Coffee, Renderless Components, and Confidence

November 10, 2021

We talk about our coffee habits, new computers, renderless components, databases, and confidence.
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Transcript

Aaron
00:00:00 – 00:00:06
Okay. We're recording, and this may or may not ever make it live, but we're definitely gonna sync up. So
Aaron
00:00:07 – 00:00:07
I like that.
Aaron
00:00:07 – 00:00:09
What's going on this week?
Aaron
00:00:10 – 00:00:14
So I am cutting back from 3 cups of coffee a day to 2. That's my big news.
Aaron
00:00:14 – 00:00:15
Oh, wow. Why?
Aaron
00:00:16 – 00:00:17
I don't know.
Aaron
00:00:17 – 00:00:18
Don't like it.
Aaron
00:00:18 – 00:00:35
It used to be 2 cups of coffee a day, and then occasionally a third cup of coffee. And then the occasionally a third cup of coffee became every day a third cup of coffee. So, you lose that additional jolt from the 3rd cup. So, I have to rebaseline it too, so then I can reintroduce my 3rd cup of coffee some days.
Aaron
00:00:36 – 00:00:37
That seems reasonable.
Sean
00:00:38 – 00:00:39
When you need that jolt.
Aaron
00:00:39 – 00:00:44
Yeah, exactly. That's that's my my big plan. And I got
Aaron
00:00:44 – 00:00:46
my new go ahead.
Sean
00:00:46 – 00:01:10
I've been doing that with that 3rd cup of coffee. I was, like, on your your old schedule. I'm kinda on that now where I'm, like, I kinda want that I wanna like, the 2 cups of coffee, it just, like, feels like an I feel like normal. Like, I I required to drink those 2 cups of coffee. So if I wanna actually feel like, yay, exciting coffee feeling, yeah, it requires that 3rd cup.
Aaron
00:01:10 – 00:01:16
Something that I do is, all of the coffee that I drink at home is half calf. So I can
Aaron
00:01:16 – 00:01:17
drink That's interesting.
Aaron
00:01:17 – 00:01:18
Pretty much as
Aaron
00:01:18 – 00:01:19
As much as you will much
Aaron
00:01:19 – 00:01:35
as I want, which is that's like, that's what I wanna do. I want to be drinking coffee, but I don't wanna, you know, overdo it and cross the boundary. So everything that we have here is half calf, and we just get, decaf and regular and then grind them together.
Aaron
00:01:36 – 00:01:40
I like it because I actually really like the taste of coffee. So it makes me
Aaron
00:01:40 – 00:01:41
so It's fun to drink coffee.
Aaron
00:01:41 – 00:01:48
It's just fun. I've tried to slow down by drinking tea after my first cup, before my second cup, and that's some that's some BS.
Aaron
00:01:48 – 00:01:56
I'm bored just thinking about it. Yeah. I hate it. That's exciting.
Aaron
00:01:56 – 00:01:57
That's exciting. And I got my new MacBook.
Aaron
00:01:58 – 00:01:59
Oh, that's great. What
Sean
00:01:59 – 00:02:01
did you get with? Presumably.
Aaron
00:02:01 – 00:02:05
It is. It's the new one that's really just the old one from 10 years ago.
Aaron
00:02:05 – 00:02:05
I know.
Aaron
00:02:05 – 00:02:11
Real solid. It's got all the ports. It's lovely. So hopefully that
Aaron
00:02:11 – 00:02:12
will work. 16 or 16?
Aaron
00:02:14 – 00:02:20
16. But I haven't set it up yet because I need some dedicated time to do that.
Aaron
00:02:21 – 00:02:46
Yeah. So I think I may be in the minority. I just got a new one as well, and I got the 14 inch. And I may be in the minority of developer users, but I just use the migration assistant to basically one to one copy it. And I just like, I let it run overnight and I started my new computer in the morning and it worked And I've been working on it ever since.
Aaron
00:02:46 – 00:03:12
So I could theoretically do that because we keep I keep full backups of everything to transmit computers. But I know I've got like 25 versions of Ruby installed that I've never cleaned up. I have like 4 versions of Postgres. Like, I have all this stuff from legacy years that I've just never cleaned up. So, conceptually, I like the idea of getting a perfect clean install just the things I'm using right now.
