[00:00:02] Whitney Lee: Coté. Okay, so we have AI in the mix. There's so [00:00:05] Coté: Yeah [00:00:06] Whitney Lee: mm, uh, you know, uh, they say AI's an amplifier. So you and I, we're content creators. Like, you make videos, you have newsletters, you have articles. It seems like you're making stuff nonstop. And even before AI, it seemed like you were making stuff nonstop. [00:00:20] Coté: It wa-, it, it is possible. I've proven it [00:00:23] Whitney Lee: So now that you have AI as an amplifier, what is different? Are you doing more things? Are you doing different things than you ever thought you would? [00:00:33] Coté: Hmm. [00:00:34] Whitney Lee: combination thereof [00:00:37] Coté: I think it's a… You know, I don't know if I do more things. I think, I think the things I do, I do better. And where better is defined by, by, uh, like, like let, let [00:00:54] Whitney Lee: 'cause it's some sort of a- admission that what you made before was kind of bad. [00:00:58] Coté: Yeah. Well, I'll, I'll, l- I'll… In, in this case, better means it's, um, enhance is the wrong word. It's enriched. It has… So for example, when I make-- when I used to make show notes for a podcast or a video, [00:01:12] Whitney Lee: Mm-hmm. [00:01:12] Coté: I would not 'cause, like, I, I would be, like, sick of… I-- By the time that I was to the point where I was making show notes, I would be like, "I wanna be fucking done with this. All I gotta do is press this button." And so I would just, like, not do it. Whereas now, I can, uh, you know, I can have the robot make five versions of show notes, edit it, and I can pick one, and then I can edit it a little bit. It can, like, gather up all the stuff. It can make, like, chapter indexes of stuff, and it's great. So, like, I have, I have more stuff [00:01:42] Viktor Farcic: You're such a disciplined person. The fact that you're picking up one of those five is amazing to me [00:01:48] Coté: Well, you know, I, I, I, uh, maybe that's left over from when I, when I manually did stuff. Now, now you're, you are correct. Sometimes I'm also like, "Fuck it," and I, and I just, I do a very minimal read over to make sure it's not… Th- I, I would say I'm doing a read over to make sure it's 30% of, of my, my, my quality control is that it's not terrible, [00:02:11] Whitney Lee: Uh-huh [00:02:13] Coté: is that it doesn't say something people will, will hate me for or I'll get in trouble for, right? And so, like, [00:02:18] Whitney Lee: I [00:02:18] Coté: it's [00:02:19] Whitney Lee: realized too that there's a third option that I didn't consider, which says more about me than maybe it does about you. But the third option would just be doing what I did normally, but now I have more free time. Does, [00:02:31] Coté: Yeah, yeah, yeah [00:02:32] Whitney Lee: anyone choose that option? [00:02:34] Coté: I th- I think so [00:02:36] Viktor Farcic: I have, I have a better one. Kind of to me it's, it's not really about amplifying me or, uh, being better in control and all that stuff. It's about being able to say to other people that I'm dependent on, "Fuck off. don't need you anymore." I'm willing to ac-accept worse results, but I don't need you anymore, right? [00:02:58] Coté: I think, I think, you know [00:02:59] Viktor Farcic: you to review my PR. Well, thank you, Greptile. Bye-bye. [00:03:04] Coté: I think, you know, I think, I think, I think both, both of what, you know, what both of you are saying also applies. And the, and kind of what you were saying, Whitney, is like, is like, I think-- Let me put it this way: I don't, I don't necessarily do more, like you're saying. I kind of do the same amount. I just do other stuff that I wasn't doing previously, which sounds like more, but there's a distinction. Like, I'm not necessarily, like, putting out more episodes or more content. There's just other little side projects and things that, that I do that I didn't used to do, like B and C or C-tier level stuff. And, and then yes, like, like, like our guest Viktor is saying, there are a lot of activities that now I, I guess… Well, I used to tailor my activities already using the, the, the Viktor philosophy, which is: How could I go through my life with as few human dependencies as possible? And, and I think, I think I have-- I think about, uh, almost after 30 years of being in IT, I'm highly optimized for that way of operating. And so now-- But I think there's still more to be stripped out. There's like, you know, less review processes. There's especially, like, less waiting on people for things, 'cause I can just get the thing, and like, so there's, there's that kind of thing. [00:04:25] Whitney Lee: Viktor, will you introduce yourself please, first of all, and then tell us how AI has changed the content that you make [00:04:32] Viktor Farcic: Okay, two questions. Introduction, yes, I'm Viktor. and what was the second? [00:04:38] Whitney Lee: That, that was not so helpful. [00:04:43] Viktor Farcic: Uh, [00:04:44] Whitney Lee: W- [00:04:44] Viktor Farcic: I don't know. I, [00:04:45] Whitney Lee: you can look… Yeah [00:04:47] Viktor Farcic: have difficulty explaining what I do. I do random things really. Can-- it depends what, what I'm interested in, what, [00:04:53] Whitney Lee: Uh-huh [00:04:54] Viktor Farcic: to have done and things like that. I could be creating content. I could be working on a project. I could be speaking with a company, uh, or I might be playing games and letting AI do all those things. Uh, depends. [00:05:09] Whitney Lee: So you [00:05:10] Coté: Nobody knows [00:05:11] Whitney Lee: YouTube channel, DevOps Toolkit, [00:05:13] Viktor Farcic: very popular is a, uh, overstatement, [00:05:16] Whitney Lee: all relative. Yeah, okay. It's, it's a lot more popular than mine, but that also means nothing. [00:05:21] Viktor Farcic: my goal was to reach MrBeast numbers, but it's not happening. It seems that less people are interested in cloud and, uh, infrastructure and what so not than in MrBeast. Go [00:05:34] Whitney Lee: Go figure. So you do that, you run a-- write a ton of blog posts, you speak at lots of conferences, you make a lot of useful software for people, and then you work at Upbound and, uh, talk with customers and advise folks in that capacity, yeah. Um, so one of three things. So you did all those things before AI, and now you have AI. So what do you do? Do you do more of those things? Is-- do you do different things? Like how, how is-- or how-- do you relax more? How has it, your life changed? [00:06:05] Viktor Farcic: relax. It's not allowed. It's [00:06:07] Whitney Lee: No. [00:06:07] Viktor Farcic: Uh, no, no, no relaxing. I, I [00:06:10] Whitney Lee: Who enforces that? [00:06:13] Viktor Farcic: I think it's similar to what Coté said. Uh, first of all, there are things that I should have been doing and I'm not. Like a silly example is, okay, if I do a live stream, I should get time codes. I never did because, you know, it's work. kind of okay, uh, then, then you sit down, write an application that is scheduled to run every day to check whether there is a stream published, and if there is, extract time codes, whatever it is it is extracts, uh, and puts into the description is better than nothing. That's my philosophy, right? Because that's-- nothing is the alternative. So I do more of the th- things that I haven't been doing. [00:06:56] Whitney Lee: Mm-hmm. [00:06:57] Viktor Farcic: n- and I agree with Coté, not necessarily pr-- So I'm not making more, publishing more videos, it's just that there are things around that, I wasn't doing and now I am, right? [00:07:06] Whitney Lee: Uh-huh [00:07:09] Viktor Farcic: and, uh, and there are a bunch of projects or tools or things that I would never have time to do, and now I do, [00:07:21] Whitney Lee: Uh-huh [00:07:21] Viktor Farcic: of, oh, you know, there is a list of, you know, all the things that you were thinking about in shower that you, uh, that ended up never