RobbieTheWagner 
Charles William Carpenter III 
Taylor Poindexter [00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to Syntax. Welcome to a brand new episode of the Front End Happy Hour podcast. Welcome to this week’s JS Party. Live from Ship Shape Studios, this is Whiskey Web and Whatnot. With your hosts, Robbie the Wagner, and me, Charles William Carpenter III. That’s right Charles. We drink whiskey and talk about web development.
I mean, it’s all in the name. It’s not that deep. This is Whiskey Web and Whatnot. Do not adjust your set.
[00:00:36] Promo: Hey everyone. We want to invite you to join us at All Things Open. All Things Open is the largest open source tech web conference on the US East Coast. It’s hosted annually in the heart of Research Triangle Park in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina. Target audiences include developers, engineers. Decision makers and open source [00:01:00] community members and anyone else involved with open source software. 4,000 to 5,000 people from all over the world are expected in October. We’re gonna be there. More information can be found online at 2024.allthingsopen.org. I really hope I don’t have to spell that for you.
[00:01:19] Chuck Carpenter: Forget every single time. You don’t have to do the intro anymore.
[00:01:22] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
[00:01:23] Chuck Carpenter: we’re at a point where he doesn’t have to say, what’s up everybody, welcome to another. Yeah, no, it just happens magically.
[00:01:29] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. You probably heard a few seconds ago that this was Whiskey Web and Whatnot, so I’m not even gonna tell you. Um, but
[00:01:38] Taylor Poindexter: Like, shocker, this is not Whiskey Web and Whatnot. This is, I’m kidding.
[00:01:42] Robbie Wagner: yeah.
[00:01:42] Chuck Carpenter: Exactly. We tricked you into stomp on little people to get up. Yes. That’s my alternative podcast. I’m working. It’s still still in the works. Yeah, I know.
[00:01:53] Taylor Poindexter: to it.
[00:01:53] Chuck Carpenter: Fair enough. You’ll be, you’ll be the first guest. Don’t worry.
[00:01:56] Taylor Poindexter: All right. Remember that?
[00:01:59] Robbie Wagner: yeah. [00:02:00] We do have a guest. As you’ve noticed, Taylor is here with us today. You’ve been on before, but if people for some reason haven’t heard that one and haven’t seen you online, you wanna give a brief intro
[00:02:11] Chuck Carpenter: Then I gotta ask, what the fuck did you, are you listening to, how did you find us? But anyway. Regardless, tell the people a little bit about yourself and what you do.
[00:02:21] Taylor Poindexter: All right, so my name is Taylor Poindexter. I am an engineering manager at Spotify. Coming up on my three year anniversary in October, I lead an amazing team of 10 full stack engineers, front end and back end. And I love some whiskey, so that’s also what brings me here. Partially got the tech, got the whiskey, and excited to be here again.
Guys,
[00:02:40] Robbie Wagner: Nice. We’re excited to have you.
[00:02:42] Chuck Carpenter: Are you still an engineering manager too? We did talk about this. Yeah. Dose.
[00:02:48] Taylor Poindexter: I’m still there. Still there, starting to stretch to senior em, but, you know, just pacing myself, trying to pace myself.
[00:02:55] Chuck Carpenter: there you go. That’s, that’s the key to all things. Can’t go a hundred, a hundred percent of the time.[00:03:00]
[00:03:00] Taylor Poindexter: You know, you can’t, you can’t.
[00:03:02] Chuck Carpenter: All right. Well then let’s talk a little about this whiskey that, uh, we know, you know, a lot about in general. And this particular one is very interesting, which we chose for a very interesting lady. Uh, this is the world.
Yeah, there you
[00:03:16] Robbie Wagner: cork, I
[00:03:17] Chuck Carpenter: The World Whiskey Society Classic Collection. It is their Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey finished in Japanese mis oak chu barrels. So this is a whole thing. So this is, uh, to these used barrels over from Japan, from some. Famous place there. They’re used, so they aren’t, so this is just a finishing barrel and uh, it is Bardstown Bourbon Company Bourbon, which is good stuff.
I’ve had that on its own. But, uh, this is a very different finishing thing. So each run they do 1500 bottles. So this one I have four 60 of that. It’s 104 proof. It is age six years. And the mash bill is 75% [00:04:00] corn, 13% rye, 12% malted barley,
[00:04:04] Taylor Poindexter: Ooh.
[00:04:05] Robbie Wagner: All right.
[00:04:05] Chuck Carpenter: and it has this super cool cap, which is like, that’s pretty badass. I don’t know what I would do with
[00:04:12] Robbie Wagner: off. Maybe you weren’t watching, but
[00:04:14] Chuck Carpenter: Oh, I wasn’t, I was reading this tiny text, uh, I was saying to Robbie offline, I’m getting older and like I’m getting closer and closer to needing some sort of like reading assistance. I’m already making text larger, you know, like you go into the iPhone and accessibility. And you increase default font size.
I’m not at the biggest, but I have definitely upped it one or two. And you know what it is. So it’s like I’m not full on like grandma mode, but getting there.
[00:04:43] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
[00:04:44] Taylor Poindexter: That’s all right. That’ll probably be all of us someday. It smells really freaking good.
[00:04:48] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. It is a little floral for me. And the smell. I’m
[00:04:53] Taylor Poindexter: already had a, a pallet opening. Uh, old fashioned here with a big cube.
[00:04:57] Chuck Carpenter: nice. Nice. So, [00:05:00] yeah, it begs the question is, do we drive you to pre-game or are, you know, are, are you winding down from a tough day at work? It could be either or both.
[00:05:12] Taylor Poindexter: A little combination of both. At first, I was like, oh, I’ll probably just lead with a whiskey. But I was like, no, you should wake up your palate. And I’m like, you know what? And it’s the end of a work day. You should treat yourself. You deserve it, girl.
[00:05:22] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Treat yourself, I would’ve said that for sure.
[00:05:25] Taylor Poindexter: Life is too short.
[00:05:26] Chuck Carpenter: Uh, definitely floral. I’m not really
[00:05:29] Robbie Wagner: like grape and honey dew.
[00:05:32] Chuck Carpenter: honeydew. Okay. Grape in your smell, huh?
[00:05:36] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, I haven’t tasted it yet.
[00:05:38] Chuck Carpenter: Okay. I’m gonna get there. I’m gonna prime my palate of smidge with that. What cocktail did you make, Taylor? I,
[00:05:44] Taylor Poindexter: Just old fashioned.
[00:05:45] Chuck Carpenter: yeah. All
[00:05:46] Taylor Poindexter: been bouncing back and forth between an old fashioned and there’s something called an improved whiskey cocktail. So you know, it still has a little bit of simple syrup. You can do it with either, either bourbon or rye, but then has a little bit of absent and patriots [00:06:00] and orange bitters.
It’s very good, very balanced.
[00:06:02] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, that does sound very interesting. I like some. Yeah, I like, uh, all of those things really. I, I pretty much in the summer do negronis on the regular. I do like gin cocktails actually a lot. Uh, there’s one called, like the last word. And Yes, and there is a whiskey version of it too, I think called like The Last War Ward or something like that.
It’s a
[00:06:27] Taylor Poindexter: Yep. That’s it.
[00:06:29] Chuck Carpenter: But uh, also tasting. Yeah. Yeah. I like that one. Uh, ill straight up Cach, if I’m going like simple whiskey cocktail, I want Cach, I want, I got the little sprayer, you know, for the absence and all of that. Yeah, you do. Little Chch. This is how you use a sprayer. Um, senior engineer. So I know how this works, but you know, for those who don’t, um.
[00:06:50] Robbie Wagner: delegate the spraying because that’s a real
[00:06:52] Chuck Carpenter: That’s only when I’m in a manager’s role. Yeah. Then I can, yeah. As a manager, I don’t delegate per se, because I don’t [00:07:00] believe, so my personal philosophy as a manager is that I don’t believe I’m somebody’s boss. I believe that I’m a member of the team with a different set of responsibilities. Right. And some of that is to protect the team from different things and help them through rough patches or whatever else, but, uh, delegate.
But I allow space for responsibility. Okay. Yeah. Like, I don’t want to tell you what the solution is here. I want you to own that, and, you know, that’s like part of your job and you know, blah, blah blah.
[00:07:29] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, yeah. That’s fair.
[00:07:31] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. This is like a cinnamon balm on the finish.
[00:07:34] Taylor Poindexter: Yes.
[00:07:35] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Like that. What is, what is that? Uh, cinnamon gum.
