Whiskey Web and Whatnot: Web Development, Neat

A whiskey fueled fireside chat with your favorite web developers.

117: Learning Angular, Leadership Opportunities, and Google Culture with Sarah Drasner

The transition from coder to manager isn’t easy for developers who love the creative satisfaction and thrill of coding. But both sides of the fence have unique challenges. Sarah Drasner, Senior Director of Engineering, Web, Android, iOS, and Multiplatform Cor...

Show Notes

The transition from coder to manager isn’t easy for developers who love the creative satisfaction and thrill of coding. But both sides of the fence have unique challenges.

Sarah Drasner, Senior Director of Engineering, Web, Android, iOS, and Multiplatform Core Infrastructure at Google, didn’t seek out engineering leadership. Sarah admits that she sometimes misses the flow state of coding but has a new appreciation for management now that she is on the other side. She discusses the culture at Google, navigating the company’s tech stack, and how much she values working with a dedicated and hardworking team. Beyond her tech pursuits, Sarah shines a light on She Code Africa, a nonprofit organization she supports, empowering women in tech.

In this episode, Sarah talks to Robbie and Chuck about why she initially avoided Angular, the challenges of management, and the flow state she misses from coding.

Key Takeaways

  • [01:01] - Introduction to Sarah Drasner.
  • [03:26] - A whiskey review: Brenne French Single Malt Whisky.
  • [15:00] - Tech hot takes.
  • [39:05] - What is going on with Angular.
  • [47:09] - Sarah’s experiences being a manager.
  • [52:10] - The career Sarah would choose if she wasn’t in tech.

Quotes

[22:48] - “I like the idea of being explicit, but I appreciate when languages are a little more bulletproof.” ~ Sarah Drasner

[43:56] - “Dealing with change as a developer is the main reason why you use a framework.” ~ Sarah Drasner

[45:58] - “That’s the reason why so many senior devs go towards this ‘it depends’ way of thinking because we see many different implementations over time.” ~ Sarah Drasner

Links

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Promos

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Episode Transcript

​[00:00:00] Robbie: What’s going on everybody welcome to whiskey web and whatnot with myself RobbieTheWagner and Charles William Carpenter the Third and he didn’t say

[00:00:16] Chuck: I’m changing it to Robbie the Wagner the Third.

[00:00:19] Robbie: Okay, you can do that

[00:00:20] Chuck: Yeah,

[00:00:21] Robbie: it’s not taken anywhere

[00:00:22] Chuck: know who’s the second, no. It’s a free handle. Up for it, anyone’s.

[00:00:27] Robbie: and we have a special guest today Sarah Drasner, how’s it going Sarah?

[00:00:30] Sarah: Hi everyone, it’s good to be here. I’m really excited to be here. I’ve seen y’all at RenderATL and that was a fun time Thanks for inviting me.

[00:00:39] Chuck: I’m glad you remember, there was so much whiskey being poured there that, uh, you know, it’s all a little hazy to me at least.

[00:00:45] Sarah: Yes

[00:00:47] Chuck: Yeah. And, did, you got one of the bottles of Sagamore, right?

[00:00:51] Sarah: I didn’t because I had to go on a plane But I I did in spirit literally

[00:00:57] Chuck: Yeah. Yeah. Literally and figuratively.

[00:01:00] Robbie: so if there’s anyone that has not heard of you, do you want to give a brief intro into who you are and what you do?

[00:01:06] Sarah: Sure.

I’ve been a developer for a long time over 20 years. I You know, started my career as more of an icy and dark matter developer in the sense of like, not really participating in open source at that time. Um, and then I eventually decided that I wanted to, since I was using so many tools, that I wanted to be more involved in open source.

So I started doing a lot of Open source contributions, writing articles, making GitHub repos, and developer tooling. And then eventually, , got really involved in React and keynoted a bunch of their conferences. And then I discovered Vue and got very enamored with Vue and became a Vue core team member.

, and was a Vue core team member for several years. I also kind of, at work, go between managerial and IC pendulums. So, like… , at Microsoft I was a principal I. C. E. specializing in serverless functions for Azure. , then more recently I was a V. P. at a company called Netlify, which is a startup, but it’s a startup that’s pretty widely used in open source.

Um, I got to work with lovely people while I was there. And, I left that job to start my own company because I had gotten to know some of the investors, of Netlify. However, then I was approached by Google, and they asked me if I wanted to run web infrastructure for Google. And that was a very exciting opportunity, and I deliberated and decided to take it.

And more recently, my role has expanded,

so before I was running web infrastructure at Google, and now I run web, Android, iOS, and multi platform infrastructure at Google.

[00:02:48] Chuck: That’s quite a mouthful.

[00:02:50] Robbie: cool. Yeah.

[00:02:52] Sarah: And I don’t do

[00:02:53] Robbie: I guess

[00:02:53] Sarah: open source work anymore.

[00:02:56] Chuck: Turns out, uh, all of those responsibilities require a little more from you.

[00:03:01] Robbie: Yeah, it sounds like the only framework you haven’t been intimately involved in is Ember, which makes me a little sad, but, uh,

[00:03:08] Sarah: Yeah, I guess I didn’t mention that like in my job, I run a bunch of frameworks. You know, I’m not individually running them. I’m more like their grandma,

[00:03:17] Chuck: Heh

[00:03:18] Sarah: director. But Angular is one of those frameworks. So I’ve been involved in React, Vue, and now Angular.

[00:03:24] Whiskey intro

[00:03:24] Robbie: Yeah. So there’s a lot to unpack there and things we will discuss in a bit, but let’s jump into the whiskey before we get too deep into that. What do we got today, Chuck?

[00:03:32] Chuck: Well, let’s see here. Today we’re having the, yeah, I love that. Uh, today, yes. Oh, you’re way

behind.

[00:03:38] Robbie: had a meeting,

[00:03:39] Chuck: your label. All right, all right. You better get to your label while I introduce it. It’s the Bren, I guess I’m saying that right. Yeah, because it’s supposed to be French.

French, single malt whiskey.

Bron. Yeah. Bron. So we’ll say for, for the yank and me, Brenne French single malt whiskey. It’s not age stated, but it is a hundred percent malt whiskey in its mash bill. Although I think I read, maybe I didn’t put this down here, but it’s a blend of two different strains of malt barley, and let’s see here.

It is initially aged in French limousine oak, and then finished in cognac casks. I know that it’s, uh, it’s distilled at an old French cognac distillery, so that’s a big part of like, they decided to, so the founder, I actually met her once in New York City at like, 2016 or something. Anyway, uh, she wanted to try the cognac process, but with a malt whiskey.

And so it’s like kind of a blend of that process and those old ideologies applied to a more modern whiskey. Uh, it is 100 percent organic and non GMO, although I think the European thing kind of enforced that. It is only 80 proof, so it’s a little lighter. For my taste, typically, but seems like something very interesting.

And, um, I always make this like, the price point to me also is a differentiator, and sort of like how much value I’m getting and how I feel about it. Like, oh, it’s really expensive but it tastes very mediocre, then I, I kind of penalize for that. So it’s about 60 bucks a bottle.

[00:05:17] Sarah: Nice.

[00:05:19] Robbie: it smells good.