doing. [00:07:30] Whitney Lee: Uh-huh [00:07:30] Viktor Farcic: it now, right? Uh, so a [00:07:32] Whitney Lee: When you say things, do you mean like coding projects or do you mean like [00:07:37] Viktor Farcic: Yeah, [00:07:37] Whitney Lee: animated bedtime stories? [00:07:39] Viktor Farcic: not happening yet [00:07:46] Whitney Lee: Until you can garden some french fries, I don't, I don't see it coming from you. [00:07:50] Viktor Farcic: I mean, that's already solved. We have delivery in, in, in this, in this country, so it's, it's, it's a solved problem [00:07:57] Whitney Lee: So [00:07:57] Coté: you know, I, I think, I think y- like, like I, I don't actually do a lot of, uh… Well, I don't-- I wouldn't say I do any coding myself. I have the robot do coding, but I don't make applications. And kind of like as, as you were talking ab- as… Well, what am I trying to say? There, there is a lot of stuff that I do that is not gardening, uh, but is like non-coding stuff that I wouldn't do otherwise. Like, a lot of it's just like organizing files and finances and stuff. But then there's also like, uh, you know, I'm like trying to learn Dutch, and thanks to you, I use Anki, and Anki is fully programmable. So like, I just will like say like, "Go change this card. Go do this, and then make a po-" Like, it does all this stuff that is, uh, like I guess I could make those flashcards. I could go look up in a reference book, but I would never do that, let alone hire some Dutch person to give me like a 10-minute podcast about the difference between onder and nach and things like this, right? Like there's-- So there's this whole other realm of things [00:08:58] Viktor Farcic: You know when you said, "But you, you're not doing coding," that, that's wrong. You're maybe not realizing, but behind the scenes it's writing code. I [00:09:06] Coté: Right, right. And, and I, I, I, I agree. I, I just, it's the, it's… I, I would separate it as, uh, not even intentional coding, but like I… 'Cause yes, you're, you're, you're correct, but I feel like there is something different between I'm making a software application, uh, versus like I'm just getting some shit done, and I don't, I don't really care about the software part. But yes, there's lots of code being written, just I'm not involved [00:09:32] Viktor Farcic: Oh, who is? [00:09:35] Coté: Exactly. [00:09:36] Viktor Farcic: Wait, wait, wait, You [00:09:38] Whitney Lee: Artisans. [00:09:39] Viktor Farcic: still [00:09:40] Coté: maybe, [00:09:40] Viktor Farcic: type letter by letter [00:09:43] Coté: he-he-- Well, here, here's, here's an example is like, I know, I know in the agentic or whatever the, in the AI coding world, everyone's interested in writing specs and things like that. And I'm like, I d- I don't care. Like, the only spec I write is like on, on the line here. So I'd have no idea [00:09:59] Viktor Farcic: that's a spec. Do this [00:10:01] Coté: Fair, fair, fair enough. All right. All right. I'm, I'm not, I'm not flashing a bunch of symbols at it [00:10:07] Whitney Lee: So all that, all that line of questioning up top was a roundabout way to get to the fact that Viktor, I, uh, I see a new type of content on your YouTube channel, which seems to be around animated bedtime stories told by Uncle Viktor. [00:10:24] Viktor Farcic: big motivation for that was to check whether you actually ever saw any of the videos I ever published. okay, experiment successful. [00:10:33] Whitney Lee: It took me a month and you had to be a guest on my show, but yes. And actually, to be fair, Coté showed me [00:10:39] Viktor Farcic: thumbnail so that you don't think it's coming from me, kind of, and maybe that's how you will see it. Exactly. [00:10:49] Whitney Lee: So for real though, is this powered by AI? Like, first of all, it's cool. Like, it's, um, like a, like how the rise and fall of Docker is one of them, right? So it's, you're telling a story as though it's a bedtime story or, you know, and then it's animated kind of in the style of Rick and Morty, then it's, it's cool. But, [00:11:10] Viktor Farcic: It's, [00:11:12] Whitney Lee: is this an AI-enabled project? [00:11:14] Viktor Farcic: It's a painful realization that led me to that. And the realization is that I normally don't, you know, don't spend time in front of the mirror, but accidentally I did recently, and then I saw this, and I thought kind of, "Come on, this is not something people should be watching." Kind of let's be realistic for a, for a moment, right? [00:11:38] Whitney Lee: That's a testament to how good your content is [00:11:41] Viktor Farcic: in front of this [00:11:45] Whitney Lee: So is that, is that AI, uh, [00:11:48] Viktor Farcic: No, [00:11:49] Whitney Lee: yeah [00:11:49] Viktor Farcic: I w- I w- I was hand drawing every single frame of [00:11:52] Whitney Lee: Well, I know you weren't, but were you, like, do you have a creative director in the background? Like, or is it, like, fully defined by specifications? [00:12:00] Viktor Farcic: which part of the earlier conversation when I said I don't w-- uh, the biggest benefit is not talking and working with other people you did not understand? [00:12:11] Coté: Well, well, uh, the, like how, what, what's the, what's the process for doing that? Like, do you, [00:12:15] Whitney Lee: Yeah [00:12:17] Coté: how did you fig- I, I imagine you have to like, h- uh, what, what word am I… Narrow down from the world of possibilities to like, "I like this style." And then the oth- the other thing you have is you probably know more, like, but they're each on kind of like a five-second loop so that you can have like the same video playing o- which is great, right? But like how did you, how long did it take you to kind of figure out like, "And we're done." Right? Now I can just tell the thing to do it, and it'll do it. [00:12:47] Viktor Farcic: So th- there are a couple of things, uh, I, I have to do there or at least I think I have to do. First I figure out kind of, okay, what's the, the ambient, right? Kind of like what's [00:12:58] Coté: Yeah [00:12:58] Viktor Farcic: kingdom with a castle or whatever, right? Um, you know, I, I would generate, I don't know, 10, 20, whatever different variations of it and say, "Okay, that's the one." Kind of that's the style. Then I generate, uh, in that style, uh, a few recurring characters, [00:13:16] Coté: Yeah [00:13:16] Viktor Farcic: Kind of their, their stills. And then, then, then it starts. Okay, scene number one kind of like create a still, uh, usually a couple of them kind of, okay, that's the one. And then next step is animate it kind of, oh, let, let the chicken pick some- something from the ground and, uh, let this guy move the hand like this or, or whatever it is. and, and it goes I use Hi- Higgsfield for that which is, you know, one of those sites that don't do anything special really just give you access to different models. [00:13:49] Coté: Mm-hmm. Yeah [00:13:50] Viktor Farcic: Uh, uh, that's it, right? And it's all done with, uh, Claude or OpenCode depending on one I have credits for. Um, that's about it [00:14:03] Coté: Yeah, it, it's, I, I've, I've never… Well, I don't know if this will come as a shock, but I have never made a TV show or a movie or been involved in it. But it seems like from watching those extra, extra specials on, on things where they show you the making of, it seems like shockingly similar to how you make TV and movies, where you're just like, "We've got a bunch of stills. We pick out our concepts, and then the very last thing we do is the computationally intensive thing of actually filming." And then I imagine there's editing afterwards. But it's, it's, uh, it's kinda like what we were saying earlier. It's like, this isn't really changing what I'm doing or how I operate. I just do it better. [00:14:45] Viktor Farcic: Yeah, and you know, basically it's, it's kind of conf- conf- uh, reject or confirm type of situation. Uh, I have elaborated instructions