That’s like big,
[00:07:40] Taylor Poindexter: Like Big red,
[00:07:42] Chuck Carpenter: Big Red? The soda or is it like
[00:07:43] Taylor Poindexter: no, it’s a gum. Or
[00:07:45] Chuck Carpenter: it’s a gum.
[00:07:46] Taylor Poindexter: It’s gum. Right.
[00:07:47] Robbie Wagner: this is like the third time we’ve had this discussion. It is still the gum.
[00:07:51] Chuck Carpenter: but there is also the
[00:07:52] Robbie Wagner: at some
[00:07:53] Chuck Carpenter: No, it is definitely a soda. Like in life, it’s just you need to be in the Midwest to get it. Yeah. But uh, [00:08:00] that big red freshness lasts right through it. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. I, uh,
[00:08:05] Robbie Wagner: is a gum. There may also be a soda. Someone else from the Midwest confirmed for us,
[00:08:10] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, please. It’s like, it, it, it’s available in places where you can buy RC Cola. Okay.
[00:08:15] Taylor Poindexter: Oh, okay. I’ll keep an eye out. My fiance’s from Michigan, so I’ll ask him about the, the big
[00:08:20] Robbie Wagner: Hmm.
[00:08:21] Chuck Carpenter: Oh, yeah. Uh, my wife is from Michigan and there’s the, uh, ginger ale. They’re all obsessed with
[00:08:29] Taylor Poindexter: Yes. Is it Werners
[00:08:30] Chuck Carpenter: Yes. Werners. Yes. Werners. Um, uh, before we go on too much whatnot, we should talk about this whiskey a little bit because I do, I am quite enjoying it. In spite of the, of the Anish. Like, too much of that sometimes gets a little weird, but like the beginning of this is really flavorful and for 104 proof it’s very smooth.
[00:08:53] Taylor Poindexter: yes, I agree completely. And I almost feel like this could get me into trouble, like at a summer [00:09:00] gathering. I feel like it’s so easy to sip, but it’s like, oh, it, it is. 104 proof. Watch yourself.
[00:09:04] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah. Self. Just not too much. Um,
[00:09:08] Taylor Poindexter: Little bit of both.
[00:09:09] Chuck Carpenter: little bit of both. Yeah. I’m trying to figure out like its initial bits, so it’s not like a ton of spice in the beginning. I can kind of see what you mean, Robbie, with like lightly on like a grape, like a white grape juice, but like watered down a little bit and then something there in the middle that I’m not totally catching, but.
[00:09:26] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
[00:09:27] Taylor Poindexter: for me in in the middle, it’s a bit of cherry. I’m getting some cherry in there with a cinnamon.
[00:09:31] Chuck Carpenter: Let see the power of suggestion, like, I’m like, yeah, okay. Yes. Like a cherry flavor, cordial cherry kind of thing. No, I love it. And then there’s like, uh, the Boston Cream, donuts, I’m get, I’m catching a little bit of that, like No, I’m just kidding. I made that part up. Uh,
[00:09:46] Taylor Poindexter: like, oh.
[00:09:46] Chuck Carpenter: was that
[00:09:48] Taylor Poindexter: I was like, I was like, Ooh,
[00:09:49] Robbie Wagner: it tastes kind of bready to me. Like, I was gonna say, like ham sandwich, but it’s not really hammy.
[00:09:55] Chuck Carpenter: Mm. Like white bread, kind of like, I prefer a potato bread for my sandwiches.
[00:09:59] Robbie Wagner: [00:10:00] oh, potato bread’s
[00:10:01] Chuck Carpenter: potato bread is the way to go. Yes. I want potato bread. I need potato rolls for my smash burgers. Yeah.
[00:10:08] Taylor Poindexter: Oh,
[00:10:09] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. That’s the the way to go. You tell. Oh man. We could just spend the rest of the episode talking about burgers and my obsession with burgers in general.
Obsession. I, like, I watch YouTube shows about burgers. I try and make some of these like classic burgers that George Mott’s, uh, show and a book and all this stuff, and he is like talking about classic American hamburgers. Yeah, there’s a
[00:10:30] Taylor Poindexter: Do you ever take any of your potato bread, uh, hamburger buns and put a little butter on ‘em and then
[00:10:35] Chuck Carpenter: Oh yeah. And toast them a hundred percent every single time.
[00:10:39] Taylor Poindexter: Oh. Every single time.
[00:10:40] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Every time I make smash burgers, I do that. think there was like one recipe that I, I came across where they were like, we don’t suggest it. For whatever reason, I don’t, I don’t know, but pretty much,
[00:10:52] Taylor Poindexter: up.
[00:10:52] Chuck Carpenter: yeah, I’d like a good, well, it helps too, with the juices coming down.
You don’t want your bun to get soaked, and if you do, so I [00:11:00] actually put my toppings on the bottom is part of it. And toast the buns. Yes.
[00:11:04] Taylor Poindexter: a pro tip. Toppings on the bottom.
[00:11:06] Chuck Carpenter: Top shredded lettuce on the bottom. Oh yeah.
[00:11:09] Taylor Poindexter: Okay.
[00:11:10] Robbie Wagner: What if you just did it normal and then turned it upside down?
[00:11:14] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, you can do that too. And some people will tell you to do that because it’s, it’s fine. Like if you have the cheese on top and some sauce or whatever there, turning it upside down is not gonna do much, you know? But presentation wise, it’s nice to put it upside on someone’s plate and then if they want to play that game.
But
[00:11:29] Robbie Wagner: That’s fair.
[00:11:30] Chuck Carpenter: yeah. So welcome to another edition to Hamburgers. Uh. That’s it. I don’t know what else. Yeah, there’s no hamburgers. HTML, and.
[00:11:42] Robbie Wagner: instead of brats, it’s uh, beers bites and burgers.
[00:11:48] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, something like that. Anyway, alright, let’s circle back a little bit. We all like this one. Uh, to three. Let’s figure out what degree that is. Our highly technical, uh, [00:12:00] rating system from zero to eight tentacles because hey, we’re, uh, we’re software people, we’re web people. We like zero based plus a octopi.
Occupy may have zero tentacles. I don’t know how much longer they’re gonna live, but they could have zero.
[00:12:15] Robbie Wagner: I think
[00:12:15] Chuck Carpenter: being terrible
[00:12:17] Robbie Wagner: is gone. Yeah.
[00:12:18] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. This is a dead octopus and so is this whiskey to me? Uh, so zero, horrible, four. Middle of the road. Uh, eight being amazing. Clear the shelves. If you can find this crazy thing on there.
I don’t have to go first. We can make Robbie if you want.
[00:12:33] Taylor Poindexter: I’m into it. I would go, I would give it a seven. There’s some little flavor in the middle that I can’t quite pick out that I don’t love, but I can’t stop myself from continuing to sip it. And I could see me myself wanting to share this with my friends when they come over. So I feel like that’s a pretty good signal right there if I wanna share it with somebody.
So I’d give it a seven.
[00:12:51] Chuck Carpenter: Pretty solid, Robert.
[00:12:54] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, I think I would give it a six. It’s pretty good. It’s, there is that weird taste in the [00:13:00] middle that I don’t, I don’t know what it is. Uh, otherwise all of it is enjoyable. Uh, yeah. Pretty good.
[00:13:05] Chuck Carpenter: Uh, I don’t know. I’m, I think it’s so interest. I think there’s this thing in the middle, and I think this might be an artifact of the sochu, sochu, whatever, like, I don’t know the difference in the pronunciation from Korean sochu to sohu, whatever, uh, this is in Japanese, but I think it does have like kind of a bittery element
[00:13:25] Robbie Wagner: the same word? Isn’t it spelled the same?
[00:13:27] Chuck Carpenter: I think the Korean one doesn’t have the H Yeah. Or first H as the second. But, uh, anyway, so I feel like it might be something derived from that particular liquor. It almost has like a waxy quality to it. And again, I think we’ve talked about this a couple different times. It’s sort of like if you chewed on some kind of wax candy or whatever it, that’s it.
So it has like, it’s like those little wax soda bottles, you know, and they would have like a cherry juice or something in it, and you get some of that wax on there.
[00:13:54] Taylor Poindexter: Yes.
[00:13:55] Chuck Carpenter: what I feel like it’s akin to, but I do really like it and I kind of think [00:14:00] it’s going to be, while I’m meeting with some friends this weekend, I’ll bring it over, share and get some feedback there.