[00:05:21] Chuck: Yeah. Popping that top, I

already

[00:05:23] Robbie: Smells like, uh, tropical and grape candy to

[00:05:27] Sarah: Oh,

[00:05:28] Chuck: Hmm. So you say tropical, that makes me think of coconut.

[00:05:32] Robbie: No, like a pineapple or mango.

[00:05:34] Chuck: Hmm.

[00:05:35] Sarah: Yeah, who said coconut? It does taste…

[00:05:38] Chuck: I say

[00:05:39] Sarah: Yeah, yeah,

[00:05:40] Chuck: I get a little of that. A little floral, a little coconut.

At least in the smell.

[00:05:44] Robbie: yeah, it actually tastes like coconut a little

[00:05:46] Sarah: yeah.

[00:05:47] Robbie: It was not

[00:05:48] Sarah: really smooth.

[00:05:50] Chuck: Hmm.

[00:05:51] Sarah: You can kind of get the cognac flavor in there, too.

[00:05:55] Chuck: Yeah, so since it’s finished in cognac barrels, it’s definitely going to get a hint of that. So yeah, I have kind of a, even like a light champagne flavor to me.

Yeah, I’d say for 80 proof, this packs a lot of flavor.

[00:06:07] Robbie: Oh, yeah

[00:06:08] Chuck: Very light.

[00:06:09] Robbie: Yeah, I shouldn’t hold it in front of my face. It makes me very blurry

[00:06:13] Chuck: This is the only thing that matters. Oh yeah, doesn’t really help. There’s a certain… We’re still getting better at this use a fancy camera for your webcam thing. Fixed lenses, all that fun stuff. I just want to be like the cool people on the internet.

[00:06:30] Robbie: It’s got a little bit of like earthiness or something on the finish too

[00:06:35] Chuck: Yeah, but no burn whatsoever for me. Which is…

[00:06:40] Robbie: Yeah,

[00:06:40] Chuck: I kind of miss that. I want a little of that. I want to know I’m having alcohol and not juice.

[00:06:44] Sarah: It does have like a, it kind of goes almost into a burn and then it cuts right at the end.

[00:06:50] Chuck: Yeah, like right before it gets there in your throat. It’s like, it’s a little bit stinging in the mouth and then, um, but, but good. I actually, I do enjoy this so far.

It’s very

[00:07:01] Sarah: buy this again, for sure.

[00:07:03] Chuck: So, given having tasted it, first of all, one litmus test for you, maybe Sarah, is, so she was mentioning before we got started that she kind of had to hide this bottle, just to make sure her husband didn’t get to it and then finish it.

do you think he would have enjoyed

[00:07:18] Sarah: Oh yeah, I’ll, I’ll enjoy the rest of the bottle with him tonight. I just made… Slow cooker chili, and we’re going to have some of it later, but, uh, if I had left this out, it would have been gone by the time the podcast had been, so I, I hid it, and I hid it in a safe space, but then I forgot where the safe space was, it was like,

[00:07:40] Chuck: yeah, so,

[00:07:40] Sarah: um, I have a habit of doing this, like I, you know, there was one point where I wanted to keep my passport safe, and I couldn’t find it, and I ripped apart my room, I had put it inside a travel book.

[00:07:53] Chuck: Like, looking back on it seems like maybe a logical place. That was a travel book you were looking at at the time or

[00:08:00] Sarah: I think I thought I was being clever and it’s not. I was so mad at myself.

[00:08:05] Chuck: Too clever for yourself. And, side note, to be fair to your husband, we did send this to you a little while ago. So, it’s gotta be like a couple months, or at least over a month.

[00:08:13] Sarah: Yeah, it would have been gone.

[00:08:14] Chuck: Yeah. In fact, I’m gonna finish this tonight myself. Before I leave the office, possibly. We’ll see.

[00:08:21] Robbie: That’s good for driving home, yeah.

[00:08:23] Chuck: It is, yeah. I’ve got a robot car, figure it out. Anyway, uh, let’s regress a little bit back to the point. Uh, so, we have a highly complex scale. Zero to eight tentacles. So, zero being the worst that, uh, you’ve ever had.

Don’t have this again for, obviously, middle of the road. Pretty good stuff, but doesn’t stand out to me. Eight, amazing. You can classify that or compare it against anything you want. All whiskeys, all liquors, whatever else. We started segmenting stuff just because we’ve had so many, but…

[00:08:56] Sarah: It’s really high, actually. I think it’s probably like a seven. not many things get to eight, for me. So that it’s not to say that it’s not amazing. I think it’s actually quite good. there’s only, I think, two whiskeys I would put at an eight.

[00:09:11] Chuck: I’d love to hear what those two are for you. What are the top for you?

[00:09:15] Sarah: I really love Mixtures, ,

that’s just one of my all time favorites, , for so many reasons. I think it’s really balanced, and very smooth, and, like, to your point about the price point, it’s fairly cheap for what you get, um, it’s really very good, , I also like Craigalechi, I’m gonna probably mispronounce that one, , it’s Scottish, I believe, it has a little bit more smokiness than the Mixtures does.

, but that one is really smooth and but also very complex and just a little bit of smoke.

[00:09:48] Chuck: Yeah, there’s very diverse choices there too, so that’s interesting. You’re like, equal opportunist. Hehehehe.

[00:09:56] Robbie: well, in terms of this whiskey, , this one for me is pretty good. It’s not really what I would reach for in a flavor profile day to day. Um, but I think for what it is, it is very good. They’ve executed what they tried to do very well. So with that in mind, just because it’s not my favorite, I’m going to give it a six, but I think there’s not really any thing bad about it necessarily.

My favorites are like, really spicy, uh, ryes. So, it’s a little different for me.

[00:10:23] Sarah: like what?

[00:10:24] Robbie: Uh, Sagamore, like the barrel pig we did, is one of my top ones. Peerless is pretty good. everything whistle pig. Yeah, the, um, Willet’s okay. I think the Willet is a little overrated, honestly. Like, it has a lot of name recognition, but,

[00:10:40] Chuck: Hot take starts early.

[00:10:42] Robbie: Well, I’m not, again, it’s not bad. I would not be like, Oh no, you brought me, will it? Let me throw it in the trash. But

[00:10:48] Chuck: Right.

[00:10:49] Robbie: at its price point, I wouldn’t seek it out a ton, I think.

Cause it’s expensive and hard to find.

[00:10:55] Chuck: Right. I think, uh, the Sagamore Rye, which you can find for like 35 40, is pretty darn good, given that, too, and way more accessible. If I could pick it up at a CVS, then it actually kinda says something, I guess.

[00:11:08] Sarah: Do you have points for being something that you could drink every day? Because like, Angel’s Envy is a favorite of mine, but it’s not, it’s not like, it’s not a favorite of mine because it’s so complex and interesting. It’s a favorite of mine because it’s just… It’s a crowd pleaser, like if I have a lot of people over I know I can bring out Angel’s Envy and everybody will pretty much like it.

[00:11:28] Chuck: Yeah, I think that’s true. That’s a pretty good point. I don’t think that’s something we’ve taken into consideration, but I, it’s at least a Something to talk about that makes sense is like,

people will ask you for certain recommendations and you usually will tell them things that you know, A, they can probably find, and B, that like, is approachable to a larger group of people.

and so, that’s a pretty good point. I would say this applies in that way. If anybody’s going for malt whisky and expecting A scotch like experience. This is probably not going to work for them. It’s not going to hit. If people are coming new into whiskey, this would be, like, a pretty nice one that is approachable.

