. mean, I don't want to like lay in bed and ruminate or whatever and think that I suck so much because I don't have a job, right? That's not good. You can't do that. And I just I just have to I have to keep busy. know, keep in the way I got out of it was was essentially network, of course, like how I.

cold calling companies are just applying on the website that never worked for me and so I would I just kept up my network and and kept poked around and trying to find somebody who wanted something like what I could give them and

Sooner or later it happens, but there's always that fear that it won't, you know, there's always that fear that, my god, I'm going to be unemployed for a year or whatever. this was a little bit before all those layoffs started happening. And so I wasn't like in the pit of despair because like the job market was still okay and but it still can be difficult for

someone with my years of experience to find a good home, you know what mean?

KBall (42:53.117)
Nick or Amy, that the type, have you dealt with layoffs or the layoff fear and do you have any techniques or tactics that work well for you?

Nick Nisi (43:05.794)
I'm unfortunate enough that I haven't been laid off. But the fear is there, for sure. It's been there. And yeah, I was nodding along to Chris because staying busy, not ruminating, those are difficult things for me. But that's what I tried to do the most. Tried to stay up on skills too, through like doing some side work and...

preparing talks things like that just like trying to feel valuable in some way

Amy (43:46.102)
I think the fear is real wherever, whatever size company you're at. the, I was working prior to Redwood, I was at a consultancy and I was on the leadership team and I had access to all the financials and could see sales aren't coming. We're struggling. you can see the bottom line. can see literally the writing on the wall and that's really hard, especially when you are in a position where you can't talk about it.

because you are in a leadership role. And I think for me at the time, the only thing that I could do was just to start applying elsewhere. Because I felt like I was actually doing something to prevent myself from being in a bad situation. I mean, ultimately, the consultancy did have to shut down after I left. But I was fortunate enough that I was able to find a job before then. But you know, it's.

People talk about change and a lot of times people fear change. I would put myself probably in that same bucket. And it's almost like it gets to the point where staying hurts more than what might be on the other side. And for me, I loved the company that I was at, but the fear of not being able to provide for my family definitely pushed me out the door.

KBall (45:09.545)
I think the... go ahead.

Boneskull (45:09.633)
Nick, I was just going to say that, you mentioned feeling useful, and I think that's, that's been a point of dysfunction. it's hard for me when I, like,

start a new job and there's that period where I have to ramp up and I'm getting nothing done. Really? I mean, you are, yeah, you're learning things. But I hate it. I hate it. I want to push code and, you know, some companies have a culture where they start you doing that sort of thing.

Nick Nisi (45:37.592)
Mm-hmm.

Amy (45:38.029)
you

Boneskull (45:46.629)
but other places don't and it really just depends on the project, I guess. that's a struggle and I think maybe that's something to get into in another episode.

KBall (46:06.579)
think one thing that I have found useful also with the fear of layoffs is like being very, I guess not avoiding that that's a possibility and being very careful and clear about stocking away a buffer of money and knowing how much that is, right? Like both my wife and I right now are working for startups that are not profitable, that are, you know, potentially...

not going to be able to fundraise more or get to profitability. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. And so we even have this joke of like, okay, we're socking away this money to protect against the eventual collapse of one or more of our companies, right? Of like, okay, this is gonna happen at some point. How are we ready for that? And then when I have been laid off before, I've been on like every side of layoffs, not laid off, laid off, having to lay people off, like they're all miserable. They all suck. But when you get on that side and you can say, okay, you know what?

I know because I've done the math that I have six months of runway here. And so I can then plan. can not panic. I can take a little time here and there. can network as Chris was saying and like know what those numbers look like. And then, you know, if you say, okay, I got a consulting gig that will help. Now, now I've got seven months. I can find something there. But kind of looking at it straight on, because I know a lot of folks I've talked to just sort of avoid it. And they're like, yeah, I'm just not thinking about this thing.

If it happens, I don't know how I'm gonna survive, right? Like do the math, think about it. Like figure out, okay, if I, you my expenses for a month are 10K a month, all right, then if I want to have three months, I need to have $30,000 in a bank account somewhere that I can get to it.

And now I can work towards that and as sort of taking action is one of the best antidotes I've ever found for despair or any of these other things. And so, yeah, I think there's something there about like attacking it head on and being like, yeah, this is a reality that could happen to me. What would I do? And then having a plan for it.

Boneskull (48:11.287)
If you or anyone you know may have been in, say, talk therapy at some point, the therapist may have suggested if you know you are going to be in a situation where you're anxious, you think about what can I do to minimize that? You know, what can, how can I prepare and what steps can I take? And you, it's just, it's like planning.

and being strategic about that sort of thing. If you know that your company is struggling or whatever, well, you know, it could happen. instead of going to the worst case scenario, just get your ducks in a row, you know what I mean? So it's good advice.

