24: Changing Everything

[Music]

Hey, this is episode 24 of the Coffee Code Cast.

This is your host, Mike Sheehan, with my co-host Kyle here.

What's up, Kyle?

What's going on?

I'm here in Denver.

You're in Seattle, so it's a little bit of a different dynamic today.

Yeah, we're doing our first remote cast, so with the new equipment.

So that's kind of fun.

Try something new.

Mike's running the board solo, so sorry about all the sound effects.

Hey, I did this. I did the board pretty good last time.

Speak for yourself, brother.

I was going out there and snowy Denver.

It's cold. Well, you were just here, you know, you know what it was like.

But I think every day that I've been here so far, at least one time a day at Snow.

So.

Even today, a little bit, I think this there was a flurry this morning.

But this afternoon, the sun came out and it was it was pretty decent.

Yeah, doing pretty good. I was out in Denver for the weekend, you know, helping my mom

get her house ready for sale. And so did a lot of project work. And Friday was great.

It was in the 70s on Friday. Well, 60s, 70s pushing it was in the 60s on Friday. And then

we're freezing our asses off the rest of the time.

Yeah, I think we missed the real good temperatures by a few hours.

Yeah.

Yeah, it was good. So you're coming back tomorrow.

I will be back in Seattle late tomorrow. Yeah.

Oh boy.

For our discussion last week about mileage programs, I got myself a first class seat back to Seattle. So that's good.

Oh man. I'm envious. I had an upgrade on the way out, but I was with my brother. So I felt really bad because they gave me a

They came back, we were sitting in the exit row, 16, what, ENF.

And the guy came back with a boarding pass for me.

And he was like, Hey, would you like to move up front 2D?

And I said, well, I'd love to, but I'm with somebody here.

Like you have two seats open.

He's like, no, just for you.

I said, I can't.

I'd be a pretty big dick if I took that by myself.

It's funny you had that experience because we had the exact same thing where I think

I booked the tickets individually because one was booked through work and one was

booked through my personal account. And so they upgraded mine,

because mine was the one with the gold medallion status or

whatever you want to say. And so that would have left me in

first class and Christina and Comfort Plus. So we just went

ahead and upgraded her ticket as well with points.

Oh, nice. That's good.

But yeah, it was the same situation. They wouldn't bring

her up as well.

Yeah, I think they do if they can. I mean, I took that trip to

Sacramento with Ali and we both got bumped up but it really just depends on

the availability and then if it's really tight then they're just gonna go with

status so seniority first I guess. Right and if you're one of the members of the

the party is a status member or a status holder they will upgrade all

members of the party in all members of the party but you're at a lower priority

already been single people. Right, right, right. Yeah. All the

little nuances of mileage plus flying for sure. That's right.

Yeah, there's a lot of little little rules and gatches for

sure.

That's cool, man. Well, I hope you have a good flight back. Yeah.

It was kind of nice today, sunny and cool, but not bad compared

to Denver, that's for sure.

Excited to be back. I'm been out here for almost a week.

Yeah, I was reflecting on that too because we did the cast a week ago and right after this, I went home and packed and I flew out Thursday morning.

So it's been about a week for me as well.

Right. Yeah, I was just watching TV earlier today and I was it made me think of you because they were going my bunk, my bunk, my bunk, my bunk, my bunk, my bunk. You know what day it is, Mike?

Wait, what is that? I saw that shit. Some commercial.

It's what a Geico commercial. I don't know.

Yeah, that's what it is. It's a Geico thing, dude. I saw that shit.

Hope.

Nice, dude.

Oh, I hope I'm just going to put this out there.

I hope there's no reverb with this setup, because sometimes I've had problems

where like the computer is an input and an output and it reverbs.

But you think we're okay on the YouTube?

I mean, we were set up that way last week, too, right?

So I think we're good.

I think so.

I just don't know. I'm thinking back to like some of those teams meetings that I've had where people said there's an echo, but I don't hear one.

So I'm going to assume we've got it working properly.

I think we're good.

Well, in that case, KJ, I think it's time for me to crack open an ice code Coors light. How about you?

Crack one open.

Oh, yeah.

There it is.

One for you too, man.

That never gets old.

I'm sure it'll never get old.

One quick thing I wanted to say, apologies for last week in the feed.

If you're a podcast subscriber, which most of you would be,

we moved hosts recently from kind of a syndicated feed to a feed that is

what's going on in the old chat here.

Slack pot.

I don't see anything here.

Nothing new anyway.

Who the hell's KJ?

Okay, Joe, Karen Johnson.

Karen, that's your mom, man.

How about that?

Um, what was I saying?

Oh, yeah.

In the podcast feed, we had a small issue with, uh, duplicate episodes showing up.

And that was partially because we switched providers and I'm not really sure why it occurred.

But going forward, we shouldn't have duplicate episodes in the feed anymore.

I don't know if you noticed that or not.

I didn't catch that.

I know that it took a little while for Spotify to upgrade, but you got that fixed.

So that was the only issue that I had.

That was just a feed problem.

And I was able to work that out with the Spotify folks.

So I think all the feeds-- well, with the exception of SoundCloud,

I don't think we're publishing to there anymore,

because it's not automatic like it was before.

But everything else should be buttoned up.

That's cool.

Awesome, dude.

Go ahead.

I've got a topic I want to talk about.

I don't know if it's time to jump into that yet.

But I had something that I thought

would be fun to discuss.

I don't think we've done it on the cast yet.

- Fire away.

- Yeah, I wanna talk a little bit about

just relevance topical because I've had

a few interviews at the office lately.

Did we talk about this before?

Have you talked about interview,

interview formats and that sort of thing?

I mean, I really like what we're doing now

with the interviews here.

- We may have talked about it briefly,

kind of that the process is weird and sucks,

but let's go into detail on what you're thinking.

