The Swyx Mixtape

Listen to AWS.fm: https://aws.fm/episodes/episode-25-shawn-swyx-wangShawn joins Adam to discuss Amplify and its place in the developer ecosystem, whether we should care about Cloudflare, yet, and how to cope with the anxiety that can come with being extremely online. Also, it sounds like Adam is a tech bro and he's NOT happy about it.TranscriptAdam Elmore: Hey, everyone. Welcome to AWS FM, a podcast with guests from around the AWS community. I'm your host, Adam Elmore. And today, I'm joined by Shawn Swyx Wang. Hi, Shawn.Shawn Wang: Hey, Adam. How's it going?Adam Elmore: It's going well. I've been extremely excited. I've said this on a ton of podcasts, that I'm excited to get on with a guest, but this has been a long time because before I took my break, I was going to get on with you. Took a big, long break, and I've finally got you on. You're somebody, and I'm going to say a lot of things, I'm very dramatic, but you're somebody that I really admire in the online space. You have this ability to think about things, and distill them, and put them out there in a way that I admire greatly. I'm so excited to have you on here. It's going to be hard for me to stay on any one topic because I have just a list of questions I want to ask you, basically.Shawn Wang: [inaudible 00:00:52].Adam Elmore: First, could you tell everyone on this show who you are, just the short version of Shawn?Shawn Wang: Yeah. So I'm Shawn, born and raised in Singapore, went to The States for college and then spent my first career in finance where I did investment banking and hedge funds. Loved the coding part because every junior finance person starts to learn to code, and didn't like the stress of the finance part, so I pivoted to tech where I was a software engineer at Two Sigma and then I was in developer relations at Netlify, AWS, Temporal, and I've just joined Airbyte as head of developer experience.Adam Elmore: Oh, I did not know you weren't still at Temporal. So Airbyte, what is Airbyte?Shawn Wang: Airbyte is a data integration company, it basically has the largest community of open-source connectors for connecting to any SaaS API source into your data warehouse. So for anyone doing data engineering, the first task that you have to do is to get data from all the different silos of data in your business. Let's say you have a Salesforce being the source of truth for customers, Stripe being the source of truth for transactions, get all of them into a single data warehouse for you to do operations on. So the goal is to have the largest community of open-source developers for connecting all the data and liberating your data from all the silos that you have in your business.Adam Elmore: And how long ago did you start? How did I miss this?Shawn Wang: A couple weeks ago. I actually have not announced it on Twitter, which is why.Adam Elmore: Oh, there you go.Shawn Wang: I like to slow play it. So when I joined Temporal, I actually waited for six months to really understand Temporal and to practice my pitch before announcing it on Twitter. And that's how I like to do things because, well, partially I want to be fully up to speed before I represent something publicly.Adam Elmore: Yeah. So I want to talk about that. You get very up to speed in a way that I don't see a lot of people on Twitter. I don't see them understand things in the way that you do. So you obviously write, your blog is a huge source of information for me, and I've enjoyed it quite a lot, but it's not just that you write, it's the way you think about things. Does that come from your finance, your analytical background in finance, or were you like that before, your ability to see the whole forest, take in the way things are trending and the way things are moving, put it all together and distill it into these wonderful articles? Where does that come from?Shawn Wang: Oh, so first of all, thanks for the very kind words. I don't hear back from my readers that often, so it's really nice when I get to talk to someone like this. So yeah, I would say a lot of this stuff is actually from my finance days. This is the kind of analysis that you would have to do when you do an investment report or investment research on any stock or any industry. You want to get a perspective of what's going on, what the trends are, who the major players are, and form an opinion on where things are going. And I think taking that finance mindset into the bets I have, in terms of technologies, whether or not it's for using them personally in my personal stack or for joining them as a startup employee, I think is extremely underrated. And it's something I'm trying to model and hopefully teach people someday.Shawn Wang: Although I'm not sure about the teaching part, because if I say like, "Get rich by doing investment analysis stock on early stage startups," I would feel like a hustler. So maybe not that, but I just do like engaging in that. And probably it's an exercise for me to think things through clearly by writing it down. And I also get a lot of feedback from that, so I actually improve and learn a lot by learning in public. And that's the other thing that I am pretty well known for, so this is the application of the general purpose learning in public principle.Adam Elmore: Yeah. No, and I love your learning in public article. I hope more people see how you break down systems and the world around us and distill it. I hope more people do that because I'd love to have more sources of that kind of information. It's really fascinating and that's a lot of what I want to talk about today is your opinions on the future and where certain things are headed. First, I want to talk, you did work at AWS. How long were you at AWS?Shawn Wang: A year. AWS Amplify.Adam Elmore: Yeah. So I'd love to know, I guess what it was like working at AWS, what you took from that, but also more broadly, I want to get into Amplify and where it fits. You sort of live in that intersection. I feel like web, and cloud, and infrastructure, where things are trending, and I want to talk Amplify's place in that, but first, what was your role there like at AWS, at Amplify?Shawn Wang: Yeah, I was a senior dev advocate at Amplify, basically doing demos and talks for Amplify. And the fun thing about working at Amplify is that you are essentially also a developer advocate for all the underlying services. So amplify is essentially a roll up of DynamoDB, API Gateway, AWS AppSync, even file storage like S3. You could do some demos with that. And I did, I made like a DIY Dropbox clone. But it's focus on front-end engineers. And I think that was the first time that AWS had ever made a dedicated arm or products for front-end engineers. And it turned out to be a really good bet because AWS Amplify was one of the fastest growing AWS services, at least during the time that I was there. So I thought it was just really compelling to try it out and obviously everyone has very high regard for AWS. There's a bunch of services that I only experienced on the inside and I only learned about once I got on the inside, and I thought that was really interesting as well.Shawn Wang: A few things I'll point out. I really loved the AWS interview process, actually. I felt like it was very rigorous and I definitely haven't had as rigorous a process anywhere else. And they really got a good look at every single part of me before they made the decision. And for...