to, to Claude that kind of, okay, so can, you know, uh, open the clip, uh, get, uh, every 10th frame, check whether actually that makes sense. If it doesn't, don't [00:15:07] Coté: Ah, yeah, yeah [00:15:08] Viktor Farcic: it again. Uh, show the different stills kind of in parallel on a screen so that I can pick one and so on and so forth. It-- There, there was a s- fair amount of work involved to make it running, you know, trial and error, but it works and I'm burning [00:15:25] Whitney Lee: I, [00:15:26] Viktor Farcic: like crazy [00:15:27] Whitney Lee: I was gonna ask, it seems like an expensive endeavor. Yeah [00:15:32] Viktor Farcic: You know, so whenever I hear expensive word in relation to AI, my answer is always, "No, it's extremely cheap." Right? Compare it like, okay, w- what, would I hire an agency to do it? Would I hire a person [00:15:49] Whitney Lee: just wouldn't make it. It's extremely cheap to make it, but you wouldn't make it at all, like compared to hiring a human. But [00:15:57] Viktor Farcic: I [00:15:58] Whitney Lee: you also would not make it, period. Yeah [00:16:01] Viktor Farcic: Yeah I, I would either not make it or I would pay much, much, much more. Uh, uh, I mean, I, I don't have numbers, but I think that probably a couple of hundred bucks goes per maybe couple of hundred, maybe 500 per episode all included. [00:16:17] Whitney Lee: That's, yeah. [00:16:18] Viktor Farcic: Uh, it's, [00:16:19] Coté: Well, that [00:16:19] Whitney Lee: that is. [00:16:20] Viktor Farcic: but find me a person who would actually it for that amount of money. And when I say do it with all the variations and iterations and rejections involved in it, right? [00:16:32] Coté: All right. And, and that's, that's probably much cheaper than the, you know, however you rate it, the overall value that, that, that you get out of it [00:16:39] Viktor Farcic: Yeah [00:16:39] Whitney Lee: W- when, when you were describing the instructions you created to make these videos, one thing you said is like, um, "Check whether the still compares to the story, and if it doesn't, don't ask me questions, just fix it." that made me realize, oh my God, I need more instructions in my, my interactions with AI that just says, "Don't ask me questions, just do it." Is that literally something you put in there often? Yeah, I need more of that. [00:17:05] Viktor Farcic: Uh, [00:17:05] Whitney Lee: It wants to… Yeah [00:17:07] Viktor Farcic: I'm not there, just to be clear, but the goal kind of the, know, man can dream type of situation is that I just confirm. I ne- I never reject anything. That, that's the goal kind of like, [00:17:19] Whitney Lee: Then why would you even confirm? Wouldn't the… If, if that's the pie in the sky, why are you in the loop? [00:17:26] Viktor Farcic: Okay. So yeah, let's go st- after that, yeah, kind of it goes live. Uh, actually now I'm working on, uh, instructions that will, uh, take my narration, uh, together with those things and assemble it even, right? Uh, the, the video, audio clips, everything, [00:17:47] Whitney Lee: Oh, is your video editor about to lose their job? [00:17:52] Viktor Farcic: that, that's the-- I mean, uh, yes, hopefully. [00:17:59] Coté: That, that's the, uh, that's, that's, that's the, the pie on the moon, uh, scenario right there. Yeah, well, you know, I, I found, uh, uh, I, I used Descript and Claude, and it's phenomenal at video editing. Like, it, it-- I, I still am in only the, uh, the pie in the sky sometimes where, where I go look at it. [00:18:20] Whitney Lee: yet [00:18:21] Coté: But I was actually thinking before recording this episode, maybe I should just, uh, you know, I'll, I'll have to pay attention, 'cause remember, one of my criteria was I don't wanna get in trouble for anything that's published, right? So [00:18:31] Whitney Lee: Mm-hmm. [00:18:32] Coté: as long as I know the, the whole thing being edited, there's nothing bad in it, then who cares how it gets edited? Well, I mean, you care 'cause you want it to be good. But you could, uh, you could probably take a pass at just having it edit it a little bit [00:18:45] Viktor Farcic: The thing is that, uh, there are, there are a bunch of tools, you know, command line tools like FFmpeg, [00:18:54] Coté: Yeah, yeah [00:18:55] Viktor Farcic: are absolutely horrible for you as a person using it, But they're actually pretty good for, for, for agents, for AI, [00:19:02] Coté: Yeah [00:19:03] Viktor Farcic: They can do marvels without Descript or, you know, Final Cut Pro or any, any of that kind of… They would get confused with those things. They are not built for them, right? [00:19:11] Coté: Right, right. And, and to your point, the Descript part is for me, right? So, so like it'll assemble it together, like comp it all together and for me to look at and mess around with. But if I didn't have to, then I wouldn't have to. It would be, uh, much better. So yes, we're on our way to the moon. That's, that's what we want [00:19:31] Whitney Lee: S- so once we get to the moon or, um, I guess even toward the sun now, uh, so once the-- once good practices in AI settle and, like, people figure out how to use sub-agents and manage AI in such a way that they can maximize the amount of work that gets done with m- and minimize the human oversight needed, what do you think, what do you think job roles will be like? What job roles will exist or not exist? Man, like say more. What- [00:20:06] Viktor Farcic: I mean, th-there are different types of management in our [00:20:08] Whitney Lee: Mm-hmm. [00:20:09] Viktor Farcic: industry. Let's, let's call it technical manager, right? [00:20:13] Whitney Lee: Okay [00:20:15] Viktor Farcic: Um, I'm, I'm trying to avoid saying specifically kind of, uh, architect or product man-- uh, technical management of sorts because, um, so the, I'm going to be, be very disrespectful here, but the monkey business that, that, that, that's going away, right? Kind of, "Oh, I can type getters, setters better than you can type getters, setters." I, I, I, I… That, that's agents now. I, I, I really don't, I don't wanna do that anymore. My job now as, uh, whatever I am, [00:20:46] Whitney Lee: Mm-hmm. [00:20:47] Viktor Farcic: Goal. Let's say goal, not necessarily job today, is to say what I want in a [00:20:54] Whitney Lee: Mm-hmm. [00:20:54] Viktor Farcic: is understood by dummies. have [00:20:57] Whitney Lee: Mm-hmm. [00:20:57] Viktor Farcic: dummies running on a machine And validate that that's what I'm getting, right? [00:21:07] Whitney Lee: Uh-huh. [00:21:07] Viktor Farcic: Uh, and specifying is a combination of I want this like that and the hardness that we build around it, right? Because I don't wanna [00:21:19] Whitney Lee: Mm-hmm. [00:21:19] Viktor Farcic: myself every single time. "Oh yeah, you know, you need to open a pull request, don't push to main," all that stuff, right? [00:21:24] Whitney Lee: Use TDD. Yep [00:21:26] Viktor Farcic: instructions are there already, and those instructions are-- There are two primary motivations for those instructions, to do the right thing and for me to not have to explain myself, more than absolutely needed, right? [00:21:43] Whitney Lee: Hmm. [00:21:43] Viktor Farcic: Um, and then validation at the end. one thing that I'm doing right now, still experimental, that I let my agents work, bunch of them, they work, let's say at night while I'm sleeping. [00:22:01] Whitney Lee: Mm-hmm. [00:22:01] Viktor Farcic: And among many others, they have instructions to when they're finished and they create a pull request and it's all validated and audited and all that stuff, they publish, uh, a video on YouTube And then I wake up in the morning, I open my phone and go say, "Feature number one, uh, this looks okay. Yeah, cool. Ship it. Feature number two, uh, uh, no, not, not, not correct. Okay, I need to, I need to correct that," right? So basically, I'm watching videos [00:22:33] Whitney Lee: Yeah [00:22:34] Viktor