00:56.76 Stan Lemon So Jonathan, here I am minding my own business, just you know going on with life. And you drop a link into our note. And suddenly I find myself an emotional wreck and struggling with my allergies, Jonathan.
01:14.33 Jon Are you really that angry with me?
01:14.39 Stan Lemon And all it said, all it said was marketing at its finest. And i I felt the lump form in my throat about midway.
01:25.27 Stan Lemon But that last scene, man, it broke me. Shame on you, Jonathan. Shame on you. ah you better tell You better tell people what what if I'm referring to.
01:35.38 Jon For those playing at home, this is the new Disney Cruise Line advertisement that debuted during the Oscars last night. um And
01:45.88 Stan Lemon Wait, wait, wait. Did you watch the Oscars?
01:47.54 Jon No, I did not.
01:48.59 Stan Lemon Oh, all right.
01:48.76 Jon so But I did watch the Disney Cruise Line ad. um And it's great. This is like the second really great Disney Cruise Line ad um they put out in the last couple of years. The first one followed this towel animal that gets all sad when the families leave. Yeah.
02:05.82 Stan Lemon Right. I remember that.
02:06.07 Jon and
02:06.66 Stan Lemon i remember that. That was fantastic. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah, this, okay. you should You should outline exactly what happens in this ad so people can understand. First of all, a Disney Cruise Line, best cruise line in the world.
02:17.38 Stan Lemon I've never been on any other cruise line, but they can't possibly match it.
02:18.87 Jon Right.
02:20.86 Stan Lemon Right? i would I would dare say, you know what? Here's the reason why I like Disney Cruise Line. This is what I always tell people. All right? Disney Cruise Line taught me how to vacation.
02:32.63 Jon Yes.
02:33.78 Stan Lemon All right. There you
02:34.39 Jon With some help from your friend, John. So.
02:36.73 Stan Lemon Listen, it took it took a swift boot in the butt to get, after a global pandemic, to get on a boat, a concealed space with with my best friend in order to to learn how to vacation. Correct.
02:49.88 Jon Anyway, so ah the ad basically starts out ah early in the morning in the stateroom, young family, um with a young kid who ah is awake, as anyone who has had a young child will remember. Sleeping's not always the best. And so dad and baby ah go take a early morning stroll on the ship. um I think it's the Disney wish that this is taking place on. um
03:15.96 Stan Lemon No, no, no, no, no. Because, well, okay. Aladdin is on the treasure, I thought.
03:22.34 Jon The treasure. Right.
03:23.29 Stan Lemon Yeah, yeah. And Aladdin makes an appearance in this.
03:24.28
Jon
03:25.53 Stan Lemon Yeah, yeah. So I don't know. it It probably isn't all on the same ship, is it?
03:28.50 Jon Could be all the same. I don't know.
03:30.36 Stan Lemon But Aladdin definitely appeared and that was the treasure.
03:31.14 Jon We'll have to go back and look.
03:32.31 Stan Lemon Okay, yeah, yeah.
03:33.24 Jon Anyways, so like those of you who have been on a Disney cruise ship, there are some really magical times where you walk around the boat and it's empty. um Like early morning, maybe super late at night, and it's like, oh, I'm the only one here because everyone else is asleep or in their staterooms. And it's pretty cool.
03:52.44 Stan Lemon I have a hot take for you. On the Alaska cruise, I never found the boat empty. Not once.
03:57.83 Jon Interesting.
03:58.90 Stan Lemon and And I got up a couple nights in a row multiple times in the dead of night to go see if I could spot the Northern Lights.
04:06.32 Jon Ah.
04:06.36 Stan Lemon There was, and I think it's because of the, I mean, the Northern Lights, but also just the atmosphere, the the nature element of the Alaska cruise. Like there was always someone out on deck.
04:18.78 Stan Lemon Always.
04:19.96 Jon OK, Alaska cruise is on the bucket list for me. um Like generally, when I have done it in on Caribbean sailings, um it's like you've got some deckhands or something that are doing something and you like see crew members.
04:23.20 Stan Lemon Oh, it's one of my favorites. john
04:33.56 Jon But yeah.
04:35.10 Stan Lemon Yeah, 100%. And, in you know, Deck 4 on the cruise ships that you've been on, right, ah are very busy during the day. And then at night, there's nobody there. That popped up in the video.
04:46.80 Jon Yep. Um, so then like, basically this goes through different cruises throughout time, looks down, kid is a little older, uh, same thing. Uh, then they flash forward and the kids now probably, i don't know, six, eight, something in there. And, uh, the kid asked dad, Hey, can we go for the walk?
05:09.59 Jon Um, and they go out walk. Flash forward, I think this is probably when Stan got hit first. um Teenager typing away on his phone and it's like, hey, you gonna get ready for the pool? And teenager says, no, I'm gonna just stay here if that's okay.
05:27.42 Stan Lemon I know that vibe. I know that vibe very well.
05:28.31 Jon ah
05:30.23 Stan Lemon Yeah.
05:30.71 Jon But then it flash forwards to nighttime and the teenager walks out and looks over the rail with dad too.
05:38.90 Jon Is there one more in there? Then does it switch to
05:43.19 Stan Lemon i think I think it jumps to grandpa.
05:46.07 Jon Okay, so then it jumps to Grandpa, and...
05:46.93 Stan Lemon Yeah.
05:49.40 Stan Lemon This one wrecked me, man. This one, like, oh my goodness.
05:50.52 Jon wow
05:53.36 Stan Lemon Go on, come on.
05:53.59 Jon So this is the original dad, um who's now Grandpa. His son is on the cruise with him, and ah son knocks on the stateroom door with the grandkid.
06:02.90 Stan Lemon Hold on. sullen Sullen grandfather crawls into bed first. Okay.
06:08.23 Jon Right.
06:08.82 Stan Lemon And we see it through the porthole. that's That's the angle. The lights go out and then there's a knock on the door.
06:16.39 Jon Right.
06:17.72 Stan Lemon man
06:19.49 Jon Yeah. And hey, we're having trouble sleeping. Want to go for a walk?
06:24.25 Stan Lemon Yeah, and it's it's the grandkid. And she says, Grandpa, oh, man. i You know, i think um Disney's always done really good at the generational marketing, right?
06:35.07 Stan Lemon This is not just a little kid thing.
06:35.10 Jon For sure.
06:36.91 Stan Lemon This is me and my kid thing. This is me and my grandkid thing. And I think that's what was what I love about this. Now, you juxtapose this to every other major cruise line.
06:49.91 Stan Lemon Maybe not every other, but the big ones. We'll talk about the big ones, Royal Caribbean, Princess, et cetera, right? And it's like fun, party, celebration, loud music, colors, flashing lights.
07:01.85 Stan Lemon And Disney is over here like, we just make memories.
07:06.58 Jon Right. And so like the story was compelling and that's what Disney is all about is storytelling. But when you tell somebody, Hey, you should really go cruise Disney cruise line. What do you talk about?