Aaron
00:03:13 – 00:03:16
Yeah. That's my Sounds painful. But I agree.
Aaron
00:03:16 – 00:03:32
It is painful. Like, just the other day, I wanted to use it for the Internet, and it it's all the little stuff. Like, it doesn't have Divi. So, I you know, just all those little things that you're so used to as part of your workflow that you're like, oh, yeah. And then I need this and I need this, but I'm gonna try it this weekend, see how it goes.
Aaron
00:03:33 – 00:03:42
Okay. Something that I've recently discovered is an app called DB engine. It's by the people that do table plus.
Aaron
00:03:42 – 00:03:44
Let's just say it. Okay. Tell me about it.
Aaron
00:03:45 – 00:04:13
It, it's a Mac only app. It's db, the letterngin.com, d b n gin. And it's, it handles, MySQL, Postgres, and Redis, and it will let you start multiple different versions on multiple different ports. And it like downloads in the background or it handles all of that. And so you don't have to use, you don't have to use Homebrew.
Aaron
00:04:13 – 00:04:23
And it does support, I think, for both maybe for all 3, it supports the m one chip without Rosetta or whatever the slow thing is.
Aaron
00:04:24 – 00:04:25
It's interesting.
Aaron
00:04:25 – 00:04:34
So this is now what I use instead of homebrew because homebrew and m y I I don't know. People complain about homebrew. So I downloaded DB engine, and it works amazingly.
Sean
00:04:34 – 00:04:39
I've been using Docker for my databases. Like, I just
Aaron
00:04:39 – 00:04:46
Yeah. That's totally viable too. I Just it? Okay. Never used I've never used Docker, and I I hopefully won't have to.
Sean
00:04:46 – 00:04:54
But Yeah. I don't know anything about Docker other than to, like, copy paste the command that I use every time I need a new database with a different version.
Aaron
00:04:54 – 00:05:00
Oh. Speaking of databases, I got some sample I got some some real data. Nice.
Sean
00:05:00 – 00:05:01
Great.
Aaron
00:05:01 – 00:05:04
So that's super exciting. That's exciting. How much? Yep.
Aaron
00:05:05 – 00:05:19
Just the events table, just like a a sampling of the events table, but it helps me as we were talking about, I think, last week, some of the challenges are, like, how are these models even gonna be related? No one really knows. So now I have real data, so I can figure it out. So that's cool.
Aaron
00:05:19 – 00:05:20
That's exciting.
Aaron
00:05:21 – 00:05:21
Yeah.
Sean
00:05:23 – 00:05:28
But it's not like a it's not like millions or or billions of rows yet. No?
Aaron
00:05:28 – 00:05:34
No. I mean, I didn't look, but I don't think it's that big. No. It would have killed my computer if it was.
Sean
00:05:34 – 00:05:35
So you're running it locally.
Aaron
00:05:35 – 00:05:37
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Aaron
00:05:37 – 00:05:38
It's just a it's just a snippet.
Sean
00:05:39 – 00:05:43
I thought maybe they were, like, actually populating their their database.
Aaron
00:05:44 – 00:05:47
We are talking about there is, like, a thread of discussion about how we're
Sean
00:05:47 – 00:05:48
gonna start.
Aaron
00:05:48 – 00:05:57
Yeah. We're gonna start, load testing the sequel stuff. So we'll see how that goes. That's the big exciting exciting thing I'm looking forward to.
Sean
00:05:58 – 00:06:00
That is big and exciting. Fingers crossed on that.
Aaron
00:06:01 – 00:06:10
Yeah. Seriously. A year later. Yeah. What version of MySQL are they running?
Aaron
00:06:10 – 00:06:11
Do you know?
Aaron
00:06:11 – 00:06:13
I don't know off the top of my head.
Aaron
00:06:13 – 00:06:15
Okay. I'll be curious.
Sean
00:06:16 – 00:06:21
Yeah. So I've been working on the front end, and that is getting, you know, excruciatingly close to
Aaron
00:06:22 – 00:06:22
That's great.
Sean
00:06:22 – 00:06:28
Like, workable. I got, Veterans Day tomorrow. I have that off, and so I plan on Oh,
Aaron
00:06:28 – 00:06:28
nice.