Farcic: um, to check the things. I don't care anymore about functional things. They're, they're all correct more or less, but user-facing, yeah, that's, that's how I validate things or at least that's how I'm trying… That's, that's the place I'm trying to get [00:22:52] Whitney Lee: You watch a video of like, of what your content will look like based on what they're… [00:22:56] Viktor Farcic: No, no, [00:22:56] Whitney Lee: like, no. [00:22:57] Viktor Farcic: now. No, no, [00:22:58] Whitney Lee: No. Okay. No [00:22:59] Viktor Farcic: talking about, "Hey, uh, develop this, uh, uh, uh," let's say working on a webpage, "De-develop this that will do that. There will be this button and this form," whatever, right? [00:23:11] Whitney Lee: Uh-huh [00:23:12] Viktor Farcic: I wake up in the morning [00:23:14] Whitney Lee: And it's published J- [00:23:15] Viktor Farcic: for me of, uh, recorded test because those are the tests and videos at the same time. Kind of like, okay, run those tests to validate that that works, and while you're running those tests, when [00:23:27] Coté: Make a video [00:23:28] Viktor Farcic: generate a video [00:23:30] Whitney Lee: Uh-huh [00:23:31] Viktor Farcic: publish it. That's a pri-private channel. You cannot see it, right? [00:23:35] Whitney Lee: Uh-huh. [00:23:37] Viktor Farcic: publish it and I'm going to see whether that looks as it should be [00:23:41] Coté: That's interesting. I, I li- I like that. Yeah, like it sounds like, like there's on, on the, the input side, there's like what to do, which is always valuable. And then on, on the output side, there's, there's almost, uh, like… Well, of course it's verification, but somewhere in there is like, uh, like having taste or like having some opinion about like what it is you want and how you want it to, to go. Not just verifying that like it's red or green, but that this is done in, in the way that I wanted [00:24:15] Viktor Farcic: That's, that's actually the latter is the, the problem I'm having rather than the former. Uh, I think we are getting closer, uh, and closer to, yeah, this-- you told me this and this is what I did, [00:24:30] Whitney Lee: Mm-hmm. [00:24:31] Viktor Farcic: Uh, it's doable. Now, I'm not saying it works 100% now, but it's achievable, right? I'm more talking about… That's why I intentionally say user-facing things. I'm more referring to, okay, uh, it's a square button. It shouldn't be a square button. It should be a round button, right? [00:24:48] Coté: Uh-huh. [00:24:49] Viktor Farcic: green is horrible, kind of. That's not the green I like. Uh, things like that. More about the taste than, than functionally working [00:24:59] Whitney Lee: Do you think when-- Okay, in this future world where everyone's a manager, they're, uh… think the lines in the sand will be similar? Like, like someone's a feature manager and someone's an application level manager, and someone else is a systems level manager. or do you th- [00:25:19] Viktor Farcic: so. [00:25:20] Whitney Lee: No, you think people will manage m- Yeah. [00:25:24] Viktor Farcic: Uh, th-this is me talking. I'm not sure about the world. I don't think, I don't… You know, th-then all those roles become a bottleneck again, again [00:25:36] Whitney Lee: Mm-hmm. [00:25:38] Viktor Farcic: I imagine a world where I'm in charge of a project or a feature. Let's say maybe there are multiple people working on a project, cool. But kind of I'm working on this feature, whatever it is, square [00:25:49] Whitney Lee: Mm-hmm. [00:25:50] Viktor Farcic: right? Uh, and I deliver, I with my minions deliver that thing, right? I imagine more people being evolved horizontally, right? Kind of, okay, so you work on this, I work on that, [00:26:07] Whitney Lee: Mm-hmm. [00:26:09] Viktor Farcic: of th-th-th-that all somehow works rather than, oh, you're in charge of the color of the button, and I'm in charge of the shape of the button, and you're in charge of a tech- text of a button. No. I, I'm not sure that that worked even before AI, to, to be honest, but, uh [00:26:26] Whitney Lee: So [00:26:26] Coté: know, may- maybe, maybe an interesting thought exercise for this is like, uh, outside of the domain of programming, like here in my neighborhood, they're, they're, they're about to, uh, let's say refactor the street. And, uh, what, what that mean… You know, whatever. So they, they got plans, and they went through all the, uh, the council meetings and et cetera, and now we've got some cool PDFs with stuff like that. And I would imagine kind- I mean, it's an engineering sort of thing, but there's probably a similar, similar effect that AI would have, and maybe even used of like, we have a street, it's kind of a d- sort of a definable system. And I think the, the issue they had was the, uh, this is like this very Dutch thing to worry about, which is to say a very not necessarily American thing to worry about, is like the trees on the other side of the street, they're not doing very well, so we should figure out how to replant them and have them do better. And there's also some… Whatever. There's some reasons, some other things. But, you know, now they have a plan. They've got a bunch of PDFs. They've got one of those great uncanny valley pictures of the street that's like very crisp and clear, and it has those pictures of photorealistic people that don't look quite right, and they're also having more fun than anyone has ever had on this street, you know, going about their daily life. But it does, especially with the, the, the horizontal thing, I wonder if… Obviously, there's people that still need to move things around, so until you have robots. But I wonder if the, the, the council doing this could have just done all of that spec work on their own and then handed it over to someone, or if you actually needed to hire whatever you call it, an engineering firm that would like… Like they, they kind of have to know when you dig on streets. I mean, the assumption would be that engineering firm has context that AIs don't have, and so they're pulling on that context to, to make decisions that the, the, the robot couldn't [00:28:23] Viktor Farcic: Yeah. But I, I feel that that would be more equivalent to buying or renting. So, uh, let me bring back to software. Let's say, um, let's say it's a webpage, right? And I'm really terrible with design. I don't want to have a person designing it for me, uh, but if person can-- I might hire somebody to, to generate a design team for [00:28:50] Coté: Right, right, [00:28:50] Viktor Farcic: right. And then I use it and kind of, okay, this is designed for you. They know what they're doing within you want kind of go. Uh, so I'm, I'ma, I'ma get that person one time, as a recurring, um, uh, [00:29:09] Coté: Interaction? [00:29:10] Viktor Farcic: interaction. Exactly. [00:29:12] Coté: May- maybe the, maybe there's, there's a, there's a too cutesy way of putting it is like human's job is to have opinions [00:29:18] Whitney Lee: Mm-hmm. [00:29:20] Viktor Farcic: Yeah, and [00:29:21] Whitney Lee: to taste [00:29:22] Viktor Farcic: of teach, teach, teach my people those opinions. [00:29:26] Whitney Lee: Mm-hmm. [00:29:26] Viktor Farcic: that's the thing, right? Teach them. Cool. My p- my people are dummy in that regard. Cool. Bring me your people or teach my people or whatever needs to happen, I don't know, so [00:29:38] Whitney Lee: So [00:29:40] Viktor Farcic: I can use them [00:29:41] Whitney Lee: You say our future jobs are to be managers and specifically to be able to tell a bunch of dummies what to do. what, what advice do you have for telling dummies what to do? [00:29:56] Viktor Farcic: Um, [00:29:57] Whitney Lee: Like, like don't ask questions is good advice, and I'll be using that, telling my dummies that [00:30:03] Viktor Farcic: I mean, I, I don't have a singular advice. Simply, uh, my instructions are growing with time. [00:30:09] Whitney Lee: Mm-hmm. [00:30:10] Viktor Farcic: I, I