Yeah, I want to talk about it a little bit just because you know like there's a

lot of it's a philosophical debate with developers all the time you've got it

you've got the old-school kind of oh I'm one of my trying to say the cracking the

code code interview through cracking the coding interview yeah with our good

friend Gail Gail Lackman yeah and so like that's historically been the way

that a lot of the companies run their interview processes like you're very

very CS heavy, very like into data structures,

algorithms and whiteboarding problems.

And that's kind of like what you have to do,

even though that's not the day to day,

that's something that's very,

it's a litmus test for a lot of these companies

as to your capabilities as a developer, right?

>> They're looking for kind of the real

computer sciencey questions, right?

The things that you learn in school.

>> Right, exactly, exactly.

And so that's one camp and that's been a pretty popular thing

and fairly standard across many tech companies

out of Northwest and other places.

But we used to do some whiteboarding ourselves.

I mean, maybe it wasn't as stringent as that

here at our company,

but we've recently redone our interview process.

We're bringing on what, about a half a dozen people,

developers mostly in some other slots.

And so you kind of led that charge.

I think you and a group of people kind of came up with a new development interview process.

Right. Yeah, I'm not a big believer in the algorithmic questions unless they're kind of

relevant to what it is that you're doing day to day, like you mentioned. In our case,

we don't really write a lot of algorithms. So we kind of went towards a format that

was more what you would do in a daily day of work.

Exactly. So one way we changed it up is instead of just bringing them in kind of blind and

throwing them on the whiteboard, before we even have the phone screen, we kind of do

a coding exercise. And for us, with our workload and the type of things that we deal with,

a lot of that has to do with API development and middle tier back end kind of stuff. And

so we kind of, the exercises to build, you know, we have kind of a little MVP app kind

thing that we don't want you to spend more than a couple hours on, one or two hours on,

but it's really about middle tier, to back end, API development, and it gives us a talking

point at least, like for the interview.

So if that project goes well, we'll do a phone screen first.

If we feel good about that, then we'll send the coding exercise, and if that looks pretty

good and thought out, then we bring you in for an interview.

And I think the coding exercise, that's another thing that I really appreciate about the process

so far.

we tell them to allocate what two hours maybe something like that?

Yeah, not much more than I think I think it said something in the ballpark of one

to a few or something but not you know the idea is to be concise not to labor

over it all all day long. Exactly and not not to waste the the people's time and

our time both right because I've definitely been in interviews where you

will spend they want you to spend you know six to eight hours building some

complex project or you know figuring out some complex problem and I didn't really

want that at all in our kind of interview process. Well that's been good too

because you get a real good sense of where they're at skill-wise through

the exercise and there's a lot of things you can pick out of a simple example

even just doing a basic API with a few endpoints you can you can get a lot out

of that that tells you about how they are and some of these guys are doing

unit tests some of these guys you know and they can pick their own stack so

you're getting stuff in Node or getting stuff done

and done at Core or whatever they want to do.

But there's a lot of detail in there or a lack of detail

that can inform you on their level of expertise.

And it doesn't require some of that data structure

and algorithm whiteboarding challenge.

- Right, I think that's an important piece of it too

is that you hit on there is that it's language agnostic.

We don't really care what you write it in

as long as it follows kind of good programmatic techniques

and you give us good directions on how to run it.

'Cause we may not develop in Python, let's say,

but as long as you can tell us how to run it

and we can look through the code and make sense of it,

then we don't really care what you write it in.

- Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And I think that's pretty common across the industry.

I think a lot of the interviews,

even if they are data structure, that old model,

if you do well at that,

They don't really care what language it's in either.

So I like that idea.

I think that's kind of a red flag if you go into a place

and like, hey, we need to have this implemented in Java.

And if you can't do it in Java, then we

just don't want to talk to you.

Because I think anymore, you're exposed

to so many different technologies that if you

understand the concepts, jumping from one language

to the other shouldn't be that big of a deal.

It's pretty trivial.

It's been really informing for me, too.

I don't really write a lot on Node,

but a lot of the responses to the question or the API have been written in Node.

So it's been really fascinating to read through some of the code and see just how easy it is to implement APIs through Node.

I've only written some real basic applications that do some real basic operations,

but this has been really fascinating and informing on just how powerful Node is

and how quickly you can stand something up that's actually pretty sophisticated.

Yeah, exactly. I would agree with that.

We've had quite a few come in and know we had one today that was dotnet core.

And even with that, uh, all of these applications have been really easy to

stand up. So it's a command line thing, a couple, couple commands, and you've

got the code cloned from get and a couple more commands.

And you got the thing running on its own web server.

So just in general, I like, uh, how easy it is. Like back in the day,

this would be a long process where you might spend a day just trying to get

your environment set up to, to build this particular code set, right?

Right. So yeah, I think in addition to you know, it's being helpful to to get

good candidates. It's been amazing how many we've weeded out really really

quickly just based on this particular piece right and saved because we have I

think a panel of anywhere from what three to four maybe five sometimes

interviews in a panel. We do and it's really funny because I mean we're still

Refining our own process and I think from where it was a year or two ago to where it is today great improvement

But it's all over the place

So I've been in some where we've had just a couple people and then today

Was one of those days where it everything worked out for everyone

and so we had like somebody on like you know Bruce was on from Denver and

We had gosh we had like six or seven people in the room here

So like the dude came in I think he was just like holy shit, man

Who am I talking to is this your whole tech team?

And so he said no no no it just like sometimes we get more people that are able to join in and

It was more interactive that way which was good, and I think that's a new piece of the interview process that we've had to work around too is now we have

Technically three different offices for quote-wizard, so we have to bring them on remotely through you know telecommunications or teleconferencing

Which is a new piece of it as well, but it seems to be working. Okay

I would say so. I think so far so good. And well, that's another thing that's helpful.

Just having the exercise ahead of time is that we all have a chance to review it.

The email goes out days in advance of the interview and the onsite. And so, you know,

by the time we get everyone on the conference call, we all have kind of a general sense

of what's going on, what this person was able to produce and have some questions to ask

to get to understand a little better.

So I think that helps distributed offices that way too.