It’s, like, very drinkable. It’s kind of like, um, what is that? Basil Hayden’s is another, like, very low proof bourbon that a lot of people kind of are like, Yeah, this is easy. , so I would say in that realm of things. But this is, like, so different than most malt whiskeys that you’re going to have. So it’s hard for me to, like, put it in a scotch or Japanese whiskey kind of category.

I think it’s very good. I think, um, I’m probably in the seven as well because it just stands out as so unique. I don’t know that I’d drink it every day, but I definitely would recommend it to folks. I don’t think the price is bad. I think they’re doing something very cool and different. And when I think about different malt whiskeys, there’s like, um, I don’t know if we tried it on here or not, but there’s the Del Bach whiskey is very interesting too because they mesquite smoke , the malt before the process and you kind of get some of that without like a I’m, I’m ingesting a campfire kind of feel, so,

you know, unique in a, in another very different way.

So yeah, I think I’d give this a seven. I think anybody would be like, this tastes good. It’s interesting.

[00:13:01] Sarah: Smoke is such an interesting one because I think some people just like smoke ubiquitously. when I was in college, there was this gross kitchen where everybody like had dishes and nobody cleaned them because we were newly. college students and we didn’t know how to be adults yet. And someone had a bottle of liquid smoke that they didn’t take care of and smashed and the whole kitchen smelled like liquid smoke.

And so now I have this really strong distinction between real smoke flavors versus artificial smoke flavors. Like artificial smoke flavors make me feel a little nauseous because I remember the dorm kitchen and real smoke flavors feel very full bodied and And taste really good to me. I don’t think I ever made that distinction before that time.

Not that I drank tons of whiskey before I was 18. But, um,

[00:13:55] Chuck: I did, but it was all bad in plastic

[00:13:59] Sarah: That’s right, that’s right. Good, I should have said good whiskey. Yes.

[00:14:02] Robbie: yeah,

[00:14:03] Chuck: yeah,

[00:14:03] Robbie: yeah. I’ve had a lot of, uh, sketchy drinks before, before I had money to pay for not sketchy drinks.

[00:14:11] Chuck: I had a long time where I had, like, a real hate vomit inducing relationship with Mountain Dew because I would use it as a chaser for either cheap vodka or Everclear with groups of friends. Like, why? That was ever a good idea? Let’s take this strong, bad flavor and cover it up with a different kind of strong flavor that eventually became very, um, yeah.

Well, I need all that sugar and caffeine to stay up till four in the morning continuing that cycle,

so.

[00:14:39] Robbie: Oh yeah.

[00:14:40] Sarah: Yeah, I still can’t drink orange juice. For that reason.

[00:14:43] Chuck: Yeah. Why has everybody experienced orange juice coming in and out? You know, I feel like

[00:14:49] Robbie: Brunch did this to

us.

[00:14:51] Chuck: ways. Oh, well before brunch, but yeah. Yeah. Brunch bottomless, brunches weren’t, weren’t helpful

[00:14:58] Robbie: No.

[00:14:58] Chuck: anyway.

[00:14:59] Robbie: Yeah, let’s pivot to some tech things here.

[00:15:02] Chuck: Mm mm-hmm. tech like thing. So hot. Hot takes. We wanna talk about some hot takes.

I guess I’ll just start at the top instead of cherry picking. You’re welcome,

[00:15:12] Robbie: You can do whatever you want. I don’t

care.

[00:15:14] Chuck: oh. Okay. Well I’m taking that one. You just

edited. life or death moment. You have to pick angular view or react.

[00:15:22] Angular, View or React

[00:15:22] Sarah: Oh, that’s mean.

[00:15:26] Chuck: It’s just a hot spicy take,

[00:15:27] Robbie: Yeah. Whatever you choose, you’ll be wrong. So

[00:15:30] Chuck: I know.

[00:15:32] Sarah: I wonder, like, how this is going to be used against me later. Because no matter how I answer, it will be. Um,

[00:15:41] Chuck: Right?

[00:15:41] Sarah: I would say Angular because I see what the team is doing and what they’re evolving to. Like, they have survived multiple waves and now they’re evolving.

some of the signals implementation is really interesting.

Some of the new, if you don’t know about the, like. revamping the reactivity system and the new signals offering, , you should check it out. Brian Carnato from Solid was also really crucial to consulting with the team on some of that. So, , that was quite interesting. And then some of the control flow pieces that they’re working on.

I am not saying that Angular is perfect. Do not get me wrong. There’s a lot that it already holds up. , I think migration tooling is pretty, , substantial given that it supports all these major enterprises and has figured out a way to update. Having been involved in React and Vue, there’s different migration things that go on there and they’re not as…

evolved in those areas. That said, Vue will always hold a very special place in my heart, and if you talk to the Angular team, they will tell you that I bring up Vue all the time. and that a lot of things are inspired in Angular because of Vue. But also, Vue was inspired by Angular. if you learn about the roots of Vue, it was initially like almost not really a fork of Angular, but like it borrowed a lot of concepts like Uh, directives and, and things like that.

, React also has a special place in my heart though too, because React is really, came at a time that was quite crucial for the industry and thought about state in a really significant way that made everybody revisit. , and ask questions about, do we need a whole MVC for all of this? Like, can we approach things with the view layer only?

There’s a lot of work that couldn’t have been done in Angular, in Vue, in any framework without React as a staple, and there’s a reason why it’s so well used. it’s a tough question, and I know I’m giving like a, a kind of, it depends answer. Um, but I, I love them all for different reasons. I don’t think that there’s a single thing that I could do, like a single, You know, user interface that I couldn’t make in each one of them.

There’s a lot of trade offs for each one of them too. But the way that Angular is evolving, and especially because it is evolving towards some of the use cases for YouTube, for some of the more significant, Pantheon with Google Cloud Console, like some of the more significant pieces of infrastructure that Google supports, as well as external.

It’s pretty thoughtful and maybe I just think that because I see the behind the scenes but I’ve, I’ve been really appreciative of the hard work that the team has to do in order to make that happen.

[00:18:33] Chuck: Spoken like a true senior engineering leader.

[00:18:37] Robbie: Yeah.

[00:18:39] Chuck: But not that I think anything you said is wrong, necessarily, absolutely. Like, well, of course, it depends, is a good default answer on things. And there’s been…

[00:18:50] Robbie: you can also like only build a full app. In Angular, if we’re being picky about it, right? It’s just the view layer for view and react. So that’s a trick question, right? Are we including meta frameworks or like other libraries to add in to build an app or not? Cause if not, that answer may be different.

[00:19:07] Chuck: So it has to be next and, uh, next versus

[00:19:12] Robbie: Yeah. Can we call it an Angular now? Put an N on

[00:19:15] Sarah: throw in meta framework? I’m not sure if my position changes.

I think Nuxt and Vue together are a really solid combination. Nuxt of course is, is great too but I think Nuxt takes developer experience to the next level with some of the Plug in interfaces, some of the modules, some of the way that, Nuxt thinks about performance, along with use, the revamp to the reactivity system using proxies and things coupled with the new Advents and Nuxt, it’s really quite smooth developer experience.