probably spend, let's say, one third of my time on, uh, brainstorming and deciding what I want to do. Uh, and one third of the time while it's doing, I'm often there, but not to validate its work, more to provide-- to improve instructions, Kinda, "Oh, I s- I saw you doing this three times over. Um, maybe I should extend the instructions," type of situation [00:30:43] Whitney Lee: when you're extending instructions, are you doing that at a specification level or within a sub-agent or in your rules files? [00:30:51] Viktor Farcic: Uh, the, I'm doing that at, uh, skills for the specialized agent that I have, right? So I have agents for reviews, agent for, don't know, coding, for testing, and so on and so forth, and then depending on, uh, which one is messing it up, um, I extend its instructions [00:31:13] Whitney Lee: I understand that you have a, a challenger agent whose whole job is to the other, challenge the other agents [00:31:22] Viktor Farcic: Actually, they're all challenging each other. So [00:31:24] Whitney Lee: Yeah [00:31:26] Viktor Farcic: uh, when I, when I bring a swarm of agents to work on something, let's say there is a coder, there is a tester, reviewer, and then the coder is not allowed to, to write tests, tester [00:31:37] Whitney Lee: Uh-huh [00:31:38] Viktor Farcic: but he's not allowed to write code, so tester writes tests and says, "I'm done. You figure out how to make those tests pass." [00:31:47] Whitney Lee: Uh-huh [00:31:47] Viktor Farcic: Then coder would sometimes say, "I cannot make those tests pass because those tests are stupid." Uh, then it goes back to tester, right? The reviewer comes and says, the heck are you br- doing, man?" Kind of like, "Stop." Uh, it-- I, I would say that the way I'm working right now takes order of magnitude more time to finish something than I was doing it before, [00:32:14] Coté: Mm-hmm. [00:32:15] Viktor Farcic: they go into endless fights, right? Um, it, it takes time until… I mean, it's like people, right? Kind of if you enable people to really speak their mind, not only follow the leader like lemmings, um, then you end up with a very long process because everybody has a different opinion, and eventually over time you will probably all agree on something, [00:32:41] Whitney Lee: So, [00:32:41] Viktor Farcic: time [00:32:43] Whitney Lee: so then do, are you optimistic that you'll be able to streamline this process, or are the results that you're getting from this process worth the extra time watching the dummies argue? [00:32:55] Viktor Farcic: already doing that. [00:32:57] Whitney Lee: Which? [00:32:58] Viktor Farcic: is always improvement, but at any given moment I have, I don't know, anything between 20 and 50 agents doing something [00:33:05] Whitney Lee: Right. So, so the quality of what you're getting from using this multi-agent system is worth the extra time of having them quarrel with each other [00:33:15] Viktor Farcic: Uh, that's the thing [00:33:16] Whitney Lee: Yeah [00:33:17] Viktor Farcic: uh, time, how long it takes for agents to do something matters much more when I'm sitting and watching as, as if that's entertainment, uh, than when they're doing, right? So, uh, if a single agent would do it in an hour and the s- my swarm of agents takes five hours, uh, doesn't matter that it's five hours if I'm not really watching it, [00:33:45] Whitney Lee: Yeah. The single agent did it in an hour, but with you manually approving and changing and doing stuff. The swarm does it in five hours. Okay. [00:33:57] Viktor Farcic: Yes [00:33:57] Whitney Lee: The swarm does it in five hours, but you can walk away and, uh, order, order your takeout and watch TV with your family. Yeah [00:34:05] Viktor Farcic: That's, that's the whole point of it, right? [00:34:10] Coté: I, you know, I, I, I, I did a, uh, you know, I-- to call this an analysis is more of a fanciful joke, but I, I had, uh, I ha- uh, for, for my playing D&D with AI, I had to look over all of my stuff since 2023 and calculate how much time I spent actually playing versus like harness crafting. And it's kind of a, uh, it's kind of a, a delightfully depressing chart because way back in 2023, of course, the only harness was copy-paste. There was nothing else that, that you could do. But then slowly but surely, the-- I'm making this picture with my finger from the top, more and more of the harness comes in and eats away at the actual playing, right? As you like build things out and have MCP servers and skills and like all this stuff to arrange stuff. And then in, um, in a, in a good/bad way, as you're like, "You know what I would like is blah," whatever. And then you spend time talking with it and speccing it out and all this stuff, and you find that like, uh, I don't know. I think it's like s-60% of me, 70% of me playing around building stuff instead of actually playing the game. So, you know, that is, um… I don't know what to do about that. I sort of make up an excuse in my head that I have fun building tools, so maybe that's fine. But it, it also, it, it also kind of shows you, I think a lot of that is just like that kind of, uh, error going back and forth, not, not knowing what's, uh, what's wanted. So there is some trap of optimizing into never getting around to what you meant to do in the first place [00:35:44] Viktor Farcic: That depends. Are you having fun in doing it? [00:35:47] Coté: Right, right. E- exactly. It, it's, it's a, it's a type of fun usually, but yes, it is, it's a, it's a, it's a weird reversal of, of what's going on [00:35:59] Viktor Farcic: Th- there is-- And this is personal. I know that pe- other people don't re- uh, think like that. Uh, but in my case, one of the greatest satisfactions I can have is to say, "You're an idiot. This is stupid." And that did not work well for me. Did not work at all, kind of. That's, that's why I, I had very short excursions into management in my career, right? This is the dream come true. This is the first time that, uh, those comments result in, "You're right." It never happened before. least not without a lot of arguing. Kind of, "Oh, you're a dummy. This is stupid." "Oh, you're right, Viktor." I [00:36:47] Whitney Lee: I will say I've learned to become much more direct, I think, as a human in general because I can be so direct with the agents. And then, uh, I still do know that when I'm dealing with a human to put some compliment at the end of a direct statement and maybe a greeting at the beginning. Um, but it's sandwiched with something maybe more direct than I would've had a year ago. I wonder, I wonder like if as a species we're all learning to be more direct, but we're all also interacting with agents who tell us we're right all the time, and those two things feel like they're in conflict. Like like the human to agent relationship is being understood and nurtured, but the human to human relationship with these, uh, patterns isn't g- [00:37:35] Viktor Farcic: I-- That's because they learn-- they're taught on, on, on our, on our, on, our content, because that's how we behave as well. In most [00:37:47] Whitney Lee: Mm-hmm. [00:37:47] Viktor Farcic: types of people. There are people who are saying, "You're right," typically, you know, juniors to the, to seniors or bosses, and there are people who are being told that they are right [00:38:00] Whitney Lee: Mm-hmm. You're one or the other, not both? [00:38:04] Viktor Farcic: you're one or the other, right? Kind of-- Because you, you will find very often in organizations that, uh, people might be arguing until the big, big one comes, you know, the one with gazillion years of experience in that thing or a boss or whatever, and then everybody eventually say, "Oh, yes, yes, you're right. I, I, I-- In my head, I'm thinking this is so stupid, but you're so fucking right." [00:38:33] Coté: Well, maybe, maybe an optimization thing. I-- It sounds like maybe this wouldn't work for Viktor, but, but maybe for other people is