Sean
00:06:28 – 00:06:50
Working on that. And then this and then this weekend and I I don't know. I'm, like, fingers crossed, we're, like, maybe this weekend is a possibility, like, where we have, like, the the inline errors. And I don't know if I'll get to making it into a a package. But maybe I will because, like, I already did it once.
Sean
00:06:50 – 00:06:54
So Yeah. And I think it's already set up. So maybe that won't be too bad.
Aaron
00:06:54 – 00:07:01
So this is the Vue front end. Yeah. And you've been talking about making a headless component for this.
Sean
00:07:02 – 00:07:03
Mhmm.
Aaron
00:07:03 – 00:07:04
What does that mean?
Aaron
00:07:05 – 00:07:06
Because what I think
Aaron
00:07:06 – 00:07:13
that means is probably not what that I think that means a JavaScript engine that, like, hooks into whatever they design. So
Sean
00:07:13 – 00:07:15
It's kind of what that means. Pretty good?
Aaron
00:07:15 – 00:07:16
Okay. Yeah.
Sean
00:07:16 – 00:07:41
That's a pretty close analogy. Right. So, like, when you're building a UI, there are parts of your code that are like, I guess, we could call it business logic. So it depends on, like, how deep you are into the single page application world. Some people have a lot of business logic in their actual, like, JavaScript code.
Sean
00:07:41 – 00:07:42
Right?
Aaron
00:07:42 – 00:07:42
Okay.
Aaron
00:07:43 – 00:07:44
But
Sean
00:07:44 – 00:08:11
let's call it let's call it business logic. But but really it's about, like, managing state. So, like, most component libraries, like the the general framework of a component library is you have some state which represents everything in your application and then a way to manage updating the state and then turning that into, like, something you see visually.
Aaron
00:08:12 – 00:08:12
Right.
Sean
00:08:12 – 00:08:38
And then the components are kind of typically how you, like, bind the state to an a visual output. So also in frameworks they separate these jobs. So like spitting out the actual visual updates is done separately than, like, the state updates. It's like MVC kinda same. It's not MVC, but it's like the same idea where you're like, each bit of code has its own job.
Sean
00:08:41 – 00:09:09
Not as cleanly separated, but essentially that's the idea. And so then each framework offers their their own way of doing this and sometimes multiple ways of doing this. So for example, in React, the way they do this is you peel out the business logic that like logic around updating the state and making API calls and all that stuff. You peel that out into something called hooks. Those run entirely separate from, like, the rendered output.
Sean
00:09:10 – 00:09:34
And then so you can pull in a hook into multiple components. So you could write a hook that, like, goes and fetches some data from an API and then set some state in your component. You can use that hook in whatever component you want. If there are or, you know, you can so you'd like it gives you various levels of abstraction to build tools for other developers to use. If you like on a team, I'm like, I want everybody to make API calls like this.
Sean
00:09:34 – 00:10:11
There's a hook. You use that hook, and then you, like, update the stuff that you need, like, maybe the URL or whatever. And then in Vue, Vue has 2 different ways of doing this, the sort of, like, classic way, something called the renderless component. So it's a component that doesn't actually render any markup. But it if you put it into an if you if you render the renderless component in another component, that renderless component can basically give you that the of the rend the now rendering component.
Sean
00:10:11 – 00:10:33
It can give you methods to call inline. Because, like, the way Vue works is in in your you create methods on your component, and then in your template, you call the methods directly. Kinda like old school JavaScript, you know, where you used to be like on click and then in line, there's this method and it does this thing. It looks a lot like that. And so you're calling these methods.
Sean
00:10:33 – 00:10:54
The methods update, that's the thing that updates the state. That's the code that does that job. So, basically, the renderless component is just this bag of methods. Here's the methods that you can use to update state. You can then go ahead and do whatever you want with what this what I give you back, and and render it however you want.
Sean
00:10:54 – 00:11:36
So you would render the renderless component in your component and then via the slot mechanism in Vue, which is particular to Vue, it gives you these methods. The other thing in Vue, and we use both, there's this new thing called the composition API, which is a lot closer to hooks in React. So but it's kinda like at the end of the day, it gives you the same ability to pull out this, like, state updating logic from the rest of your code. And every single thing in our view front end is built on top of both of these both of these concepts in a way that's meant to, like, enable front end developers to, like, build their own UIs with it.