Like, it’s very good, and I think the performance is good.

[00:19:52] Chuck: but I mean, kudos to Angular, the Angular team, in that they always look to be inspired to what’s happening and are willing to kind of take in, influences that. Move things forward regardless, instead of having like too strong of an opinion and argue and fall, you know, fall on that, that sword.

they integrated CLI inspired by Ember, for example, a big one. yeah, I, I did some work in like Angular early on and was not very excited about that. But coming back to it, at Angular 9 and just seeing the progress there and

[00:20:28] Robbie: So 45 years ago is when you

[00:20:30] Chuck: Forty five years ago, exactly. Cause I don’t know what,

[00:20:32] Robbie: it’s on version, like a billion now.

[00:20:35] Chuck: Yeah, I don’t know. But 9, to me, was like, whoa, uh, TypeScript is there, First Class Citizen, the DX is really fun, Uh, say hi to your dog, Sarah. Um, All of those things were like, wow, They actually really are moving forward and iterating And giving us some nice things, so, You know, kudos to that team. Even 45 years

[00:20:59] Sarah: I mean, Angular in a sense is kind of like a meta framework. I mean, it’s not far off. Because it does, it does include things like the router that, you know, it includes things like the CLI that you’re talking about. It includes scaffolding. It includes a lot of the things that you reach for in a meta framework.

And now that Angular’s engaged with the, , Chrome team on things like the image component, you’re probably familiar with the image component in Next. Let’s come to Angular 2, some of the things that you reach for a meta framework in order to do Angular already had, kind of, so,

[00:21:35] Chuck: I mean, like Robbie said, it’s basically, when you’re looking at, Can I create an application without having to make any or very few choices on tooling along the way? Like, is it just let me spin up something, it’s made some decisions, it’s opinionated. And that’s great, because I’m buying into that, because I want, I want to ship.

I don’t want to think about what’s my state machine. I don’t want to think about which router strategy do I use. And, you know, all kinds of extra crazy things like that. Piecemealing things together.

[00:22:06] Inferred vs explicit types

[00:22:06] Robbie: in TypeScript, uh, inferred types are explicit types.

[00:22:10] Sarah: well, I think both, in a way, because if you want to leverage inferred types, but then also declare explicit types, and what I mean by that is, like, if you want in languages like Kotlin, you actually have the ability to declare explicit types, but then the type inference is there as kind of a backup. Um, and, uh, I think that’s quite elegant. I guess I’m not answering the question because I’m not answering it in a TypeScript way.

[00:22:38] Chuck: You have to answer it from your own context, or feelings, or whatever. So, there’s your example. So, in general, that’s how you feel about it, is

some of

[00:22:48] Sarah: the idea of being explicit, but I also appreciate when languages are a little bit more bulletproof.

[00:22:55] Robbie: Yeah. Yeah. I’ve encountered a lot more lately of needing to be explicit because like the types just will not match. And I’m like, just match here. You’re this thing. And it’s like, you’re right on that thing. So like, it’s better than throwing an any on it or typecasting it, just like telling the function what it returns.

And then you use the function elsewhere and you’re like, it works.

[00:23:18] Sarah: Yeah, it’s kind of like how I wish that somebody would just tell me the taxes I owe.

It’s maybe a bad metaphor, but…

It’s

[00:23:26] Robbie: no, I, I,

[00:23:27] Sarah: what’s this guessing game of like, here’s what I think I owe, and then they’re like, yes. Or that, no, like just tell me what I owe and I’ll pay you.

[00:23:37] Robbie: yeah.

[00:23:37] Chuck: right. Yeah, that would be too easy. And then also, how can others game the system?

[00:23:41] Robbie: Yeah, it’s all fake. Because a lot of people never pay any tax. And then, yeah, you pick a number and pay them and they’re like, Oh, that’s wrong. Uh, we’re gonna fine you

or like, threaten you to go to jail. Yeah.

[00:23:54] Sarah: Straight to jail.

[00:23:54] Robbie: it’s uh,

[00:23:55] Chuck: Can you just tell me what? Yeah, I saw some comic like some time ago where it was like that. Hey, IRS, can you tell me what I owe? No. Can you give me an idea or how to figure that out? No. Okay, well, I’ll just pay this. Okay, it’s time to go

to

[00:24:08] Robbie: yeah.

[00:24:10] Chuck: The penalties for that don’t match. Um, alrighty. I like this one. Get rebase or get merge.

[00:24:16] Rebase vs Merge

[00:24:16] Sarah: I keep giving you it depends answers. I mean, I’m mostly… Using Git Merge, but Git Rebase has I mean, there’s a lot of reasons to use Git Rebase as well. think it’s actually more common these days. It kind of shifted. Like, I think Git Merge was more widely used maybe five years ago and then everybody moved to Git Rebase.

And now that is more ubiquitous. I would say it’s probably more what the culture on your team does so that you’re not confusing people. If you’re like a lone merge person in a rebase world, then maybe just do the same thing as the rest of your

[00:24:56] Chuck: Right, right. again, that’s, uh, I think a very managerial like response. But it, you know, it is be a good citizen, depending on where you’re at. I do believe in that. So,

[00:25:06] Sarah: I don’t know, what do you, what do you all think?

[00:25:08] Chuck: I like rebase personally, but if I was in a situation full of merge folks, then,

[00:25:14] Robbie: well, it just kills me that merge has to have merge commits. every other, like, even if you squash everything to one commit, you still get this nice, clean commit. And I merged this commit as two different commits. I just don’t like that. So it’s a picky thing, but that’s my reasoning.

[00:25:31] Sarah: That’s, that’s, yeah, I think that’s true. I think that’s why everybody moved to rebase.

[00:25:36] Chuck: Yeah, I don’t know. Something like that. Just a more visual appeal of, of the timeline. I don’t know.

[00:25:42] Robbie: yeah, but then again, like you hardly ever do look at the get history unless something goes really, really wrong. So does it matter? Maybe not.

[00:25:51] Chuck: I think folks that are more in charge of delivery, like there were stronger opinions there at different times, cause there’s, there, there would be times where you essentially can reset production based on going back in history and having these like clear lines of releases was kinda nice there. But I think as… Delivery pipelines have changed a little bit, quite a bit, actually, that, you know, that wasn’t so important and then cleanliness of the releases starts to become a little more, I don’t know. That’s just what I’ve experienced, but that’s a small subset of things. I’m sure.

[00:26:25] AD SPOT

[00:26:25] Chuck: All right, Robbie. Next question is you.

It’s, it was made for you.

[00:26:29] Robbie: Is it?

The

Tailwind one? Okay, Tailwind or Vanilla

[00:26:34] Tailwind vs vanilla CSS

[00:26:34] Sarah: oh God, I keep doing that. It depends. Um,

[00:26:38] Chuck: Be you

[00:26:39] Robbie: CSS. What do you like using more? Not what is the best tool for the job. What do you like?