07:19.77 Stan Lemon I, that's a good question. So what I, what me, Stan Lemon talks about is being, uh, pampered, right? Everyone being nice, it being clean. I always note that there are no felons and there are no, uh, casinos on the cruise. Um,
07:36.47 Stan Lemon Right. And then i talk about this just immersive experience. Everything is nice and tied together. And I guess, I guess what I'm probably describing is the story around you and in more of a passive sense, but i like being able to relax and just make memories, I guess.
07:48.76 Jon Sure.
07:54.45 Stan Lemon I guess that's what I'm doing. Right. Like I, as I sit here and reflect on this now, um, even as we've traveled the world on Disney cruise line, all we're doing is making memories.
08:03.29 Jon Yeah, and I think that you touched on some of this, but really what sets Disney Cruise Line apart is the fit and finish of the ship. That thing is immaculate even if you are on one of the first ships.
08:16.02 Jon um
08:16.25 Stan Lemon Yeah, absolutely.
08:16.76 Jon The second is the service. You get Disney-level service um where they're treating everybody like VIPs um and really going out of the way to make it a magical experience.
08:28.89 Jon The food is good. Ports are good. um Like there's all sorts of product features of Disney cruise line um that would set it apart from the other major cruise lines.
08:42.90 Stan Lemon there's um You mentioned ports, excursions. There's like a thread, right, where they tie everything together and they just take care of you. And so, you know, it's kind of like ah I don't worry about even booking something or what's going to happen if something goes wrong.
08:49.41 Jon Yeah.
08:55.71 Stan Lemon Like Disney's just going to take care of it. It's um it's a complete experience. um and And it allows you to relax in a way that I i just have never experienced anywhere else. Now, you mentioned Disney has this reputation of treating people as a VIP. i completely agree with that. But I i don't think...
09:12.41 Stan Lemon I don't think folks understand that until they have the ability to compare against something else. And I told you when I went to Universal Studios, like I think kind of better rides, but like meh on the experience side, right?
09:18.27 Jon Right.
09:28.12 Stan Lemon And, and that really, and and I was actually on a VIP tour going through universal students. Like I paid extra for the VIP tour and it didn't match up to just another day at Disney, you know?
09:39.29 Stan Lemon Um, which I think everybody needs to be able to do that juxtaposition to really, to really get it. And, you know maybe, maybe you don't need that kind of VIP tour or experience or like treatment, but, um, it's nice. It's really nice. I like it. And just the, the, again, Disney cruise, I get the relax.
09:57.53 Jon And like another feature of Disney Cruise Line, if you love the characters, characters all over the place um that you get good interactions with and things like that. And so when I say this is marketing at its finest, those things weren't even included for the most part. um Like the ship and the storytelling was included as the backdrop.
10:20.57 Jon um but this was really an emotional connection for families between themselves, not the emotional connection with Disney.
10:26.61 Stan Lemon Yep.
10:29.01 Jon Disney is a service to provide those things. And so when I'm talking to my marketers um all the time, I see like, hey, this is great for classroom music teachers because this, this, this, and this. And I'm like, let's make it customer centric, not product centric, not company centric. Let's make the customer feel something that really connects with their day-to-day life. um And Disney knocked this out of the park with his ad. Yeah.
10:57.78 Stan Lemon Yeah, it's a good ad. i If we can remember, maybe I'll stick it in the show notes and I'll try and remember.
11:05.13 Jon Yeah,
11:05.40 Stan Lemon willll let everybody like ah But otherwise, like just hop on in to YouTube and look for disney Cruise Line add right ne memory ad.
11:11.51 Jon yeah it's on the Disney Parks YouTube channel.
11:14.55 Stan Lemon Yeah. nobody Nobody goes to channels anymore, Jonathan.
11:17.43 Jon Sure.
11:18.30 Stan Lemon they just They just search, right? Even when I know the channel that I want to go on, I just search.
11:23.03 Jon I mean, generally I'm subscribed to them. I was not subscribed to Disney parks, and I'm still not currently.
11:27.06 Stan Lemon Are you now?
11:28.15 Jon So we'll see.
11:28.28 Stan Lemon Oh, okay.
11:29.19 Jon I'll have to go see what else what other kind of content they post.
11:31.13 Stan Lemon You did not convert.
11:33.40 Jon Not based on this one end, no. Yes.
11:35.24 Stan Lemon right. Well, man. All right. Hey, yeah so I wanted to talk a little bit about LinkedIn this this last week because I feel like i had had some fun posts and and also I got a little spice from the dark corners of LinkedIn as well.
11:44.73 Jon Yes.
11:55.19 Stan Lemon And it all started with me getting back on the bicycle So if if you recall, I have a goal to do 35 rides, 15 with my friend Noah, who, Noah, we're still zero.
12:07.19 Stan Lemon i don't know if you listen this, before we're still zero, buddy. I got 34 rides to go. um i managed to log on 23 and a half miles for my inaugural ride. I was pretty pleased with that as a distance.
12:17.24 Jon Which is great.
12:18.39 Stan Lemon Yeah.
12:18.41 Jon Yeah.
12:19.38 Stan Lemon And I had a moment where I almost died. This is not on a LinkedIn post, um but I was cruising.
12:27.19 Jon Was it because you were looking at your phone?
12:29.11 Stan Lemon It was because I was looking at my phone. So I used to never bring my phone with me when I rode. Like as a general rule, I left it in the car. I just brought my watch. There have been a couple of times where I've decided to go like on a different path. Because in Indianapolis, you have you have the Monon Trail, which runs north to south, stretches most of the length of the city. There's the Cultural Trail downtown. You've got Fall Creek. You've got ah the Nickel Plate Trail.
12:57.21 Stan Lemon and the Fall Creek actually goes off in two different directions. Like there's a lot of different ways you can branch off the Penzi Trail, all these things, right? And I started mounting my phone to the front of my stem because I wanted to try something different. Like I didn't always go ride with a plan.
13:13.37 Stan Lemon And one one day this this blew up an epic proportion. I wound up on the far west side of town on the canal towpath, got lost, covered a whole bunch of mileage and and and clocked in just eight tenths of a mile short of my my long distance goal for the year, but I still counted. That's okay.
13:30.52 Stan Lemon Anyhow, I bring, i bring the phone because that. So as I'm cruising along and it's beautiful weather, it's not too packed on the trail. I decided to check in on my friend, Claude.
13:41.53 Stan Lemon because Claude Remote Control works. And this is what the LinkedIn post is about that caused some spice, but here's what was not in there.
13:43.31 Jon Right.
13:46.23 Stan Lemon um I got so excited that I was able to you know tell the tell the robots to go do more work for me that lost sight of where the next intersection was.
13:57.98 Stan Lemon And I'm clipped in on my bike, right? So stopping on a dime generally means I'm gonna completely like come undone. Somehow by the grace of God,
14:08.89 Stan Lemon i was I was steering Claude to you know do the next cycle of work. And I looked up, realized I was about to blow through an intersection, unclipsed, slammed the brakes, and got my legs on the ground, my feet on the ground, rather, ah before I rolled through.
14:23.48 Jon Nice.