- It's good I think that you came with that

and kind of mentioned that

because the original intent of the exercise

when we kind of concepted it was that number one,

yeah, we wanted to evaluate the skills

that they had in creating the API,

but then number two, create like a jump off point

to either ask subsequent questions

or even build off of it

and maybe throw a UI question their way

or something like that that would make them have to work even further down kind of the

typical dev path that we use day to day.

Yep.

Yeah, it's a good conversation starter.

Usually what I try to do is get a little background info, have them talk about where they're at,

what they're doing, what they want to do next.

But once we get into the exercise, there's just a lot of different ways you can go with

it.

And I mean, we could have spent an hour just talking about ways to improve the, on the

example.

And so I find now that there's more content than there is time, usually, like during the

interview, which I think before, you know, we had our canned responses that we would

ask and if it was going really awkwardly, it didn't go very far and if it went well,

whatever, we just didn't have a whole lot to talk about outside of that.

So it sounds like much more of a discussion than kind of a one-way conversation maybe?

Yeah, exactly.

And I think that I still think that you get to a similar conclusion, right?

Like I don't think for one thing we're not developing the type of work that we're doing

doesn't require something that's that technical, not to discount data structures and algorithms.

But I think that the type of work that we're doing, like this is a way more practical example

to measure someone's abilities than that would be.

Like we're not looking for that cutting edge stuff.

Like we're using technologies that are already out there

that people are creating that way, right?

- Right, yep.

Another interesting problem that we ran into,

and I think this is not an uncommon problem

in the interviewing world,

but because we do a take home test

within probably four or five interviews we had,

I don't know how many different versions

of our take home test were up on GitHub,

by a simple search.

Yeah, I was worried about that.

So now I think what they're doing,

it seems like is they're kind of giving them silly names

for the people to use if they post them up there,

so that way they're not easily found at least.

That's what happened today too.

Yeah, it was a really clever naming anything

without quote wizard.

Because we were talking about that.

I was like, let's do a quick search on quote wizard

and see what comes up.

And sure enough, you find a few things in there.

Yeah.

Yeah, good. That's great to hear that things are things are going well.

We've hired what will be hired like three people already or something like that.

Maybe so working. I know two confirmed and maybe a third. So yeah.

And well, they had one in Denver here. So, uh,

and I think there's a couple in Seattle that maybe are confirms or at least one

as a confirm. So there's, it's definitely working. We're getting people through the

pipeline. We're getting kind of good unanimous agreement amongst the dev team,

as to skill set and fit and everything.

So I think it seems to be working well.

- Well, maybe this is a trend that's starting to change.

Maybe this is something new that's starting to spread out

because the gentleman that we talked to today,

he did a good job.

He did a good job with the example

and without giving anything away there.

A couple of times he just commented,

well, if I had more time, I would do this.

If I had more time, I would do that.

And one of the things he said I thought was interesting

was that he goes, "Look, I'm doing a few of these other things,

and so you're not the only ones asking for a code example."

He goes, "Several other companies he's talked to

has been in very similar format where it's like,

'Hey, we need to do this coding exercise.'"

And that's kind of a new, that surprised me a little bit

because I haven't interviewed in five years,

but the last time I interviewed,

like that was never really an option, the coding exercise.

It was very much the old school,

like get on the whiteboard and show me

how to write this function.

- Oh, that's interesting 'cause I've interviewed,

I guess, in between the time that you started at Quote Wizard.

So I've definitely run into coding exercises

for pretty much any of the last several jobs

that I've applied to.

So I think that's pretty common.

- Wow.

- It's a pretty easy way to screen folks out, right?

And it works pretty effectively.

We've screened out a lot of folks that way, so.

- Well, there's no hiding behind it, right?

I know that you're giving someone time to go

and Google stuff, but it's kind of like open book tests.

Like if you don't know the material,

The book doesn't really help you much.

Like you're going to struggle to find shit

and it's just not going to go your way.

So you really have to know what you're doing

even in an environment where we say, hey,

go spend a few hours on this code.

If you haven't done an API before,

you're not going to figure out in a couple hours.

And if you do, it's going to be pretty ugly probably.

And I'm all for Google.

Google all you want.

That's part of-- that's the engineer's cookbook right there.

So that's what you're going to use anyway in your day to day.

So fine.

use the same resources that you're gonna use

as a day-to-day engineer, that's fine with me.

So you could find an example of an API out there,

but you know, and it still takes somebody

that knows how to set it up, make it work

in whatever framework or technology they're using.

There's like still nuances that you still need to know

even beyond finding somebody else's source

and utilizing it in some way.

- Yeah, exactly.

There's a baseline that you have to have.

The baseline knowledge that if it isn't there,

it doesn't matter what you're looking at.

just not going to make sense. Yeah. Right on, man. And I think the other thing too, that

we're looking for here, and I would say this is another facet that's maybe even more important

is that you want to find somebody who's hungry, somebody who's excited about it. And how many

times have we had interviews with guys that are really smart, really know their stuff,

are just a-holes, man.

You know you couldn't work with them if you had to,

because they're so stubborn or opinionated.

I think that the type of environment that works well

is someone who's really hungry and excited and passionate.

And if they don't have a few skill sets here and there,

that passion is more important.

It'll carry through.

Right.

I think we have a lot of the people that are, for lack of a better

that they're the kind of tenured people that you might assume to be the people

stuck in their ways or you know have heavy opinions which is good you need

that as well but the people that we're looking for in this case I think are more

the the people that are willing yeah like you said excited to do work excited

to learn eager to to get their hands on anything they can do and that's the type

thing that we're looking for absolutely man love that well let's move on a

little bit here, shall we? I have a topic as well that I'd like to talk about.

Well, and that is, let's do it. Bring it up. Yeah, I'm bringing it up.

I'm going to start on a new fitness routine.

Oh, Diplan slash changing the whole damn world.

Oh, shit, dude.

So, you know, Bolly was on the what two two episodes ago and was kind of

of espousing that you shouldn't make wholesale changes

all at once.