like, to try to tell the, the, the AI every now and then, like, "Tell me when I've got a dumb idea." Or dumb is a judgmental way, but it's like, "Tell me when this is the wrong path to go down," right? And, and there's something better. And I haven't really tuned it that much to do that, but there have been times when it's like, "You know, let me tell you why you shouldn't do this. That's, that's gonna be ridiculous." And I'll, I'll, I'll agree with it. Which, given my comment about spending a lot of time making tools, probably I should give it some instruction to be like, "The next time I wanna look into the agent-to-agent spec so that I can have a bunch of NPCs that play with each other while I'm not playing with them, maybe you should say, 'Why don't you just go play some games instead of, of building this out?'" [00:39:24] Viktor Farcic: S- I, I w- I was going in that direction before. Now I'm going in slightly different direction, and that direction is partly what I said before k- Okay, you assume that you, I'm right, and you argue with each other to make, uh, make it, make it good on, on what I ask for, right? So [00:39:43] Coté: It's, it's almost like the, uh, it, it's like the, uh, the counselors of, of a monarch where their job is to make, is to make the monarch [00:39:52] Viktor Farcic: Exactly. [00:39:53] Coté: do, do the right thing and think it d- it came from, it was derived from what they wanted [00:39:58] Viktor Farcic: No, I, I still want to, you know, when I'm planning something, before I give mistru- final instructions, let's say, I, I do want-- I do analyze it from different angles. I want to make it right. uh, there is a lot of val-- Sometimes it is easier… Ignore the cost of tokens for a second, right? Kind of they're working in the background, they're doing stuff, and I'm going to see the end result, and I'm going to discard it and say, "Fuck it, not doing this," or, "We are not [00:40:31] Whitney Lee: Mm. [00:40:32] Viktor Farcic: that way," right? It's very often easier for me to prove myself wrong by seeing the end result [00:40:39] Coté: Hmm [00:40:40] Whitney Lee: Mm-hmm. [00:40:41] Viktor Farcic: by, uh, spending too much time trying to find the right thing to request in the first place, knowing that it's probably going to be wrong anyway [00:40:55] Coté: Right, right, right [00:40:56] Whitney Lee: and then you can maybe figure out how it's wrong, and in doing so, figure out what good is. [00:41:04] Viktor Farcic: Yeah [00:41:04] Whitney Lee: Yeah. Learning from the failure is [00:41:07] Coté: Yeah, it, it's, it's th- like, like that's a, that's a new power you have, as we mentioned several times, is now you can see 10 possible ways of doing something and, you know, just pick one or two. You can… It's eas- I, I gue- I guess that's another thing that, that I do going way back to the beginning is, yeah, there, there's many different attempts at stuff that I do, and because I don't have to spend the time to do it, I don't waste any energy. So I might just see like, "Show me five different ways of doing this," and I'll pick, uh, pick two of them. Like, like back to our, our content stuff, uh, yeah, I use the FFmpeg stuff now to have it make like five or eight, 10 shorts to select out of a video. And maybe this is like why data centers are terrible, but like I often only look at three of them. I don't even look at all of them. But, you know, you just kind of like look through them and pick the ones you want. Whereas previously, I wouldn't make any of those, let alone 10 that I would, uh, pick from. So there, there's a certain amount of, uh, th- le- letting the dummies sort out and, and try things out and then just giving you the, the, the top three of them [00:42:09] Whitney Lee: Do you think there's gonna be a point where the cost for all of this is prohibitive? Or do you think our manage- our future management roles may never come to pass just because of cost? [00:42:22] Viktor Farcic: I mean, the c- the cost will always be a thing in terms that, cost is dictated by what you earn and by your competition. that's true before and that's true with AI, is that, you and me are going to produce something very similar. You're going to produce it for less, uh, cost than I, and then you will be able to sell it cheaper and things like that, right? So [00:42:50] Whitney Lee: Mm-hmm. [00:42:51] Viktor Farcic: is always a thing. Um, but right now we are comparing cost, with human labor, [00:42:59] Whitney Lee: Yeah [00:43:00] Viktor Farcic: my argument is, is cheap. Now, of course, if I, if I spend $10,000 on tokens to do the same thing that you do, but you do- did it with 5,000, then we, we are both, uh, benefiting because in both cases cheaper than if people did it, [00:43:21] Whitney Lee: Mm-hmm. [00:43:22] Viktor Farcic: But you did it cheaper than me, so you're more competitive [00:43:26] Whitney Lee: But also it's my understanding that the price of AI is being subsidized by the industry right now, by investors, and that's, you know, eventually it's… Yeah [00:43:36] Viktor Farcic: So look at-- L- let's, let's… I'm going to be conservative here and say, let's say that, uh, AI doubles my productivity. I think it's much more than double, but l-let, let's be cons-- very conservative, right? Doubles [00:43:50] Whitney Lee: Mm-hmm. [00:43:51] Viktor Farcic: Now, what do I cost a year? Uh, in total with everything, including food and what's not. Uh, 200K? [00:44:01] Whitney Lee: It, [00:44:01] Viktor Farcic: L-look, [00:44:02] Whitney Lee: y- [00:44:02] Viktor Farcic: let's, let's still be [00:44:03] Whitney Lee: yours [00:44:04] Viktor Farcic: Let's say 100K [00:44:06] Whitney Lee: Is this like to feed you? do you mean what do you cost a year? [00:44:10] Viktor Farcic: how much do I cost? [00:44:11] Whitney Lee: And housing and food or like salary? [00:44:15] Viktor Farcic: l-let's ignore how, how… Let's say salary, right? Kind of like [00:44:18] Whitney Lee: Okay. [00:44:19] Viktor Farcic: cost my company [00:44:20] Whitney Lee: Okay. [00:44:21] Viktor Farcic: at, right? Uh, and let's be extremely conservative and let's say that all the expenses of the company are hun-hundred and twenty K, [00:44:28] Whitney Lee: Okay. Not counting your token usage [00:44:32] Viktor Farcic: Yeah. No, no, just me. Pre, [00:44:34] Whitney Lee: Yes, yeah [00:44:36] Viktor Farcic: uh, AI me, [00:44:37] Whitney Lee: Okay. Got it. Mm-hmm. [00:44:38] Viktor Farcic: K. [00:44:39] Whitney Lee: Mm-hmm. [00:44:41] Viktor Farcic: That's a lot [00:44:42] Whitney Lee: Mm. [00:44:44] Viktor Farcic: A lot of tokens by, uh, at any price you want. Subsidized, not subsidized, what so not, a lot of tokens. [00:44:53] Whitney Lee: Do you think people [00:44:54] Viktor Farcic: very conservative estimation, just to be clear [00:44:58] Whitney Lee: Do you think people will be paid less to be managers that AI than, than they were paid pre AI to be engineers? Do you think that [00:45:07] Viktor Farcic: I [00:45:08] Whitney Lee: knowledge is less specialized? Like I've done it. Fair. [00:45:17] Viktor Farcic: the, I, I, I feel that it's going to be a bloodbath. Let's, let's [00:45:21] Whitney Lee: Mm-hmm. [00:45:22] Viktor Farcic: that. There, there [00:45:23] Whitney Lee: Yeah [00:45:24] Viktor Farcic: political troubles. There will be civil wars even, uh, because of AI. I'm, I'm sure of that. Um, at the end of the day, uh, the who can do things that other people can't will be paid more. That [00:45:43] Whitney Lee: W- yeah. [00:45:44] Viktor Farcic: That [00:45:44] Whitney Lee: That was [00:45:45] Viktor Farcic: the rule, right? And that means that those people with, you know, better harnesses, better instructions, knowing better how to tame those uh, will be paid more [00:46:01] Whitney Lee: Tell us more about this civil war [00:46:05] Viktor Farcic: I mean, look, let's say, let's say in Barcelona, right? Uh, there were for, for a long t- period of time, there