14:26.17 Stan Lemon And I decided then that as cool as remote control is, I would not use it in motion again.
14:34.55 Jon Probably a good call.
14:35.69 Stan Lemon So waited until I got to the, like I rode as far north as I could and I stopped, ate a fig bar, checked in on Claude and then i rode back. And then I checked on Claude again in the in the parking lot. And... um
14:45.24 Jon Friends, cycling is dangerous enough, um mostly because drivers are stupid. um So please don't be looking at your phone while you're in motion or wearing headphones or other things that just elevate the risk like that.
14:58.96 Stan Lemon it's It's just generally a good idea to focus on the road and and nothing else, to be honest with you. um
15:03.41 Jon Yeah. Although I am anti like those side rearview mirrors um on bikes, because if somebody is going to hit me from behind, I don't really want to see it coming.
15:04.38 Stan Lemon But it was...
15:14.23 Stan Lemon I think there's there's an element of of you just get a little too paranoid when you can actually see behind you, I think, at least for me, right?
15:20.80 Jon Yeah.
15:22.85 Stan Lemon And like, here's the thing. I primarily ride on paved greenways through the city. I am out there because I like to be outdoors, which again, I'll you know get off my phone, Stan.
15:36.02 Stan Lemon But the the bottom line is that I am not there to like be looking behind me all the time, right? Right. So, you know, it is, it but I posted about this on LinkedIn and, I've kind of had this, don't long trail of here are crazy places where I've used Claude. And this one, this one got like 3,500 impressions, which is, I think that's a lot. Right. Um, and it got one really spicy comment from somebody you used to work with, uh, who kind of, I think, I think i kind of jumped the plot line. Don't you think?
16:11.38 Jon i I do you think so.
16:14.10 Stan Lemon So there's, I think i was excited. i mean, I am excited about AI and writing software with AI. I'm excited about ah being able to use Claude in places that I could not previously code, right? Because as we talked before, I've got all these like moments in between things.
16:30.65 Stan Lemon right? That are lost to nothingness. If I don't do something right, like like they're, they're just awkward in between moments. It's like at the end bike ride, I was waiting for my wife to pick me up. Took 10 minutes, right? I had nothing to do except I could doom scroll Instagram or I could tell Claude, go make me another build of my app.
16:48.26 Jon Yep.
16:48.45 Stan Lemon Right. Um, and,
16:49.62 Jon You historically are good at this. um I find myself to be pretty comfortable in ambiguity. so
16:56.79 Stan Lemon I think um I'm starting to learn that maybe one of my superpowers is the way that I fill in the moments.
17:02.72 Jon Yep.
17:03.73 Stan Lemon It's how I get, I don't know, more done than than maybe the average Joe. I don't know. Maybe it's not true, but like i think there's something there. I'm starting to become self-aware and and in this regard. But here's what's here's what struck me. So I can get excited about the robots and some people translate that into software engineering jobs are going away, right?
17:26.81 Stan Lemon which i think I think based upon this post is a huge leap.
17:32.38 Jon Oh, for sure. There are other things you have done that, you know, maybe put it in danger, but.
17:34.34 Stan Lemon clearly...
17:37.75 Stan Lemon but But I think there's there's a there's a leap here that a lot of people are making. And I actually think it's sad. There's a huge opportunity to take the tedium of the job away so we can work on cooler, better stuff.
17:58.23 Stan Lemon And that's what I'm excited about. this I'm mostly posting about Claude in my spare time. like These are hobby projects. These are not jobs at work that are being replaced by AI. It's it's literally me doing a thing for fun.
18:12.09 Stan Lemon And you remember when built Dollar and Cents, right?
18:15.08 Jon Yep.
18:15.74 Stan Lemon That took, what would you say? That took probably an a year from start to first App Store release.
18:24.06 Jon Probably close to.
18:25.30 Stan Lemon It was a, it was a little, I felt like it was a long time. Now granted, it was my first time writing Swift, my first iOS app.
18:28.95 Jon Your first Swift stuff, yeah.
18:32.29 Stan Lemon um And, and like, it's not an overly complex app. Like the the hardest part was Apple sharing, but that just sucks. Like that's just a sucky implementation that Apple has done.
18:45.31 Stan Lemon And I don't think AI would have made that better, but like everything else, there's some stuff it could have done for me and like, you know, been easier, faster. So I take that and and then I fast forward and I've, and I spent like way more dedicated time to that app than I have with this exercise routine app, which I may never release.
18:54.35 Jon Right.
19:04.81 Stan Lemon I may never release. I don't know. Um, but I, I just, I think that's, that's the cool part of it to me. And at work, at least I see a lot of engineers doing more stuff at a higher quality and be more excited about it because it's taking away the parts of the job.
19:22.78 Stan Lemon Like here's here's, here's, my hot take. Claude is best at doing the parts of the job that nobody wants to do. And the parts of the job that nobody wants to do are the ones that we tend to let suffer.
19:33.50 Stan Lemon Right.
19:33.65 Jon Yep. Mm-hmm.
19:34.68 Stan Lemon a And I'll give you, so in in the software industry for a long time, there's been this philosophy of like red green development, right? So this notion that I write a test, it fails, then I go implement the feature and the test passes. right So I define the contract, the expectations, the outcomes up front.
19:52.98 Stan Lemon And then I read it. Now, in as a philosophy, it's beautiful. It's brilliant. And it works great. And it's especially good when you're writing like unit tests or or like low level tests. Like that, it actually helps. I've done it. I've preached it.
20:06.30 Stan Lemon But I think, i did yeah, yeah, yeah.
20:06.36 Jon You train me up on how to do it once upon time?
20:10.08 Stan Lemon here's Here's the thing that I think it doesn't work well with is any type of UI interaction, right? So for me to go write a UI test before I write the UI is nearly impossible, I think. Even even with Figma style-driven development, I think it's just nearly impossible to do. um And so what happens is we go build a UI, we manually QA it with ah a very like high level of thoroughness, and we make sure that works. And then sometimes we start to write tests, right? Right?
20:37.32 Jon Sure.
20:37.37 Stan Lemon And I think this is where Claude is super, super powerful. And Codex, like all of them, right? I do my manual QA. I know that my application works. Now I'm going to go have the robots write a bunch of tests that frees the outcome in time, right?
20:53.94 Stan Lemon And so then then i i' like I didn't have to do all that manual hard work, but everything I do after this now benefits from that. And that's such a ands such a powerful thing, but that's the kind of like tedium that I think it can take away and we actually get to ship more, faster, better all the time.
21:12.66 Jon Yep. And like, that's the exciting part about development too. I remember when I was actually ah messing around with agent decoding initially, ah the big unlock there was it just updated things for me and just got my dev environment working. Whereas before that would take me three days to figure out what was going on and how to get just my development environment working. Yeah. um So it's great.
21:39.66 Stan Lemon there's ah There's a ton of magic in the tedium getting out of the way so we can focus on the hard problems.
21:40.43 Jon need do more.