- He's not a big resolution guy like that.

Like, oh, starting January one,

I'm just gonna be clean living and going vegan

and I'm gonna work out five days a week.

- And what else does Bully say?

- Something about the wacky weed.

I wish I could have him.

Is he around here?

Hey, Bully, what was that you said there, buddy?

- We're gonna find out.

I smoked the wacky weed.

Oh my God, would you calm down, buddy?

Have a beer.

- So, yeah, so I'm gonna start a new fitness program.

I'm gonna probably join the CrossFit gym

that you're currently more actively in.

- Hey, all right.

I'm not very active in it right now,

but I'm happy you're coming.

- Oh, maybe I can help you with that.

Maybe we can go take CrossFit classes together.

- I'm an active donor of the CrossFit gym.

- Onability, yeah, you go, donor, I like it.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- Well, so a couple things.

number one. I don't want to make this permit. I'm not. I'm not. I don't want to be doing

CrossFit forever. That's not any kind of goal that I have. Sure. So what I want it to be

is kind of a jumpstart back into health and fitness. So I haven't weighed myself in a

while, but I would guarantee you I'm probably the heaviest I've been. I don't know, in a

couple years, three years, four years, something like that. Okay, I'll probably even longer

than that. But anyway, so I want to get that taken care of knock a few pounds off. But

But in the meantime, also rebuild some strength because as you get older, you lose muscle

mass and I'm pretty bad about doing any kind of weight training.

So I think this would kind of accommodate all of those things in one fell swoop.

So that's the plan from the kind of fitness and exercise side of it.

In addition to that, I think what we're going to do, actually I know what we're going to

do is Christina Dana and I, which is the people that I live with, are all going to

do a whole 30. So that'll be in conjunction with this new fitness routine. So in theory,

we're eating the things that CrossFit actually recommends you eat, but we've done this before

as well.

I thought you had talked about this before.

It's pretty effective all on its own. So in theory, I think this should work pretty

well assuming I can stick to it. I'm kind of flying in the face of bullies don't make

wholesale changes all at once. I'm pretty much changing everything all at once.

Well, we'll see how it goes. The biggest thing that I think I need to put into place is number

one, a schedule and number two, a whole lot of planning ahead of time because what'll happen is

we'll get to a point where I'll be, you know, late home or something like that, or have a stressful

day at work or whatever the case may be. And then instead of eating a whole 30 meal that I created

myself I'll just be like, ah, fuck it, let's go get barbecue or let's go somewhere, you know,

get pizza, whatever the case might be. Pizza. I would have to agree with you on this. I mean,

I think there's some things that are just worth, worth changing wholesale. I'm not always good

at this either in the long term, but I think it's nice sometimes to hit reset. So even if it's not

meant to be a lifestyle change that's permanent, even having a month or two or three where you

just hit reset and do it all over again is can be transformative and can be effective.

And that's the plan. And then one other piece that we're going to put in conjunction with this,

and we've done this a number of times, and that is that we're going to do a

no spend month. And what that means basically is I mean, you still spend money, but the main thing

is you're not spending money on frivolous things, you know, going out, drinking, eating, out,

going to shows, movies, whatever the case might be. You're basically just paying only your bills

that you have to pay on a regular basis and the food that you have to

buy to make your meals, but that's basically it. So that'll prevent me from hopefully

going outside the bounds of the Whole30 program as well.

>>Yeah. I mean, for you, that's pretty basic. You've got your grocery bill, your rent,

Internet, maybe cable and your corn nub account.

I mean, that's not very many things.

Corn nub.

I'm just saying not very many things, just a handful of things there.

But yeah, that's the plan.

So I think I'm going to start that on Friday was what I was hoping.

Um, I was going to talk to you maybe after the show, we'll talk a little bit

about how the CrossFit program is set up, what their schedule is when you go,

you know, that sort of thing. But just figure some sort of like major jumpstart.

The other thing that I want to do too with this whole program is I'm a big

cyclist and I enjoy running as well. But the thing that I want to do is kind of

jumpstart my fitness back into getting into that program again as well. So

spring is coming. I'd like to kind of be in shape and ready to go for cycling

season as it comes and becomes nice enough to do that.

Well, you've always been a bit of a cycler anyway, so in multi-modal, I mean, running maybe to a lesser extent, but I've always thought you'd done a good job of

varying the exercise, not just on the treadmill or just lifting weights, but trying to change it up, whether you're hiking, going on a rigorous, you know, eight mile hike on the weekend or hitting the

trails or riding the work or whatever.

Yeah, I would like to do a lot more of that.

Hiking has been something that I've wanted to do a lot more of in the last three years,

and I end up doing none of it.

So I definitely like to do a lot more hiking.

The running in the cycling are very similar in kind of modality.

So I'd like to get something else to run in there and the CrossFit will help with that.

And then I just need to kind of, I don't know, give up my pride or whatever the heck you want to say

and get into the way room and do some actual strength training of some kind.

once I am done with CrossFit.

Well, we've talked about this before and I feel like I'm an amateur every time I step

into the gym because I haven't really had a consistent practice.

The only consistent about it is that it's inconsistent, really, for me.

And so I started going back in August and had a really good chunk of time there.

I had a solid eight to ten weeks where I was in there four days a week, three to four days

a week and starting to really build on that and feeling really good.

focus on the nutrition side of it much, but it was about being active.

And so that kind of fell out during the holidays and with the sale of the company and all that

stuff and now it's time to get back in.

But I mean I spent more time just being on the adjustment phase, if you will, getting

acclimated to it.

And the one thing I do like about the training that I've gotten from, I've been to two GEMs

now and the one I'm at currently is that I think they both they allow you to, I mean

CrossFit's kind of a scary word. There's a lot of negativity around it. We've talked

about some of this before, but on the positive side, you can get a good workout and competing

with yourself. It really is about just doing what you can do and adjusting the workout

to, it's about finishing, finishing and making sure you can do it, not that you're first

or trying to compete with everyone else in the room.