But, uh, it’s, it’s super unique. Uh, if Arts Town whiskey is pretty good to begin with, so they’ve given it, uh, you know, a different level. So yeah, I’m gonna go seven
[00:14:15] Taylor Poindexter: Yeah. Hell
[00:14:17] Chuck Carpenter: Seven’s the magic number.
[00:14:19] Taylor Poindexter: And I liked for this too. I think there’s only 1500 of these bottles made.
[00:14:23] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, that’s it.
[00:14:24] Taylor Poindexter: very special. Very special. Mm-Hmm. We’re cool.
[00:14:28] Chuck Carpenter: they got a small stock of it, did whatever, six month finishing they were gonna do here, and then that’s it. You get what? You get.
[00:14:36] Taylor Poindexter: Yep.
[00:14:36] Chuck Carpenter: Funny, right? Hot takes Robert.
[00:14:39] Robbie Wagner: Let’s do it. Is jQuery actually better than JavaScript frameworks?
[00:14:46] Chuck Carpenter: You’re like, I don’t want to answer that. Um,
[00:14:51] Taylor Poindexter: fun fact, I know so little about the front end. Like that is not, that’s why I try to stay as far away from as possible.
[00:14:58] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. It’s [00:15:00] not,
[00:15:00] Taylor Poindexter: So no real strong opinions,
[00:15:01] Chuck Carpenter: Wait. Is jQuery better than Laravel?
[00:15:04] Taylor Poindexter: no.
[00:15:05] Chuck Carpenter: Okay.
[00:15:07] Robbie Wagner: Those aren’t really comparable, but.
[00:15:09] Taylor Poindexter: They’re not, but like my loyalty to Laravel is actually pretty high. It is a very special place in my heart, so I’m probably always gonna pick it
[00:15:17] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. And we talked about this last time. They gave you a Lambo full of whiskey. You’re gonna shield that shit for as long as possible. Now there’s nothing wrong with that. If they sent me one, I would be like, yes, that one. I love it. I love
[00:15:31] Taylor Poindexter: The best.
[00:15:32] Chuck Carpenter: Yes. Alright. So know you’re a fitness junkie, uh, that stuff.
So is creatine vaporware?
[00:15:48] Taylor Poindexter: Why not? You know, I take it every day. I love it. You know, I do. I do. I, I’m being reminded, I have not taken my creatine today, so after I finish this whiskey, I’ll probably take some.
[00:15:57] Chuck Carpenter: Or you mix it in the whiskey, you know
[00:15:59] Robbie Wagner: how do you [00:16:00] tell if it does anything though? Like, I can feel it when I take it, but I like don’t know if it gives me any benefit overall,
[00:16:08] Chuck Carpenter: Is, or is that just what you blame your water retention on?
[00:16:13] Taylor Poindexter: A little bit of both. So for me, I have this workout plan, it’s like a spreadsheet that I work my way through. And so I did about a quarter of it. It’s a years long like workout plan without any creatine, without any protein or anything like that. And then I introduced it a quarter of the way through and just kept like consistent metrics on my body and my definition was a lot better.
I did have more water weight, but I just looked a lot more. Athletic. So I was like, oh, I think it’s working.
[00:16:39] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah,
[00:16:40] Taylor Poindexter: taking it. Yeah.
[00:16:41] Robbie Wagner: Okay.
[00:16:41] Chuck Carpenter: something. Here’s a, there’s a sub question here. Why does everyone insist on the flavorless ones? You can tell I love this sub, sub-question, so
[00:16:49] Robbie Wagner: I wrote that.
[00:16:50] Chuck Carpenter: Mm.
[00:16:51] Taylor Poindexter: I, if I think about it, I put it in a lot of random juices and just shoot it. So I think just having it like, you know, bare bones, I can do it in [00:17:00] lemonade, I can do it in orange juice, I could do it in that like turmeric, ginger shot. So just flexibility I think for me. And the flavors are never good when you get ‘em.
So
[00:17:09] Chuck Carpenter: So why not pick your own? I mean, I, I went through cycles of this a long time ago, back when I did bodybuilding for a while and then I was in the CrossFit stuff and whatever. I’m in the, uh, cross, do nothing, you know, for the last couple of years, mostly drink and do nothing. It seems to be working for me.
But when I did, uh, cycle in supplements and things like that, uh, that like, uh, pick your own flavor, it mixes, it’s flavorless, right? That’s the good thing. And there was also. Entire movements around whether you should have sugar or salt as it’s like supplementary delivery thing. It’s better to keep more of it within your muscles.
And I don’t know where things landed there. Maybe that’s a like sure hot take or whatever else. But it used to be like, oh, it should do it with orange juice. And then people were like, well, no, actually you should do it with something like saltier and this and this is better. Yeah, I
[00:17:57] Robbie Wagner: You just coat your chicken in it and [00:18:00] fry
[00:18:00] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah,
[00:18:01] Robbie Wagner: yeah.
[00:18:01] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. I don’t
[00:18:02] Taylor Poindexter: gained baby.
[00:18:03] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
[00:18:04] Chuck Carpenter: it would be like, yeah, maybe you would still do the juice and you’d add, you know, whatever, a pinch of salt for electrolytes. I,
[00:18:11] Robbie Wagner: that’s a business idea right there. You make a, a shake and bake, but like it’s creatine and.
[00:18:18] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. So that you could have fried foods, but then they’re healthier because they’re, what?
[00:18:24] Robbie Wagner: You could still bake it. You just gotta get it
[00:18:26] Chuck Carpenter: You gotta air fry it, you
[00:18:27] Robbie Wagner: yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:18:28] Chuck Carpenter: just, you can’t deep fry it, but you can air fry.
[00:18:31] Taylor Poindexter: no. Yeah. But I also do this thing where I go in my fridge and I’ll eat like two or three olives. Maybe I should just start rolling them in creatine and, and popping ‘em. So we got a little salt, creatine.
[00:18:40] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Maybe. I don’t know. Yeah. I love olives. I’m like the only one in my house, so it’s
[00:18:46] Taylor Poindexter: but that’s great. So you don’t have other people eating them.
That’s That’s a win.
[00:18:50] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, that, I guess that’s true. It’s a funny thing, ‘cause growing up my mom loved olives and just your plain old ones with pimentos and she’d get so mad at me because I’d go [00:19:00] and I would suck out the pimento and put the olive back. As a kid, I would do that. I was like, I just like this part. And she’s like, well, I like that part too. And I don’t want just this stuff, you know? Anyway, it just reminded me for her next birthday I’m gonna. Send her an emptied out jar of just olive snow pimentos.
[00:19:21] Robbie Wagner: Oh
[00:19:22] Chuck Carpenter: Oh, yeah. You know, if you saw the competition, you wouldn’t, you’d, you’d probably think that, but, uh, otherwise, yeah, not so great. the bar is so low.
[00:19:32] Robbie Wagner: Oh,
[00:19:33] Chuck Carpenter: Honda important things, Robbie.
[00:19:35] Robbie Wagner: are Bombas the best socks?
[00:19:37] Taylor Poindexter: Do not get me straight.
[00:19:41] Chuck Carpenter: Well first, uh, be honest. Did they send you free socks?
[00:19:44] Taylor Poindexter: No, I wish they had actually. So I’ve been on this train of getting cheap socks and I was like, you know, I’m a big girl with a big girl job. I’m gonna invest in some socks ‘cause I like to walk paid $86 for this pack of socks. Wore ‘em one time, got a [00:20:00] hole in them. And so I know they’re gonna say that I can like do the warranty, but at first glance, I think I’m gonna have to pay for shipping to send the socks back.
I’m gonna look more into it. Oh.
[00:20:10] Robbie Wagner: I have, I have, uh, knowledge. Um, so I just got a replacement 12 pack because like I’ve had, like, I bought three 12 packs over the last like six, seven years or something, and I’ve got like. I don’t know, eight socks left. Like most of them have holes of them. And so I was like, Hey, um, I like get a replacement.
They didn’t even reply. I got like a AI response that was like, uh, yeah, we have a happiness guarantee. Like just click this link, put in your order number and we’ll send you a new one. So you put in the order number and it’s like, oh, I see this is a 12 pack, new 12 pack coming to you, no shipping. Don’t send anything back.
Like if you have any socks that are still good, give ‘em to like charity or whatever. And you’re like, cool. So. I think they’re good. Yeah.
[00:20:56] Chuck Carpenter: so
[00:20:56] Taylor Poindexter: I’ll take a little bit of my hate off of this. This is very fresh. This happened in the last [00:21:00] hour.
