The Swyx Mixtape

Audio source: https://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/945080108/a-century-of-money (6 mins in)This is a story I only vaguely knew and I enjoyed this retelling of the Great Depression leading up to the FDIC.

Audio Source: https://share.transistor.fm/s/d717f16dFollow Julia Che's work on Openess, her new open source funding/community startup.Topics Discussed  in sequential order, but timestamps arent available bc the audio has been cleaned.Swyx shares about his background, previous career in finance, Gamestop & shorting it, transitioning to tech at age 30, community building.What it means to be a GitHub star, what’s so appealing about open-source & why participate?"Open-source sets tech apart from every other industry because we share so much.”Figma CTO Evan Wallace’s design tool, esbuild.The future of open-source, corporatization of open-source.The biggest pain points in open-source.GitHub sponsors, Patreon and HackerOne.Learning in public, React and the beginner's mindDeep work vs. learning in public, Andy Matuschak’s working with the garage door up.On creators being enslaved by their own structures and systems in producing creative content.Living your life in high-definition, idea velocity.Building a personal brand as a developer.The Developer’s Journey & community building.Diversity, equity & inclusion in open-source.Where open-source devs could use a helping hand.Governance“Ultimately software is an expression of values and if you fundamentally disagree with the values of the people running the project, then you will eventually disagree with the code as well because it will just encode the values over time. Having welcoming and inclusive values is important.”Swyx’s favorite open-source project: Svelte.Hawker markets in Singapore, “Food is the great equalizer in Singaporean society because rich & poor people eat the same things.”How to get started in open-source as a developer.Space in the community for non-technical contributors.Transcriptswyx: [00:00:00] I was recently on the building openness podcasts with Julia Che. Julia is building a startup to solve open source funding and build open source communities. This is her first time doing a podcast interview, so there is a little bit of awkwardness here, but I thought it went off relatively well. We talked a little bit about learning in public, being a GitHub star and building developer community. So here it is! Julia Che: [00:00:26] Swyx I am so excited to chat with you today. Thank you so much for agreeing to do this inaugural interview of this podcast. You're my, literally my very first guest ever on the show. So I couldn't be more delighted, honestly, So you have a pretty strong following of dev community on Twitter.And so they know who you are, but for others who might not have come across you before, can you share an overview about yourself, who Shawn Swyx Wang is and what you're currently up to?  swyx: [00:00:55] Sure. And thanks for having me. It's it's an honor to be considered and I'm happy to help launch your podcast, which is pretty exciting.I'm Shawn. Aye. Work at Temporal is head of developer experience. And I'm originally from Singapore. Mostly work in New York previous career in finance, where I did everything from currency derivatives to treating GameStop in, shorting it and actually making money. But I transitioned to finance transition to tech at age 30, and then essentially did a bootcamp.And since then I've been, I've worked at Netlify AWS and now at Temporal on the side, I do quite a bit of community work. So I used to be the moderator of our stature, BRGs, which is the subreddit for reactive Oliver's the largest JavaScript framework. And that, that grew from like something like 40,000.When I joined to over 200,000 now  I recently left that to run my own paid community, which I run for my book. And that's available at learninpublic.org as well as a, another framer community, just cause I like it. But this time starting from zero, I literally started to, I think we just hit like 9,000 or something like that.And we're going to launch our third conference this month. So, yeah. I like community stuff. I like blogging. Happy to talk about any of that. Julia Che: [00:02:10] Awesome. Yeah. I mean, you're a very active member in the open source community. You're even a good pub star. So I'd love to know what that means.And furthermore, what open source means to you? swyx: [00:02:23] Honestly, it's just. Beta test slash super user program. Just like a lot of companies have like some kind of recognition for people who are  maybe prominence users. Also, they give you some swag. So this microphone that I'm using is what I'm good hub. And yeah they give you events, look at some of their upcoming features and it can ask you for feedback.So it's a little bit of a status in recognition in exchange for some work, but every one of us love give up, get up so much that we don't mind. Cool. Julia Che: [00:02:54] And so what do you find appealing about open source and what makes you want to participate? swyx: [00:02:58] The source is one of the things that make makes tech.  So different from every other industry.Particularly, I came from finance, sorry, let me turn off my discord because it's going to do that maybe in a few minutes. Well, opensource makes sets, sets tech apart from every other industry because we share so much. So there are two, there are a few benefits coming out of that. One is that we have to duplicate work a lot less.Like we can just stand on the shoulders of giants a lot faster. And And build faster, in theory, the practice is that it's very messy, but in theory, if you find the right things that you can reuse, that you can use them forever and it's totally free and you can inspect the source, you can change it.It's a really wonderful thing. The second thing is that you actually get a lot of scrutiny over the highly used open source. And I think some of the, I don't know who said this, but. No sunlight is the best disinfected. Whenever people write software there's bound to be bugs, especially security holes.And when and more people looking at it, the better. So that's a very strong reason to open source. But me personally, coming into the industry, I think that the personal reason is that it's a great way to learn because that the code is a source of truth. And you can literally just open up the code and read what, what goes on under the hood.Not a lot of people do it, but every time I do it, I find I learned something new and it really is a reliable way to level up very quickly. So I think I owe a lot of that. It's open source. Like when I. Was in finance. A lot of the way that we used to learn was like you go to college, you learning some textbook and then you pass some CFA exam and then you try to work on your investment thesis or your pricing model, and that's proprietary.And you do not share that with any other banks or hedge funds.  And I realized that's fine, but it's very zero sum. We have to look at things like I win only if you lose.  Whereas in tech it's a fundamentally more positive som...