Aaron
00:11:37 – 00:11:53
Got it. So if I'm a front end if I'm a developer designer and I wanna create a drop down, I can style it however I want and then your renderless component renders inside that and I can listen to the callbacks kind of.
Sean
00:11:53 – 00:12:05
So yeah. Exactly. Like like, that would be like, just changing styles, that's a thing that, like, Vue is feels really good at. Actually, it's you can just pass in a class. You could just do we're all tailwind.
Sean
00:12:05 – 00:12:28
So, like, just tweaking styles is is easy, and that's more likely we'll do that with, you know, small tweaks, like, hey. I wanna add an icon, etcetera. We'll do that with prop we'll do the props, and, like, configuration stuff that we pass into the component. It would be more like so, like, for our stuff, you know, we have, like, different types of inputs. So we have, like, a text input, number input, date input.
Sean
00:12:28 – 00:12:36
So our data input uses a date picker, so they don't like it. So they just trash the whole thing and just, like, plug in their own date picker.
Aaron
00:12:37 – 00:12:37
Got it.
Sean
00:12:37 – 00:12:57
And all they have to do is pull in the UI piece. They don't have to figure out how to, like, connect it all up to every all of the other stuff that we have. So so it's it's like a it's you can, like, completely rewrite our front end from whole cloth, but then reuse all our state logic.
Aaron
00:13:00 – 00:13:01
Got it. Very cool.
Sean
00:13:03 – 00:13:04
Yeah. Very cool.
Aaron
00:13:04 – 00:13:06
And then Very, very flexible for
Aaron
00:13:07 – 00:13:07
Yeah.
Aaron
00:13:07 – 00:13:13
People who have particular UI needs or, you know, implementation needs, which Yeah.
Sean
00:13:13 – 00:13:13
And, like, I
Aaron
00:13:13 – 00:13:14
a lot of people will.
Sean
00:13:14 – 00:13:22
I showed you that React I showed you that React component for query builder, like the React query builder
Aaron
00:13:23 – 00:13:23
Mhmm.
Sean
00:13:23 – 00:13:33
And, you know, how terrible that was, like, the UI. I mean, it's like the bar is real low. I mean, it's not terrible. I'm sure I'm sure they those guys made a great, you know, tool. But, like, I'm looking at that.
Sean
00:13:33 – 00:13:47
I'm comparing it to ours, and I'm like, wow. Ours is significantly better and, you know, connected to this awesome back end thing. Like, it's way better as an offering. If we did a rack rack version, know, it would it would also be better. But that's just the builder part.
Sean
00:13:47 – 00:14:09
They do not have this other thing that I have built in, which is like, yeah, you could use these standalone queries. You don't actually have to do it as a builder. Like, you can because, like, right now, it's like, okay. We in some cases, you want to give a user the full power, build an entire query. But in some cases, you want them to just, like, only be able to filter on one one property.
Sean
00:14:10 – 00:15:00
And so the way ours works is the front end developer has total flexibility to to do that. Like, we're we're we're not quite there, but, essentially, the way it'll work is, like, you can, eventually, you could just drop in the filter. I mean, it almost works this way now, but, like, basically, you could drop in a filter and that that injects a little, mini DSL for building queries into the front end that you could just use based on the configured, like, thing that we get out from from Aaron's back end. So this configuration file drops in. And then instead of having to, like, build a query with the query builder, I could just write view components that say, like, the condition name, the condition like, and this stuff is just they're just components in the DOM already.
Sean
00:15:00 – 00:15:16
So you could just write it out, and then it renders the same as the query builder. So all that work that you do there renders or you can, you know, obviously completely make it look like whatever you want with all the other tools we give. So that is way more powerful than any of the other query builders that I've that I've seen.
Aaron
00:15:17 – 00:15:40
And I think that's the one where we decided that's probably faceted search. Like, you're the the static mode is really, really helpful for faceted search, where they have, like, a whole list of static filters down one side versus you can build up a filter row or query row by row by row. It's going to be super useful for static search. Yeah.