[00:21:00] Chuck Carpenter: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So click the links or something else that might work. Um, knowing that, do you recommend, I mean, I’m down for like buying something that’s gonna last like the next five years or whatever else. I’m okay with that. So it’s 80 bucks for 12, so you know, it’s like less than 10
[00:21:17] Robbie Wagner: comfort. The comfort can’t be beat, in my opinion. Like they have a nice thing on the back that holds it up. Like a lot of socks have that now, but
[00:21:24] Chuck Carpenter: Are they, no-show socks that work? Is that what you’re doing? Or are you doing
[00:21:27] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, I’m doing no show
[00:21:29] Chuck Carpenter: Well, you, the kids these days are doing, you know, like mid knee
[00:21:33] Robbie Wagner: I know. Yeah. Gen Z says no show socks or dad socks, and I’m a dad, so I’m here for it. I don’t care.
[00:21:39] Chuck Carpenter: I’ve got both. I’m gonna be honest. But, uh, myself the other day, and I feel like my new vibe is dressing like Chevy Chase in the early eighties. Like if you watch the Fletch movies or something, that’s the shit I’m wearing. So I was like wearing like a polo shirt, uh, Kuni Glow or whatever, but just like normal that my shorts now are like five inch in seam.
Had some socks up, you know, half [00:22:00] and some, uh, some old like Stan Smith’s, you know, which is shoes from the seventies and eighties. So I was like, I’m feeling very Chevy Chase in the eighties vibes. And maybe that’s the real dad flex.
[00:22:11] Taylor Poindexter: What does that tan line look like though? Like is everybody just walking around with like calf? unt?
[00:22:19] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Well, I will say when I’m in the sun, that’s not necessarily what, you know, I’m not an avid tennis player. I do like tennis and all of that, but like that’s not happening. Like I’m literally getting in the car and coming into this coworking space and you know, all of that. So when I, uh, sun, which did happen a bunch last month ‘cause we were in Italy and, uh, lake near Como and all of that.
So I did get a bunch of sun and I wore normal. Outside sun stuff, you know? So,
[00:22:46] Taylor Poindexter: Yeah. Next week I’m leaving for a Switzerland, Italy trip, so you’ll have to give me any tips you have.
[00:22:51] Chuck Carpenter: I gave you two restaurants.
[00:22:53] Taylor Poindexter: Oh, right. I forgot my memory’s so crap.
[00:22:55] Chuck Carpenter: you?
[00:22:56] Taylor Poindexter: I bookmarked it.
[00:22:57] Chuck Carpenter: Okay. El Gato, Nero, you’re gonna want to [00:23:00] make, uh, in advance. That one’s like books up, but it’s like super awesome, great view. All that’s in Cherno, like right by Lake Como. And then I told you another one and I, I don’t remember, but that one, it’s key.
[00:23:12] Taylor Poindexter: Okay. All
[00:23:13] Chuck Carpenter: Okay. Yes, bombass. Uh, they’re good socks and they replace them.
Uh,
[00:23:18] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, this podcast is sponsored by Bombas.
[00:23:21] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, listen, this could be sponsored by Bombass. If you just send me two 12 packs, which will last me the next 10 years probably. Um,
[00:23:30] Robbie Wagner: out how well their system works and you could use some more of my order IDs and see if you could just get them to send you more.
[00:23:37] Chuck Carpenter: Well now they’re not gonna sponsor us ‘cause you’re telling people how to cheat. Um, okay. All right. This is the most serious one probably so far. So a moment here and ask, were fillers and crab cakes a mistake?
[00:23:51] Taylor Poindexter: They were, they were, and whoever did that, if I find you we’re gonna have a problem, big problem. Okay.
[00:23:56] Chuck Carpenter: well define fillers more than like, you know, a little. [00:24:00] Old breadcrumbs and
[00:24:03] Taylor Poindexter: Yeah. Honestly, I don’t know exactly what they put in them. I guess it’s like maybe just too many breadcrumbs and like just additional things. Sometimes I’ve seen people put like onions in them at restaurants and stuff like that, and I love onions, don’t get me wrong, but like if I pay for jumbo lump crab, give it to me.
It’s, it’s such a beautiful thing on its own. Add a little Z to it, but not too much. Okay? Don’t shred it. Don’t add all those fillers to it. Whatever it is in there,
[00:24:28] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, don’t get cheap. You’re paying the money.
[00:24:31] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. I want it to defy gravity. Like I want it to have nothing holding it together, but somehow be a cake. Like I don’t need any mayo or onions or celery, or. I don’t know. There’s a ton of crap in there. Sometimes blunt, just the crab.
[00:24:47] Chuck Carpenter: That’s why I wanted to get specific. ‘cause celery happens a bunch and it’s okay, but this isn’t tuna salad. Like this is nicer seafood. Like Yeah. I wanted it to be simple and you know, some nice crunch and then [00:25:00] tons of crab. Yeah, I want, I want that. I don’t think I ever even ordered them out of like the DC, Maryland area anymore, because when I lived there they were amazing.
It was like. Good all over the place. As soon as you leave a particular zone, then they just fill it up with garbage. Yeah.
[00:25:19] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
[00:25:20] Chuck Carpenter: So I, I think that’s, that, that’s the advice. Don’t somewhere no local to you. You should, you should throw some shade, so,
[00:25:27] Taylor Poindexter: All right. I thought about it ‘cause I was saying it was in the area. Maybe I’ll, maybe I’ll shame them a little bit. I won’t do it today, but maybe
[00:25:34] Chuck Carpenter: yeah. Yeah. They happen to listen to this podcast with you. The sun, crab cake, seafood, and web development so that that particular restaurant. Yeah. You know, it’s, it’s the next thing we’re trying, we’re all trying to figure out the next thing. And it might not be ai, it might be another niche. Who knows? You know, developer experience?
ai, no Tech. Food burgers. Potato buns. [00:26:00] Yes. You know what, you don’t need crab. Yeah. Creatine on crab cakes in a toasted potato bun. Maybe put your creatine in the mayonnaise that goes on the bun. Yeah. Then we could do something with this. Anyway, uh, this is a good segue though, into any potential tech topics and, you know, we’re not stuck on those or whatever else, but with AI and the terrible job market in general right now, what do you think the future of development is? It’s not anything to do with crab cakes, I don’t think, but I don’t know.
[00:26:32] Taylor Poindexter: You know, honestly. I’m incredibly torn. I do think that like machine learning and AI has like a lot of great use cases. I think things are a little too bloated right now where everybody, you know, typical buzzwords, throw ‘em around, throw ‘em around, and I think that things will kind of fizzle out and we’ll just maintain the pits that have been good.
I think if people can pick up AI skills at work or like maybe take a simple course. They should do. It couldn’t hurt, but I see some people putting all [00:27:00] their eggs in one basket, trying to get like maybe their first foot in the door in tech or something like that. And I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it in that case, in that way.
[00:27:09] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah,
[00:27:10] Robbie Wagner: I feel like it’s like Web3, like that was a huge thing. Everyone went really hard on it. And then where is it now? I haven’t seen it in a while.
[00:27:17] Taylor Poindexter: Yeah, exactly like that.
[00:27:19] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
[00:27:20] Chuck Carpenter: definitely companies existing in some way, but not doing NFT projects. They’re not releasing new coins. They are trying to lever it, harness the blockchain in some way, and you know, who knows? I mean, I think at the heart of it, there’s potential in that technology, the blockchain, and.
Having some sort of sensibility around, oh, I trust these things have happened, or this is a receipt of, or whatever else there. But yeah, you know, the revolution that was, I, I have to say, I, I have skepticism in wrapping chat, GPT or whatever flavor you like and making it talk about things on your website.
Like, [00:28:00] okay, sure, maybe, but I don’t know. Also, I wonder like where are they training all these models on, like how. Much free information are we putting out there that they are using? It’s a little scary.
[00:28:12] Taylor Poindexter: And I do kind of wonder like, you know, Reddit lock things down, so like models can’t be trained on it as much, and other places are also trying to lock down that data. She’s like, what does that also look like as other companies continue to lock stuff down? So I think that’ll be fascinating to see Play out.
[00:28:26] Chuck Carpenter: yeah, yeah. Definitely there like where this goes, I mean, as the Wild West again on a thing and what fizzles and what works and. Yeah,
[00:28:35] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, we’ll just put out a lot of fake content that it can get trained on and, uh, we’ll see where it goes.