- Yeah, the competition comes as part

of the community aspect, right?

Like eventually you do become good enough to where

now you're competing against other people

that are in the room or even you do have done this

to some degree I've heard you talk about.

- It becomes the motivator later,

but I think what's cool about it

is that you can find motivation day one

just saying, look, my goal today is going to be

to make it three rounds or my goal today

is gonna be to do the recommended number

reps even though I'm not doing it maybe at rx weight so I'm going to back off the weight

but I want to complete the the exercise and so I think when it comes to that there's a

lot of ways that you can kind of game it to still come out of it successfully and build

motivation even though yeah there's guys in there that are just going to crush it they're

going to go heavy weight and fast reps but I don't know I like the idea that I'm there

and that it doesn't have to be prescribed.

I get a lot out of it, even if it's not 100%

what's recommended.

- One thing I did forget to mention

about this whole program too is that

one of the other things that kind of created this,

I guess thought that I needed to do this

or do something was that I'm getting kind of some

old man problems here.

Like now I have back problems.

I've been going to a chiropractor for a little bit

for back problems that I have. So I work now too. I also have a standing desk. So I'm going

to be trying to stand more and I just need to kind of get, you know, my body back into

shape, get the get the back stronger and you know, those types of things. So there's a

whole host of issues that I'd like to correct. And this seemed to me to be the best or most

efficient and quick way to correct it. So we'll see how it goes. And I guess we can

keep updating here on the show as things go along.

Yeah, I'd like to hear how it goes for you and I'm excited for the accountability because

by myself it's tough sometimes to do it.

You know, I like a cold beverage.

You do like your cold beverages.

I had a cold beverage before I got on the show today.

I'm not surprised by that.

That's one of the things that I actually really enjoyed when I used to run quite a lot.

I used to run with a buddy Andrew Woods and we just had a meeting point that was out actually

kind of at the start of the trail where we had run.

- Yeah.

- And we would meet at, you know, a specific time.

And there was an accountability factor there

because if you don't go,

then he's standing out there all by himself

waiting for you or, you know.

So like, if you didn't meet at that place,

like you kind of broke in that routine

or that trust that you were gonna show up.

So I think there is something to be said

for having somebody that keeps you accountable

for those types of things.

- It's huge.

I mean, that's a huge motivator,

just having someone that, you know,

I'm way more motivated to do something for somebody else

than I am for myself.

I can make excuses to myself.

It's a lot harder to do that for somebody else.

- That's right.

- Sure.

- Even having this cast being live on Wednesday

is a good example of that.

I mean, this is our second time going live

and you're out of town and, you know,

there's always something going on

after work on Wednesdays for me.

And so to be down here and to make the thing happen,

if it was just up to me,

I'd probably push it off until next week

or something like that.

- Here I am in Denver.

I'd loved all of my gear here

and then you're at the fuel drinking it up

being like, oh, I could fit one more in.

- I wasn't at fuel this week.

That was last week.

(laughing)

I may be at fuel later tonight.

There is karaoke in a couple hours.

- Oh boy.

(laughing)

So you won't be at work tomorrow is what you're telling me?

- No, man, I ring the bell, dude.

That's one thing that,

that's an important topic to talk about.

'Cause I think a lot of tech companies,

they're pretty lax these days.

Everybody offers kegerators and beers and all kinds of boozy

and enjoyments, right?

That's part of the culture, the work culture.

Sure.

And it's certainly part of our culture here at the office.

Drinking is a huge part of our culture.

It's a pretty big part of the culture.

A lot of people participate in that, not everyone,

but most people do.

We have a Coors Light machine, a couple kegs,

and just whatever random stuff, right?

But I think that, at least for me,

and I think for the key there is,

we call it ring the bell,

that's kind of our thing at the office here,

which means that you know what you wanna do after work

and on your own time is fine,

but have as much fun as you want,

but you gotta get back up in the morning

and ring the bell.

- Who came up with that term?

- Well, that was our president, our CEO, Scott.

That's where I heard it.

I didn't know where that come from.

Yeah, that was always his thing.

It was just, hey, have a good time, enjoy yourselves.

But, you know, it's kind of a work hard, play hard mentality.

So if you're going to be out going big, then you better be back next morning,

ready to go again, get after it.

Yeah, and I think that's a good policy.

I mean, you're given the freedom until you, you know, break the rules,

break the law, right?

And then they're going to clamp down on you or you'll be gone, one or the other.

Well, yeah, if you can't balance both sides of it, you're just not going to be a good fit.

It's not going to work out.

I think that the responsibility comes, you have a certain level of responsibility that

you have to maintain if you're going to do that.

You know, if it starts this, if your work suffers because of that, then it's time to

reevaluate what you're doing and that just isn't going to work.

So yeah, it's not for everybody.

I think that some people struggle with that more than others.

That's always been my litmus test.

If my work starts to be impacted by that, or if there's a day when I can't ring

the bell, then I think I've got to reconsider what I do in my free time.

Yeah.

I think that's good policy.

It's good policy.

Keep things safe.

Yeah.

And, and they want everybody to have fun, have a good time, but we're still a

business trying to make money and hit goals and all that kind of thing too.

So you got to you have to keep that in check to a certain degree.

Yeah.

I got some big news.

Holy shit, man.

Do I need to like hit the little interrupter here?

Do I need to like segment this topic or what?

Go.

Big news.

It's been a whopping three weeks since I've had Tesla news.

No, it isn't.

You talked about Tesla last week.

What did I talk about last week?

I don't know.

Something about Tesla.

I think you're going to have to go back and review the tape.

OK.

You say it's three weeks.

I think it's because I didn't talk about it with Bully.

Hmm.

I was going to.

It was in the show notes, but I didn't bring it up.

OK.

What was it?

Some new software update?

What's going on?

There's a software update, and they brought out two new features.

This isn't Fart Mode or whatever is it?

I heard about that.

What mode?

It's like Fart Mode or something.