[00:26:45] Sarah: I would say vanilla CSS and maybe that makes me old. Um, but what, what, what the reason why is

I think that people try to avoid, situations where they have to really understand every single thing in order to just apply a class and make something happen. But what you trade off is that you end up doing that towards Tailwind instead of specific vanilla CSS and it kind of depends on the project. Because Tailwind does offer something that I think any kind of well functioning design system or object oriented design system, you know, if you know what OOCSS was back in the day, Nicole Sullivan invented it long before Tailwind, , was around, it does offer, A system that is clear and also consistent, like your designs and those kind of things fall apart when padding is all over the place, when, code is unstructured and things like that, and so I think Tailwind does that really nicely.

Um, but what can happen in a utility class only world is that it just bloats that, HTML or JSX or whatever, what have you, the markup. because you end up having to declare all of these things in a row, and it’s kind of one of those things where it doesn’t really matter if it’s a small project, and when it really matters is a bigger project. I’ve seen codebases that were large and at scale where Tailwind hurt because it ended up being all of these bloated classes that everybody had to parse through and it’s hard to read, right? Like, it’s hard to think through where one, you know, writing it in one concise class probably would have behooved the project.

it kind of depends because it depends on how the, how everything is structured. There are some… systems where it might make more sense to have one class that’s per the component and More scope to that component. You can do that with tailwind, of course, but vanilla css does force you into a way of thinking and structuring your css so that you’re And the way that i’m thinking about vanilla css might not be the way that other people are imagining.

I am Thinking about a replacement system that is kind of like Tailwind, but more tailored to your own code base, right? it’s not like I’m advocating for, like, write every single class. I’m advocating for, what does your code base need? And sometimes that means, I think Dan Mall puts this really well when he talks about design systems, that you should be thinking about what your system is doing and what the products are building and then back up into the design system instead of the other way around.

That way you’re not bloating the code. You don’t have all of these classes that are mismatched and used all over the place. You have more consistency. It’s more thoughtful. Um, I do think that there’s something to that of saying like, you know, we’re an airline. We’re really careful about this and we need these kind of paddings and the, you know, thinking, being really purposeful about that particular system.

I’ve seen, uh, implementations of Tailwind do that really well when they customize it really well and everybody is on the same page about what I’ve also seen Tailwind use wrong, where they’re just like bloating every line and it’s impossible to read. like it’s a kind of a very general question where you can hold it differently per project.

vanilla CSS can mean so many things. What I think the core of it is, is the outcome. Is your code legible enough? That someone can jump into it and understand what it is, what the rules are, what they’re refactoring. That it’s not like a globby mess,

And you can make a globby mess in either system, but as long as you’re thoughtful and purposeful, then you can avoid that.

[00:30:30] Chuck: Well, does it stand to reason that, as a former contributor to CSS Tricks, that maybe you just love the craft a little bit,

[00:30:38] Sarah: I actually, you know, it’s funny, I contributed a lot to CSS Tricks and people think I do CSS, but I don’t. 95 percent of my articles were not about CSS, they were about JavaScript. So, uh, I would punt that back to you and say, I’m actually not a CSS person. I’m actually a JavaScript person.

[00:30:56] Chuck: Yeah. No, that’s fair. And you wrote a managerial article on there, too, so, I mean, that’s true. I guess, I don’t want to appear overly naive, because I have read some of the articles. Used to be, uh, very into that site before. Some unnamed company kind of buried it, but uh, good for Chris.

[00:31:12] Sarah: I mean, I think like if you’re a front end engineer, you care, or even full stack, like you care about the whole thing, but you don’t care about like one thing or it’s, if you’re a carpenter, you’re not like, I only use saws, like

[00:31:27] Chuck: But I only use saws. I mean, I, I’m a carpenter, and I, I only use saws. I just don’t build any wood things.

Uh,

[00:31:35] Robbie: don’t use any tools, probably. Or not that

[00:31:38] Chuck: I have quite, I have a number of tools, and I can fix things. So, I put my home repair skills up against, at least yours. I don’t know about anyone, but…

[00:31:47] Robbie: Alright, well, we’ll have to build a room one day and see who gets theirs done first.

[00:31:52] Sarah: Can you drink a whole bottle of this and build a ring?

[00:31:57] Chuck: Yes. Yeah. Can we do it at your

house?

[00:32:01] Robbie: Yeah.

[00:32:02] Chuck: I don’t want, I don’t want the backlash from my wife. You know, Why are you building and doing in our house? Why are you drinking all this while you do it? This is not how her voice sounds. She’s gonna hear this and yell at me later. Sorry.

[00:32:15] Sarah: We have three children, so we already have forts all over the house.

[00:32:18] Chuck: Oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah. Pillow forts and that kind of stuff. I have, I have two. Four and seven, so their building skills are getting better.

[00:32:25] Robbie: Actual building or a fort building?

[00:32:28] Chuck: Fort building.

Yeah. No, they, they don’t have real tools.

Robby.

She’s four. I can’t give her a

[00:32:35] Robbie: No, I know

[00:32:36] Chuck: Anyway, alright, to another important hot take question. I mean, this one actually is fairly vide or smash?

[00:32:46] Sarah: They answered to that one already. And

[00:32:48] Chuck: I probably know the answer to that, but you can say it out

[00:32:50] Sarah: now I have validation. We did actually have 17 people over and we did a cook off. So for the people who don’t know the background. Jason Langsdorf is a horrible person. No, I’m just kidding.

[00:33:05] Chuck: He’s alright.

[00:33:06] Sarah: Jason decided to troll me for several years.

[00:33:11] Chuck: He made a sight.

[00:33:12] Sarah: made, yeah, he made a site and was like contribute to the site or you’re a loser, something like that. Um, threats, a person on my staff, by the way. Um,

[00:33:25] Chuck: He’s not afraid. So you’re not, you’re not a leader that invokes fear.

[00:33:30] Sarah: I think maybe, like, looking at this thing, like, was that a fear response? Maybe, like, maybe, I, maybe that was like, I, we should have brought that up in performance management.

[00:33:42] Chuck: You could’ve leveraged that. Maybe you did in some ways, and that’s how you ended up winning. I don’t know.

[00:33:47] Sarah: Well, he wasn’t on my staff

anymore, which is unfortunate because I definitely would have.

Doing well at work, but your smash burger sucked.

[00:33:58] Chuck: Eh, maybe it’s just his smash burgers. Oh yeah, that’s hard to say. Cause I gotta say, that’s, that’s my tried and true method. And I’ve tried a bunch of different ones. I even have the burger book, that George Motz thing. I’ve watched the burger show on First We Feast. Like, I’m very interested in Burger cooking and culture and all of that kind of stuff.

So when I saw that, sous vide as it was, I was like, I don’t know. You know, the ground and it staying together. And like I was,

[00:34:25] Sarah: You should try it.

[00:34:26] Chuck: questioning it.

[00:34:27] Sarah: honestly, like, it, you know, there’s a couple reasons why SUV is so good. Um, if, have you read, uh, Simon Nosrat’s, um, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat?