[00:28:42] Chuck Carpenter: just the exposed ones that you know about. You have so many things like, you know, your tiktoks that get all of this information, uh, video form and profile form and interaction form and comment form. And they’re not telling you what they’re doing with that information, but they’re doing something.
‘cause you know, it’s [00:29:00] been said a billion times before, if you’re not paying for a product. Product.
[00:29:05] Robbie Wagner: Mm-Hmm.
[00:29:06] Taylor Poindexter: just thinking that
[00:29:07] Chuck Carpenter: Will we ever go back to the golden days of infinite jobs and money?
[00:29:12] Taylor Poindexter: I think everything is cyclical, so I think it’ll probably take us some time to get back there and the landscape will likely look completely different, but I do think that, you know, everything’s cyclical. We go back there.
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[00:29:56] Chuck Carpenter: I think the money part of it is like. [00:30:00] Of the internet, right? Like web development and SaaS application, all that kind of stuff like that. Ecosphere, it’s pretty young, you know, we’re gonna say like 25 years, give or take maybe a little bit more. And it didn’t start with infinite jobs with and money, but it did start by scaling up jobs first.
I think we’re gonna see a regression in salaries because I’m seeing that, you know, differently, a regression in salaries and has gone down across the board from what I’ve seen. And I think that’s probably part of the point. I think they are cutting a lot of high salary people out having a regression in the market.
So now you reset your expectations for the same skillset and whatever else, and then when that’s reduced, that’s when they’re gonna want to start to increase jobs at that lower salary. Even in my time, I mean, it took me 10 years to hit six figures. Yeah. What? Yeah, so it was like seven or eight years, but it was a while.
[00:30:56] Taylor Poindexter: Yeah, that also makes me think, so a guy that I mentor, he’s a very [00:31:00] high performer, but he’s deathly afraid of his salary being too high because he doesn’t wanna be targeted in a layoff or something like that. And so like for me, I’m just like, gimme the money, baby. I’ll figure it out on the ass in.
So,
[00:31:13] Robbie Wagner: yeah,
[00:31:14] Chuck Carpenter: right. Like, let me decide what I do with that money. I don’t want you to hold it for me. I’ll, I’ll get a little interest over here or something like, right. Like I’ll invest that as I see fit. But, uh, yeah, I can see two sides of that coin.
[00:31:27] Taylor Poindexter: Yeah,
[00:31:28] Robbie Wagner: yeah. I’ve never had that fear. I just give me as much money as possible, please.
[00:31:32] Chuck Carpenter: I want to figure this out right now. Insurance on Lambo isn’t cheap. I need, I’m gonna need it. So, um,
[00:31:39] Taylor Poindexter: Wearables is keeping the lights on, but just in case it never is and the future Gotta be ready.
[00:31:45] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
[00:31:45] Chuck Carpenter: exactly. I, I think you should ask the second part, Robert.
[00:31:51] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Will AI ever be good enough that all developer jobs go away?
[00:31:56] Taylor Poindexter: In my personal opinion, no, I think they may change. [00:32:00] I almost view it as a tool for us. Like okay, there may be, you know, I know people use chat GPT to maybe brainstorm some things that they’re struggling to fix or other things in the IDE, but I don’t think we’re gonna like, be wiped off the, the job market just because of ai.
It needs us.
[00:32:17] Chuck Carpenter: Though I think it’s accelerated search for me in a lot of ways. Like I can, if I’m getting stuck, ask it some questions and get some other ideas. You know, it’s like way cleaner than Stack Overflow.
[00:32:29] Robbie Wagner: It can build RegX for me.
[00:32:31] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah. Red X definitely for Red X. That’s an easy one. But, uh, like I’ll, I’ll look up something and even if I.
Use it as a starting point. I always end up tweaking and changing and having a different opinion. Right. It’s like that’s the fun in development is that there’s more than one way to skin a cat. Uh, cats and. Uh, and then, you know, like I have my style, my opinion, a little bit [00:33:00] into this, and that’s, that’s, uh, another like facet that just won’t go away, you know, code, no code solutions have been around for a pretty long time and they don’t seem to be completely displacing us either.
[00:33:11] Robbie Wagner: That’s true.
[00:33:12] Taylor Poindexter: and I’ve also seen situations where somebody may be reviewing somebody else’s code and and ask like, wait, was this chat GBT generated code? So I almost feel like the code that it generates, you can kind of tell it’s like maybe a little bit off or maybe not taking the full ecosystem into.
Into mind, and so I think we’ll still be around.
[00:33:31] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, context is missing if you’re doing it through that and even copilot, which you know, an idea of like what you’re doing in the code, and so it tries to make some assumptions there. I used it the last time. It would always just not completely finish. Like it’d be like, oh, do this and this and this, and you hit the tab and it does it all.
But then it wouldn’t put the last bits in for me. I don’t know if that was a me problem or whatever else. So yeah, I was always like, Hey, why didn’t you finish your thought there? I guess I will. [00:34:00] Yeah.
[00:34:01] Robbie Wagner: Somebody else asked it a question and they went, oh, gotta go help.
[00:34:07] Chuck Carpenter: one. ‘cause we’re talking about it like hiring and all of that in general, and this is obviously something you have to do on a regular basis as part of your position. Someone was not a referral. ‘cause you know, know how this dance and game goes. If it’s a referral and you trust that person, you usually take that pretty seriously and then do the best you can for them in, in your process.
But let’s say it’s not a referral ‘cause that is where thousands of people are today. Someone impress you both via their application, and then the follow up to that is after you first meet them too.
[00:34:38] Taylor Poindexter: One thing that I feel like people can do ‘cause like also keep in mind as a hiring manager, especially at somebody working at a company like Spotify, there are thousands upon thousands of resumes that come through. And yes, recruiting does screen some of them, but even sometimes I like to get in before recruiting, does screening and kind of go through all of them myself, so I can really tell the people that have [00:35:00] tailored their resume.
To the job description. I’m not saying you wanna lie or anything like that, but like if technically you have experience that applies to it, definitely tweak your resume instead of using one generic resume for as many jobs as you can spray and pray and hope that it gets through. So definitely doing that a lot of times and also like making sure that you’re.
You’ll be shocked. The resume formats I’ve seen before you submit a resume, have somebody else review it and see if they think that it’s readable. And also like what is the outcome of each bullet point. A lot of people put bullet points, but like, okay, you did this. What was the outcome or the impact of what you did there?
And then once you meet with me, I wanna know that you have taken time to understand the role in the company. ‘cause some people, once I get into the interview, obviously the technical skills are important, but I can tell. You may not have even looked at the job description because you’re asking me what tech stack we use or things like that and that was in the job description.
So like [00:36:00] showing me that you have like a good attention to detail and like this isn’t just another one on your list can go a long way for me.
[00:36:06] Chuck Carpenter: It kind of makes sense. And I think, I think that’s a similar theme from a lot of hiring managers. It’s hard though. It’s hard, it’s a hard balance, right? Let’s say you’re like on the job market and you’re feeling desperate. It’s like, yeah, do I take that extra hour or so to Taylor? And that’s a, you know, Tora, uh,
[00:36:27] Robbie Wagner: well, how good is AI at that? Can you be like, tailor this to Spotify?
[00:36:32] Chuck Carpenter: That’s true. I don’t
[00:36:33] Robbie Wagner: Like at least make a little effort like.
[00:36:36] Chuck Carpenter: yeah, yeah, yeah. Like have this, and then yeah, maybe there’s that aspect of it, but it’s hard, right? Like, oh, if I have my heart set on working at Spotify and I spend, you know, a bunch of time practicing everything in this stack, you know, put together a specific resume, make it so far, and maybe I make it halfway through your loop and then just doesn’t work out.
And then it’s like. Now I have to start that [00:37:00] again. And you know, that’s really debilitating to a degree, you know, to go through that, those loops and and grind.
[00:37:06] Taylor Poindexter: I definitely agree, and I guess I should say, so it’s been probably about three years since I was job hunting, but I think I had like three or four versions of my resume. So I wasn’t like necessarily tweaking it every single time unless I came across a role that I was really interested in and I was like, oh, like this wasn’t on my resume, but I really think this may resonate with them.
So even just having maybe two or three versions of your resume can be enough. And with the. With the making sure you prep for their interview. I know it can take an hour, but again, it’s been a while since I was interviewing, but, and especially in this market, how many interviews are you freaking getting?