21:45.85 Stan Lemon And I don't think that's going to eliminate jobs unless your sole purpose in life was to do the tedium, right? And i I'm sure there are people out there like that. I just don't i don't don't know who you are, and i that's kind of odd to me. Yeah.
22:02.09 Stan Lemon Yeah, I don't know. all right, so cycling, Claude, remote control, still cool. I don't think, i am I firmly believe that AI will create more jobs than it will take away.
22:16.54 Jon I agree.
22:17.91 Stan Lemon So I've been, interestingly enough, Lucy has had a debate assignment with school and it has been about AI, automation and jobs, right?
22:28.91 Stan Lemon So we've been talking a lot about this.
22:29.00 Jon Mm hmm.
22:31.16 Stan Lemon um I think for whatever reason right now, we're putting blinders on and we're forgetting that automation as a theme over the over the expanse of history has created more...
22:41.01 Jon It's what turned the US s into a global superpower.
22:43.45 Stan Lemon Yeah, well, there you go. but it's it's like it's It's created more jobs than it's taken away, right?
22:44.98 Jon like
22:48.45 Stan Lemon You can you can go back to Henry Ford and the assembly line.
22:48.82 Jon For sure. Right. Mm-hmm.
22:51.61 Stan Lemon There's a whole bunch of automation there that creates tons and tons and tons of jobs. um I don't remember where I was reading this now. Somebody somebody mentioned that when Excel first came out, that everybody was convinced this would eliminate the accounting job, like the the accounting role, jobs, accounting jobs cross across the globe, right?
23:09.30 Stan Lemon We probably have orders of magnitude more because those folks are using Excel all over the place, right? or Or take Amazon, notoriously packing packing boxes, but the packing boxes with robots. Are there more or less jobs today because of Amazon?
23:26.46 Stan Lemon Yeah, yeah, absolutely, right?
23:27.93 Jon Just look down your street.
23:29.53 Stan Lemon just looked down your street, right? Yeah. So I think i think um for whatever reason we are, we're kind of in a fear-mongering mode. i think I got a little bit of that on LinkedIn.
23:40.90 Jon For sure. So.
23:42.33 Stan Lemon How was my reply, by the way? Did I do all right? like I feel like replied, okay.
23:44.50 Jon ah You did alright. You didn't ah throw gas on the fire. so
23:49.72 Stan Lemon You know, the Stan Lemon of 15 years ago would have would have like, yeah, I would have dropped a nuclear bomb on that.
23:52.86 Jon Whatever. Yes, it would have turned into two-month blog war. so
23:58.52 Stan Lemon Those are the days. Those are the days. Back when getting angry on the internet was still fun.
24:02.56 Jon Right. Instead of the standard.
24:03.26 Stan Lemon now Now, now, like it's just, yeah. it's ah All right. um The other thing I want to talk about, and I posted about this too, disposable software. Have you heard this term before?
24:15.16 Jon I have not, but this was a super cool post.
24:17.85 Stan Lemon All right. So like I was at a co-working space last week with a colleague. um He is very passionate about AI. And he I'm sure he doesn't even pay attention LinkedIn, let alone listen to the podcast. But Kevin, if you're out there, love you, man. Appreciate you. So basically...
24:36.60 Stan Lemon We werere were talking over lunch about AI and he brought up the term disposable software, right? like This one-shot implementation you know serves a moment in time. You do a thing with it and then you throw it away. It doesn't need to be production-grade software. It just needs to get a job done.
24:53.59 Stan Lemon And um ironically, i sent you I think I sent you a screenshot of Claude with the um the interest estimator.
25:02.42 Jon Yes.
25:02.52 Stan Lemon Did see this? Yeah, yeah So this was this is like Claude's doing this. That was part of a demo prompt. You click it, you get a bunch of sliders, a graph, and you can manipulate it within the chat. And what it's done is it's created a mechanism by which you can do disposable software in chats all the time.
25:19.83 Stan Lemon Right. So this is cool. it it gives you a one off. But I was I was um reflecting in a different conversation with Kevin about this software because Kevin Kevin's big into Windows software development. Right. Whereas I do Swift and iOS. He's, you know, ah still using, i guess, C Sharp. I don't know. I should ask him what he actually writes in.
25:40.44 Stan Lemon um But I mentioned that I have these i have these binaries, assembled binaries from my dad who passed away a couple years ago and I i scooped up some hard drives, spent some time organizing and deduplicating.
25:53.18 Stan Lemon And I have, they're they're written in basic. They're actually written in like a flavor of IBM basic. So this is this is ancient stuff, right?
25:58.39 Jon crazy.
25:59.80 Stan Lemon And I have no way of looking at the code, none. And you know Kevin was like, just ask Quad, right? That's Disposal Software. He'll be able to figure out how to detokenize it and all this. And i was like, well I've never even crossed my mind, right?
26:13.85 Stan Lemon So Sunday morning, i was waiting for the kids to get ready to go to church. and sat down at my office and I was like, all right, let's try this. So I put them in a dedicated folder so I wouldn't lose the originals and open up Claude.
26:25.76 Stan Lemon And I didn't use anything crazy. I think I just did Sonnet. I might've put in like high thinking mode um or high reasoning mode, whatever. High effort.
26:34.92 Jon Mm-hmm.
26:35.23 Stan Lemon That's what it's called now. High effort. But I didn't use like the big complex Opus model or anything like that. And I even posted the prompt as a comment on my LinkedIn. But basically I was like hey, help help me figure out, you know, if to read this code. i want to read dad's source code kind of thing. And it did in like 20 minutes before I left the house. I was able to open up this basic code that dad had written. The oldest that I found in the in the folder.
27:00.98 Stan Lemon So this is fascinating. Dad does these headers at the top of the the code, right? Like written by Robert Lemon, written in this folder. year revised in this year.
27:11.05 Stan Lemon And I think the the oldest one I found was like 86. Right. So I was one, I was one, which I don't know.
27:14.09 Jon Crazy. Yep.
27:17.84 Stan Lemon That's that just cool. and And I thought to myself, like, this is another good use for AI and it folds into this disposable software category.
27:26.44 Jon For sure. um Where my mind goes is like when I was back in IT t world and system admin, like you would write scripts to load in 200 users um rather than do it manually. um Now, most of them probably have import functions, um but you used to have to script that kind of thing.
27:45.59 Stan Lemon Yeah, all that all that scripting stuff in general, like the utility scripting, I think that's a great replacement. In fact, here's kind of a funny thing. So dad dad was a high school mathematics teacher, i also helped run the computer lab back before like having computer courses were a thing that high schools did. um And he wrote a bunch of like little one-off tools for grades and stuff. And so one of the... one of the chunks of code that I found basically imports a CSV and does some math on assignments per row and then spits them back out so that you could plug it into a report card.
28:20.25 Jon Nice.
28:20.44 Stan Lemon um Yeah, and it like, that wasn't hard, right? But I also have to remind myself, I think, when when did Microsoft Excel come out? This was before um it was widespread for sure.