[00:34:37] Chuck: A little bit. I’m like blown. I’ve like flipped through it. I wouldn’t say

[00:34:41] Sarah: Um, she does a really good job of breaking down, like, When you add salt to meat early, it does a lot to tenderize the meat from within. Like it, there’s a big difference between salting later and salting earlier. And something that sous vide does well is, , if you add a lot of flavors to that mixture and then you sous vide, you’re basically cooking at an even temperature and it’s really allowing the flavor and profile and all of the, , the protein strands to…

to extract in a certain way that makes it really juicy and tasty. Then if you finish it off with sear on the grill, then you get a nice combination of the flavors without being overcooked. so it’s still kind of, packing in that flavor while giving that grill sear so that you get that like, Nice barbecue kind of flavor on top.

that has worked out really well. I think in me and Jason’s competition, like there was a bunch of things that went awry that day for both of us, like, and I was trying to time with him. And so what you’re supposed to do is only put it on the grill on either side once, but he thought that he was going to be done in 15 minutes.

He was done in hour. So I kept taking them off the grill, putting them back on.

[00:35:53] Chuck: Mmm.

[00:35:54] Sarah: like I could have probably gotten an even better sear, and, and the way that the burgers were supposed to be cooked. On his side, he forgot to bring the right spatula. So this is a really funny part of it. He had made this burger belt.

That’s like a WWF burger bell for the winner. And the loser gets this loser’s spatula and he ended up having to use the loser’s spatula.

[00:36:21] Chuck: I mean,

[00:36:22] Sarah: he’s like, I’m not going to use that. And then he was like,

[00:36:26] Chuck: I gotta

[00:36:26] Sarah: um, so, um, I think on, on both of our ends, we probably would iterate, but the thing that I win the most in winning that competition is not having to be trolled by him anymore.

That’s what I was like, we got to pass the baton, the spatula to another group. So we’re going to, there’s a new, new competition happening and neither Jason nor I are in it. It’s about mac and cheese. So,

[00:36:51] Chuck: Hmm. Growing up in the South, I would accept that challenge also.

[00:36:57] Sarah: yeah. I’m

used to, like,

just

eat and not be…

[00:37:01] Chuck: yeah, yeah, be a judge of that. I mostly just use Alton Brown’s mac and cheese recipe, because it’s just, it’s amazing.

[00:37:08] Sarah: know that one.

[00:37:10] Chuck: Oh, so he, you know who Alton Brown is?

[00:37:13] Sarah: Uh, I’ve heard his name.

[00:37:15] Chuck: He’s been on some of those cooking shows, and he’s had his own for a while. So, He has his own site though, and all of his recipes over time are like collected there, so if you just go to altonbrown. com, you’ll find it there, and it’s, it’s awesome. Super good. He’s a big fan of sa the Sazerac. I like to make a Sazerac while I cook.

It’s kind of fun. By A, I mean, you know, a half

dozen of them.

[00:37:37] Sarah: I’m gonna have to hit you up for these recipes after we are done.

[00:37:40] Chuck: Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah, I’ll send you some links or whatever. yeah, you should get that burger book too, and try some of the weird stuff. That, uh, he has in there. It just basically goes through, like, burger history, and That show is really fun on, on, uh, It’s a YouTube show, Under the First We Feast umbrella.

And the burger show is actually run by a guy Out in L. A. Who has, like, a butcher shop and restaurant. But then, like, he, he has George Motz on a bunch of times, And some other burger people, so There’s some really neat episodes on there.

[00:38:09] Sarah: Cool. yeah, I don’t tell Jason this, but I actually made smash burgers last night. I did the viral smash burger taco thing. I

don’t

know if anyone knows. They’re

really good, like we were skeptical and then we made them and those are good.

[00:38:26] Chuck: Wasn’t it a place out of LA that actually, like, started those? It was like a pop up in LA, I think. It was doing, like, smash burger tacos. It was like a, you know, the meld between traditional Mexican food and smash burger

[00:38:39] Sarah: Nice. We did a

Greek version where you do

lamb and beef and then it’s a ziti and…

[00:38:46] Chuck: I would also have that. Phil, maybe you need to share your recipe as well.

[00:38:51] Sarah: Yeah, it’s gross and awesome.

[00:38:55] Chuck: Perfect. Win win. Alright, should we talk about any more tech things, Ravi? I don’t

know.

[00:39:00] Robbie: Uh, yeah, we could do a little, I think we should. At least circle back to Angular for a second. We talked about it for a little while, but, it’s been around a long time and for maybe people that haven’t checked it out in a while, what’s changed since, I don’t know, version two or three, when it kind of started down this path to version what’s 16, 17, what are we on now?

Um, I’m not sure what we’re on now, something high. Um, but like, what is, uh, you know, what’s, what’s new? What stayed the same? Like what’s, what’s going on in Angular.

[00:39:31] Sarah: So I want to be really honest that because I was in React land and Vue land, I actually very purposefully did not learn Angular because I got so many questions. Being in open source spaces and stuff about, about React and Vue that I, and I was trying to help people out that I was very intentionally staying away from Angular because it was like, I already get too many questions in my inbox about these and I’m trying to help people, like I don’t.

want to, you know, learn literally everything.

so I did not participate in Angular until I joined the team. Um, until I started late. I did hear about all of the things. , and I was actually backstage when Brad Green announced Angular 2. and Cause that hubbub and things, uh, O’Reilly conference. , so I, I knew about it.

Like I heard a lot of people and I also, when I was learning react from Ryan Florence and Michael Jackson, when they were doing those react training sessions, a lot of Angular developers were there because they were so upset about the shift between AngularJS and Angular 2. , and Angular. TS or whatever we want to call it.

Um, not AngularJS, Angular. a lot has changed because Angular does do these six month updates. , when I first joined Google , I was a little worried about taking on the Angular team because I was like, how are they going to respond to this like viewport team member on their staff and like, I don’t know if they’re gonna you know, this is gonna be a scary thing or something.

But they were actually Quite thoughtful and curious and like wanted my perspective on things. So I wrote this doc called Babby’s First Angular and it’s like a 13 page doc where I was like, why do you do this? What’s this? Like,

I’m not really playing with it because I have come from a reactive view.

background just asked a lot of questions around like this doesn’t make sense to me or this is really cool. Like, you know, the migration tooling and specific. I was like, Oh, we don’t have tooling that does this as well. And other projects, , I would say that since I’ve looked at the project. what I’ve seen them change and so I’m only going to speak to probably 14 through 17 or 13 through 17, I don’t know, the reactivity system is quite different now, , moving towards signals.

If you’re familiar with, , Angular back in the day, they used zone, zone checked the world, so. one might say that it was strong. I don’t agree with this, but I’m just trying to present both sides. that it was strong because you didn’t have to declare anything. The framework did it for you. the thing that I found very frustrating about that, that’s different from the way that React and Vue do things where you’re kind of declaring the state that you’re trying to look at was, one, debugging was a nightmare.

It’s giving you all of. And it’s just like a mess and it’s very nodded because it’s keeping track of state. You’re not keeping track of state. There’s tons of information about anything that’s changed, especially at scale. , that I found frustrating. the ability to kind of declare state is also a signal to other developers about what you care about.

It’s not just, you know, the tracking of it, but it’s also the legibility of. Saying like this is the thing that I’m really looking out for and I need you know That that’s the state that I need you to pay attention to so it there’s a little bit of a Communication signal to other developers who jump into the project.