Read the article and watch the full interview: https://dx.tips/plaid-hockey-tips---SaaS API founders should not miss this week's Cartoon Avatars interview with William Hockey, former Plaid cofounder/CTO and now founder of Column.He does not do interviews often and rarely do you get this level of insight into a $13 billion, fintech category-defining behemoth. What follows is a TL;DR for those who, well, TL;DW.The $12 Billion UI Decision - Owning the UIMany SaaS API providers take pride in being "behind the scenes", or being "whitelabel" to appeal to as many enterprise customers as possible. Jeff Lawson often proudly talks about how many people use Twilio without realizing it.TLDR: Hockey bet the company on going against that received wisdom - forcing 100% of his customers to migrate to a Plaid hosted UI with Plaid's logo and branding - over a period of 2 years, with a lot of pushback.He estimates this decision alone was worth 90% of the company value today (!)From the 22-26 minute mark:I think the most successful decision we made was actually owning the interface - the physical design and owning the client side...When we first started, we were this transparent infrastructure provider and so the consumer had no idea who we were......and so what happened is you didn't know, as a consumer, that Plaid existed in that flow. We realized that this was kind of problematic because, as a consumer, you were not getting the same experience hooking up your bank account to Venmo as you were when you hooked up your account to Square Cash, or Chime or, Coinbase..and that had a lot of security issues but also had conversion issues because every application thought that their design was best or whatnot...so what we decided to do is we made them display a Plaid designed UI to the consumer...We made the application insert our branding, our logo and our experience into the application. That was extraordinarily controversial, as you can imagine, because these applications want to control the experience.One way to view this move is concluding "Plaid customers were so bad at their jobs of optimizing UI that just providing the APIs wasn't enough."The motivations were two fold: self protection (Plaid oriented) and conversion optimization (customer oriented):We needed to establish some level of relationship with the consumer and provide uniformity across these applications because we were the only one focused this hard on conversion.It actually started converting a lot better... the consumer actually started to feel comfortable, like hey I know this screen, I've seen this before, and it also allowed us to do a lot of micro optimizations around messaging certain banks and just allowed us to kind of have a platform that we could actually deliver content and software directly to the consumer...Where my eyes really popped is how far they took this - forcing ALL their users to adopt this flow - near impossible for most API companies to do especially if customers threaten to leave over this decision.Now 100% of traffic flows this way and it's actually one of the only reasons that we have good relationships with the banks because those sensitive data never actually hits the application anymore and we can also if a bank wants to make you accept some terms of service or something like that, we can deploy that instantly... and so it allows us instant flexibility.but it was a very very challenging rollout - it took almost 18 to 24 months, there was a lot of pushback to it - but i think if we didn't do that, A) consumers wouldn't have as good of an experience, B) we also would have got commoditized and it would have been really easy for these applications to switch it out. It would just been a worse experience for everybodyBut in the end, it was worth it:I think that (decision) probably generated like 90% of our market cap today.You can try the full UX of the $12 Billion UI right here: plaid.com/demo without connecting a bank account.You can see Stripe, a Plaid competitor that stayed relatively behind the scenes, increasingly start to own the experience with Billing in 2018, Checkout in 2020, and lots more I am unaware of. In fact, Stripe Checkout's marketing sounds eerily similar to what Hockey just said for Plaid:You get the benefit of all this and everything that’s to come: even faster load times, additional payment methods we add, compliance with future payments regulations, and every optimization we make to maximize conversion—all without major code changes on your end.Alvar Lagerlof also reports that Swedish fintech Klarna also inserts a branded UI:This is a product direction you can expect more SaaS APIs taking going forward as they seek both to build their own customer relationships and to serve their B2B customers better (by doing their jobs better than they can).Sidenote: Founder Intuition Over DataWhat is perhaps most interesting is that this decision was made without data - Hockey felt like he would not have had support from consumers, banks, or employees - which is why these kind of high conviction bets require founder-led companies.Also noteworthy - it took "three or four years" before it became obvious that forcing their UI was the right decision.At 27 minutes:I see this with founders a lot - when they go try to do product interviews or customer interviews, they're assuming that the people they're interviewing have similar knowledge, interest, or insight to them, and that's just not the case.We just felt like there was a bit of an arbitrage where we knew where the industry was going to play out we knew what the banks were going to react and so we just made the gut call.This isn't something he encourages at all scales - and the transition from being a product visionary at 10 employees to a delegating leader at 1000 employees is a difficult but necessary transition.Column: The Bank with Developer ExperienceFor his next act (as a billionaire, post Plaid), William