This is a narrated version of my blogpost. You can share the tweet thread version here!---I turn 35 today. Here are 35 principles I have accumulated and try to live by:Life is too Short for Short Term Games. We only have so many years for long term games to compound.Writing is Stupendously High Leverage.It helps to organize my thoughts and learning (aka Building My Second Brain). I win even if nobody reads me.It enables me to share great ideas even while I sleep (as a Friendcatcher). I am constantly shocked at the caliber of people that read my work and DM me their thoughts. There is absolutely no other way I would be on their radar.Blogging helped me sell $4k worth of an empty PDF on the day I decided to write my book because people trusted me.It's led to multiple job opportunities from great companies (e.g. Netlify, AWS, Temporal) that I would have otherwise struggled to be hired at.Learn in Public. Most of you know me for this one... (read up if you're new round here, welcome!)Good Enough is Better than Best. In a world of infinite abundance, you can lose yourself constantly chasing the hottest new thing. Satisfice rather than Maximize.Less is More. Minimalism wins: Subtracting is harder than Adding. Quantity reduces perceived quality. Depth and whitespace stand out. (yes I realize the irony of this principle in a list of 35)Create Clarity. Simple Explanations of What, Why, and How are extremely Optimize for Change. Optimizing for anything else tends to make systems MORE fragile, not less. If you learn only one lesson from React and GraphQL, learn this. https://overreacted.io/optimized-for-change/Seek First To Understand, Then To Be Understood. Don't get defensive about your point of view or perception of reality - understand theirs first. Either you will learn something new or you'll understand how to better get your point across. Hold multiple perspectives in your head and be able to summarize the best arguments of all major parties in a way that THEY agree with.Praise in Public, Criticize in Private.As satisfying as it might be to dump on someone publicly, I need to remember how it makes them feel.Everything is not awesome, and I despise fake positivity. But I can either help or make them feel bad about it and the former is more effective than the latter.Exception for companies and people that are actively harming or misleading the vulnerable.Build an Empathy Check Habit. I can't take back an impulsive response that hurts someone. When I can't check with trusted friends, I need to think before I tweet.People remember how you made them feel, before what you said. A good story has more power than a good argument.Treat Others How They Want To Be Treated. The Golden Rule is -sadly- not good enough when your privilege is higher or expectations are lower than others'. Time for The Platinum Rule.Complete Truths are Not Welcome.Most people are more interested in...being entertainedsharing outragefeeling good about themselvesdefending their reputation...than debating truth or improving themselves.Trying to change them is ineffectual.Let them be, and seek out like minds.Organize IRL Events. You can do a lot to create excitement and connection in a community simply by organizing dinners and meetups and conferences. Svelte Society started on a whim exactly like this. Now there are thousands of members drawn to the Svelte community that wouldn't have before.Don't offer unsolicited help. Make Sure Help Is Wanted Before Offering It. Men - be especially wary about this when women are talking about their problems. Sometimes they just need support, not solutions. (But sometimes it really IS about The Nail...)Ask For Help More. People are happy to help and like you more when they have helped you. Don't worry about showing weakness; you are getting something far more valuable in return. Use a Help Timeout.Log Your Wins. e.g. when you ship something big or small, or when someone says nice things about you. They can help when you are feeling emotionally down, or when writing a brag document. Help others celebrate their wins too. P.S. a brag slack channel can serve as an OLTP store of personal wins.Don't End The Week With Nothing. The reason you don't see any of my work prior to 2017 is because I thought it was sufficient to just work hard at my finance job. Now all of my intellectual output from my 20's - some of the best research and writing I have ever done - is locked up in some mailbox somewhere. Never again.Pick Up What They Put Down. Guarantee feedback by giving feedback. https://www.swyx.io/PUWTPDSpeak Succinctly. Stop speaking in trailing sentences and double-barreled questions. Set the general direction and shut up. If they're off-track, interject. This is preferable to preempting all conversation paths to show how smart you are.Optimize for Retention, not Consumption. We are the sum total of still-relevant knowledge we still remember, not the total of the volume of content we consume.Illustrate Your Point. Adding code samples or drawing 2x2's and system diagrams makes your idea much more effective. A picture IS worth a thousand words! Even this shitty example works, you can do better than me.Separate Your Identity from Your Work. You can learn a lot on the Internet for the low, low price of $YOUR_EGO.Build Tools For Yourself. This is a superpower and a sandbox all rolled in one that is guaranteed to make you happy.Collect QuestionsObsess on collecting good answers and you ...