So in moving to signals Not only is it a really elegant form of reactivity that I think is actually quite good You know, they, listened to my feedback a little of prodding them around things like computer properties. I loved in view the ability to cache something based on its dependencies. I found it really useful.

that’s something that was brought into signals that I didn’t see in other implementations, that their ability to kind of. Think through well, maybe we can shortcut for some browser APIs and treat those differently. That’s really solid

[00:43:44] Chuck: Yeah. Pun intended.

[00:43:47] Sarah: So that that was that’s that’s a big change going from zone To signals is a is a massive change for the framework Dealing with change as a developer is a main reason why you use a framework. So that’s that’s massive Control flow is another big one. I would say that Angular has over the years, because it’s withstood the test of time, has a lot of extra stuff.

The team is really thinking through, like, can we get rid of ng modules? Can we get rid of, you know, some of this older systems? And can we clean up some things that were just, like, not well addressed in earlier versions, like the if else? scenario. I personally appreciate, since I’ve seen the project, I never told them what to do, but I, I think that they, not just with me, but with GDEs, and they reach out to the community, they do surveys, they like do a ton of work.

, to understand, where are people really getting stuck? And so they’ve done a lot of work to address that. I think they’re mid stream in that, right? if you play with Angular now, you’ll see a lot of nice updates. You’ll see even more in the coming years.

[00:44:57] Chuck: I think it’s a proj I think it’s fair to say that it’s a project that reacts really well to feedback and, iteration and innovation in many different ways, so there’s a lot of kudos to that. It’s kind of ironic because I can remember a long time ago, one of my complaints about it was around How much it, kind of polluted the HTML and using that, you know, as a, state flow and all of those things.

But then now, lately, I’ve been saying, I’ve been talking a lot about regressing back to simpler. Ideologies, technologies, basic from old, old web frameworks like Django and thing, and rail, maybe rails is fine too. Maybe it’s all fine. And then things like HTMX and Astro project and all these other things.

Somewhat polluting the, the HTML for interactivity, but then just looking at starting with that, that base thing. So I’m a big hypocrite many years later. That’s really my point.

[00:45:55] Sarah: I don’t think that’s hypocritical at all. That’s like, I think that’s the reason why so many senior devs go towards this kind of, it depends way of thinking. Because we see so many different implementations over time. And then, the nuance strikes us, I think when you’re younger you would love to believe in this like, good and evil and, and bad and good and there’s one true way, and, over time you realize like, it’s not actually the truth, and there are things that get in your way for sure, and there’s definitely bad things for sure, , but there’s also, on good ends of spectrums, there are trade-offs for everything, The more you see different implementations, different programming languages, different frameworks, the more you understand, like, I might get this, but I’m also trading off that.

directives versus TSX, like, you need dynamicism? Or would you rather something stay within some sort of boundaries? these are things that, you know, as long as you can compose a component, You could battle back and forth forever, and some of it would end up being preference or nuance for those trade offs.

[00:47:01] Chuck: yeah, it’s an interesting thing that you sort of get more open minded, I guess, over time. I think that’s like kind of part of it, kind of reminds me for some reason, uh, talking about some of your career and all of that. There’s like a popular charity majors, uh, article. It wasn’t even that long ago, I don’t think, talking about the pendulum of management to contributor and sort of like, kind of keeping that swing ongoing throughout, throughout your career.

[00:47:28] Sarah: one of my favorite articles, actually.

[00:47:31] Chuck: Oh, okay. Yeah, I think it’s amazing. I think it’s great. It’s like, It changes a paradigm of thinking out of folks need to constantly be leveling up, quote, unquote, whatever that means, right? Like by title and salary or whatever in perpetuity to have success necessarily, , and to be a part of successful companies.

And I think that’s a giant misnomer. So anyway, do you ever, the point of my that thinking about that and that my question would be like, is that something you see for yourself in your

[00:47:59] Sarah: Oh yeah, I think actually

before she wrote that article, I was wondering, like, am I broken for doing both? , because I have done IC work, and I was very committed to only being in IC. I didn’t want to be a manager for a really long time. I know I’ve written a book about management, but I talk

about this in the book.

Like I really didn’t wanna be a manager and all of a sudden I was kind of thrown laterally into management and I didn’t have any tools for that because, you can be a really good developer and then it’s like all of a sudden you’re a baker and you’re like, what? It’s totally a different skill set in some ways, not always, but in some ways.

I love that article because it, it spoke to the thing that I feel. I love to code, and I will always code on the side, if I retire someday, I’m coding, like, I’m retiring to code. the thing that I found frustrating about only coding for a long time, especially as I got higher as a principal and things, was if I wasn’t aligned to the strategy that my code was making, You know, enabling that felt demoralizing to me, like, why am I building all this stuff and I don’t even think that it’s being used properly.

I don’t even think that the leadership is, doing the right thing here. And then, in order to fix that you end up more in these kind of strategic management positions. So I kind of go where I think I’m more strategically placed that could be developing and coding that could also be do providing strategy to a broad team for directives.

And I think it’s valuable to see both tracks because I’ll be very honest that I didn’t have empathy for managers until I was one. my husband was a VP of engineering while I was a principal IC and I, he still makes fun of me because there was one time where I got done with work and I was like, I have to do hard work all day, like debugging and fixing things and you get to sit in meetings.

[00:49:56] Chuck: Yeah. Get to. You feel a bit differently

[00:49:59] Sarah: I, yeah, you know, I think I have a different perspective now and I think it’s actually kind of healthy to understand how hard the other job is. Because there are a lot of days where I, now, where I’m going like, both are hard. I’m not saying like, I see work isn’t hard, that’s not what I’m saying, but what I’m saying is both are hard.

[00:50:22] Chuck: I bet sometimes you’re in particular meetings and you’re like, Gosh, I wish it was just heads down, making something.

[00:50:29] Sarah: Absolutely. Like I do miss flow state, I think that’s why I still code on the side or do these projects on the side because you don’t get a lot of flow state as a manager.

[00:50:40] Chuck: Three hours, four hours of meetings doesn’t put you into, it doesn’t give you any

[00:50:45] Sarah: hours of meetings

[00:50:47] Robbie: Yeah, I was going to say, why so few hours, Chuck?

[00:50:51] Sarah: I,

[00:50:52] Chuck: I was assuming Google was more efficient, but it is a big company. So I think what you, what it is, is that you are becoming very well poised to still start that company.

[00:51:05] Sarah: I think that there’s probably someday that I want to start a company of my own. I really enjoyed this job maybe even more than I expected to , I think it took a second to get into it because google’s culture is different google’s tech stack is different Like there’s there’s a a lot that is quite different from the outside world and so it took an adjustment period but man, these are like really thoughtful hard working teams who are really So smart and I I know everybody says Like I’m humbled to work with my team.

I actually I really mean it I’m really humbled to work with the people that I do. I learned so much from them and I just love the things that we work on together. So

[00:51:53] Chuck: They’re giving you a lot of fodder for your follow up book too. So there’s that.

[00:51:58] Sarah: Why why I’m a fan of my staff

[00:52:01] Chuck: Yeah, there you go. You know how, how to develop, how to become a fan. Of your employees, or something of that nature. It could be a good one.

[00:52:09] Robbie: So on the other side, if you weren’t in tech, what career would you choose? And this could be, you don’t have to have this skill. It can be like, what do you think would be the most fun career if you could just miraculously get a skill or whatever.

