The home team talks about Cassidy’s new role as Head of Developer Experience and Education at Remote, Ceora’s controversial opinion on mac and cheese, and why Gen Z may understand information architecture differently than the rest of us.
Episode notes
It’s not news that, as Cassidy says, “remote has grown wildly fast”—but Remote has gone from about 25 employees in March 2020 to 900 now (a 3,500% increase).
Ceora explains to Matt (oh, sweet summer’s child) what it means to get ratioed on Twitter.
Inspired by a great read, the team discusses how Gen Z, having grown up without floppy disks, file folders, or directories, thinks about information.
This week’s Lifeboat badge goes to user 1983 for their answer to the question Why can I not use `new` with an arrow function in JavaScript/ES6?.
Transcript:
[intro music plays]
Ben Popper Stack Overflow is supported by CircleCI. Now that every company is a software company, getting code to market quickly and securely matters. Learn why developers rely on CircleCI to manage their continuous integration and delivery pipelines at CircleCI.com
Matt Kiernander Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Stack Overflow podcast. This is a home episode today. I'm joined by Cassidy Williams and Ceora Ford. I'm your host for today. My name is Matt and I'm a Technical Evangelist here at Stack Overflow.
Cassidy Williams Hello everyone! Yes, I'm Cassidy. I am Head of Developer Experience and Education at Remote. That's Remote.com, where we help you hire remote workers and be a remote worker and all that.
Ceora Ford Yeah, very cool. I'm Ceora Ford. I'm a Developer Advocate at ApolloGraphQL. We help people do things with GraphQL and manage their GraphQL API’s and their graphs and all that kind of interesting techie jazz. And I help them teach people how to do that. So, fun job!
CW We're going to get a bunch of PR people coming to us saying, “Is that how you described our company? Hire and stuff?” That'll be great.
CF I hope none of my coworkers listen to this episode.
MK I do like techie jazz. But Cassidy is that a new gig? Have you picked that up recently?
CW Yeah, this is week four for me. I started this January.
MK Oh congratulations!
CW Yeah. Time flies by the way. I can't believe it's already week four but I'm really excited about it. It's something where we're doing a bunch of cool things and Remote has grown wildly fast. I'm just going to talk about that for a second. When I first started chatting with their CTO, Marcelo, very nice guy. We were kind of just friendly, like, “Oh, I don't think it'll work out now, but maybe let's stay in touch.” Back at the beginning of the pandemic, March 2020. And around then they were at like 25 people. Guess how many employees they have now. Just guess.
CF How many?
MK I was going to say 200?
CW 200 is a guess. They just hit 900 employees.
CF Wow!
MK Whoa!
CW Isn't that wild? I think it's just what happens in this pandemic. People have been working remotely so much more. And so what Remote does is, let's just say I'm a startup and I want to hire a bunch of workers and I'm based in the US but I find someone in Budapest who's a really awesome developer, but I don't want to deal with all the legal implications of hiring them and then making sure that they have their benefits and stuff in place. Do I hire them as a contractor or a full-time person, whatever? Remote handles all that for you. So I could use Remote to hire this person in Budapest, and then they will have a full-time job paid in their own currency, full benefits and everything. They act like an employer of record of that. And they do this all over the world and add more countries daily it feels like. So they've just been growing exponentially because of all the remote work movement that's been happening.
CF Awesome. That's so cool.
MK Yeah, it's something that I had to deal with and is kind of near and dear to my heart, because for those of you who can't tell by my accent, I'm not American and not working out of America. So I had to go through that whole process with Stack where they couldn't hire me locally and so they had to use a third-party company to set up all of my, like, getting paid, all the way through to life insurance and all that kind of stuff. So having a service like that that enables you to kind of have a global workforce is awesome.
CW Right. And I don't mean to be a total shill, but it's awesome because it's so affordable for startups to use it and stuff because it's just a flat fee. I'm going to butcher it. So hopefully again, PR doesn't fact check.
MK PR department! PR department!
CW Yeah. I'm so sorry, but I think it's only like $299 per employee. It's a flat fee. And so you can really grow a ton and be able to hire all of these people remotely and it'd be sustainable. And that's their whole goal is to make being able to hire anybody a really sustainable process instead of going through all the hoops of setting up a whole system just for one person.