That's no that's old news buddy. Oh, okay. Now we have dog mode. Oh

Dog mode I heard about this. Okay. Yeah dog mode and century mode or century mode

I don't know how you pronounce that word century like S EN TRY

Century

Moutry century mode. Yeah, so these are two new modes that they've released in a software update

So number one the first one is pretty self-explanatory dog mode

It is four pets that are in the car and the idea is that you can set that the

What would you call it the temperature or the cabin temperature of the car? Yeah to a specific setting?

So let's say in the Midwest where it gets brutally hot in the summer

People get real upset and dogs die because people leave

Animals in the car while they run into a store or something and it can get brutally hot in your car really quickly

And so the idea behind this is that it will leave the temperature on to whatever

temperature you set and it'll also display that temperature of the interior of the car on this the

main console screen

really largely and

It'll it has some message

I don't remember what it says but some message that indicates that the animal is fine and you'll be right back type of thing

That's also a interesting feature that would be helpful for children. I mean child death

- Eesh.

(laughing)

I mean, you would, but let's not advocate

leaving kids in cars.

- Well, no, but it's interesting.

It's not at all, but that's become a bigger problem

where like with the cell phones and other things,

there was some reports on this

I just read the last week or two

about how more distracted we are.

And there was the law that was passed

that said you had to put the child seat in the back seat,

right?

So you can't put the child seat up front anymore

for safety reasons.

And when that legislation went into effect,

the number of kids that were left in vehicles

started to go to increase.

Not intentionally, because people are spacing out

or looking at their phone or doing something like that,

right?

Most often, they forget that the kid's there.

Yeah, it's unintentional, because yeah, you're stressed out

and you're-- I don't know.

Like, you're multitasking and you've

got a lot of things going on.

And so you've got to stop at the store and grab something,

your purse or you grab your phone out of the cup holder or whatever it is and just it slips your

mind that hey I left my child in the backseat. So the thing about this thing is though is it's not

automatic so in that kind of scenario the problem still exists you know it's not going to solve

that kind of an issue yeah but it's a possibility that maybe they could make some way to detect

weight in the seat right because they know when there's a body in the seat based on weight so I

So maybe they could give you a warning or something

that would make sure you know that the kid's in the back seat

or something like that.

I know that one thing that Ford--

I believe Ford and maybe a few other auto manufacturers

are releasing is a feature where--

similar to what you're talking about.

But I think it's something like if you open the back door

before you start the car or something,

I don't know the exact mechanism.

But it will detect-- like if you access the back door

and then you get out of the car without opening the back door

again, that it will honk a horn or flash lights.

That's pretty smart.

Yeah, something like that.

It's got to be a pretty no brainer thing

to implement for them to give you a warning.

Yeah.

So the other thing that is interesting about this

is that even though this is a feature

and it's available in all 50 states, immediately

upon software update, but the issue with it

is that some states do have laws on the books

regarding leaving animals in a car anyway.

So even if they are perfectly safe,

the Tesla is keeping them safe temperature wise,

like some states don't allow it anyway.

So you need to consult your local laws

before implementing the Tesla dog mode.

- Well, I think it's gonna save some puppy lives.

I mean, I think that's a good, I understand.

I don't know if I agree with that,

that states pushing back on that.

I just think that it's gonna happen, right?

Like whether or not it's a law that you can do that or not,

like it's going to happen.

And so having the vehicle be able to detect that

and do something to keep the car cool,

I think that's a good thing.

Yeah, I would agree.

And to be clear, they're not legislating

like against Tesla or anything like that.

It's just more general laws on the books.

Right.

Regarding pets and vehicles and that sort of thing.

So the other mode, Sentry mode, that we discussed or mentioned,

that's a security function of the car.

So the Model 3, for instance, and some of the other ones,

have quite a handful of cameras.

So what this mode allows it to do is the cameras,

while it's in park, and not being utilized,

are recording constantly in this case.

So if it detects somebody, like say, leaning on the car,

what it'll do is it'll trip an alert in Tesla software,

and it'll record that on all the cameras

so that you can retrieve it from your little storage device.

And it'll also send an alert to your phone.

And then there's another level to that.

So then if a window, say, is getting broken

or something like that, then it'll send

an alert to your phone immediately,

it'll start recording, and it'll turn the volume

of the stereo all the way up and start playing music

and honking the horn and doing all kinds of crazy stuff

to just make it super annoying and obvious

that something's going on.

- That's good.

That's a cool feature, Century Mode, I like that.

Yeah, I think it's a pretty smart way to go.

So that's a really cool feature.

And again, this is why I love Tesla so much.

Like it's a car that we had already bought, already paid for.

We've had it for months and it's continually improving,

which is crazy.

- Software updates over the air.

You're not doing anything.

You just get in your car one day

and all of a sudden you've got Century Mode

protecting your car.

- Or you got Emissions Mode.

- We'll let out more emissions.

That's cool.

- No, it lets out farts.

Well, that's the-- yeah, that's right.

That's what I was talking about.

That's like states like Colorado and Washington

where you have an emissions requirement.

You throw it into that mode, emissions mode.

And then whenever they turn the blinker,

like it lets out a little fart noise.

Yeah, so on that one, it's pretty entertaining.

So first of all, you set which seat is the target.

So if you're sitting in the passenger rear seat,

I can set that seat to be the target.

And what that basically means is that it's going to play loud more loudly on the speakers

that are in that corner than anywhere else.

Okay.

And then you can set how it is you want it to interact.

So either it can be random.

It can be on demand via pushing a button or it can be when you turn on the blinkers.

And so every time you hit that trigger, it lets out a varying, I think there's probably

20 different fart sounds that it'll use.

I would I would be able to add some sound effects, but our our colleague Connor was supposed to give me a sound bank

And I haven't gotten those sound files yet. So I'm sorry I can't up there

There you go. That's what you need is a little a little squeaker. Yeah, a little squier. Yeah, exactly

I've got a couple news items that I wanted to discuss briefly, I know if you've been reading the news but a big announcement out of the

You know Amazon headquarters recently

HQ2 was canceled.