28:34.07 Stan Lemon me see if I can find out. When did Microsoft Excel come out? Came out in September 30th, 1985, but it was specifically for the Mac, so dad would not have had it. And then arrived later in 87. I think dad wrote the grade averaging software that I found in 86 and then revised it in 90.
28:51.51 Stan Lemon So the crazy thing is I don't remember Excel as a force until Office 95. which came out with Windows 95.
28:57.03 Jon Right. sure.
28:58.54 Stan Lemon That was like a big launch moment. So I'm sure like it was out there. People were using it. I'm not trying to knock that, but I like i don't think it was the ubiquitous piece of software that it is now um when it first came out.
29:10.62 Stan Lemon and ah Now you would just do that in Excel, probably, if we wanted to, or someone do an Airtable or who knows what. Yeah. Yeah. um That, that reminds me, that's another thing want ask you about. So aye is the age of software as a service dead because of disposable software?
29:29.66 Jon I don't think so. um And I think it has to do with prioritization. um Like there's some SaaS that is really has turned into infrastructure. um And I think that when a company is trying to solve their customer problems, they don't want to necessarily throw resources um at maintaining and keeping something running there. So I think CRM because of my role. um But I think that there are going to be specialists that do software really, really well that solves your problem to make it easier for you to focus on your customers' problems.
30:11.35 Stan Lemon So this is interesting. You called out CRM, right? Contact relational management. So which is basically a massive contacts database in the cloud, right?
30:18.80 Jon Mm-hmm.
30:19.51 Stan Lemon And the the criticality there is sharing that data set across people. Right?
30:24.78 Jon Correct. Right.
30:25.50 Stan Lemon Having multiple people be able to access it. Now now think about, I'm going to pick an Airtable. i actually like Airtable as software, but when I'm sharing an Airtable data set between people, right? there's there's There's some magic there. It's like Excel in the cloud on steroids. Actually, it's more like Microsoft Access in the cloud on steroids.
30:43.38 Stan Lemon But think about all of those times that you go to a tool like Airtable and you use it because... It's handy, right? But you're not actually sharing data with other people.
30:56.73 Stan Lemon Is that the kind of thing that this disposable software concept is going to creep in on and and and maybe like, I don't want to say neuter, but reign in a little bit?
31:06.10 Jon i I think so. um I imagine we see um Airtable start to um kind of shift um and bring in some of that AI use cases to platform.
31:18.23 Jon um I think where we end up seeing us go, because right now we think about AI and we go to Claude or we go to ChatGPT. But I think over time, we're going to see the AI come to where we are working.
31:33.44 Stan Lemon I don't disagree with you. um Airtable is an interesting one because they actually have a connector integrated into ChatGPT. So one of the things that i actually do is I... um when I'm logging my food, when I'm tracking nutrition, I have it write a row into Airtable.
31:47.27 Stan Lemon I have done it. don't always do it because sometimes I'm lazy.
31:49.18 Jon Sure. Right.
31:50.07 Stan Lemon But that was something I like wired up, right? I look at Claude with Cowork and I've done some experimentation with just Claude in general and Microsoft documents. And it's really good at like manipulating a row or adding a row to an Excel spreadsheet or through the Google connector. And that's that's where I wonder if this shifts towards, like I'm just going to tell Claude go add this in in a dumb data set, right?
32:15.42 Stan Lemon Or go do this visualization over dumb data set rather than these shared platforms. That's the thing that I'm i'm curious to see if it evolves, right?
32:23.18 Jon Yeah, so i I'm fairly certain that's where we're headed. um And
32:28.89 Jon again, it's like what we're what we were just talking about with software development, it taking on all the things that people don't really want to do or spend a lot of time doing without a lot of value in return. um I think this breaks out into all other roles and go from there. We see some of this specifically with like meeting notetakers.
32:51.07 Stan Lemon Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Where they joined the Zoom and then they just recorded. Or Zoom's AI summer even, right? um
32:56.34 Jon Right.
32:58.08 Stan Lemon No, I think that's fair. I think about like, I'm going to use pick on the nutrition tracking thing, right? So I'm doing this thing that's predominantly Chia-Chip-PT, pumping it into Airtable, and like chronometer is still out there. And as far as I, like from my assessment, chronometer is easier.
33:14.36 Stan Lemon ah it's It's a lot less friendly to use than just talking to ChatGPT or taking a picture or pasting even a picture of a recipe, right? And just saying, go figure it out. Now, Chronometer has started to incorporate like AI imaging and AI importing. And so has FoodNoms, is another one that I've used. And they're not they're not bad by any stretch.
33:36.57 Stan Lemon But I think if you're really embracing the capabilities of AI software, right? Like it's... It's just a little behind, which is which is wild to think of.
33:45.19 Jon Right.
33:46.25 Stan Lemon It's a little behind, but it is. And so that's the thing that I wonder, and to a certain extent worry, like will that software evaporate? you know um Let me give you another example that i've been I've been noodling on.
33:59.34 Stan Lemon You and I have talked about the wine tasting app, which we don't use when we're not tasting wine together. i also would like a better experience for tracking my wine cellar. I use an app. It's okay.
34:11.100 Stan Lemon But then I keep thinking to myself, like, why would I build that app? Why wouldn't I just maintain that in a Google sheet with some clever Claude UI over top? Right?
34:22.12 Jon Yeah, and I think part of that is because of who you are. um Like, your mom isn't going to do something like that.
34:29.95 Stan Lemon But she could, right?
34:31.04 Jon But she could, right.
34:31.93 Stan Lemon She could. She could open up Claude and say, make me an app experience for logging um wine on a cellar. And the racks are going to be six high, 12 wide. I'm going to take a picture of it, and i will tell you where to log the bottle. And I want you to be able to like show me visually where it should be.
34:53.40 Stan Lemon like i don't I don't think that's totally unreasonable.
34:53.67 Jon Right.
34:56.53 Stan Lemon it It requires a little creativity, maybe, to get there. But...
35:01.21 Jon And i I think, again, that's your personality and your builder mentality um that not everyone has.
35:09.12 Stan Lemon See, John, i disagree. I think everyone's going to be a builder with AI. Everyone's going to be building apps. Everyone's going to excited about it. even going realize they're building apps. They're just going be like show me a little slide toggler for my interest on my checking account. and Boom, they built an app in Claude, right?
35:25.72 Jon Okay, Stan. I'm not quite there yet.
35:27.15 Stan Lemon All right, well...
35:28.08 Jon um My hope is that this all ends in ah Star Trek TNG utopian style civilization. Yep.
35:38.46 Stan Lemon what What I really want, this is, so there's rumors of Johnny Ives, right? Working with OpenAI to create a product for ChatGPT and I've decided what I want. I don't want an earpiece or goggles or anything like that. I want a display on my wall.
35:56.08 Stan Lemon That's, we'll just say roughly 20 inches across. Right. And I want to look like a little SARS display on the enterprise.
36:03.13 Jon There you go.
36:03.74 Stan Lemon And I want to be an interface. I want to be an interface to ChatGPT. And I want to be able to walk in and say, computer, you know, and just let it do its thing. And I wanted to talk back to me in, what was that, Roddenberry's wife, Marjorie, what's her name?