CF Yeah. I love that because I think I've noticed that now, especially during the pandemic, so many people are learning how to code, trying to get into tech and a lot of tech jobs are remote. Unfortunately, a lot of tech companies are based out of Europe or the US but there's so much talent everywhere. Every country, every continent. And I think that a huge barrier to entry for a lot of people is like, “Oh, but they don't allow workers from such and such country or region.” So that's cool. I'm glad that we have companies like Remote to help fix that problem.
CW It's very cool. And the people who are joining with me, like, I had an onboarding call and there was people from New Zealand, from South Korea, from South Africa, from Jamaica, from all kinds of countries that normally you just don't see if you're in a very US centric or European centric workplace. And so it was really exciting to see.
MK It sounds like you're almost going into like a model UN or something like that. You just have someone from everywhere.
CW I know right? It's just cool to see all of the different languages being able to be supported and really caring about the internationalization of work.
MK So there's a wonderful company called Buffer. They have a completely open salary plan where they can go and see what the CEO is earning. You can see everyone from the very top, I don't want to say down to the bottom, but in terms of pay on a quantitative scale, you can see who's earning the most and who's earning the least. And what they have in there is a cost of living calculator. So if you're living in San Francisco or you're living in say, for example, Milwaukee or somewhere that's got a very low cost of living, they basically multiply your salary based off of that. And I thought that was cool at first, but then I was like, “No, but they're providing the same value to the company and the job that they're doing.” So you get all these discussions happening because I can see both sides of the story.
CW Yeah, it's difficult because you see people saying like, “Well, if they can afford someone in San Francisco, why can't they afford that same salary in Milwaukee?” But then they can't always afford everyone in San Francisco. But it's not something we're going to solve on a podcast.
MK So Ceora you mentioned “ratioed” before, and I'm already starting to feel out of touch because I don't know what that is. Can you please explain it to me? And then we can move on to the Gen Z topic.
CF Oh my goodness! Yes! I would love to explain it. Especially after the week I've had. So I got ratioed three times last week, okay? Across two different Twitter accounts. But I'll explain what a ratio is. So basically when you tweet something, it's typically something that happens on Twitter, but it can happen on other apps too but it makes more sense on Twitter. So basically, say I say something like, “I think grits, coleslaw and another food.” What's another food that I hate?
CW You didn’t like mac and cheese, right?
MK No!
CF Oh, I said that I like to put hot sauce in mac and cheese. I like to put hot sauce and sriracha in mac and cheese. So I said those things on Twitter and what happens is, usually the way that people show their support for your tweet is by liking. But when you get ratioed that means that you have barely any likes and like a hundred comments of people disagreeing with you, and a hundred quote retweets of people saying like, “She's so silly for thinking that”, or whatever. So that's what happened on my main Twitter account. I kind of expected that to happen so it wasn't bad, but sometimes you'll say something and people will legitimately be upset with you and really, really come at you when you get ratioed. So it's sometimes not the best experience when you're being ratioed. For instance, also over the weekend, and this is funny because it happened during our last podcast recording. I have a K-pop Twitter account, so I can keep up with the K-pop stuff and keep it separate from everything else. So on that account, I tweeted something about a very popular K-pop group and I don’t even want to say the name after the response I got. But after tweeting that, I was in the recording and I'm having a good time, and then I kinda noticed that my phone was going off a little bit but I didn't pay any attention. And I was getting ratioed for sharing my opinion. I'm laughing now, but people were trying to hack into my account,
CW Oh my gosh!
MK Oh god!
CF Yeah. They were sending me DMs, they were quote retweeting me. I eventually went private and they were still adding me saying really, really mean stuff.
CW Gosh.
CF So yeah. It's a very common experience of people who are chronically online like me. So yeah, sometimes being ratioed is funny, like it was with my food opinions, but sometimes it's not. There have been times where I said something and people were being mean about it or whatever, but I think at one point I had about 200 quote retweets.
CW Oh gosh. That's a lot. Oh no!
CF Yeah. And I had a bunch of DM’s. I was also getting messages from Twitter, like, “Here's your code to log into your account, here's your code to log into your account.” Because people were trying to hack into my account and then I got a bunch of comments. And that was the first time I ever had really experienced that much at once, and granted I missed most of it because I was recording a podcast episode. But it just made me think about how even if you disagree with someone and even if you rightfully disagree with someone, there are better ways to approach it than that. I think we discussed this in the episode before, but it's really important for us when you do external outreach for whatever company you work for, you sometimes become the public face for the company in the work that you do and the team that you work with. So because we do this kind of work, it’s important for us to think about getting ratioed or piled onto, or doing that to other people as well. Because it's a huge possibility when you do developer advocacy or something similar to that.