They're plans to--

HQ2 is no more.

New York City is not getting an Amazon headquarters.

Not happening, man.

It's done.

It's over.

A lot of political protests.

There are a lot of people on the ground that wanted to stop that from happening, and so

they made the decision to cancel the New York deal.

So the interesting thing to me, a couple things about this, is that there was such an effort

to find cities and do all this research and solicit bids from cities to narrow it down,

right? Like to know where they were going to go.

Yeah, they had like a six or eight month process to select these cities, right? And they had

like a list of what, 50 or something?

Yeah, they narrowed it down over time, but they had a massive list. They had a lot of,

they put an RFP out there and got a lot of responses back all over the country and Canada

down other parts as well. So it was a fairly extensive search. And I was really surprised

to hear that after narrowing it down and all the due diligence that went into the process

that they just decided because of a few squeaky wheels on the ground, like we're just not

going to do it.

So what does that mean? Like I haven't read a lot of these articles. So now that HQ2 is

not going to be in New York, are they going to reassess and come back to some of these

other cities that they initially turned down in the RFP process.

Because I've definitely read articles that Seattle will not be a benefactor from this

necessarily.

You know, you would think that, okay, well now HQ2 isn't going to happen, so now Seattle

is going to get more employees, more buildings, etc., etc., but I've read that's not the case.

That's not the case.

At least that's not what they're saying publicly.

I mean, Seattle, Southlake Union, they have like 44 buildings down there right now.

buildings down there and so no like their their claim is that they're just

pulling out of the project and they're not going to look at other sites per se

but they are going to move forward with additional hiring that they already had

planned for other cities so you'll see like Virginia for example they were

gonna do something near Arlington Virginia and other parts of New York and

so I think they're still their growth plan right now is just without a major

hub. They're just going to expand their headcount at existing facilities or grow, expand existing

markets at their ROTM. Yeah, so instead of a massive new headquarters,

yeah, just fill in a whole bunch of different areas in smaller campuses. Sounds like, yep.

Yeah, so like San Francisco, Austin, Boston, a lot of these areas are just going to have more,

they're going to bring on more people. But it just begs the question for me, like what the original

intent was behind all this because it just seems like these guys are so methodical. They're

so thought out. Like, did they really go into this whole process, spend a year soliciting

bids from other cities and to make a decision and then just bail on it? I just wondered

like what was really going on or what it just seems kind of quick to me that they would

just quickly decide to shut it down like that.

What were the primary complaints and protests and so forth about?

Is it displacement of people? Is it more, what's the word I'm looking for, gentrification?

Like what are they, what was the complaints?

Yeah, I don't know all the details about that, but I think it was a lot of the...

I mean they saw what happened in Seattle. There was a lot of folks here that were speaking out about like,

about like, hey, you know, this is what happened to us.

And look what it did to our housing prices,

look what it did to jobs and yeah,

created a lot of jobs, but now we're just like kind of this

monochromatic tech hub.

And it pushed out a lot of the diversity,

pushed out a lot of folks that were pursuing arts

and doing our things like that.

And it's such an expensive city now

that you really can't live here unless you're making

big six figure Amazon income. Right. Or Microsoft or any of the other big tech companies. Yeah.

So I think that was it was rooted in that. And there may have been other things relative

to the area there. But but I think that was kind of the whole thing. They just didn't

want to see that change happen there. But which it's already ridiculous over there anyway.

I mean, that's even worse than here.

- It is interesting though that, like you said,

they were gonna make this massive campus in New York City

and bring all these employees and have all this floor space

and all this office area.

And instead now that they've canceled the project,

suddenly they can filter all this stuff elsewhere.

Like it's not a problem now to put them elsewhere.

So to your point, what was the reasoning behind

this whole stunt?

Was it a publicity grab?

Like why did they need to do this whole HQ2 hunt?

It feels like that a little bit to me

because it would be naive to think they went into this,

not expecting a bunch of political backlash

or protests or that sort of thing.

Like people talked about that even before the bids

were turned in, right?

Like look what it's done to Seattle, oh my God.

You know, people were talking about that way before

that process was complete.

So I'm not really sure what it was.

It's interesting.

- Yeah.

Well, we should probably move on.

What else did you have?

The other one was more of a news that came out of Lyme.

Lyme now, Lyme bike, Lyme scooter.

Yeah, for those of you that aren't familiar with Lyme,

big cities have Lyme bikes, which are bike shares.

So you can use an app to unlock a bike that's just kind of

sitting anywhere.

They can be sitting any place.

Same thing with the scooters, which there's a ton of those

here in Denver.

I wish we had them.

They're actually really cool.

I wish we had them too.

When I was in San Francisco, we had bird,

and those scooters were awesome.

They were fun to ride and quite controversial

because a lot of people were driving those things

on sidewalks, running down old ladies and shit like that,

so they didn't like it.

- Small tangent here, when we first got here,

you see the scooters immediately,

they're on the sidewalks,

there's probably anywhere from one to five

in a given block span,

where we're just walking straight across the block,

but that's kind of one of the big complaints

that people complain about when Lyme comes into a city

or wants to expand into a city,

like Seattle's a prime example,

they're just worried that these scooters

are gonna be everywhere and they're just gonna be

littering the sidewalks and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

well, like, here they're all very well respected,

or at least in this, what do they call this,

the dairy block, they're all very well respected,

they're all on their kickstands,

people aren't just throwing them around.

There's not that many of them.

There's enough but not that many like it's not like it's over overboard like the bikes kind of feel like they're a little overboard sometimes I

Would I would a good program and I guess I don't really know where the

The fear of them being overpopulated comes from haven't seen that problem in Denver

And I don't know if they just have a cap on how many of those can be parked at one time or like

Cap to how many you can have in a downtown area. I will say this like in San Francisco. They were everywhere

I mean they were like more

commonplace than like beer bottles in the gutter, you know?