Sean
00:15:40 – 00:16:14
So say you do all this work on your query builder building custom input types, you know, because we just do dates, but, like, there's all kinds of other things you might wanna select for and build custom selectors for. So you do all this work, and then you wanna you're on a page and you wanna just reuse the same stuff and, like, reuse the same query running logic in the back end that with all our optimizations and stuff that we have, like, you can just do that. So it's not 2 different tools. You don't have a faceted search that looks like this or like a one off, you know, filter that you've thrown on a modal somewhere or whatever. Like, you you you're all use using the same stuff.
Aaron
00:16:19 – 00:16:20
Is that more than you bargained for, Colleen?
Aaron
00:16:21 – 00:16:24
No. I'm I'm here for it. Like, that's great.
Sean
00:16:26 – 00:16:34
Yeah. So we're not we're not launching with that. We're launching with just the builder. We call it builder mode. And, you know, not builder mode is there under it.
Sean
00:16:34 – 00:16:35
But
Aaron
00:16:35 – 00:16:39
Is that what I think of when I think of what I'm doing when you say builder mode?
Sean
00:16:39 – 00:16:42
Yeah. The Hotwire version is only builder mode.
Aaron
00:16:42 – 00:16:43
Yeah. Okay.
Sean
00:16:43 – 00:16:59
It's much simpler. But yeah. But also, they have already asked for stuff which would basically require build non builder mode. So, you know, that's but I don't know. Yeah.
Sean
00:16:59 – 00:17:14
I'm I'm excited. Like, that the the open source thing, I think, will actually get a little more traction than I thought based on that kind of, like, mediocre project. I see it. I feel bad if anybody that wrote that is listening to the like, it's good. It's really good.
Sean
00:17:15 – 00:17:19
But it's you know, we just have we just have a lot more features than ours.
Aaron
00:17:20 – 00:17:20
So, Aaron
Aaron
00:17:20 – 00:17:22
I am oh, go ahead.
Aaron
00:17:22 – 00:17:25
I was gonna ask you what's been going on with you.
Aaron
00:17:25 – 00:17:35
So I'm traveling with the children. We're going to Virginia for a wedding. So we're gonna be flying with 2 6 month olds tomorrow. So I'll be super offline.
Aaron
00:17:36 – 00:17:37
If you
Aaron
00:17:37 – 00:17:57
need something from me, tough luck because I will have no hands. So, yep, just getting ready for that. Apparently, it's a huge amount of logistics to travel with babies that young, so we're getting all of that sorted. Good. Yeah.
Aaron
00:17:57 – 00:18:25
I think it will be fun. It's like our first wedding, you know, since the before times. So that's gonna be nice. On other stuff, I wrote a, I wrote a my SQL posts, I think yesterday or the day before about querying, based on location, which is something we have to do at work, obviously, because we're a property tax company. We have to, you know, search for houses near other houses.
Aaron
00:18:25 – 00:18:54
And I thought, okay. I need to start, like, I need to start kind of branding myself as a database expert too. And so I, you know, found this one part in our application where I think I had done something clever and productive and wrote about it. And it's and then shared it on Twitter, and it's been going great. I'm just I'm super pleased.
Aaron
00:18:54 – 00:19:29
Like, right now, it's got 82 retweets and 320 likes, And I'm just like, this is amazing. And so I'm really, really happy with that. I think I'm gonna try to start writing more stuff like that to get my, database bona fides out there as well. I was contacted by, Oh, he said it on his, by Jack Ellis from fathom. I was gonna keep it private, but he said it on his podcast.
Aaron
00:19:29 – 00:19:46
So I'm not too worried about it, to see if I could help them with some of their database stuff. Because he asked someone else in the Laravel community, hey, who do you know that does databases? And they said me. And so that's a good thing.
Aaron
00:19:46 – 00:19:47
Yeah. That seems like a huge thing.
Aaron
00:19:47 – 00:20:00
Yeah. So Like Yeah. If I could and he asked me, you know, how would you do something? And I was like, I would probably try it this way. And he was and I did it in, like, a couple minutes, and he was, like, blown away.
Aaron
00:20:00 – 00:20:29
He's like, how did you learn all this stuff? And I was like, maybe I know more than I'm giving myself credit for. And so that's when I was like, I need to start publicizing this. So I wrote after that, I wrote this, blog post, and I also submitted a talk proposal for Laracon online, about database indexes. So I called it database indexes for the rest of us, because for the rest of us, everybody loves that crap.