This Clubhouse-style Q&A was held as part of my support for React Summit 2021 (https://remote.reactsummit.com/). Moderated by Robert Haritonov, CEO of GitNation.Timestamps2:30 How do you keep up with the changing landscape?5:00 Balancing Learning Time with a Job7:15 What are the top technical and soft skills to transition from junior to senior?12:30 The Importance of Communication and How to Do it Well17:30 Prioritization, Batching and Pair Programming19:20 What can Seniors Do to Help Foster Juniors? Apprenticeships, Mentoring, Sponsorship and Allyship23:15 How to convince older devs to try new tech? Address their concerns, do proofs of concept, know when to fold.28:45 Nontraditional background. How to convince people to let you through the door? Networking and Personal Content Marketing.34:00 How do you make technical decisions as a senior and avoid getting stuck? Innovation Tokens, Action Produces Information, Pay for Advice40:30 Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution42:00 Can you still be a fullstack engineer?If you enjoyed this chat, you're welcome to check out our career community for 30% off!Mentioned LinksChapter 5 - Junior to Senior (free PDF)Gergely Orosz's Tech Resume Inside OutMy Podcast RecommendationsEvery Public Engineering Career LadderSponsorship: https://larahogan.me/blog/what-sponsorship-looks-like/Allyship: https://www.samanthabretous.com/blog/black-women-equal-pay-day-heres-how-you-can-help/ Diversity Resources (this is a work in progress list, hence not yet published, but i've been sharing these with pple who ask): https://gist.github.com/sw-yx/7aeedbeac1bb81017cd4f9d66b223b63Ninah Mufleh Airbnb ResumeInnovation TokensIf you'd like to see my React Summit talk, check out: https://youtu.be/yLgq-Foc1EETranscriptRobert Haritonov: [00:00:00] So yeah, I'll let you get to your Shawn just, go ahead as you please? swyx: [00:00:03] Hey everyone. Hey, I'm Shawn,  also known as Swyx on the internet.I'm a React fan and but also a Svelte fan and one of my talks, that I speaking later on in an hour or so is seven Lessons to Outlive React. But this discussion room is a different topic. It's a non-technical topic. It's related to the book I published last year.Basically talking about how people can go from junior to senior, how the non-technical elements of the software engineering job is very relevant for our career progression and something that we don't really talk about enough. And yeah, I'm very interested in sharing my experience, the experiences of the people that I learned from.If you wanna check out the, the amount of research I did you can check out the site at LearnInPublic.org.I'm going to just explain a little bit of what I wrote on the junior and senior chapter. So essentially   part of what I was trying to do here was define what a senior engineer is.And  it's one of those things where everyone has a different opinion and  it's more of a pay scale than it is a well accepted metric. To some people you have to have at least three years at a high growth startup. Others can take up to eight years to become a senior engineer. Or there's, let's just say they don't care about the number of years, right? It's  more about what you can do. And ultimately I think for me is what I really care about is for everyone to have the prerequisite skills enough of the prerequisite skills, and accomplishments that you can make a strong case for a senior developer, but then also market yourself as meeting enough so that people notice you and hire you whether, internal promotion or externally when you do a lateral transfer to another company. And I think a lot of times it involves acting like a senior engineer before you officially become one. So it's a bit of a chicken and egg, right? And I think that's something that we have to recognize more and study more. . Because I don't think we have  enough of a conversation about how to convert juniors to seniors and It's the biggest gap in the industry, everyone wants to hire seniors,  but there are so many juniors trying to try to upskill themselves. 2:30 How do you keep up with the changing landscape?I've just invited avocado Mayo. Are you able to speak hi, can you hear me?  Hey, how's it going? Shawn? The eye. Good. Thank you. I'm a developer based in Canada. I am, I have a question for you a general career advice.So I, I feel that the front end landscape is constantly changing and the web is constantly evolving. A question that I have for you is what are some ways that you kept up with the cutting edge so that your call I'll still the learning and what are some ways that you kept up with the changing landscape in development?Great question. It's something I get a lot, but honestly I don't, I haven't really slowed down to like document a process. I just do whatever comes to mind. So this is a bit off the cuff. So something I care a lot about I think it would not be an exaggeration to say that I do get a lot of my tech news off of Twitter and the things that, so I tend to do this strategy, which I call following the graph, which is like figuring out what the smart people that have effect they have built, the things that you use, like the reacts and the babbles and the WebEx, figuring out what they, how they got where they are and what they're working on today, because they're also excited about other things they didn't stop just because they were done working on, on, on the tool.So I follow the graph, like I follow who they follow, and then I figured out who their influences are and try to understand the historical context of where these technologies fit in. And that's all an attempt to try to figure out like what themes I should focus on for the future. So every now and then I try to step back and go okay what am I interested in?Because I think honestly the reality is that there's too much to keep up on. And I think if you try to keep up on everything, it's a full-time job and you'll never go deep on any particular topic. And that's also really bad. It's not enough to just know the names of every project.You actually have to have tried it out to know the philosophy. You have an opinion when you're, in your company, you're asked for it. So that's why I try to do I tried to have a thesis. I tried to inform it by following people who I think are doing interesting things in the ecosystem. I think attending conferences actually really helps a lot because the people who are ex...