36:20.67 Stan Lemon Oh my gosh. She played Loxana and, um why can I not remember this, Jonathan? Marjorie Barrett Roddenberry, Majel Barrett, Majel Barrett. So she was also the original number one from the pilot episode of the original series.
36:38.63 Jon Ah, nice.
36:39.10 Stan Lemon And then Loxana Troy later in life. So, which talk about a crazy character, man. And then, then I'm, I'm pretty sure she's the original voice of the computer. I think that's right.
36:51.42 Stan Lemon I don't think I'm, don't think I must remember that.
36:51.71 Jon Okay. Nice.
36:54.20 Stan Lemon Some deep Star Trek lore 187 of Life with a Twisted Lemon.
37:00.55 Jon You'll be like, computer, locate my daughter.
37:03.24 Stan Lemon Computer left me, my daughter. Lucille is on deck three. All right. You've got a, I don't even know what this means.
37:13.50 Stan Lemon You've got this last bullet on the note today. It says AI ROPS, AI ROPS.
37:15.29 Jon so this is So I think it's pronounced AIRops, but it's basically AI RevOps.
37:18.09 Stan Lemon AIRops
37:22.33 Jon And it's this term that I've seen around the HubSpot ecosystem. And I don't think I buy it, Stan. um So I'll read.
37:29.22 Stan Lemon Well, you have to tell me what it is because I don't even know what this is yet.
37:29.93 Jon Yeah. I'll read this. um So this is from the CEO of a company called HubSearch. They put out the HubSpot ecosystem salary guide. um So I like to keep an eye on every year when they release this thing um to see kind of where the market is and different things going on in my spaces. So here's the ah meet the emerging role across the ecosystem, AIRops, the pinnacle role in the HubSpot ecosystem.
37:56.67 Jon says, AIRops is AI-first revenue operations inside HubSpot. We're confident it will become a standalone role over time. Today, it is a RevOps professional or an admin with an AI-first mindset and the skills to implement.
38:13.12 Stan Lemon Okay. ah i So maybe maybe let's take us to back. Define RevOps as a starting point for us.
38:22.14 Jon ah So ultimately RevOps is bringing ah marketing teams, sales teams, and customer success teams together working towards the same goal. um So it starts to break down some of those historic silos and some of those historic friction points in the customer journey.
38:39.80 Stan Lemon Okay, so ah rather than everybody fighting for distinct funnels and pipeline, tying it all together in one big customer centric story.
38:47.80 Jon Or just not not talking to each other.
38:50.22 Stan Lemon Not talking to you.
38:50.49 Jon yeah
38:50.96 Stan Lemon Okay, all right. And a big component of this, right, is providing data analytics and views over top of the whole life cycle of a customer.
39:01.61 Jon Life cycle of a customer, um specifically where the friction points are in certain things, like are we getting a bunch of people on a landing page but they aren't converting? um Are we getting deal opportunities through ah through to a certain point and then they stall or that's where we see a bunch of drop off um or customer service interactions, which ones start to drive revenue and kind of refill that flywheel.
39:25.76 Stan Lemon Okay. And so the idea is is just going to over all that. Is that is that a air airops
39:29.79 Jon So I don't think that they are really setting it up like this. They're setting it up like a RevOps person who also is with AI. So here it says what Aeroops professionals actually do. They deeply understand the funnel and attack points of friction with RevOps, AI tools and agents. So I think it's specifically, i don't know if it's like a marketing technologist for AI specifically that they're kind of setting this up to be. um But they leverage Breeze, which is HubSpot's AI tool, agent smart automation and data quality tools to turn HubSpot from system of record to a system of revenue.
40:07.90 Jon um So what I see, like this is the, this is RevOps with modern tools. um Like I don't think that it's an AI specific thing.
40:19.56 Jon Like we don't have e-commerce RevOps. um We don't have internet RevOps, but
40:25.62 Stan Lemon Well, what's the benefit in advertising it this way? Because what you've described, here's yeah here's what I think it sounds like to me. right I have a person who's doing rev ops and they are going to be able to leverage a whole bunch of agents to do work for them right and and multiply out their impact, which is like, that's what I would expect for any job in software, any job touching software in 2026. So what what is the benefit in advertising it this way?
40:55.78 Jon I don't see it, um so I will guess. um But like other titles are using is AI Marketing Automation Manager, Growth Marketing Manager, HubSpot Plus AI. I think that it's just calling out the AI skillset, which I think is a short sighted view um because I think every role is going to be implementing AI as a tool. Like AI isn't the end goal. It's a new tool um that I think everybody starts to use in their roles. I don't think the roles fundamentally change. um The tools do.
41:35.34 Stan Lemon So could this be a play to get folks who are maybe not AI curious or even maybe like ah folks who posted on my LinkedIn recently, right? AI hostile um into a tool chain where they see the benefit first. Like, I don't know.
41:53.42 Jon So this is it. Hub search is a staffing agency essentially. Um, so they're seeing the market and seeing how these new titles are coming out and talking to companies who are rolling these titles out. And I think that basically we're kind of in an employer market right now.
42:13.32 Jon Um, So it's like, hey, we're going to add more qualifications. We want to see that you have experience in AI um to do this and actually know the tool sets.
42:24.10 Stan Lemon Okay, hold on I wanna do some clarification. So Hub Search, is this owned by HubSpot or is it just like a like a job search?
42:28.95 Jon Oh, this is independent.
42:30.54 Stan Lemon Okay, all right.
42:30.89 Jon Yep.
42:31.32 Stan Lemon so But they they primarily do staffing around HubSpot ah operators, admins, HubSpot admins, okay.
42:35.47 Jon HubSpot admins, essentially. Yeah.
42:38.34 Stan Lemon And they're the ones who came up with this AIRops term
42:42.12 Jon I don't know if they are the ones who came up with it, ah but it it now has made itself presented itself in the um kind of ecosystem document.
42:53.00 Stan Lemon Interesting. I just, have you Googled Aerox? Cause there's like a, there's a company called Aerox as well.
42:58.95 Jon I have not.
43:00.94 Stan Lemon Yeah. So this it's a, um, craft content that wins AI search. So this looks like more like an AEO play on this one.
43:08.26 Jon Yep.
43:10.27 Stan Lemon Huh? Well, like, look, I, I think, um, All right, let me see if this makes sense. i I think what Microsoft has done with their AI brand is directionally where a lot of stuff needs to go. So Microsoft is not saying like it's Windows AI or it's Microsoft AI, they're calling it co-pilot. And they're they's stuffing a bunch of things under that brand. GitHub's doing this too, right? So um Copilot on the GitHub space can actually be an implementation over a bunch of different models or it could be autocomplete, right?
43:43.08 Stan Lemon And um strategically, I think there's there's some value here in the notion of taking this powerful tool and decoupling it from AI as a thing, as a brain, like AI as a brand.
43:53.86 Jon for sure.