were protests and streets were blocked. Uh, you could not drive your car because taxi drivers were, um, against Uber. [00:46:26] Whitney Lee: Yeah [00:46:26] Viktor Farcic: that was a real problem for the city, [00:46:29] Whitney Lee: Mm-hmm. [00:46:30] Viktor Farcic: Now, happening to a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of the people, right? Kind of they, they felt threatened, they did not know what to do about it, and so on and so forth, and it was a huge political problem, and so on and so forth. when that happens to many industries at once, it will be trouble, right? It will be trouble. Because, we always have the same problem, is that things change for better or worse, and a significant percentage of the population cannot adapt to those changes. That's been happening before. I don't see why it wouldn't happen now. [00:47:12] Coté: Well, now, now that we laid the groundwork of how you created these videos, I, I, I, I, I wanted to ask, since you had one recently on Docker, and it's one of, uh, as, as, as you know, it's one of the favorite games of people who, who've been, uh, around for a little bit to be like, "What the fuck happened there? How did they screw that up?" [00:47:32] Viktor Farcic: Oh, that I, I'm sure that that will be taught in, in universities, you know, around, um, business finance. Uh, they screwed it up, uh, because-- I mean, there, there are many reasons why they screwed it up. One is that they flew too high and they thought that they could go against everybody instead of working with others, kind of, "Oh. Oh yeah, Google, Google, Google wants to, wants us to work together. Well, fuck Google, uh, [00:48:00] Whitney Lee: Hmm [00:48:01] Viktor Farcic: Amazon and, uh, Hat. No, no, no," kind of like, "We're going to take them on all at once in a ring and win." It was very silly. Um, another problem is open source itself, and that's that, um, with open source you get adoption, uh, that are very often necessary first step, then nobody wants to buy stuff. Like kind of, uh, uh, old Docker, the one at the peak of its kind of… What did they sell? They could not figure out what to sell Right? Uh, they c- finally figured it out, we can sell Swarm, that's what companies need. Except that, uh, you know those guys that we said fuck off? they all united and created something called Kubernetes, and now nobody wants Swarm. and, uh, another problem the way I see it is that Solomon, he's a great guy. I, I love him. He's amazing. there is often a person who can get you from nothing to something is often not the person who can get you from that something to, [00:49:20] Whitney Lee: Profitable. Mm-hmm [00:49:22] Coté: This is the, [00:49:23] Viktor Farcic: have [00:49:23] Coté: the, that's the, the zero to one framing or whatever, right? And then, and then your, uh, your, your one plus different set of people than, than your, your founder [00:49:33] Viktor Farcic: Correct [00:49:34] Whitney Lee: What's an example of a company that went from zero to profitable on top of open source? [00:49:43] Viktor Farcic: Red Hat? [00:49:45] Whitney Lee: Red Hat, yeah. Yeah [00:49:47] Viktor Farcic: Red Hat would be one example. I mean, HashiCorp in a way, um, until they didn't. Um, there are examples, but you need to be at the right moment at the right time. Uh, you know, there, there was no real competition when, when Red Hat came along, at least not for that. Uh, I'm very skeptical about open source for majority of companies ever turning profit [00:50:17] Coté: Well, the, you, the, in your, your other video, I mean, you talk about Chef, Puppet, Pulumi, Pu- whatever you say it. Uh, does CF Engine show up there? I don't think they really tried to make a lot of money. And then Ansible, like those were all open source [00:50:30] Whitney Lee: what's the story of the other video? What's the [00:50:34] Viktor Farcic: It's a, in a way, history of infrastructures called configuration management. Or we, we changed the name, uh, for the same thing over time, but, uh, of all those tools, Chef, Chef, Puppet, Ansible, Terraform, Crossplane, so on and so forth [00:50:51] Whitney Lee: Is Crossplane [00:50:52] Viktor Farcic: kind of… [00:50:53] Whitney Lee: the hero of the story since you work at Upbound? [00:50:56] Viktor Farcic: story, hero is a, is a young girl [00:51:01] Whitney Lee: Uh-huh. [00:51:02] Viktor Farcic: the end of the story hardly can walk because 40 something years passed. Uh, yeah, there she is. The, the lesson learned in that story is that nothing really changed for her, kind of she's still fucked. No matter, [00:51:18] Whitney Lee: So [00:51:18] Viktor Farcic: matter what [00:51:18] Whitney Lee: this is the, the operations person is just like, "Whatever." [00:51:23] Viktor Farcic: yeah [00:51:26] Whitney Lee: Good night, kids [00:51:28] Coté: I, well, how, how about, uh, you know, the, like, I guess the, the, the, the Puppet and the Chef and the Ansible, Ansible, like, uh, trio there? Like, did they… Do you think they figured out an open source business or, or not? Like, what, what was their story? [00:51:46] Viktor Farcic: I mean, Chef Puppet didn't. Uh, Ansible-- First of all, Ansible is not going away. It's going to stay forever like mainframe, you know, like Jenkins, like that. Um, Ansible, I think, was successful because you can, you can go public or you can be bought by somebody for a lot of money. I, I don't remember the exact figures, but Ansible was a good sell to, to Red Hat at the time, right? [00:52:19] Coté: Yeah, yeah. They, they, they sold out, uh, they, they sold earlier than, uh, waiting for like Progress and I even forget who bought Puppet, but like, you know, small pseudo PE software companies bought Pu- Puppet and Chef [00:52:33] Viktor Farcic: Yeah. Yeah, I mean Hashi-- Uh, who bought-- No, Ansible. Yeah, Ansible bought by Red Hat [00:52:39] Coté: That's right. And then, and then also Hashi by IBM and it's interesting [00:52:44] Viktor Farcic: yeah. [00:52:47] Whitney Lee: Bringing it back to… [00:52:48] Viktor Farcic: i-i-i think that we are all in CNCF ecosystem one way or another, right? Kind of if we exclude the big guys, who will ever turn profit from that for p- foundation? Which company do you… Would you… If you would have money now to invest in any of those companies, excluding big guys, say big guy, if I put money there, they're going to turn profit, it will be good for me. Who would that be? [00:53:11] Whitney Lee: Solo maybe? If I had to put money somewhere. Solo.io [00:53:17] Viktor Farcic: Maybe Solo, yeah. They will be bought by somebody for a good amount of money, maybe. Okay, [00:53:23] Coté: They certainly have large booths [00:53:24] Viktor Farcic: not go IPO [00:53:28] Coté: Yeah, you almost want to, uh, in that scenario, it seems like, uh, the conservative thing is you, you wanna know which founder is getting tired and wants to, like, sell as soon as possible. 