Aaron
00:20:30 – 00:20:56
Yep. So hopefully, I can talk there, if they accept it. And then beyond that, obviously, it would be Lyricon in person would be the next ideal spot. But in pursuit of that, I also I also bought, like, 6 books on MySQL, and, I don't think I bought any on Postgres, actually. But bought a bunch of books on my SQL and have been struck by.
Aaron
00:20:57 – 00:21:08
So this is the way I originally learned programming when I was a kid. I bought books on asp.net. The I remember the name of it. It was asp.net unleashed. And my brother made fun of me for that.
Aaron
00:21:09 – 00:21:28
Yeah. And so this is how I, like, this is how I learned to program was by reading these big old, whatever they're called, O'Reilly books. And I haven't done it in a long time. I just kinda have been picking stuff up, and I've been really struck by reading books again. How.
Aaron
00:21:28 – 00:21:54
It's gonna sound so stupid, how helpful they are Because, like, when I'm on when I'm searching online, I feel like I'm, like, I'm a detective, and I'll read a blog post and then have to deduce, like, is this trustworthy? Is this accurate? Is this timely? And then also, okay, well, he said these, you know, these other six words, I don't know. I don't know what those words are now.
Aaron
00:21:54 – 00:22:33
I gotta go find blog posts on those things and like read about those things. Whereas when I'm reading these books, it's, like, structured and laid out and organized and comprehensive and, you know, written by MySQL maintainers. And I'm just it's just such all my mental capacity is going to understanding the concept and not, like, trying to figure out what parts they're leaving out. And if I can trust this person and if this is actually true, or it's just some person on the internet. So turns out books highly recommended.
Aaron
00:22:34 – 00:22:52
I feel that. Like, I love that you said that because I feel the same way. It's so frustrating, especially once you're pretty good at something, to try and learn something else. Because most of the people who are writing about it on the internet don't know it as well as you do. And so you know that they're either wrong or don't have, like, full context.
Aaron
00:22:53 – 00:22:56
Yeah. I second both.
Sean
00:22:56 – 00:23:12
I love that feeling. There's this like, the moments in your career, they're sort of it's sort of like a cyclic almost where you're like, okay. I really need to be an expert on this, and then you go get the pile of books and then, you know, you're just, like, reading, reading, reading. Yeah. Yeah.
Sean
00:23:12 – 00:23:12
That's I
Aaron
00:23:12 – 00:23:14
love it. I'm having so much fun
Sean
00:23:14 – 00:23:15
That's the way I
Aaron
00:23:15 – 00:23:16
am right now.
Sean
00:23:16 – 00:23:17
I've learned that stuff in the past too.
Aaron
00:23:18 – 00:23:34
Yeah. When Jack reached out to me and was like, hey, can I can I pay you to help us with some Fathom database stuff? I was like, yeah. Definitely. Like, based on your response, it seems like I, you know, I may be able to help you.
Aaron
00:23:34 – 00:23:56
But also I feel like I should like have a little bit more formal knowledge, whether that's true or not. You know, I don't know. But it, to me, it felt like I should buy some books and like really bone up on this stuff. And I'm so glad I did. I'm having a blast and it's already proven like outsized usefulness.
Aaron
00:23:56 – 00:24:08
I got more from reading, skimming one of these books than I've gotten from reading blogs in the past, you know, 2 years. It's great. I love it. So that's what I've been up to.
Aaron
00:24:08 – 00:24:09
Awesome.
Aaron
00:24:09 – 00:24:28
I talked with Keith last week, about the stuff I had been working on. And, again, I'm picking up on a theme here. Again, I told him, like, dude, I don't know if I'm being that helpful. Like, here's what I've been doing. Here's, like, here's where I'm at right now, and here's how much time I've spent on it.
Aaron
00:24:28 – 00:24:38
Do you want me to, like, keep going? And he was like, this is insane. This is worth way more. I don't know how you did this in 40 hours. Like, you're a machine.
Aaron
00:24:38 – 00:24:47
I've been working on this for 2 years. I was like, oh, okay. Like, that makes me feel better. I feel like the stuff I'm doing is really helping. And he's like, yes.