Listen to Part 1: Origins here.Audio Source: https://www.sunrun.com/quick-reads-from-ceo/masters-of-scale-podcast-sunrun-ceo-lynn-jurichTranscript: https://mastersofscale.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/rapid-response-transcript-lynn-jurich.pdfSAFIAN: You mentioned climate change. With health concerns rising over the last year, itsometimes felt like climate's become, I don't want to say a secondary priority, but it's beenpushed down. Sustainability now certainly includes health in a way that maybe it didn't a yearago. What do you think the long term implications of that will be?JURICH: I think that we're seeing more impact from extreme weather than maybe thequestion appreciates. If you think about California as an example, with people at home,working from home, schooling at home, and the fact that the power is getting turned offbecause of fire risk, that is a very visceral experience for people, and we'll see more ofthis.Puerto Rico is another example where the energy system is just frail. I think 70% of theenergy assets are old, and extreme weather is only making it worse. So I do believe thatit is and will increasingly become visceral for people. And back to that change formula, Ithink that dissatisfaction is, and that pain will drive awareness and attention to it.We're taking a different approach, which is, independent of your view on climate, we canoffer you a better lifestyle and meet carbon emission goals. If you look at the home,there are about four big choices you can make around energy that lead to your carbonfootprint: your car, how you power your home, your heating, and your cooking. Anelectric vehicle is less expensive. An induction stove is superior. An electric hot waterheater can save you money, and solar saves you money. So if you look at what we cancreate for a household, it's an average of $1,000 to $2,000 of savings. So you don't haveto be a climate warrior to adopt these products.The challenge is really social and political and financing, because many of these greenassets, they're more expensive upfront, but they're less costly over time. And that wasthe innovation of starting Sunrun was we saw solar as a technology that would clearly bethe future.What was so breakthrough about solar is that it can be distributed. You can site it locallywhere the power is actually going to be used. In the U.S., two-thirds of your power bill istransmission and distribution. From a first principle standpoint, if you're able to useexisting infrastructure and put the solar on there, it will be a more affordable solution. Wejust needed to eliminate the upfront cost, and so we invented the business model ofsolar as a service where we paid to install the solar system and the homeowner justbuys the electricity, just like they would from the utility, only it's cheaper and it's green.When we think about climate, we don't think it needs to be this ethereal thing. It's abouteveryday savings, a better lifestyle, and job creation.SAFIAN: Now, when you describe all that, it raises the question of why residential solar isn'tmore ubiquitous. It's still a small proportion of residential homes have solar. So what is thatabout?JURICH: First, because this is called Masters of Scale, I’ll throw out a few scale facts foryou all, so one, we already have 500,000 customers, just Sunrun, and we've raisedcapital to install about nine billion dollars worth of solar. Sunrun is the second largestowner of solar in the U.S. behind NextEra, the huge utility. Residential does have scalenow and will increase.If you look at a market like Hawaii, where the value proposition was strongest first, it'sabout 30 to 35% of households have solar power. California is about 12%, the rest of thecountry is about 1 to 2%. It will all get there. The amount of power you can get off of arooftop with solar would serve 75% of California's energy needs, it would serve 40% ofthe U.S. energy needs, so it is a scale technology. What's holding us back is inertia. It'swhy do I want to do it now? 90% of Americans are in favor of solar. The interest is there.It's just the challenge of friction in the process.SAFIAN: So I have to ask you, your biggest competitor is Tesla, which took over SolarCity a while back. What's it like to compete against Elon Musk?JURICH: Well, you never underestimate him, that's for sure. I think we're still in theadoption phase where a rising tide lifts all boats. So I'm very pleased with their brandbeing well-known, well-liked because it just increases the awareness of solar energy. Aswe mentioned, it's only 1, 2% penetrated right now, so that'll help lift us. Recently when Ilooked at the data in the markets where we're both competing, we have a higher closerate, effectively. Again, it's this normalization of solar that's a benefit. It's the awareness,it's the trust in their brand, and I aspire to, over the years, have the Sunrun brand bebetter known in terms of turning your home into an electric energy asset.

Listen to Part 2: Growth hereLynn Jurich started her solar energy company in the depths of the 2007-2008 financial crisis, as a 26 year old with no prior experience in the industry. Now it is a $10b giant beating Elon Musk's SolarCity at its own game.Audio source: https://socapglobal.com/2019/02/ep-17-lynn-jurich-ceo-of-sunrun/ (5 mins in)TranscriptNina Bernardin: [00:00:00] What are some of the very first steps that you guys took? I mean, starting like a coffee company, I can like understand like basic elements of starting a coffee company, but starting a solar company...? Lynn Jurich: [00:00:12] Yeah. Well, so, so I used a lot of my analytical skills and experience to, to start to learn more quickly.And the first thing I did was look at a network of Stanford alumni who were in the energy industry and just started calling them and interviewing them and asking questions about, Hey, how viable is solar? Is it in your plan? I was talking to utility executives, anybody who would really take my phone call out of the Stanford alumni database and what I heard.Very clearly from everybody was, Oh, it'll never work. There's, yep. Solar's getting cheaper, it's getting better. But there's so many sophisticated people doing this that, be careful, implying that I wasn't sophisticated or that I was young and naive or inexperienced and energy.And that it wouldn't work, but I was 26 probably, but they validated to me that there was a business opportunity. It was just, the commentary was very much like, Oh no, but it's not for you. So that also kind of gets me going, gets me motivated a little bit. And so I did that. And then we started talking to potential customers.So some of the early customers that day w solar, where universities were, other public schools governments. Some businesses, some forward thinking businesses. So we just started calling customers, trying to understand what they wanted, what their needs were. And so it was really a lot of, I, because it's, it was a nascent industry, there wasn't a lot of research to do.It was very first person just kind of calling around anybody who would take your phone call. So that's really how we got started. so what we figured out fairly quickly was there's a lot of interest in solar, but there was a lot of complexity to it and there was a high upfront cost.And so the model that we came up with was, Hey, people will switch to this. If you can just make it easy. And if you can just turn it into a monthly bill, like what they're used to paying for