Our Twitter space: https://twitter.com/Chau_codes/status/1560749221447286784Hour 1 was Q&A - comparing notes on Vercel vs Airbyte, going deep/leveling up in DevRel (Building your Lightsaber) and on content creation (Dev.to vs Hashnode vs Substack)Hour 2 was Video/YouTube/Twitch focused since Theo joined!Previous Devrel Real Talks:https://mixtape.swyx.io/episodes/weekend-drop-devrel-real-talk-ep-1-ft-justin-garrison-micheal-benedict-zack-hoherchakhttps://mixtape.swyx.io/episodes/devrel-real-talk-making-2m-yr-in-devrel-ft-rebecca-marshburn-and-nader-dabitOur guests:Hassan https://twitter.com/nutlopeAlex https://twitter.com/alexandereardonNairobi https://twitter.com/Tech4AbolitionTheo https://twitter.com/t3dotggJustin https://twitter.com/rothgarOur hosts:https://twitter.com/Chau_codeshttps://twitter.com/RealChrisSeanhttps://twitter.com/swyx

Previous Episodes: https://mixtape.swyx.io/episodes/weekend-drop-coding-career-chat-the-operating-system-of-youhttps://mixtape.swyx.io/episodes/weekend-drop-coding-career-chat-finance-for-developersShow notes and referenced links:Reading: https://learninpublic.org/v1-strategy-intro-tech.pdfReplies: https://twitter.com/Chad_R_Stewart/status/1558529083079856128Join the Coding Career Community: https://learninpublic.org/Follow for future spaces: https://twitter.com/Coding_Career