Amy (49:05.165)
I read an article a couple weeks ago about a surgeon talking about anxiety and it was fascinating because he's basically saying I'm a surgeon I have somebody's life literally on the table and I get anxious you can't freeze in that moment it really is a life or death situation so how do you deal with it and as he talked about anxiety one of the things that he talked about was figuring out

why you're anxious. Like really that is exposing an underlying emotion. And so he was saying a lot of times you get anxious about the things that you care about. And so in his case, he really cared for his patient and the person that was on the table. And so I think for me, when I get anxious, if I can give it a name instead of just putting it in a bucket saying, this is my anxiety bucket saying, no, what I'm anxious about is I care for my family. I want to make sure that I'm providing for them. That's why I'm anxious. That's what I care about. And when I do that, at least for me,

I know everybody kind of handles their anxiety a little bit different. It makes it okay because I'm like I'm okay with caring for my family and I'm okay that that's why I am anxious and so it makes a difference when you can give it a name.

Nick Nisi (50:25.23)
feel like there's a fine line between that. Like, yeah, I want to be prepared. But that leads me to tend to think about all of the ways that I'm not prepared. And I think that's like the definition of anxiety, right? Like I'm worried about all of the eventualities that may not come to pass.

KBall (50:48.275)
So what do do when that happens?

Nick Nisi (50:52.804)
I just cover my ears and pretend I'm somewhere else.

Amy (50:58.519)
turn into an ostrich to get that in the sand.

Boneskull (51:05.443)
In moderation, sticking your head in the sand is really not a bad idea.

KBall (51:10.985)
I've been doing that with the national news lately.

Nick Nisi (51:13.732)
Yeah You know that is that is the thing though. I think that that's a big thing that I often like I don't give enough credit to or I don't value enough is just like stepping completely away and that can be like Going up and and you know, I'm really like stuck in a problem. you know what my son's working on this Lego thing let's go build that or I'm just gonna jump into this video game and completely disassociate from

Boneskull (51:14.713)
Me too.

Nick Nisi (51:42.575)
what I'm doing right now or I'm gonna go on a walk but like the point is I just leave it and the problem will be there when I get back and maybe I'll have a new perspective when I come back I never value that enough and I always forget that lesson so I never am like you know what I should just go play video games that's never like something I say it's like I'm at the end and then I'm just like okay I'll go you know shoot some zombies and then feel better after that

Amy (52:08.607)
I call it my developer snooze button because I'm like, just give me five more minutes and then I think I'll have it. But I just keep hitting snooze and then an hour goes by, it's still not solved. I'm like, fine, I'll just walk away.

Nick Nisi (52:15.298)
I like that.

KBall (52:22.617)
I find that I am so much better at writing code when it's sunny and warm out because I'm eager to go for walks, right? And so I will get stuck on something. I'll be like, all right, I'm just going to go for a walk, go for a walk. And my subconscious will work on it. And either they'll come to me while I'm on the walk or when I get back, I look at it and it's straightforward. When it's rainy or cold or miserable.

I don't do that and I end up in the, you're talking about, Amy, where I'm just like, God darn it, why isn't this working? And you kind of go at it for way too long and you get stuck. And this is, I guess, why Silicon Valley is such a great place for software development.

Nick Nisi (53:04.142)
That is true. It is rainy and cold and miserable right now as it's like an ice storm and all I want to do is go out on a walk but I walked to the mailbox and almost slipped so... Seasonal Affective Disorder is real in the Midwest.

KBall (53:21.981)
I I was talking, I have a coworker who's in the Northeast and he's like, yeah, I've barely been outside for 10 days. I start to go bonkers if it rains for two days straight. Like, I don't know how you do it.

KBall (53:42.633)
All right, well, I think we've covered kind of a wide range of stuff. We've sort of introduced ourselves. Hello, here we are. Maybe we can talk really quickly about some of the topics we'd like to cover in future episodes and then call this a wrap.

KBall (54:00.584)
So I think some of the things that are one of the core ideas here is like taking head on the very commonly dysfunctional things that happen in the software development process. So some of the topic areas we've talked about doing things are like incident management and all the ways that that can go wrong. And also the ways to do it maybe a little bit better dealing with product or business folks. We touched on that a little bit dealing with broken open source.

Nick, I think you mentioned people asking a lot of questions about how to deal with AI in the workplace. Curious. Those are some topics I think we've thrown around before. What other topics are on y'all's mind that maybe we can put out there? if somebody's listening to this and says, yes, that's me, you can ping Nick Nisi on LinkedIn or are you still on Twitter? Blue Sky. Blue Sky. Let him know. Do we have an email for Dysfunctional yet?

Nick Nisi (54:55.032)
Blue sky.

Nick Nisi (54:59.074)
We can.

KBall (54:59.817)
If we can, email nickneesey at dysfunctional.fm and let us know. But yeah, what topic areas are you all excited to cover in future episodes? Onboarding, yes.