43:55.50 Stan Lemon let me Let me say that. AI as a brand is not popular right now. And so using AI without calling it AI is strategically, I think, advantageous. So when when when I hear this air ops, it still looks weird with the way it's written.
44:09.06 Stan Lemon AI are it like, it looks like AI rops. um
44:12.97 Jon Right. it's
44:14.77 Stan Lemon Yeah. So I, I, this seems to me like it's the wrong directional play. Like this just needs to be a tool that pervades itself into everything, um, with enhancements and enrichments in the things that you do day to day. This is funny enough. This actually comes back to what you were saying about the disposable software side.
44:31.17 Jon Right.
44:31.66 Stan Lemon Right. Um,
44:32.94 Jon So, but like, In software development, you will have an AI software developer, um but that is probably working on the AI models um and things like that, not just a standard developer, like what you're building. um But you're using AI very, very heavily.
44:55.24 Stan Lemon Yeah. ah Okay. This is interesting. So the software world, there are very few people building like models and AI software, et cetera.
45:03.64 Jon Correct.
45:04.41 Stan Lemon Right. There's a lot of folks. I mean, I think it at this moment in time, just about everybody who's writing software has the ability to use the productivity side of it. Right.
45:15.18 Stan Lemon um there are definitely smaller subsets that are using it in a product, but it is interesting that the, I think the largest AI footprint is actually but within software is it is writing software, not the software that shipped.
45:29.35 Stan Lemon Yeah. That's got to change, right?
45:30.70 Jon so
45:31.64 Stan Lemon Like it has to. and And I think part of the reason that, companies like Anthropic have gone all in on developer tools. I mean, there's there's a few few reasons, right? There's one, this notion that like AGI has achieved when ah like Claude can write its own code for anything. you know I don't know if that's true.
45:50.31 Stan Lemon it seems the The definition of AGI seems to move by the second, maybe by the nanosecond, but um You can definitely see where by training Claude to write code, the possibilities are are endless, right? It has innate extensibility.
46:08.33 Stan Lemon But I also think the the play here is in part, get a bunch of software engineers to use it, to know how it works, so that they can leverage it elsewhere. Like, i think that's I think that's part of the play, at least...
46:20.47 Jon That's part of the play. I think that ah in general, software developers um adopt these things um faster than when you get into other um roles, other industries.
46:33.35 Stan Lemon Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's that's definitely true. um And I think we are more comfortable with rough edges in software, right? And customer experiences that are maybe not as smooth as as you need for a consumer-grade product, right? And, you know...
46:52.49 Jon So I think that's why we see a lot in the software industry, but I see that um starting to roll out to other industries as well.
47:01.26 Stan Lemon So what does this what does this change for you?
47:05.00 Jon What does this change for me?
47:06.16 Stan Lemon Yeah, AIRops.
47:06.28 Jon um
47:06.87 Stan Lemon What is this AIRops position?
47:08.52 Jon ah you I just think the positioning is wrong because I think that everyone will be using AI in some way, shape, or form in their roles. And it will be a co-pilot, a co-worker, somebody who's working there alongside of you. um Something like I use AI all the time to challenge my thinking, to formulate my thinking, um and go back and forth and have those conversations so that I don't need up all your time, Stan. So I'm like...
47:38.28 Stan Lemon This is why we talked last, Jonathan. AI is destroying our relationship. No, no
47:41.75 Jon Right.
47:42.38 Stan Lemon um
47:42.64 Jon AI is what brought the podcast back oh in more ways than one.
47:44.56 Stan Lemon no, no. There you go. if you were trying to make this same pitch, how would you frame it?
47:55.43 Jon I don't know that I would make the pitch because I want people to level up and use the new tools. um So I think that this is very much a way to weed out candidates if they don't position themselves as using AI tools when they're trying to land a job.
48:15.72 Stan Lemon Oh, that's fascinating. Okay. because So this this puts a different spin on on where we could go with this. I have wondered if um we are going to start seeing, like i can see little bits of this already in software, but are we going to start making um used ChatGPT or used Claude as a job requirement in the same way that like proficient with Excel used to be a job requirement?
48:41.94 Stan Lemon I mean, it's doesn't not really anymore, but like, you know, similar, right?
48:42.24 Jon Right.
48:44.06 Stan Lemon Or I would imagine in your line of work, if you wanted to take another job, one with more paid holidays perhaps, you would look for something that lists proficient with HubSpot as a requirement, right?
48:57.38 Jon Sure.
48:58.34 Stan Lemon um So that's interesting.
48:59.46 Jon This is a whole other topic for a whole other episode about you know job descriptions and postings and the recruiting process. But
49:07.40 Stan Lemon Good grief. Yeah. ah Such a mess. um But I haven't seen that yet. I like browsing around on LinkedIn. I have not seen Chachapiti, Claude, Gemini as a job or requirement.
49:19.32 Stan Lemon I see some like really hand wavy nebulous, like familiar with AI tools um starting to pop up in particular on more senior level roles where I presume the company wants to ensure that more adoption of these things is occurring.
49:24.08 Jon Right. Yeah.
49:35.69 Stan Lemon I think that's what's going on there. But on the software side, what I haven't seen, and what I really want to see is um engineers be challenged to use Claude or Codex or whatever in an interview loop.
49:52.33 Stan Lemon And I haven't seen this even on a job description where it's like part you know part of your job interview will include prompt engineering. Right.
49:58.33 Jon Right.
49:58.44 Stan Lemon And I think we've got to start doing that on the engineering side um so that we're hiring people who are, well, two things.
50:10.34 Stan Lemon We're hiring people that can can do engineering the way that it's starting to be done now. But also, that will become a forcing function for anyone who's not on that train to get on that train,
50:21.26 Stan Lemon Right. People forget that like 20 years ago, the notion of an idea, integrated development environment, was like anathema to a bunch of people, right? um And then eventually like not using it became a problem. And that's like where we're at now. So you're not hiring people who are like Vim or Emacs diehards anymore. They have to have some experience, even if they don't love it, even if they still want to like go do, you know, all their coding Emacs. And I think that's going to be the same, but we haven't figured out how to, the next like rotation of this is um we actually start using it in our interview processes.
51:00.10 Jon Yeah, I think there's that, but I think fundamentally um good hiring practices I don't think have changed. I think you always want to hire the person who is more curious and ah has an aptitude to learn, and you always want to hire the candidate who is the better writer.
51:21.29 Stan Lemon Oh, you um yeah, mostly. I think i think mostly. the The curious thing, definitely, the the writer piece, um I think it in part depends on the role, but like I wouldn't expect a junior engineer to be a fantastic writer.
51:35.66 Stan Lemon I would want to see some aptitude for being able to learn how to write, if you can even suss that out, right?
51:40.17 Jon Right.
51:41.23 Stan Lemon um I've actually never seen... No, this isn't true. I did see this once. I have rarely seen a writing assignment as part of a software engineering interview loop.
51:53.38 Jon Right. But this is where your prompt engineering would come into play.