Our Twitter space: https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1vAxRkDjkpNKlComp Report: https://www.commonroom.io/blog/2022-developer-relations-compensation-report/Slido: https://app.sli.do/event/bxvrMv1yBfycLUh7bL3aaGPrevious episodes:https://mixtape.swyx.io/episodes/weekend-drop-devrel-real-talk-ep-1-ft-justin-garrison-micheal-benedict-zack-hoherchakOur guests:Rebecca https://twitter.com/beccaodelayNader https://twitter.com/dabit3Our hosts:https://twitter.com/Chau_codeshttps://twitter.com/RealChrisSeanhttps://twitter.com/swyx

Use good speakers! Not Airpods!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lklTPY4Zj7Qhttps://soundcloud.com/clublifebytiesto/clublife-by-tiesto-podcast-801https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ti%C3%ABstoTracklist:[00:00] Intro[00:42] 1 John Summit & GUZ feat. Stevie Appleton - What A Life[03:50] 2 Fancy Inc – Circles (feat. Jack Dawson)[06:16] 3 Piero Pirupa - Put Your Hands Up[08:00] 4 Oliver Heldens - I Was Made For Lovin' You (feat. Nile Rodgers & House Gospel Choir) (James Hype Remix)[10:11] 5 Tiësto & Charli XCX - Hot In It (VIP Remix) [13:44] 6 The Weeknd - How Do I Make You Love Me (Sebastian Ingrosso & Salvatore Ganacci Remix)[16:33] 7 David Guetta vs. Benny Benassi - Satisfaction[17:56] 8 Cat Dealers & Lukas Vane feat. Elise LeGrow - Hey Hey (Heard You Say)[20:13] 9 Sebastián Yatra - Tacones Rojos (Tiësto Remix)[23:44] 10 Axel Rulay vs. Tiësto - Si Es Trucho Es Trucho (feat. El Alfa & Farruko)[26:09] 11 DubVision, Otto Knows & Alex Aris - Electricity[28:10] 12 HÄWK & The Shooters - We Make It Pop[29:08] 13 Tujamo - Drop That Low (Tujamo's Secret Weapon 2022)[31:09] 14 Imanbek & BYOR – Belly Dancer (LUM!X Remix)[32:40] 15 MORTEN - No Good[35:39] 16 Tiësto - Baila Conmigo[37:12] 17 KVSH & Carola - Welcome To The Future[38:42] 18 Martin Garrix & Breathe Carolina - Something[40:21] 19 Martin Ikin - Future[41:38] 20 Odd Mob - LEFT TO RIGHT[43:08] 21 Fred Again.. - see yourself in my eyes (Sonickraft Remix)[45:31] 22 Binary Finary - 1998 (Whitesquare Remix)[48:31] 23 Mind Against & Dyzen - Freedom (Club Mix)[50:12] 24 Gheist - Only[52:24] 25 ARTBAT & Shall Ocin, feat. Braev - Origin[56:57] 26 CamelPhat & Mathame - Believe

Opening Scene: S4E2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osPVh1mT5WoUnderstanding Kim Wexler https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHhGjnzAEqE

Lalo ScenesIntroduction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJv-QBdxSaUInterrogationhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5osSNZ1jykhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSDLNjwIjbMLATE ADDITION: Tony Dalton and Vince Gilligan on BCS Insider: https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/better-call-saul/608-better-call-saul-insider-GKShJeCHRkE/ 

Watch the Howard Hamlin video essay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvPoZS-Wr0k

Listen to the BCS Insider podcast: https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/better-call-saul/105-better-call-saul-insider--J5jRD4fLhX/ (12mins)Watch the Better Call Saul Season 1 Recap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Jr33FcB9lAWatch "A Sick Joke" - Chuck's scene in Chicanery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rreFXFnlKO4