MK I think it's going to be something in the future within the next, I hope two to five years, where if you come into a company and you do have a public facing position, and especially in a community as active online as software developers, that we do have some kind of training or battle plan or something to say, “Cool. So this is a scenario which will happen. You're going to get ratioed.” First time I've used that in a sentence, thank you. “And this is what you should do. This is probably how you're going to feel. This is how you're going to deal with it. This is how you protect your accounts and all the security and all this kind of stuff.” Because this is happening at the moment but I don't think anyone's really taken any, like, there are no digital courses for like, what happens if you get harassed online as a public face for a company.
CW Right.
CF I think that's a great way to transition into, if we're talking about how the next generation uses the internet, how they communicate. I think that really ties in well to this article that I found. I can't remember the exact title, but it is basically about how computer science educators, especially at the professor level in universities, have found that they're having a hard time teaching students post-2017 basic computer concepts, especially when it comes to directories and folders and things like that. The thing I find interesting about that is how it kind of colors how we'll have to deal with educating and teaching the newer generations about basic computer science concepts, because the world has changed so much. And a lot of times, the way that we describe things now may not be what they'll understand in the future.
CW It's interesting because the quintessential concept is that a lot of students and younger people today don't understand the save icon with the floppy disc next to it. And it's so funny because it makes sense. They've never had to use a floppy disc.
CF I'm one of them.
CW Yeah! And honestly I haven't touched a floppy disc since I was 10, maybe, because my school computer had one? But it's interesting. This article goes into how students don't understand the concept of folders on the computer systems, which blows my mind because that's such a core aspect of how computer file systems work. They're named file systems for a reason, because of files.
CF Yeah.
MK Are they talking specifically about the very low level operating system? Like, “This is how a directory works.” Or are they talking more about the kind of upper level where you have a folder you can click into it and you can create a series of other folders.
CW Both!
CF They were referring to both. So what they were saying because they tackle both of the sides of that equation. So as far as actual folders on your computer, having more folders on your computer, yada, yada, yada, they were saying that a lot of students, when they would tell them, “You need to go into this folder, into that folder, into this folder.” Like, “Get to this thing.” They didn't really know how to do that because, and there were a couple of reasons why, one of the things that they mentioned was that a lot of us have grown up where you didn't need to know where anything on your computer was because you could just search. Some people grew up with computers where you had to know exactly where everything was in order to be able to find it later on and use whatever the thing is. And I'm not even sure if I'm explaining that correctly because that's not what I grew up with. I grew up with always being able to search globally on your computer, being able to search for things on YouTube, being able to search for things everywhere. And I find that after reading the article, even when it was describing the concept of directories and how a lot of students have a hard time understanding that because it's based off of the concept that you have a file cabinet is basically what it is.
CW Right. A file cabinet with folders, files in the folders, nested folders, all that.
CF And when I read it, at this point, I've been working with directories and stuff like that on my command line for a while. But when I first learned command line I struggled so much and reading the article, I was like, “Is that why?” Is it because I had never been really familiar. I even had to ask just now, “What was the analogy?” So I've never had to really deal with file cabinets and knowing which file to go into and all that kind of stuff. So it's just interesting to think about how as technology evolves and as generations grow and get older, it really changes how we view these systems that some of us are so used to but some of us are not. So yeah, I'm interested in hearing too if you had ever had an experience like that either with the directory things or with anything in technology where you were like, “Hmm, this isn't inherently understandable anymore and I'm struggling with it.” Almost like I deal with with the whole command line thing.
CW Yeah. It's definitely a mental model thing. I never really used a file cabinet but I was exposed to them. So I understand the concepts of it, but, for example, some number of episodes ago, we talked about our productivity tools and I really like Obsidian. And I've talked about it, how you can tag all of your notes and then it has a really cool way of searching and showing a graph of your notes and it's interesting seeing how different people organize their notes in it, because there's a whole Obsidian community and there's some people where they really rely on folders saying, “All of my notes on this topic go in this folder. All of my notes on this topic go in here.” Meanwhile for myself, I use tags where it's all flat. Everything is just in a giant folder and kind of like you said, I search for what I need or search for a high level topic and then what I'm looking for eventually comes up. And I think getting used to that mental model in both ways is just one of those concepts where you have to figure out what works for you. And for students that are in these computer science classes, they've never had to think that way about that set type of mental model because they can just search and it works. And they've never had to change that.