energy. They'll adopt it. So we came up with a model where we would pay for the installation of the solar panels and just sign customers up to long-term contracts to buy the electricity for us.And there were some early subsidies for it. So we could actually, even though solar was fairly expensive 10 years ago, compared to where it is now we could sell electricity. Just for a slight premium versus what the utility company was selling it for, even with zero upfront cost for customers.But we had to get convinced consumers to sign up for a long-term contract, because the business model from Sunrun's perspective was we had to pay  $50,000 to install a system on a homeowner's house. Upfront. So the only way to recover that over time, if you're only billing a customer $150 a month is to get them to sign a long-term contract.So we had to launch the business by convincing people, Hey, work with this startup sign a 20 year contract. That's what we are. And still today, our customers signed 20 year contracts. To buy the electricity for us. And and so we had to go out and convince a number of customers to do that, that as you might imagine, was quite expensive because that $50,000 a pop you're putting the cash out for that with these 20 year contracts, that you're going to get the money back over time, but you have to find a way to finance it.And so then we had to go to banks to, to figure out how we could pool enough of our home owners together.  To go to a bank to say, Hey, can you give us a million or so dollars upfront? We're going to in return pledge you these, 200 homeowners their cash flows for the next 20 years. So it's a very, it was a financing model.And so what we had to do, which was in retrospect, quite risky, was spent all of our own money upfront buying all these systems. So we funded the company ourselves about $3 million. To get started, which was, as you might imagine, a lot of our savings and didn't pay ourselves for quite a long time. And and then we're able to go out and raise capital from people that we had worked with before venture capitalist.So we raised $7 million from venture capital firms.  But still we were spending all of that equity capital to buy these projects. We did not have the project financing lined up. So we didn't have that bank financing lined up that was going to help us make the upfront cost, and pledge the customer cash flows to pay back the bank.So we had to make a bet that we could get enough consumers to do that. And that we could go to a bank and find someone to give us capital in order to make it a more sustainable business. And that was in 2007. And unfortunately right when we had spent millions and millions of dollars, the market crash  and it was really.Quite stressed, quite stressful, quite horrible time. But we were able to finally convince a bank who was not as exposed to the subprime crisis that, we all remember from 2008 where they still had capital available to even invest. And we were able to convince us bank  to give us $40 million which kept us going for, the next year through the crisis.And we developed track record and we prove that consumers wanted this, that people were paying their bills that, there was a deep market for this. And then from that point forward, we've been able to steadily attract the capital to finance the business. And now we're up to raising some more than $3 billion worth of that capital over the last 10 years.

Audio Source: https://joincolossus.com/episodes/10262551/pujji-a-primer-on-performance-marketing?tab=transcriptTranscriptThe Execution LoopPatrick: [01:17:01] Can you walk us through this idea of the loop, the execution loop, and maybe it's specifically... I don't think it is specifically just suited to bootstrapped founders or businesses. I think it's very generally applicable. It's an interesting combination of quantitative rigor, and acknowledging that you don't know what the future holds. Maybe there's some over the horizon vision, or goal, or whatever, but that you have to be very flexible along the way, but also be very rigorous. So not loosey-goosey along the way, like hold yourself to hard standards, and that there's this happy medium for the best operating cadence within a business. Can you walk us through this loop?Jesse: [01:17:39] Let me talk a little bit about why we built it, because I think that's a very important piece of backdrop. So we started the business when we were 25. In the first few years, like most businesses, it was really fun. And then the business actually had real revenues in EBITDA. And then we realized we were waking up, more often than not, shit-scared that somehow the golden goose was going to go away. And we said, "You know what? We thought we wanted to build something long-term and cashflow, but let's just sell it. Let's get this thing into an exit." We grew up really fast. Glassdoor started popping up with very negative things about the culture. My wife was like, "What's up, dude? You don't seem that happy doing this anymore." And we really got to the point where we said, "Man, we're not enjoying this and our culture is not great. People don't like the culture." And it is a very common entrepreneur offense, especially in the first business. And so we started working with a coach, and we said, "What's what's going on here?" And there was a few things, we started doing this thing in the Conscious Leadership Program. There's this book, The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, which has been pretty life-changing for me. And I'll just share a couple of the concepts and then I can talk about the loop.So the first concept was types of motivation. And there's these five types of motivation, according to this paradigm, and it's fear, extrinsic, intrinsic, play or genius, and then empathy or love. And that's more about the human experience, not about a person individually. And these are all, again, these are fractal. So we might feel these all five of them in any given day for given different things that are going on. And in general, we're motivated by them. And you think about fear, motivation as like a chip on someone's shoulder, "I'm not great enough." "I'm going to go conquer the world." And you think of empathy and love as like, "Man, Mother Teresa, I'm going to make everyone's life a little easier." Extrinsic is money, titles. Intrinsic is my own thing. Play and genius, I think of like Buffet, where it's like, "Oh, I just love what I'm doing. I'm enjoying it."And they talk about fear... They're all effective forms of motivation by the way, and there's none better than worse... Fear tends to leave a negative residue on yourself and other people. And it tends to run out on a non-renewable resource. It's the common thing where someone goes, "I got my number." And you get to your number and you go, "Oh, no. Now I want that other number because I was scared. Now I'm here and I've run out of motivation." And love and empathy, and play and genius, tend to be renewable, and they tend not to leave a negative. They tend to lift people up as you do them. And so we started learning about this and had this moment where we were like, "Oh my God, we've been, more or less, totally fear motivated for a very long time. And no wonder the culture, no wonder everyone feels negative"fullscreen And the other concept I'd tie into this is the concept of context versus content. And this is just another paradigm, which is, oftentimes, some really bright people especially