51:53.61 Stan Lemon ah did
51:58.94 Stan Lemon that's a That's a good it's a good perspective, John, that I had not considered just having a writing assignment itself be
52:05.54 Jon like I would ah hundred times out of one hundred want to work with somebody who can more clearly communicate than having a slight edge on the foundational hard skills.
52:21.14 Stan Lemon Yeah, yeah. No, I get you there. what's so What's kind of blowing my mind a little bit right now is if I ask someone to do a design document, right, that design document should give me a lens into their ability to communicate a problem and a solution and direct the work around it, whether it be humans or agents, right?
52:39.34 Stan Lemon um
52:39.52 Jon Sure.
52:40.72 Stan Lemon Now the question that I have is, is it adequate to just give an assignment and have them turn it in? Or do I need to see them write it? And I don't like the latter, but I also worry about, and maybe this is okay. I worry about like, maybe they just one shot the prompt with Claude, right?
52:57.48 Jon Yeah, so that's possible. i think that there needs to be a conversation about how they arrived at that document. I don't think you necessarily have to see how they do it, um but you have to be able to ask the questions like, hey, what were you thinking here? um And things of that nature.
53:10.34 Stan Lemon Okay. So, so the, it would be an async task. Here is a design choice. Uh, write me a doctor like here's here's a problem. Here's something we got to fix or build.
53:21.70 Stan Lemon Write me a design document for it. Submit it. It's gotta be, you know we'll, we'll go all Amazonian and be like, it's a one pager, a three pager, a six pager or whatever it is.
53:31.16 Jon Sure.
53:31.43 Stan Lemon And, um,
53:32.78 Jon Six pages would be too long for an interview.
53:35.11 Stan Lemon Six pages would be too long for an interview. But it'd be like, if youre if you were going to launch AWS, a six-pager would be appropriate.
53:37.62 Jon I guess depending on what the seniority is. so
53:41.93 Stan Lemon um
53:42.01 Jon Right.
53:43.14 Stan Lemon I actually saw someone recently reference the original AWS six-pager because AWS is now, what, 20 years old, 25 years old, something like something like that
53:51.91 Jon Sounds right.
53:52.87 Stan Lemon Yeah. And, uh, but I, I kind of chuckled, like you launched a business like AWS with a six pager and I can't get people to figure out how to write just one page of content, you know?
54:03.02 Jon For a feature.
54:03.18 Stan Lemon it
54:03.75 Jon correct
54:03.85 Stan Lemon Oh my goodness. It kills me. So, um, but the assignment would be right. Uh, I'm gonna say three pager for the sake of this. Right. Um, and turn it in and then have a 30 minute meeting where you will be asked to describe how you wrote the document.
54:23.02 Stan Lemon not the outcome of the document, but how you um develop the thought process.
54:26.73 Jon Right, the thought process so that led you to that um solution is something that I would be curious in. um I want to learn how somebody thinks um because I think that starts to show where the strengths and gaps are.
54:39.26 Stan Lemon It's just an interesting perspective because I think so often software engineering interview loops are really focused around um ah what was built or what was designed, not how you did the design process.
54:53.35 Stan Lemon this is This is what's fascinated me a little bit. like even Even a coding project, it's very like, why did you choose an LRU cache versus an LFU cache? right not How did you think through um whether or not to even cache in the first place?
55:08.46 Stan Lemon right
55:08.82 Jon Right.
55:09.26 Stan Lemon ah and And that progression of thought, I think as an engineer, it's so, probably maybe as a human, it's so easy to snap into um the tactical, practical deployment of a thing rather than the thought work leading up to it. So I like this.
55:25.48 Jon And ironically, i think this becomes more powerful with more junior roles.
55:33.67 Stan Lemon Oh, tell me more.
55:35.02 Jon um Because like, as you get more senior, like a lot of the choices you make are because, hey, you've seen this situation before and this is where you're comfortable or this is what you've seen work well in the past. I think when you go to junior, um like maybe they give you a wrong answer.
55:52.33 Jon um I think that's okay if you understand how they got to that wrong answer.
55:59.43 Stan Lemon Okay. This is fascinating because I, right before you said this, I've been thinking to myself, this is how I'm going to hire principal engineers, right?
56:07.02 Jon And I think there's value in there so you understand how they think um more from a working relationship and see where they can push you, things like that.
56:07.47 Stan Lemon Um,
56:13.74 Jon um But I think this is a bigger tell earlier on when you don't have, hey, here are all the things I accomplished on my resume. um And then you start to train what is the aptitude?
56:25.19 Stan Lemon I like it, I gotta noodle on this a little bit because one of the things that I have observed purely anecdotally, right, is that more junior engineers ah are struggling to do multi-prompt or multi-phased work with AI.
56:40.31 Jon Yep.
56:40.49 Stan Lemon So it's real good at like, do X, where X is super concrete, discrete unit of work, right?
56:40.49 Jon Yep.
56:46.12 Stan Lemon um But like, i think we've talked about this before, but sub-agents is fascinating to me because if you use sub-agents on these coding tools, you're basically saying, you know, you go do this role, you go do this role, you go do this role in in parallel, right?
57:00.67 Stan Lemon And then you come back and you compile all together. So that they like,
57:03.69 Jon Which you think about naturally because you have different teams, different individuals that you're um orchestrating anyway.
57:09.58 Stan Lemon exactly, right?
57:09.67 Jon But a junior has never had that. They finish the homework assignment.
57:13.99 Stan Lemon If they finish the homework assignment. And so what that means is that they also don't necessarily see the value in sub agents, let alone how to leverage it.
57:19.44 Jon Mm-hmm.
57:20.64 Stan Lemon And um that's why my my mind gravitated toward this would be a great way to interview for a more senior role where I need to orchestrate sub agents. But I actually think you you may made a more compelling case for interviewing more junior engineers this way.
57:37.26 Stan Lemon So I'm going to have to noodle on this. This is ah this is fascinating, John.
57:40.66 Jon ah Glad I can help, Stan.
57:40.75 Stan Lemon You're bending my brain a little bit.
57:41.85 Jon When you write your book, ah I want some kind of royalty. so
57:44.86 Stan Lemon Royalty, yeah. If I come up with ah with an AI-proof interview loop, maybe that's the startup, Jonathan.
57:45.70 Jon but
57:50.81 Stan Lemon will' help We'll help you hire your your agent overlords.
57:51.52 Jon There we go.
57:55.91 Stan Lemon All right. Well, Jonathan, ah that about it, I mean, that's as good place as any to wrap it up, just think?
58:02.00 Jon I think this was a good episode, Stan.
58:03.84 Stan Lemon i'm Hey, i'm I'm tickled. I'm still trying to figure out how to pronounce AI-rops, AI-ropes, AI-ropes, AI-rops, whatever it is.
58:09.66 Jon Right.
58:12.59 Stan Lemon But yeah, other than that, it was great.
58:13.41 Jon Yeah, Rops.
58:14.34 Stan Lemon Yeah.
58:14.37 Jon Yeah, sure.
58:15.94 Stan Lemon right, Jonathan. Until next time, my friend.
58:18.47 Jon Until next time, have a good Wednesday.