MK I think that also kind of brings into the question of like, it's an old way of doing things versus a new way of doing things and the old ways, typically, sometimes it is the best way. But sometimes it's not. And I feel like with the whole folder dynamic and search for me, I understand the benefits of search a lot more than I do, “It's nice having everything compartmentalized and so everything has its place.” But searching is so much faster. And I'm wondering if that's how computers are going to go, where we're just going to completely abstract away the file system and we can know that we can just bring up a search bar. It will have some kind of smart search feature and we can pull up the information like that with a couple of keystrokes, as opposed to having to search through a list of directories. And so it'll be interesting to see I guess 30 or 40 years on, how operating systems and how file structures have changed as a result of the influence from a new generation of programmers coming to the forefront
CW Yeah. We had a podcast episode a while back with Alexander Obenauer who is basically researching this now. And he has some really interesting things. If you look up Alexander Obenauer lab notes, he has been writing essays on these subjects of what does the future of personal computing look like, and a human operating system that is more based on how we think rather than these more restrictive structures and it's really interesting to hear his ideas. And I think that he's probably not the only one out there who's exploring this, but it's the start of something and people are really seeing that now more than ever.
CF Yeah, absolutely. And I just want to add too, one thing you said Matt, searching is easier. I think we're going to move into a world where we're going to stray away from like, “Oh, this is complex and so organized and everything looks so precise” and all that kind of stuff. I think we're going to move into a place where we're going to much more prefer things that are simple and easy and quick, especially with this new generation. Gen Z is going to move in to the people who are developing products and companies and joining companies and using this technology that we built. I think we're going to have to start thinking a lot more about making things simpler, as simple as possible, and as easy as possible to get started. So I think there are some developer tools out there that make that possible, but I think there's a lot of space to improve in that way as well. So we'll see if our predictions are correct. We'll see.
CW Yeah. All the things that are growing are based on instant gratification pretty much. Like if you look at TikTok as an example, it's been growing at rapid speed and is like the fastest growing app in the world and it's because it's fast. Like, if you want another funny video you just swipe and it's just there. You're pretty much guaranteed to see something you like, because it trains that algorithm directly to you.
CF So well!
CW And so well to the point where it's scary.
MK It is!
CW And so it's the kind of thing where I think computing is going in this direction where it's going to be very based on instant gratification because that's the stuff that people want.
CF Yeah. I'm going to tie it all together by saying TikTok is actually how I got into K-pop and therefore it's the reason why I got ratioed. So I blame TikTok.
CW Whoa. It all comes together.
[music plays]
MK Well, we're going to lead on from that to the lifeboat, which the shout out today is going to be for member 1983. I specifically looked for a JavaScript question because I was a front end developer and I found this one. “Why can I not use ‘new’ with an arrow function in JavaScript/ES6?” And this person gave a very good explanation. They basically broke it down as to, “What did I do wrong? Can I turn an arrow function into a constructor? Can you explain how the specification disallows ‘new’ with arrow function?” It's not something I've previously thought about before. I knew you couldn't do it, but now I know why, which is great. So thank you very much, 1983.
CW That's a good question too. I would totally record a podcast on just that question because I love that topic, but another day, another time.
MK It would be great to do just an episode on functional program in JavaScript if people want to contribute to that specific topic. It's a fun topic.
CF Yeah. Maybe that'll be our next topic. Hmm.
MK I really hope the next topic isn't “Matt got ratioed.”
All [laughter]
MK And that's about it. Thank you so much everyone for joining. I've been Matt Kiernander. You can find me on Twitter at @MattKander. Please don't ratio me just yet. I'm still working on my social presence.
CW I'm Cassidy Williams, you can find me at CASSIDOO on most things.
CF And I'm Ceora Ford. You can find me on Twitter. That's where I'm most active. My username there is @Ceeoreo_.
MK Great. Thank you so much, everyone. It's been a blast and we'll see you next time.
[outro music plays]