go, "Oh, do I like healthcare? Do I like marketing services? Do I like..." And I got to this point personally, where I was like, "I don't like marketing services. Why did I start a business like this? And I'm not motivated to keep doing it." And with the help of my coach, he was like, "You were fear motivated. You made some money, you sold a part of your company and now you don't feel scared anymore and so you're struggling with what motivates you." And we went through this whole process.And the context versus content idea is, it sort of like, from where are you doing it? And there's people who are mission-driven, cancer-curing companies, but if they wake up every morning and they're coming from a place of fear, or they're worried about how they show up in the trades, or how much money they're going to make, you'll hear that they're not happy, their cultures are not happy. On the flip of that, you'll hear of like insurance brokerage, or some random commodity business isn't sexy, doesn't have a great mission. But the people doing it, the founder especially is coming from a place of wanting to make his employees lives great and wanting to help people get better in their careers, or truly wanting to help his customers. And those businesses are flourishing cultures, and all the great things.And so that's the concept of context versus content, from where are you coming? And a lot of the paradigm of conscious leadership is just starting to first notice. In one moment, you're feeling fear, in one moment you're feeling like you want to help an empathy. And we looked at OKRs, which we'd been using. And we said, "Gosh, there's two issues with them we didn't like, in particular, in most of the goal-setting processes and systems." We said, "They seem very fear-oriented." They just felt like you got to set this arbitrary goal out there, and you're going to rush, rush, rush to hit it. And it's got to be a big jump up. And if I don't hit it, oh gosh, that's not a good thing. And the other thing we didn't like about it was it tends to... To us, at least, it seemed way better for a business you understand and know, to go, "I can improve conversion by 20%." but in entrepreneurial ventures, you don't exactly know what's going to happen.And so the motivation behind the loop is, can you build an organization and a culture that gets all the benefits of entrepreneurial thinking and approach, speed, ambition, creativity, problem-solving, tenacity, all of these amazing things, and mitigates the things that tend to make humans' lives not fun, the fear of fundraising, the failure, or someone getting reamed in a conference room. And by the way, I don't know that it's possible, to be clear. ...

Robin Dunbar did an interview to coincide with his new book, and there are surprising depths to Dunbar's Number that isn't normally picked up by commentators.Audio source: https://play.acast.com/s/intelligencesquared/thescienceoffriendship-withrobindunbarandhelenczerskiShare this clip on Twitter!swyx: [00:00:00] Something I also learned about the Dunbar number is that it's very tied to age. We don't always stay at. 150, we start with about one or two wishes, our parents then we get to about five with our closest friends. Then in our twenties and thirties, we  overshoot and go to about 200, 250 people. By our thirties that drops to 150. And then into our sixties and seventies, it continues to decline. And there's an age related dynamic to this which i didn't really appreciateHelen Czerski: [00:00:30] Albert wants to know about the correlation between age and the ability to form friendships. And what's, why is there a connection between age and new friendships? And he also, I assume it's, he says at the end, I've personally found there to be a negative correlation which is. Diplomatic, I guess.Robin Dunbar: [00:00:47] Yeah. So I used to getting very close to home to what happens to be age. Yes. So actually you can think of this really as a sort of arc that you start out at birth and it's an arc, which involves the circles. So we do seem to acquire the circles of friendship as complete circles, as it were over time and correspondingly, we lose them as we age, but th the arc looks something like this.You start out. With as in a core of about one and a half there, obviously your parents, as it were by about five, you can reach the five threshold. And then as you age, you can accrete the various layers as your social and cognitive skills developing, and you can handle them.They want, it seems to happen is in the late teenager, early twenties. You overshoot as it were, but they commonly get up to about in terms of face-to-face and meaningful friendships, roundabout 200, 250 people. And then it's by the thirties that will cut down and drop to about 150, which is the sort of, obviously there's various individuals vary around these numbers, but these are the average numbers from about the thirties through to.Perhaps the late sixties, it's very stable at about 150. And then you go into. This sort of period of terminal, I'm afraid decline from perhaps 65 70 onwards, where you gradually lose the layers and end up if you live long enough, backup one and a half. Again. Now that's a consequence of that end of losing people in your sort of layers dying, or maybe even moving away or becoming unavailable for other reasons.And. If you were in your 20 somethings or teenager, if somebody moved away like that, you would simply replace them with somebody else. You would go to the usual venues that, that, where you meet people and you would find somebody else to add in and replace the missing person. I think what happens when you get to all this, the general sense in the literature is w w.We've only done a small amount on on, on this aspect of it. Once you get to the older age, you just no longer have the motivation and the energy to get up and go to places where you're going to meet new people to fill out that. And also you're not sure what people. Talk about anymore, if they're younger than you or complete strangers who built up this cozy little world, which has been very stable in the latter decades of your life and you're embedded so much within that you're probably less well engaged with the wider community.Than you would be when you're younger. So you don't, you're not sure about going to, clubs or whatever, where you would stick out like a sore thumb anyway. And B you don't know how to ask or invite a conversation. What kind of conversation do you have? What do you want to talk about?Helen Czerski: [00:03:36] So it's  not that you can't form friendships. It's more that, there are a few opportunities and you're possibly a bit fussier about, that's anecdotal entirely, but I think people spot what they want in a friend. Yeah. Robin Dunbar: [00:03:48] Yeah. I think this is what happens in this. So the overshoot in, in the late teens, early twenties is that w we look at it as a younger people being careful shoppers, they're checking around all the supermarkets to see what's available out there in terms of the possibilities for finding good friends and romantic partners and all that kind of thing.And once they've had a look at what the market looks like, then they start to narrow down in their thirties because the other big thing that rather forces this. Narrowing down is if you reproduce and as all those who have young children will remember, babies and social life, absolutely incompatible.If it takes a long time to emerge from it.