'Cause that's another, another angle on the Docker thing is, like, when Microsoft offered you a billion dollars, you should have just taken it. That, that, that, that was it. That was the one, that was the moment where success was defined or not. And similarly, I would imagine with Chef and Puppet, there were probably also moments where someone offered them a lot of money, and that was the, the, the, the, the unknowable at the time, but the peak exit that they could have had. And maybe Ansible was the opposite of that. Maybe Ansible, they were like, "This looks great. Let's do it." And [00:54:13] Viktor Farcic: Exactly [00:54:14] Coté: and then, and then their profile is a bit more successful. And then you have in another area, I don't… I, I stopped following stuff closely at this point, but HashiCorp is somewhere in the middle 'cause they were public, so you could sort of see what was going on. And then IBM buys them, but did IBM buy them because of synergies, or did IBM buy them because the HashiCorp thing was like, "Mm, I don't know if this is working out," and they, they needed to have a, have an exit? [00:54:43] Viktor Farcic: I mean, from what I know, when, when HashiCorp went public, they were good. It's just that [00:54:49] Coté: Yeah, yeah [00:54:50] Viktor Farcic: down, down from there. So kind of if you sold your shares the moment you could, were probably fine or more than fine, right? Now, if you thought this is going up, then you made a mistake [00:55:07] Coté: Yeah. Yeah. So may- maybe the, the, one of, one of the issues with open source businesses when you look at it from an exit perspective is it's very important to time your exit correctly, and that's how all success is, is judged by it. And then, and then also, I don't know if it's to be fair, 'cause there's nothing to be fair about there, but it… I, I've never quite figured out, we always say as you did, Red Hat, successful open source company, and yet they were bought by IBM, and I haven't quite figured out what that means by the analysis, for the analysis, right? Like, they weren't… Of, of course there's that, right? But it does, it does bring into question the, well, can you be an independent, like standalone open source company, or is that the new, like once you reach that level of Red Hat, the answer is no? Like, you still have to be a primarily closed company to be long-term successful, like, like their acquirer was [00:56:00] Viktor Farcic: It's simply, it's brutal. It's not that nobody's successful, right? But it's, it's brutal over there, right? Few databases were successful, had successful IPOs. Um, but every-- I, I f- I feel that the problem is really that once I offer you money to buy you, that solidi-solidifies your idea that you will go IPO, and if you go IPO, you will get much more than what I'm giving you right now, [00:56:28] Coté: Mm-hmm. Yeah. [00:56:30] Viktor Farcic: oh, if you're giving me a billion, that means that I can go IPO for a trillion, [00:56:36] Whitney Lee: Mm-hmm. [00:56:39] Viktor Farcic: and, uh, I guess that, uh, good founders-- the problem is that good founders must be risk-takers, otherwise they wouldn't be starting that thing in the first place. And if you're risk-taker, then you say, "Ah, I'm gonna take more risk." [00:56:57] Coté: Maybe, maybe you need a, a, a risk taker who also has a big red X on their calendar of when they wanna, like, go fishing. And, and kind of like… Because, because if you, if you have a risk taker, I mean, this is how you make money on the, the house side of gambling, right? Is like, given a long enough time period, you'll get a lot of money from a risk taker. You just, you just have to elongate the time period. So if you shorten it, maybe, uh, may- maybe there's a little bit less crazy founderism there [00:57:26] Viktor Farcic: Um, uh, you just said something that I'm not sure what you meant when you said elongate. Did you mean do [00:57:33] Coté: A long, a longer [00:57:35] Viktor Farcic: kind of like extend? [00:57:37] Coté: You extend, yes. You, you make, you make it much bigger, longer [00:57:41] Viktor Farcic: do the other elongate thing as well [00:57:45] Coté: Y- yes. [00:57:53] Whitney Lee: Uh, Viktor, when, when will your next bedtime story video come out? What's it gonna be about? [00:57:59] Coté: Oh, I know what we should be asking. How many are never gonna come out because you decided they weren't good enough? [00:58:06] Whitney Lee: Where are they? [00:58:08] Viktor Farcic: Oh, kind of, the, the, those stories are usually about stuff that somehow still resonates but turned out to be a failure. Um, and there is an endless pool of those. [00:58:22] Whitney Lee: Yeah. [00:58:23] Viktor Farcic: More [00:58:23] Whitney Lee: what's it… [00:58:25] Viktor Farcic: More coming. They will be coming faster than, than I can make them. [00:58:31] Coté: You need a, you c- you could have a, a members only thing. I, I lo- I love it when there's a Patreon or a members only thing, which is like all the stuff that wasn't good enough to publish, you can now pay to watch. [00:58:42] Viktor Farcic: Oh, uh, I, I ca- I ca- I, I have probably unique members program with very few members, uh, to say in advance. And I, I published a video that they can watch before they become members, and basically it says, uh, "Thank you for giving me money, but I can give you nothing in return." are two tiers of those. [00:59:12] Whitney Lee: Means if they're supporting you, not, they not only, like, are happy to look at your face while you talk about tech stuff, but they will give you money for nothing in return. They're dedicated [00:59:23] Viktor Farcic: There you go [00:59:25] Coté: Well, well, uh, it'll, it'll be fun to see some more, uh, some more, some more of these bedtime stories. They're, they're, they're delightful. [00:59:32] Viktor Farcic: Yeah. The [00:59:33] Coté: of thing… [00:59:33] Viktor Farcic: Stack Overflow [00:59:35] Coté: Oh, there you go. That, that'll be fun [00:59:38] Whitney Lee: I want a rocking chair, Viktor, and like a blanket in your lap [00:59:42] Coté: Oh, like, like Grandma Viktor [00:59:43] Whitney Lee: Yeah. [00:59:46] Viktor Farcic: No, I'm, I'm actually looking forward to the, uh, electric chair kind of. I cannot get-- I cannot-- Me getting old enough to be socially acceptable to be in an electric [00:59:58] Whitney Lee: To, and like a scooter? Yeah. [01:00:01] Viktor Farcic: I cannot wait for that day. I will be-- I will have a flag behind me. I will beep at everybody, and I will be as grumpier than I usually am [01:00:12] Whitney Lee: It's not possible. [01:00:15] Coté: Well, you could, you could, you could always, uh, you could always get a fake cast that you carry around with you and you put it on when you wanna get on the scooter, and then everyone will be like, "Oh, look, they've got a bum leg. That's why they're on a scooter." [01:00:28] Viktor Farcic: Yeah, I st- I still don't look old enough for that. It's coming, it's coming. [01:00:32] Coté: Well, maybe one day [01:00:33] Viktor Farcic: about the age. The older you get, the more things that you want to do become socially acceptable. I love it [01:00:41] Coté: Well, speaking of socially acceptable things, I think, I think we've gone the socially acceptable length of any great podcast, about an hour. And, uh, yeah, so thanks for being on once again. What, what's, uh, g- give us, give us a, a, a homepage on the World Wide Web people can go to to see these delightful stories [01:01:00] Viktor Farcic: Uh, that, it's youtube.com/@devopstoolkit, I think. [01:01:07] Coté: That looks right from my notes. Let me see. Yes. That, that's, uh, that's, that's in there for sure. Well, uh, you know, like I said, we'll look forward to seeing you next time. So we'll put it, we'll put in links you can click on, or as everyone has found out, if they listen to the beginning, the robot will put in links for you, uh, that, that you can click on, uh, for, for this, this [01:01:27] Viktor Farcic: Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't click the link [01:01:30] Coté: Yeah, that, that's true. And then, and then just you could, you could do what I may or may not do for other things. You could just ask Claude to listen to this and tell you what the summary of it was, and, uh, that would be fine too. If so, Claude, say hello to the human [01:01:47] Viktor Farcic: don't, don't ask Claude to first tell you whether this is worth listening because that's how we lose people. [01:01:53] Coté: Yeah, yeah. So re- maybe we should tell Claude that it's totally worth listening to, that your human will love it. [01:01:58] Whitney Lee: A very good use of time [01:02:00] Coté: Excellent use of time. Uh, well, this has been, uh, Software Defined Interviews, episode 128. So you can go to softwaredefinedinterviews.com/128 to find all of that. Whether you listen to it, your robot listen to it, or you listen to your robot's summary of listening to it, you've now listened to it. Bye-bye.