Aaron
00:24:47 – 00:24:55
Absolutely. It's helping. Please keep going. So I haven't had a ton of free time this week to work on it. It's only Wednesday.
Aaron
00:24:56 – 00:25:01
But I am still working on that and he is, he is pleased with it so far. So
Aaron
00:25:03 – 00:25:04
that's that's great.
Aaron
00:25:04 – 00:25:07
That front. Yeah. Yeah. Made me feel awesome. I walked in.
Aaron
00:25:07 – 00:25:31
I walked in after talking to Keith and started talking to Jennifer and was like, this is the 2 times 2 times in 1 week, the exact same thing. Like, I can give you an answer. I can give, you know, Keith or Jack an answer, show them what I've been doing, and feel like it's nothing, and they both come back and they're like, this is insane. I freaking love it. It's like, I may need to calibrate a little bit better here.
Aaron
00:25:33 – 00:26:00
So I'm working on that. And I think it's I don't know if it's Sean, I'd be curious your take on this. I don't know if it's being raised evangelical. I still am evangelical, but being raised evangelical to be taught, like, don't be proud, and like be humble. But I definitely think I could be a little bit more I could be a little bit more confident in my abilities.
Aaron
00:26:00 – 00:26:11
I don't know if it's from those roots or if it's just like an internal thing in myself, but there's something there where it's like, dude, you know what you're talking about. Just like own it. Don't be so afraid of it.
Sean
00:26:12 – 00:26:36
Yeah. That's interesting. I think that might be oh, yeah. I wonder if there's the there's definitely, like, a trend in that community to think like that for sure. To be to be humble, which humility is good.
Sean
00:26:36 – 00:27:02
Right. But then I sometimes wonder if that isn't misconstrued for, like like, there's there's being humble, and then there's being confident. And the 2 are compatible. Right. But but the message of continuous message of, like, you must be humble is not necessarily compatible with confidence.
Sean
00:27:04 – 00:27:38
So I could see that. For you know, for me, I was just thinking about this because I had we're to, work all we're talking about is compensation because I'm I'm, like, in charge of figuring out how our what our compensation strategy is gonna be. Like, we're hiring 5 developers right now and, like, trying to and probably, you know, there's I mean, we could be hiring more, you know, next year too, like, really fast. And so it's kind of like, oh, we need to have this whole we need to have a little more apparatus in place for, like, how we think about, how we level people. It's you know, all that stuff.
Sean
00:27:38 – 00:28:18
We have none of it, so I have to make it all up. And I've been having conversations with people and it reminded me of, like, we were talking about bonuses. And so when I was at Accenture, I did this I had this 1st year where I just killed myself. Like, I worked so much, and I made these massive contributions as, like, a 23 year old to these projects, like, very significant contributions to these projects, including intellectual property that I generated, like, kind of invented for project management stuff that problems we were having that they went on and then sold, you know, for, like, half a $1,000,000 to Comcast.
Aaron
00:28:18 – 00:28:18
Mhmm.
Sean
00:28:18 – 00:28:35
And I knew about all this, and they're telling me that. And, like, what I got out of it was they, like, took me out to P. F. Chang's for dinner, and they they sent Beth a box of wine to say thank you for letting us borrow Sean. We still joke about that, the box of wine.
Aaron
00:28:35 – 00:28:38
Chang's box of wine.
Sean
00:28:38 – 00:28:45
And then I got I got a bonus. I got a $5,000 bonus. And I was I mean, it's $5,000. Yeah. So it was easy.
Sean
00:28:45 – 00:29:16
But only I was, like, I worked 100 hour weeks multiple times. And not only the hours, but, like like, just my margins on the hours were enough to, like like, justify more than that. But, like, also, like, I made significant contributions to major projects and, like, saved a gigantic project almost single handedly, and I got a $5,000 check. Like, meanwhile, the partners are, you know, just, like, collecting these Buying extra bonuses. Them hit these goals where they get these big bonuses.
Sean
00:29:16 – 00:29:41
And so to okay. So for me, at that point, then the message like, I was just doing the work and then expecting that, like, yeah, people will notice and then I'll get, you know, correctly, you know, compensated, and that's the right thing to do, and I don't need to brag. I don't need to, you know, talk about myself. Just doing the work. And that's great.