Robin Dunbar did an interview to coincide with his new book, and there are surprising depths to Dunbar's Number that isn't normally picked up by commentators.Audio source: https://play.acast.com/s/intelligencesquared/thescienceoffriendship-withrobindunbarandhelenczerskiShare this clip on Twitter!swyx: [00:00:00] I think people who work in community and social networks think a lot about Dunbar's Number, and i was pretty surprised to hear Robin Dunbar actually talk about it recently so here's a clip from his recent interview:Helen Czerski: [00:00:12] Let's get onto the numbers a little bit.  There are these numbers that seem to be surprisingly robust. Tell us a little bit about the hierarchical structure on what those numbers are. Robin Dunbar: [00:00:21] If you look at how often people  talk with their friends and extended family, what you find is. That you can string everybody out from the person who devote most time to the person who devote less time to, but actually it's not a sort of simple line of declining contact.It's rather bumpy. And those bumps occur in various specific. Places which cause your social network, the sort of collection of friends and extended family, you have to look like a set of ripples on a pond. If you like, where a stone has been thrown. If you think of yourself as the stone, right in the center, you're surrounded by these ripples, which go further and further out.And in fact the analogy is quite good because the inner most ripples are usually a bit higher than the outer, most ripples of getting towards flat as the energy dissipates. So the inner most layer, or the ones you devote most time to, in fact, you devote 40% of your total social effort to that inner core of just five people.And then beyond that, you titrate your time, according to the value of the relationships in many ways. And you end up with these quite distinct layers and the layers count cumulatively you see. So each layer includes the layer inside it, but there  technically one and a half, right in the center, five, 15, 50, 150.And then they extend beyond that 150 is your sort of natural social networks, but they extend beyond to 500, 1500, 5,000. That's the largest circle we know anything about. And it really seems to differentiate between. Completely anonymous people, people you've seen before somewhere, or you recognize the photo, but it's probably as much as we can actually cope with, but those layers, we pick them up.Not only in face-to-face interactions, we pick them up in telephone databases, if you look at how often people phone each other. You can see it in Facebook, if you look at the frequency with which people post to named individuals. We've even picked it up on Twitter. Pretty much anything you look at. If you look at the structure of organizations, the structure of natural groupings of humans, you see the same layers.They're extremely robust.swyx: [00:02:32] There's an implication here of how Dunbar communities form an us versus them approach. And Robin Dunbar actually proposes that there are some ways in which we find connection across very, very large groups.Helen Czerski: [00:02:43] You can't just have a group that gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Eventually it'll split into two groups. And even you say, around the dinner table, if you have eight people, it tends to split into two groups.There's a lot of what feels like tribalism to me in society is a lot of us. And then you're all a lot or you're there a lot and a lot of people and I have to confess I'm one of them would just, wouldn't it be nice if everyone just stopped being in a tribe and just all got on, is that is nine nice that LIDAR of everyone.Not belonging to a very strong, bonded social group and just, accepting people. Is that a pipe dream?  Are we programmed that there has to be an us under them at some points, because if you've got people in your social group by definition, there are people that are outside it. Robin Dunbar: [00:03:21] Partly obviously it's all the screaming stuff, but we also do it at a cognitive level, a psychological level, whereby we look for people who are rather similar to us, so-called homofeely effect, which is why we get these echo chamber effects.  We tend to like people and spend, want to spend those time with people who are similar to us and a whole tranche of in particular cultural dimensions, which we call the seven pillars of friendship.And these are things like shared interests and shared moral views and shared sense of humor, shared musical tastes and so on and so forth. And it turns out that we're very good at building kind of mega communities out of one single dimension. So normally. With your nearest and dearest you'd perhaps share.Six or seven of these seven pillars wisdom. So if you'd like to think of them as a supermarket barcode of your kind of interests in hyphen and so on, on your forehead or accepts that you speak them obviously, but sort of when you get down to the nether, reason regions of your social network, you might only share one or two, but being able to take one of those.As the basis for creating friendships with what amount of friendships with strangers seems to be a skill that we've managed to develop quite effectively. So this is the thing Helen Czerski: [00:04:41] where, someone supports the same football team, or they play the same sport or it's that sort of thing.That, that is enough that we're already automatically on the same side. We've got shortcut. Yep. Robin Dunbar: [00:04:50] Absolutely. And that's exactly what it is. It's a shortcut through get having to get to know them better paradoxically though. The one thing that seems to be particularly good at creating a sense of bondedness with a complete stranger is your musical taste.So if they liked the same music as you boy, you're onto something good here. 