So like, I think you can probably spend at least five to 10 minutes prepping. Like Robbie said, you can put it through chat, GPT, but even just having a couple of thoughtful questions to ask, even if they’re not particularly tailored to this company, to show that you are genuinely invested in this job, hunt can be a really good thing to consider into the job hunt too.[00:38:00]
[00:38:00] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. I think baseline is like review the job posting. Absolutely. Get that fresh in your mind. And then yes, having some questions. I think if you have no question.
[00:38:10] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, you can’t have no questions. Yeah.
[00:38:12] Chuck Carpenter: You gotta have some questions. You know, anything that applies to this kind of position even.
[00:38:18] Taylor Poindexter: Yeah.
[00:38:18] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, like if you’re curious about the tech stack, maybe read about what it is upfront and then be like, I see you’re using X, Y, Z. Like what about this one
[00:38:25] Chuck Carpenter: And
[00:38:26] Robbie Wagner: shows you read it, that shows you’re curious about it? What’s that?
[00:38:29] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. You’ll be like, why not jQuery?
[00:38:32] Robbie Wagner: Yeah, but I, I see you’re using React. Did you guys spell jQuery wrong? Is that what I.
[00:38:40] Taylor Poindexter: What’s really going on?
[00:38:41] Chuck Carpenter: Uh, if I use dollar sign parens in your code base, what’s gonna happen?
[00:38:47] Robbie Wagner: Did you see the new, uh, we have a tangent here, but there’s something Ben Holmes put out with like astro. It’s like basically jQuery, another like dollar sign selector thing. He
[00:38:56] Chuck Carpenter: I think I did see that. Yeah. I called it something else. And everybody’s like, you mean [00:39:00] Jake weary? Like no one can take the dollar sign ever again.
[00:39:05] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
[00:39:05] Chuck Carpenter: No, like do a, I don’t know what else you’d pick, ampersand or something. Right.
[00:39:10] Robbie Wagner: So something I want to ask about, uh, I don’t remember the exact context of exactly what you posted about, but something about like, moving up to being a manager and not being an individual contributor. Wanna get your thoughts a little bit on like, I don’t know, there’s, there’s not like a great threshold of when you should do that, but a lot of people get kind of pushed into it.
Because they’re like, I wanna make more money. I want to like move up whatever. You’re just hitting a wall, trying to get promoted into like a higher IC role. What advice do you have around that situation?
[00:39:40] Taylor Poindexter: The number one thing that comes to my mind when people ask me questions like this is if you do not want to go into management because you don’t wanna deal with people, don’t do it. Or even if it means you have to leave your company. To find a role where you can stay in that IC path, I genuinely think that is the best thing for you to do, one, because if you switch to management and you don’t wanna do it, you’re probably [00:40:00] gonna mess up somebody else’s career indirectly.
Not that you’re a bad person or anything like that, but it takes a lot of energy to be a manager and to be a good manager, and it’s just gonna get you further away from your goal. Secondly, so I would just go ahead and either try to convince your company to make an IC role that you can continue to progress through.
Or get outta there, quite honestly. Otherwise, it’s just not, it’s not good for anybody involved in my opinion.
[00:40:24] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, I have a, a kind of to that, that I think is interesting ‘cause I’ve seen this pattern too in like, we’ll have. A career ladder that allows for the IC role to keep moving up. But I’ve just noticed, uh, and more at various levels that they’re adding in, like mentorship and leader, like team leadership, almost like pseudo product owner aspects plus mentorship, level up those around you from
[00:40:52] Robbie Wagner: want you to be a manager, but it’s not like, not a hundred percent all the same responsibilities, but like, yeah, it’s, it seems like they’re [00:41:00] blurring the lines a lot and that’s kind of
[00:41:01] Chuck Carpenter: yeah, I’ve seen it some in staff. You see it a lot more in the team lead or tech lead level. Now where, and then far as like. Senior, or let’s say you’re intermediate and you’re trying to get into senior, and part of that path is to act as if, then there’ll be a lot of pressure as like mentorship and guidance and leveling up your team as being a part of that rather than just being a high performer.
I.
[00:41:27] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. It’s like looked down upon to be a high performer to do that next step. If you’re not getting everyone else to do the work and you’re doing the work, ‘cause you’re really fast and good at it, you get penalized for that. You’re like, what? It doesn’t make any sense.
[00:41:42] Taylor Poindexter: In my mind, and I’m trying to, I’m trying to decide right now if I’m biased, but like I do agree that high performers can be like chastised a little bit, but the high performers that I think of that like get a lot of stuff done is typically the ones that don’t like interacting with people. But I do think when you’re [00:42:00] staff level are above, one of the big benefits that you bring to the company is being able to share that knowledge.
And I’m not saying like you need to be some informal manager of somebody or anything like that. But say for instance, if you’re driving some project forward, but it’s too big for you to do by yourself. If it’s in the, in the process of coming up with that architecture, maybe you could share your thought process with a senior engineer or something like that.
Let them know what you’re thinking, see what they’re thinking, and kind of brain meld in that way. I feel like that can be a relatively easy way to like share that knowledge and technically uplevel those around you without too much hopefully headache with that.
[00:42:37] Chuck Carpenter: I think that’s reasonable. I think force multiplying your efforts and getting buy-in, uh, that’s definitely a part of it. I think that like partially responsible for others in your team or like in your sphere of influence for them, like let’s say somehow. He doesn’t get a promotion because I didn’t like owe him in ways and like force [00:43:00] multiply him to get that.
And that, I’ve just seen instances where like that has been a detriment to someone else getting a promotion and stuff. And I’m like, I don’t know. It feels a little like, oh, too much. People onus when it should be about solutions and force multiplying, uh, than the business and less about force multiplying the people in the business.
But I don’t know.
[00:43:21] Taylor Poindexter: You mentioning influence made me think of. Another thing I’ve been noticing with staff engineers in the industry is that sometimes because they’re not managing people, they may not have the power to be able to come in and say like, you’re going to do this and that. So they have to be able to persuade people as to why their opinions are the right ones that we should get behind.
And that has been an interesting thing to watch.
[00:43:42] Chuck Carpenter: Uh, yeah, which I think might, I think it would be, uh, part of their responsibility to like, not only develop a solution, but you can’t just like force feed it across the organization. Part of developing that solution is getting buy-in and, and or is basically for your solution, right? Like [00:44:00] this whole thing is always about somebody as a customer.
[00:44:02] Taylor Poindexter: Yeah.
[00:44:03] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. Convincing anyone to do anything is hard though. Like. You need buy-in all the way up the chain. Like if you’re a staff and you’re tasked with like, you know, doing something that you need other people to help with and you need them to like show up to like pairing sessions or whatever to do it and just like no one shows up.
‘cause it’s like a open, like office hours kind of thing. Like it’s not a required one-on-one thing. It’s like a, you know, then it’s like, all right, well no one’s interested in this. They have their own work to do. They don’t care about like this thing we’re trying to push forward. So unless like it’s mandated on high, everyone’s doing their own thing like that persuasion bit is always really hard because they’re like, well, well how does it benefit me to help you do the thing that makes you look better?
‘cause I did the work that you were supposed to do so that you can get your promotion. You know, it’s all a, a crazy game to me. Like you should just ship as much code as fast as we can in the most efficient way we can. And who cares if I do the work or you do the work or whatever, but.
[00:44:56] Chuck Carpenter: You could just let Robbie know that he just doesn’t deserve that promotion. [00:45:00] I mean, you’re just not ready.
[00:45:02] Robbie Wagner: Well, that’s another thing too, is just the, like, all the words on like every leveling doc or like open to interpretation. Like everyone thinks force multiplication is a different thing or like whatever. So it’s like, I don’t know. It’s, it’s all a rigged game in my opinion.
[00:45:18] Chuck Carpenter: That is the nature of it. I, I think to some degree that’s always been the case though, right? Anytime where there’s subjective interpretation, if you’re direct manager. Not having the kind of relationship would skew that in your favor like that, in a rigged in that way, regardless. Yeah.
[00:45:35] Taylor Poindexter: so some of my friends and I are also are, my friends are managers too, and so like. During promotion time, you may get in a room and everybody’s jockeying for their person. Everybody’s jocking for that person. And sometimes it may just come down to the fact that one manager won’t shut the heck up and like keeps pushing for their person, keeps pushing for their person, is not even necessarily that that person is the best, but maybe they just have a more spunky manager or [00:46:00] something like that that’s able to make it happen.
So like it’s all a weird, interesting game sometimes.