[00:52:23] Sarah: That’s a good one, miraculously getting a skill, like, I would want to be a superhero, right? Because that would be super

fun. Like, sometimes you watch Spider Man movies, and it’s like, wow, if I could just… And, you know, with anything, I want to do superhero stuff. But I don’t think that’s in the cards for me, because I’m quite small and I have no reflexes.

And I’m not good at sports, so probably not. if I wasn’t in tech, I do love problem solving. So anything that engages that part of the brain of problem solving would be fantastic. I like outcomes and problem solving. So architecture or like just, you know, I like building things for other people. in former lives, I was a professor.

Um, I taught people. I do like teaching. Um, that’s another kind of outcome. It’s more, you know, helping other people see the value in things or understand things.

[00:53:24] Chuck: Yeah. Those seem like pretty good ones. not as good as superhero, but you could be a superhero teacher. You know, with a, with an actual living salary. That would be your superpower. Can I be, can I be a teacher and survive on this?

[00:53:37] Sarah: What do you, what would you do?

[00:53:39] Chuck: Um, whatever made me Robbie’s boss, that’s what I would do. I just want to be in charge of him, like, telling him what to do, and him not being able to complain about it. Uh, no, I, I think, I think I would have, like, um, interests much like my, like, seven year old self or something. Like, car racing?

Something I think is, uh, I don’t know, I’ve dabbled into a couple of times in life and, like, would be very interested in. I, I do enjoy speed. I don’t like dying, but I could

see

where if I had like

[00:54:13] Robbie: and you, you

[00:54:14] Chuck: that. I did autocross for a little bit and you know, yeah, things like that. But, uh, so I think that, or there was a time in like my early thirties, I was like, I really love soccer and like obsessively like watch it and everything else was never like good enough to have any kind of career there and didn’t really think about it until like my early thirties that like.

Being a referee is a way to like stay close to the game. It’s actually a pretty decent career, makes a decent living, you get travel. There’s all those aspects that I actually like about it. I can be close to the game, I get to travel a lot, um, stay fit, you know, those kinds of things. So, uh, but, but, there are some age limits, there’s, you know, so basically starting late in life is pretty hard.

but I think, uh, yeah, being a football, a European football referee.

[00:55:02] Robbie: Yeah, I would, uh, maybe continue towards a similar theme, except American football. Like, I always like playing. Like I was never on a real team, but just playing with friends and stuff. that, or like I did a lot of music growing up. I was in bands and stuff. So, uh, like a touring musician of some kind would be fun, but, uh, yeah, it was never good enough at any of that stuff to make money doing it.

So that would be a, Oh, I miraculously like lucked out kind of thing. But, uh, yeah, that

[00:55:31] Chuck: You did pivot pretty early in life though. Didn’t you like, have a band until you were like 18 or something

[00:55:36] Robbie: Um, Oh, I was in bands until Most of the way through college? I think so, like 2020 or so. I stopped.

[00:55:42] Chuck: we have to find your music online somewhere.

[00:55:44] Robbie: Oh, I can, I can send it to you. It’s not really online, I don’t think, but I’m not sure why I should throw it on, uh, SoundCloud or

[00:55:50] Sarah: Yeah, I want to hear it too.

[00:55:53] Chuck: he has some, some Christmas songs and you’ve done re more recent

Christmas

[00:55:57] Robbie: Christmas songs. Yeah.

[00:55:59] Chuck: Mm-hmm. .You should share and

[00:56:02] Robbie: boy. Well, Chuck will be, uh, tweeting that out later, I guess. Uh,

[00:56:07] Chuck: Yeah, I gotta find it, because I know you, like, sent some to us. It was good. Or maybe, like, my wife. My wife is also Sarah with an H.

and I know that matters. So I say, with an H.

[00:56:17] Sarah: One of those things you only know if you know Sarah.

[00:56:20] Chuck: exactly, yes. and, I don’t know if she found it, or you sent it to her, maybe?

[00:56:24] Robbie: Yeah. I posted it on Facebook. Once a year I record a Christmas song for my mom and I post it on Facebook. That’s the only time I post on Facebook. Like that’s all I do. yeah.

[00:56:34] Sarah: I gotta hear these now, like, that’s great.

[00:56:37] Robbie: Yeah.

[00:56:38] Chuck: so my action items are to send you the link to the burger show, although you can probably find that, the Alton Brown recipes, these are more like reminders, and a Robbie song. Okay, we can do this. Do you prefer formally Twitter or email?

[00:56:55] Sarah: Either works. I’m on Twitter a bit less just because I have less time. Uh, email

is probably easiest. But if you want everyone to know,

[00:57:05] Chuck: sounds good. We don’t have

[00:57:06] Sarah: if you want

[00:57:07] Chuck: email here.

[00:57:08] Robbie: Yeah. Don’t, yeah.

Don’t give out

your email unless you want.

[00:57:10] Sarah: retweet, Yeah, if you want me to like spread the love, which I’m happy to do, on your account.

[00:57:17] Robbie: I don’t know that we

want my songs, uh, going out to the wider

[00:57:20] Chuck: think, I think he’s like, he’s like, please don’t, no, but kind of, if you want to, if

I that’s how I’m

[00:57:28] Robbie: I, a couple of them I think are okay. And a couple of them are kind of

[00:57:34] Sarah: I’m here on Twitter. That’s what I’m hearing from you. It’s like, yeah, like, we gotta spread the love here.

[00:57:38] Chuck: Like share it. And if it does well,

then yes.

[00:57:42] Robbie: that if it doesn’t, I’ll take them down.

[00:57:44] Chuck: yeah, and he can be like, no, no, don’t do this. I didn’t want that. Yeah, exactly. So you’re

[00:57:49] Robbie: Well, yeah. Anyway, we are over time here. Is there anything you want to plug or mention before we end?

[00:57:56] Sarah: I

really

[00:57:57] Chuck: about your book that we didn’t talk about?

[00:57:59] Sarah: I really appreciate you having me. Um, this has been really fun and, like, this This ability to, like, drink this wonderful whiskey with you, even though we’re remote, is so wonderful. Um, oh, I guess, yeah, I wrote a book.

I should, yeah, you can read my book if you want. Um, it, it was, um, cathartic to write because I felt like I, when I started managing, I really didn’t have anybody to help me. And I had to learn a lot of stuff by learning on people that was. Hard on them, I think. Um, and so I tried to write stuff down so that other people had some resources.

So if you want to read it, great. If you don’t, totally good. , I would also plug SheCodeAfrica. half of the book proceeds go to SheCodeAfrica, but you can also just donate to them directly. , SheCodeAfrica is run by a wonderful woman named, uh, Who, um, is basically empowering a lot of women in tech in Africa, she gives them laptops, she creates courses, she creates community conferences, things like that. Which allows for people to have upward mobility. Allows for people to have, create generational wealth. And it’s just a really cool project. , there’s a lot of, they also work on job placement for people.

So. if you’re interested in that, you should check her out. Uh, she’s Kolokodes on Twitter. I’ll give you the handle, and also SheCodeAfrica is a handle in and of itself.

[00:59:34] Robbie: Cool. All right. Uh, thanks everyone for listening. If you liked it, please subscribe, leave us some ratings and reviews. We appreciate it. And we will catch you next time.