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfZm0tPUxjESite: https://codingcat.dev/podcast/1-15-whats-up-with-svelteDetailsShawn or perhaps more popularly known as, Swyx, is a frequent writer and speaker best known for the Learn in Public movement and recently published The Coding Career Handbook with more advice for engineers going from Junior to Senior. He has worked for Netlify and AWS and is also the co-host of the Svelte Radio podcast.QuestionsWhere are you living these days?What is Svelte and how is it different from other frontend "frameworks"?The website Svelte.dev explains a lot about why I love Svelte. It says, write less code in languages you already know, compiles the framework away to a tiny vanilla JS bundle, and easy out of the box reactive state management. All of this sounds fantastic, so why are companies still choosing the other big 3 frameworks. Is there anything Svelte missing?a. https://www.swyx.io/svelte-sites-react-apps/I saw you have a course on egghead on Design Systems with React and Typescript in Storybook. Do you think Svelte would be a good choice when building a design system since it is so close to base HTML?Built in animations and actions out of the box are 2 things that really make Svelte stand out for me. Can you explain more about what actions are and how you use them in Svelte?a. https://github.com/sw-yx/svelte-actionsThe Svelte docs are really nice, but when it comes to video tutorials there isn't much out there. Where would you tell people to go that wanted to get started learning Svelte and would you ever think about creating a course for Svelte?We've all heard the rumors that SvelteKit is coming soon and I know you don't work on that specifically. But, with this new solution coming out that will supposedly handle static site generation and server side rendering, do you know if Sapper is going away or what is happening there?Additional Links Mentionedhttps://sveltesociety.dev/https://github.com/sw-yx/svelte-actionshttps://svelte.dev/https://svelte.dev/examples#actionshttps://www.svelteradio.com/https://egghead.io/courses/getting-started-with-svelte-3-05a8541ahttps://frontendmasters.com/courses/svelte/https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZSr5B0l07JXK2FIeWA0-jwhttps://sveltesummit.com/https://podrocket.logrocket.com/swyxhttps://svelte.dev/blog/whats-the-deal-with-sveltekitPurrfect PicksThese are fun picks of the week. Maybe something you bought online, a great show you are currently watching, or that last book that you thought was amazing.Shawn WangThreejs JourneyBrittney Postmahttps://www.swyx.io/svelte-sites-react-apps/Draggable Kanban App with Svelte - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcaYol_XFk4&t=1529sAlex Pattersonhttps://undraw.co/https://github.com/sw-yx/spark-joy/blob/master/README.md#illustrationsTranscriptAlex Patterson: [00:00:00] Welcome back. Perfect peeps to perfect ad dev today on the show we have Shawn Wang also known as Swyx. Hey Shawn, how's it going? swyx: [00:00:11] Hey, thanks for having me. Yeah, happy to be here.Alex Patterson: [00:00:15] Thanks. Thanks for coming on. A little bit about Shawn, or perhaps popular known as Swyx is a frequent writer and speaker best known for the learning public movement. And recently published the coding career handbook with more advice for engineers going from junior to senior, he has worked for Netlify AWS and is also the co-host of felt radio podcasts. That was quite a bit of stuff.swyx: [00:00:39] Yeah. Is that too long of a bio? I've been thinking about cutting it down?Alex Patterson: [00:00:42] I don't think so. I think it's perfect. Honestly, I really like busy. Brittney Postma: [00:00:47] That's really cool. We like swyx: [00:00:48] all the content. Okay. Making up for lost time. I was a career changer, so from 2011 to 2017, I was finance. And now I'm trying to make up for it.Alex Patterson: [00:00:59] I think you're doing a great job. You've probably leaped over a lot of us. So I probably varied deleted as I always tend to do, because I'm just so excited about the guests. Usually not as much, well equally as the sidle and subjects. So, today we're talking about what's up with felt. And possibly some things there.Brittany will probably lead a lot of this conversation today. Folks, you probably hear too much from me, but Brittany loves fell. And so, I'm going to let her take charge on this one quite a bit. The only things that I want to know before we dive in is felt where are you these days? Are you at home or where are you? swyx: [00:01:32] Not for those watching on video. This is clearly not daylight.  It is 3:00 AM my time in Singapore. And basically this is where I was born and raised and where my family lives. Normally I live in New York but. You know exactly a year ago, I fled New York because I wasn't sure if the healthcare system could take me if I got COVID.So I came back to the only place I knew, which is here. And I've been here. It was supposed to be like, I actually packed for like two months and I left all my stuff in my apartment and I was like, it's a short trip. It's fine. And now I'm still here. Repeatedly. It's Brittney Postma: [00:02:06] crazy. That's exactly how we all felt like it's going to be over in a couple months.Like, let's just do this for now and then no, we're still here a year later that you got to go back to the family. swyx: [00:02:19] I've lived through this I've lived through SARS which actually shut down schools here in Asia for a while. And I think Americans don't know how it is. So maybe, I do think that you ha you don't take it as seriously if you haven't been exposed to it.But like everyone everyone of us in Asia knew exactly what to do. And we just did, follow the playbook. But it was over in two, three months. It wasn't like, We were scared. I was scared for ...