[00:46:06] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. I hate that part. Like you should let the engineers speak for themselves in that kind of meeting, I feel like, or like have other engineers, maybe higher level engineers, like getting feedback on like, this person’s great, they should be promoted because like yeah, there’s so much like politics of just managers in a room be in like, oh yeah, these people are great.
And like if you have a manager who doesn’t speak up, you’re never gonna be promoted. So
[00:46:29] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, because objective metrics are also very difficult. I mean, there’s an entire industry on. Trying to, uh, they can prove, like bring performance and what is productivity and what is, what is that, right? Like there’s all these metrics and there’s this system and right. There’s now a whole business pushing tools around that.
And they’re interesting. I think that like, I mean, I’ve had to use some of them and I’ve just said. This is interesting. This is a [00:47:00] piece of the puzzle. I wanna necessarily say, great, go split up your prs, you know, for every one. Excuse me. And then you can win this metric like that, you know? And what take it is that associated to I, you know, it’s all like, I wish I could tell you just do A, and you’ll get outcome B.
But that doesn’t exist anywhere that I’ve ever seen. Right.
[00:47:22] Taylor Poindexter: And also like how I’ve never used one of those tools, but my first thought is like, how do I account for my tech lead who’s not necessarily pushing tickets across the board, but they’re multiplying everybody on the team, doing the architecture, doing the meetings, and those types of things. So it looks like she’s not doing anything, but she’s actually like kicking complete ass.
[00:47:39] Chuck Carpenter: And then that point, you as that manager, you have the onus is now on you and you can ask like that person to sort of help you in this process, whatever. But then you’re gonna come and say, just so you know, as we’re talking about performance evaluation. This person is doing their job really well because we’ve said multiplying the performance of their [00:48:00] team is the win, and this is what’s happening.
Hard. It’s a lot of like work and a lot like you, you know, you like that person, you help them and you, you know, path. Or if you’re like, oh, you’re kind of an asshole to me, so figure it out buddy. You know, who knows? I mean, not saying that you specifically would do that, but just like thinking about like how there is still a human element there and you’re dependent on someone else to advocate for you for that next level.
[00:48:25] Taylor Poindexter: Yep. And I think that’s actually the hardest part of management is that we’re all humans with our own flaws and with our own thought processes and ways of living, and we’re just like connecting and trying to do the best that we can in some weird, fucked up way.
[00:48:38] Robbie Wagner: yeah, yeah,
[00:48:41] Chuck Carpenter: that’s the nature of it. Yeah. It’s a little bit fucked up everywhere. It’s
[00:48:45] Robbie Wagner: Something else that’s fucked up. Tell me about how you get a grill big enough to put an entire alligator on
[00:48:53] Taylor Poindexter: So that’s my cousin’s like custom made grill?
[00:48:56] Chuck Carpenter: Alligator Grill is it is it just happened to be larger or it’s [00:49:00] four alligators.
[00:49:01] Robbie Wagner: For
[00:49:01] Taylor Poindexter: is just, it just happens to be larger and I guess now it’s a gator grill, but.
[00:49:06] Chuck Carpenter: That’s, that’s a very interesting, yeah. I’ve only had gator one time. I had an alligator poeboy and I didn’t really care for it. What’d you
[00:49:13] Taylor Poindexter: Oh, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it, but no, no kink shame into anybody
[00:49:20] Chuck Carpenter: to me. I was like, yeah,
[00:49:22] Taylor Poindexter: that probably was co cooked too long.
[00:49:24] Chuck Carpenter: yeah, that seems about right. Okay.
[00:49:26] Taylor Poindexter: Yeah, and also like the best part is like the tail. So I dunno which part of the gator you had,
[00:49:31] Chuck Carpenter: I don’t either. Yeah. Okay’s.
[00:49:34] Taylor Poindexter: at her.
[00:49:34] Chuck Carpenter: It’s a 10 to meet. I’ll just go to your cousins and get some, I’ll be like, I heard
[00:49:39] Taylor Poindexter: come on.
[00:49:39] Chuck Carpenter: it’s good. Yes.
[00:49:41] Taylor Poindexter: Just hang out with my family. We just drink and barbecue and talk shit. It’s great.
[00:49:45] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, I’m in, uh, if, uh, next time I’m in town, that’s assuming they’re near you, but yes. I’ll, I’ll hit you up. I am trying to come in the fall, so we’ll see. Um, do, uh,
[00:49:57] Robbie Wagner: theoretically there’s no trying. You will be [00:50:00] here unless something goes terribly wrong Between now and then.
[00:50:03] Chuck Carpenter: Right. Well, so we’ve talked about a couple different plans. Like, so we go to uh, two and, and do different things. Sometimes the stage, sometimes little offstage stage things, whatever else, record podcast episodes, get snippets, all that. So we’re doing all things open in Raleigh, right? In October.
Just whatever the logistics of that plan. Am I gonna come into DC first at some point and then we drive, or I don’t know,
[00:50:30] Robbie Wagner: Mm. Yeah. I guess we don’t know the full details yet.
[00:50:32] Chuck Carpenter: There you go. See, I’m not full of shit. You are full of shit. Um,
[00:50:37] Robbie Wagner: All right.
[00:50:38] Chuck Carpenter: all right. Uh, it’s
[00:50:39] Taylor Poindexter: the record
[00:50:40] Chuck Carpenter: Sorry. Yeah. Let everyone know Robbie is full of shit, so I call him Robert, uh, as a lady with a nice job in a Lambo.
How do you find yourself at a laundromat?
[00:50:55] Taylor Poindexter: So the way I found myself there is, so we just bought a new [00:51:00] king size duvet and it would not fit in our washer and dryer in our home. And so I was like, oh, I could get it like dry cleaned, but it was like 60 bucks. And so a little bit of me is still kind of cheap. I’m like 60 bucks just to wash this dang thing.
I’ll take it to the laundromat. Mistake. I should have paid that $60 I should have made.
[00:51:20] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. I don’t know if you’ve been to a laundromat recently. Well, you have, uh, prior to that you hadn’t been in a while and you’re like, these aren’t my people. Um,
[00:51:29] Taylor Poindexter: are not my people. I thought I was gonna get. Like, yeah, it was not good. And keep in mind, like I live in a pretty good area, but I guess just like that laundromat, I found some corner tucked off, you know, a mile away. I was like, oh, this is fine. Not fine, not fine.
[00:51:42] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, no. Too close to you. That was the problem. You like go somewhere into Virginia where there’s like an Applebee’s or something, you know, just close enough and then that’ll
[00:51:52] Robbie Wagner: well, I don’t know there, there could be some sketchy people at Applebee’s.
[00:51:55] Chuck Carpenter: listen, I don’t know if you saw Ken Wheeler’s post, but like Applebee’s, a couple of appetizers and [00:52:00] beer is 70 bucks. It’s
[00:52:01] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. He said he didn’t even eat just like his kids’ food and like they had a
[00:52:05] Chuck Carpenter: Two beers or something. Yeah, it was like $70 for some mid ass food, like,
[00:52:10] Taylor Poindexter: Just.
[00:52:11] Robbie Wagner: And I know they have those dollar margaritas, so like that food is expensive.
[00:52:16] Chuck Carpenter: yeah. You know, he was there for dollar Mar margarita night, so that’s true. Walt.
[00:52:21] Taylor Poindexter: a doubt.
[00:52:21] Chuck Carpenter: Yes, I know what we can do a barbecue tour. Okay, so I’m gonna expand the realm of this because he did. I’m gonna invite other people to Ken’s house too. ‘cause he said like, come by. I forgot what picture of food. And I was like, I wanna be hosted for that.
And he’s like, come on up. So I come into dc we go to your cousins for barbecue and then we go up to Jersey and get a, and get a wheeler experience.
[00:52:45] Taylor Poindexter: So
[00:52:45] Robbie Wagner: Do you think we can get.
[00:52:46] Taylor Poindexter: I love it.
[00:52:47] Robbie Wagner: Ken Wheeler to just put his address on a podcast like he did his phone number.
[00:52:51] Chuck Carpenter: Uh, right. I was gonna say, I do have his address, but I’m not gonna publish that. Uh, he did put his phone number up and many people texted him and apparently he responded[00:53:00]
[00:53:00] Robbie Wagner: yeah.
[00:53:02] Chuck Carpenter: good for him.
Taylor, don’t, don’t give your number out
[00:53:04] Robbie Wagner: No.
[00:53:04] Taylor Poindexter: I won’t, I won’t. I’ve also had the same number since like seventh grade. And so to this day, people text me and I don’t know. And it’s funny ‘cause my fiance just started a new job and he was trying to be funny and he text me like pretending to be some guy from my past. And I immediately blocked him.