Boneskull (55:11.022)
onboarding.

Boneskull (55:16.827)
I feel like interviewing has been beaten to death. Everybody's got an opinion and they all stink. like, maybe that's not as interesting. yeah, onboarding isn't interesting to me. I think innovation is a, it can clash with other mandates.

Nick Nisi (55:24.868)
You

Boneskull (55:46.159)
And that's something I'd kind of like to tease apart a little bit about, you know, how do we, you know, maybe some suit got it in their head that we must innovate. And so now there is mandated innovation. And how does that work? Like what works for you? I think, yes, there's lots of things that are dysfunctional about software engineering. And

Maybe we should also touch on some of those things that are more, you know, that are not so dysfunctional. Like, you know, things that we really enjoy about our jobs. I don't like much, but I do like coding and solving problems. So I'm happy to talk about that.

Nick Nisi (56:44.312)
I like that. I think that's a good idea. Like, what keeps us coming to these keyboards every day?

Nick Nisi (56:52.036)
I also think another topic trying to be trying to stay functional in a dysfunctional world meaning like There's lots of distractions and that could be the news. It could be kids. It could be All sorts of problems, you know that are not directly related to your job It's stuff that we all go through. How do we? How do we ignore that or turn that part off and try and be productive or do we is that the answer?

Amy (57:22.157)
think another thing that's interesting is you have code, which can be objective. Notice I said can be, but it either works or it doesn't work. But a lot of times it's the people part that feels dysfunctional. It's like, like working on code, but if it weren't for so-and-so, just trying to interface with humans is messy.

KBall (57:53.418)
Alright, well, we don't have a tradition about how we end these yet, but I think this sounds like a lot of interesting stuff we can dive into. Anything that y'all want to close with before we say goodbye?

Amy (58:11.581)
I just hope that the show makes people feel human. We work with computers, but just to normalize the good and the bad. That we're all in this together, whether you're working for big tech or small tech or working for yourself. We all encounter the same problems, maybe with different faces or different names, but we're all in it together.

KBall (58:37.159)
Yeah. I tried to do a show for a while called human skills, because I feel like those are the most important things about working in software, at least beyond some point, right? Working with computers is important, but at some point it becomes table stakes because if all we wanted to do is work with computers, we'd just be doing side projects. If we want to get paid, we want to do jobs, we want to get things done and have impact, we got to work with people.

Amy (59:02.967)
Well, and hopefully it's the part that outlives your code, right? Your code will iterate, people will delete it, it'll get better or faster, the new thing will come out, but hopefully the relationships that you have will stick around beyond that, beyond your jobs as you move around and build your network.

KBall (59:22.813)
That's totally true. think most of the code I've written in my life no longer runs anywhere, but there are people that I worked with 15 years ago that I still meet up with anytime I'm in their city.

Nick Nisi (59:27.884)
Wouldn't want it to.

Nick Nisi (59:37.092)
We want to hear from you too, the audience.

KBall (59:37.276)
Awesome.

Yeah. Say more, Nick.

Nick Nisi (59:42.916)
We want to hear what what what's dysfunctional in your world or what you want to hear about what parts of The the former podcast did you like and we should keep around, know, should we still do game shows? I think we should Yeah, I want hear from you so reach out

KBall (01:00:04.435)
Alright.

Boneskull (01:00:05.177)
I think we should try to avoid being... I don't know, sad. Like, I don't want the show to be a downer. We're talking about problems, and sometimes they're intractable problems, but I don't want to see a downer. I want it to be more like... less Schindler's List, more like...

curb your enthusiasm where there's terrible, you know, there's terrible things but we, know, humor gets us through a lot,

Nick Nisi (01:00:44.952)
I agree.

KBall (01:00:47.347)
Love it. All right, well, at this point, we need some spunky music to close this out. So we'll have to figure that out. But with that, think that can be an introduction.

Actually, should, do you remember Chris when you had your kazoo? We should get a record, do you have it? Ooh, ooh, all right, this is gonna be, all right, this is the ending. Do a quick tune on the kazoo and we'll call it a day.

Amy (01:01:07.757)
You

Boneskull (01:01:14.875)
I don't know how to play the kazoo. I can play the nose flute. That's what I can do. Any requests?

KBall (01:01:25.809)
I don't even know what to request.

Amy (01:01:26.637)
What did she? It's like, Nick, were you singing? I'm having the time of my life.

Nick Nisi (01:01:32.11)
Yes.

Nick Nisi (01:01:39.684)
You

Boneskull (01:01:42.766)
Etc, etc.

KBall (01:01:46.697)
Scene.

Amy (01:01:47.885)
See?

Nick Nisi (01:01:48.452)
Perfect.

Nick Nisi (01:01:55.237)
All right, stop recording.