Like, they were all over the place.

- That was like one of the first cities

that adopted them, all right?

- Yeah, and at that time too, it was a land grab.

And so you had multiple competitors out there

at the same time.

So everybody had their fucking version of the scooter

that was just dumped on every street corner.

And, you know, some of the sidewalks

were already fairly narrow down there,

especially down in Soma and over by Moscon Center and all.

So you'd see people like, and you're supposed to ride on the street, but you're not.

So a lot of people are riding these things on the sidewalk and don't have great control

and are trying not to hit people.

And it just, it was a big mess.

Yeah.

I liked it.

I thought it was great, but yeah, it was a problem for some people.

Yeah, I think it's a cool program and they're all electric, right?

So you don't have to do anything.

It's not like you're kicking and pushing yourself along.

So they're really cool program.

And I think it'd be something great for Seattle, but I think they just have to get

over the hump or put some restrictions in place

on how many there are or some kind of something like that

to get over that fear.

But I think it's a great program.

You see people driving those,

even here where it's less than freezing,

people are out on scooters, it's great.

- Well, it's a nice solution for the last mile, right?

That last mile problem, you get off the light rail

and you just gotta go up, especially if you're at down

in, down in Lodo in Denver there.

I mean, you get off the light rail Union Station

And the office is what, maybe like 0.75 miles from there,

something like that, half mile, a mile away.

And it's not a bad walk, but if you had a scooter right there,

you could get your ass over there pretty quick.

It'd be nice.

Yeah.

So sorry, I took a soft topic from your original thing here.

But yeah, what's going on with Lyme?

Yeah, so Lyme has the battery operated bikes.

They have the regular bikes.

They have the scooters in certain cities.

And now they're launching a car sharing service in Seattle

that are kind of like the card goes of old.

They had the old smart cars for a long time, and now they're fully Mercedes-Benz shop

fancy cars.

But Lyme has a permit to send out 502-door Fiat vehicles.

So they're compact cars, the Fiat 500 vehicles, and they're all decorated in fancy Lyme decals

and all that shit.

But there's 500 of them in Seattle now that are open to the public.

that has the Lyme app for the bike program can get a Lyme Fiat for $1 to unlock and then

I think it's something like 40 cents a minute.

So I really appreciate that they went with Fiat 500s here because that was one of the

things that I really loved about the Cartagot program initially, which I still love them

and I do love Mercedes and being able to pick those up.

But the smart cars that they used to have were so damn convenient.

You could park those things anywhere.

you know now they're all full-size vehicles so it's much more difficult to come up with parking.

So the Fiat 500s will be a welcome addition to be able to get you know go downtown and find a

parking spot within reason. I agree with that. I have to say though I really enjoy driving the

luxury vehicles I mean for 40 cents a minute or 45 cents for those guys. It's a much better

experience but when you had the smart car you could park that thing sideways in a parking

spot downtown and they're so narrow right yeah it was very convenient and in places that you

couldn't park regular car those guys would squeeze in there so this is a niche I think that was

that needed to be filled after car to go was replaced with the long body Mercedes Benz you

know like the full-size cars so now we have three different three different cars here well four if

or if you want to include, what's the one that you use?

It's not the same. - Zip car.

- Yeah, zip car, there you go.

So you have car to go, you have reach now,

you have Mime and zip car.

- Now the interesting piece there,

I don't know if many know this,

but like reach now and car to go

are both owned by Daimler.

So Daimler Chrysler had car to go originally

and they acquired reach now a few months ago,

maybe six months ago.

I haven't fairly recently. Yep. It's a newer thing. So they're they're under one roof joint venture. But yeah, you've got you've got reach now is card it goes so card ago is

BMW and reach now is Mercedes Benz and

Zip car other way around did I get that wrong reach card ago is Mercedes and reach now is BMW

Yeah, yeah, and I have fiat in the mix fiat's in there, too

It was interesting. We used to have one of these Lyme vehicles parked kind of over in the park that we walk our dog and we would walk by it and I would be like, well, that's interesting that it's a car that claims that you can rent it and it's Lyme branded and the whole nine yards.

But I was like, I've never seen an app or something that will allow you to do this. So there must have been a little beta program going on or something that's a select few people could go and rent those cars ahead of time.

because I think I've seen those cars in Seattle for a month or two maybe now.

They did. They had a private beta for a while. I don't know. It was pretty tight.

I tried to get in on that and I couldn't. So whereas like the other guys, when they were coming out,

they were more public about that, I feel like.

Yeah.

I didn't see anything about the Lyme program other than those cars, a few cars on the street.

So you're a Lyme member. Have you tried to take one of these yet?

I haven't yet. I haven't had a need for that yet, but I'm definitely since I am a member.

Why not? In my current housing situation, I've got zip cars in the garage, so I don't know that I would use it much.

I like having the I only use the car now just to go to the store and back.

When I was up in the U district, I was using more of that one way transit to get down to the office, but I don't really need to do that anymore that I can walk there.

So I

Might try it just for kicks. I don't have a good reason to use it or maybe if I have a late night make these run

I can do that

That'd be all well dicks, right?

Or or dicks. Absolutely, man. I mean

Who has a problem with the greasy bag of dicks said uh?

You know late night

That's the Seattle specialty right there man. Everybody wants to get a bag of dicks

Well speaking of bag of dicks KJ. We're at the top of the hour here and we're running out of time on the coffee code cast

So you want to bring us home or what?

Yeah, well, you know, as always, you can contact us on Twitter at the coffee

code cast. You can use the hashtag Ask3C.

If you want to reach out to us, the website is obviously

www.CoffeeCodeCast.com.

You can reach us at coffeecodecast@gmail.com if you still are into email.

And of course, get us wherever you find your podcasts, including Spotify.

We're on Spotify now about that.

We're everywhere, man.

Awesome.

Happy time in Seattle.

I'll be thinking about you from my cold temperatures here in Denver.

And we'll see you probably on Friday.

All right, safe travels, hombre.

Cheers.

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