I mean, until, until we were trying to figure out. Why our new Google Voice wasn’t working when he was trying to call me from it, and he was like, oh, did you never responded to that text message from the other week? And I was like, oh my God, that was you. So, yeah, no.
[00:53:34] Chuck Carpenter: yeah. And then he was like, I’m proud of you. You did the right thing. I never doubted you. Of course. Never doubted you. You know, we’re getting married. It’s totally fine. Yeah. That is funny. Does he want to cover Robert before we wrap things up?
[00:53:50] Robbie Wagner: Yeah. The only other thing I had on here really was, uh, you ready for football season?
[00:53:54] Taylor Poindexter: Yes, yes.
[00:53:56] Chuck Carpenter: Proper football, right? No, no
[00:53:58] Robbie Wagner: No, not proper football. [00:54:00] You’re the only one that likes proper football.
[00:54:01] Chuck Carpenter: I, I just signed up my fantasy Premier League team today, uh, on Friday,
[00:54:07] Robbie Wagner: Is it weird when you compete against no one?
[00:54:10] Chuck Carpenter: Right. Uh, well listen, you know, I have friends in Europe and they care about this, this other game with a round ball that you actually use your feet for. So there’s that. And actually have like people all the way back from high school that I played soccer with.
So, you know, I gotta dig deep to get into. Yeah, yeah.
[00:54:28] Taylor Poindexter: Childhood friends.
[00:54:29] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
[00:54:29] Chuck Carpenter: it or not. So you didn’t believe I had friends. I get this, uh, I have a couple of friends from like way back in like eighth grade still.
[00:54:36] Taylor Poindexter: Oh, I love that. I love that.
[00:54:39] Chuck Carpenter: Some in Kentucky, some in other places. Some of us escaped. Yeah.
[00:54:44] Taylor Poindexter: Okay. Making it out. I feel it. I’m from a small town too.
[00:54:46] Chuck Carpenter: I actually from like Cincinnati area, so it was bigger area. It was like northern Kentucky. Right across from there is very urban, you know, that’s, yeah, I’m, and that’s a, you know, no Nova for that. A lot of people, when I say [00:55:00] Kentucky, they always think like, oh, down on the
[00:55:01] Robbie Wagner: that, that’s the planes.
[00:55:03] Chuck Carpenter: You haven’t even, uh, you didn’t even get shoes till you got outta there rotten.
And I said, well, that’s not exactly how it went. Like, yeah, no, I used to, I was like 10 and riding the bus downtown to go skateboarding at Proctor and Gamble and like all kinds of ridiculous trouble. I was a troubled youth. Procter and Gamble’s, uh, headquarters are in Cincinnati, Ohio, and they had like a huge, uh, parking area and like, it was kind of like there was an overpass, like over part of it, so there were some cool concrete structures and people go skate.
It was just a good skate spot downtown Cincinnati in general, but yeah, you know, the star comes exactly.
[00:55:45] Robbie Wagner: All right. We’re about at time here. Is there anything you want to plug? Anything we didn’t mention? Uh, I don’t know. I can’t say words. Anything you wanna say, Taylor?
[00:55:54] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. It’s all up to
[00:55:55] Taylor Poindexter: Let’s see if you haven’t found me on Twitter, I’m [00:56:00] Engineering Bay and two, I am talking to a lot of people that feel incredibly burnt out. And so if you are one of those people that has been feeling burnt out and you feel like you need a break, I wanna advocate for you right now to take a break. And I mean like an extended break if you can, like a two week break, throw your phone in the closet, your work phone, I mean, and just relax.
If you’re a manager, I know you can feel like, well, I don’t wanna leave my team and I get it, but like, you won’t be able to continue to take care of your team the way that you do if you are not taking care of yourself. So that’s the last thing I wanna plug.
[00:56:32] Chuck Carpenter: We didn’t even get
[00:56:33] Robbie Wagner: him.
[00:56:34] Chuck Carpenter: into that burnout in general. I feel like we could just like talk about that for an hour over some whiskey in the next one for sure. I’ll probably, yeah, I’ll, well, I’m gonna
[00:56:42] Robbie Wagner: we can have a burnout happy hour, and just all talk about how burned out we are.
[00:56:46] Chuck Carpenter: of that nature. Yeah. And we’ll all get like some cheap whiskey and just be like,
[00:56:50] Taylor Poindexter: oh yeah, because I’m SoCo. Really just throw it back just like my life is in hell.
[00:56:56] Chuck Carpenter: yeah. How low do I gotta get where I pick [00:57:00] SoCo over like Jim B. White label. Oof.
[00:57:02] Robbie Wagner: Oh.
[00:57:03] Taylor Poindexter: We’re at rock bottom, baby.
[00:57:04] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Oof. Well, you’ll
[00:57:07] Robbie Wagner: more expensive though
[00:57:09] Chuck Carpenter: I don’t know. I haven’t had it in a long time.
[00:57:12] Taylor Poindexter: I will say somebody gave me a bottle of SoCo like probably like five years ago, and I’ve had it in my closet and I decided to like just put it in the lobby of my condo and just let somebody take it. But before I did, I was like, lemme just see how much this cost. I was shocked. I was shocked. It was like, I think it was only like 30 something bucks for like the, the slender bottom of SoCo.
But I’m like, you’ve gotta be shitting me
[00:57:36] Robbie Wagner: Yeah,
[00:57:36] Taylor Poindexter: for this,
[00:57:37] Robbie Wagner: yeah,
[00:57:38] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. You can get Buffalo Trace for 30 bucks or less. Right. And like, if you’re making that choice, you don’t like drinking, so you should probably
[00:57:45] Robbie Wagner: yeah,
[00:57:46] Chuck Carpenter: just go get some gummies and get it over with, you know what I mean? Like, don’t, don’t fuck with this stuff. You don’t need to, you, you know, you don’t need the calories.
Just find another way.
[00:57:56] Taylor Poindexter: Truly, the last bottle of Buffalo Trace I bought was $27.[00:58:00]
[00:58:00] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah. Yeah. I, I was in that, yeah, in the CVS here and they’ll have like deals. Yeah. Well, it’s the Wild West. So grocery stores, the CVS and all of that, like, yeah, that’s, uh, it’s also like open carry laws and other things that are more fucked up, so I don’t know.
[00:58:17] Robbie Wagner: You mean, do you
[00:58:18] Chuck Carpenter: No. If you like it, I don’t know,
[00:58:20] Robbie Wagner: mean open
[00:58:20] Chuck Carpenter: open, open carry gun.
Like
[00:58:22] Robbie Wagner: Okay.
[00:58:23] Chuck Carpenter: CVS and you can like people with a holster, like, and it’s not like Vegas where you can like walk down the street drinking. I think you have to have a bag on it. I mean, we’re somewhat civilized, but, uh, whichever one you were cheering for, whatever, that totally all, all good, but it’s
[00:58:36] Taylor Poindexter: originally, I was thinking open carry liquor, and then it clicked after I was like, oh. I was like, oh, there’s probably guns. All right. But I do love guns. I do love.
[00:58:45] Robbie Wagner: to clarify.
[00:58:45] Chuck Carpenter: Yeah, I don’t, I don’t have any problem with guns. I don’t know that a CVS is like the appropriate outlet for them necessarily. You know, it’s like, it’s better than schools, but how much? I don’t know. But, uh, anyway, there we go. Well, [00:59:00] there goes our one listener.
[00:59:01] Robbie Wagner: Yeah.
[00:59:02] Chuck Carpenter: toting motherfucking whatever.
Uh, yeah, again, I don’t have a problem with guns. Just don’t wear your holster to CVS while I’m trying to buy
[00:59:10] Taylor Poindexter: I’m with you.
[00:59:11] Robbie Wagner: All right. Well, before we dig this whole further, let’s end it here. Thanks everyone for listening. Thanks Taylor for being on. Uh, you all next time.
[00:59:19] Taylor Poindexter: See you soon.
[00:59:21] Chuck Carpenter: they pop.
[00:59:22] Outro: You’ve been watching Whiskey Web and Whatnot. Recorded in front of a live studio audience. What the fuck are you talking about, Chuck? Enjoyed the show? Subscribe. You know, people don’t pay attention to these, right? Head to whiskey.fund for merchant to join our Discord server. I’m serious, it’s like 2% of people who actually click these links. And don’t forget to leave us a five star review and tell your friends about the show. All right, dude, I’m outta here. Still got it.