Sean
00:29:41 – 00:30:12
I mean, I that's it's like that's a good attitude. But also, like, in the world of business, that's when I realized, like, I'm making a contribution to your profit and, like, pay me. Yeah. I've always been like that since that moment when I'm like, alright. If I'm making a significant so I've never been shy about, like, being confident about what my abilities are and then the since then and then the, you know, compensation and, like, where that should be.
Sean
00:30:12 – 00:30:16
That's always been easier for me since then because I was like, no, that's not fair.
Aaron
00:30:16 – 00:30:25
And what a what a good lesson to learn at 23. I'm I'm sitting here at 32 being, like, oh, you should be more confident.
Sean
00:30:26 – 00:30:36
Yeah. Like, I mean, you're you know, it's like I'm always we've had this conversation, you know, a lot of times where it's like I think sometimes I make people uncomfortable, you know, being like, you know, you charge more, like
Aaron
00:30:36 – 00:30:37
Yeah.
Sean
00:30:37 – 00:30:57
And it's because, like, you are contributing directly to, like, the money that they're making. Like, it doesn't make any sense to be, like, worried about your rate. You should figure out what's the what's the what's the rate that makes sense to them as a business investment. What's the most amount that you could charge? And there's nothing wrong with that.
Sean
00:30:57 – 00:31:16
But it does go against this, like, humility, don't brag about yourself, don't talk about yourself. But it's it kinda it feels like that. I don't think it does, though, because it's more like I actually appreciate when I'm interacting with someone that has business mindset and knows, like, where the contribution is because then it's, like, it's a much purer conversation. Yeah. For sure.
Sean
00:31:16 – 00:31:19
Like, we just know what we're doing. Like yeah.
Aaron
00:31:21 – 00:31:47
Yeah. And I think it's hard for me to do that, to go super strong into that on the business side and then not do that on the personal side because I don't want to just like run over people personally and that, you know, is not not something I I do. And then that carries over into business where I'm just like, oh, well, let's let's just like I'm I'm pretty good. I'm, you know, I'm glad you think that. It's like, no.
Aaron
00:31:47 – 00:31:52
I know what I'm doing. So it's kinda, like, bifurcated between business and personal.
Sean
00:31:52 – 00:31:54
Yeah. Like, I know, like, gentleness,
Aaron
00:31:55 – 00:31:56
kindness. Exactly.
Sean
00:31:57 – 00:32:11
Like where do those fit to business? Right. Exactly. I think when I think it's easy for me to know when that fits. So, like, dealing dealing with people that are interacting with me as a business profit center
Aaron
00:32:11 – 00:32:12
Mhmm.
Sean
00:32:12 – 00:32:35
Like, kindness and gentleness have nothing to do with it. But then if I'm coming up with if I'm going the other way where I'm interacting with people, like, as a as the boss or, like, the owner, like, some of it goes some of it you know, like, they're not my they're not my peers. I'm not hiring them as, like, like, employees. Like, the employee relationship especially.
Aaron
00:32:35 – 00:32:38
So it's like When you're in the comedy power.
Sean
00:32:38 – 00:32:42
Like, it's comedy you should punch up, not down. I think it's the same rule.
Aaron
00:32:43 – 00:32:50
Yeah. Yeah. I believe that. So that's what's been going on with me. Lots of good stuff.
Aaron
00:32:50 – 00:33:10
Yeah. Also, we did, we did the, individual pursuit nights. We scheduled them. So Monday Monday Wednesday, we each did individual pursuits, and it was great. It was like, I know, like, I know that these nights I'm just going to do stuff and Jennifer's happy doing her stuff.
Aaron
00:33:10 – 00:33:14
And then the other nights we're like hanging out together. It was great. I loved it.
Aaron
00:33:15 – 00:33:15
Awesome.
Aaron
00:33:15 – 00:33:22
Good idea. That's all for me. Colleen, do you have anything? Yep.
Sean
00:33:23 – 00:33:28
Cool. It's a wrap. I wanna tell you about job stuff, but I don't wanna record it on the podcast.
Aaron
00:33:28 – 00:33:29
Okay. So long, friends.
Me

Thanks for reading! My name is Aaron and I write, make videos, and generally try really hard.

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You can find me on YouTube on my personal channel or the Try Hard Studios channel.

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