Join Ben, Starr, and Josh on this week's FounderQuest for a look at our dystopian future. Ben shares the most interesting questions he received while interviewing and the discussion results in the creation of an onboarding manual for time traveling job candidates. Also, Discover which host, like, bought a totally rad pager, like, this month. Beep Beep!Show NotesLinks:Pagersdirect.netPagerdutyO’Reilly SafariFull Transcription:Josh:So I think I mentioned a little while ago that I've been kind of experimenting with ways to disconnect from the internet and from my digital life. And being able to turn my phone off is a big part of that. But with the business and, especially if I'm on call or even when I'm not on call, I'm still a little, I want to be available for alerts, or major things that if you all need to get a hold of me for an emergency. So my thought was, if I want to just be able to shut my phone off and not ever worry about it, just know that there's always a way to get through to me, I could have a landline at home.Josh:But then I had a different idea and I want to see if I can show it to you. We have to, this is going to be very dramatic because we have to wait for it.Starr:I'm waiting.(pager beeping)Starr:Did you get a pager?Josh:Maybe.Ben:A raspberry pie with a breadboard. Just a little light that flashes.Starr:So awesome. Oh my gosh. You really got a pager.Josh:That's a pager.Starr:They still sell those?Josh:They still sell them.Starr:Where did you get that?Josh:I got this at pagersdirect.net.Starr:Oh my gosh. Okay. We're not even advertising pagersdirect.net. Your source for all paging supplies!Josh:Well I'm pretty sure I remember no, I'm serious. I'm pretty sure I remembered the brand name from radio commercials, in the early 2000s. Their website looks like it hasn't been updated since the 90s so I'm almost positive that I remember their commercials. But yeah, they're one of the options where you can still buy a pager. The networks are still all active and as far as I could tell, because I did, I went down a rabbit hole on pagers over the weekend and apparently doctors still use them, some other on-call people still use them, emergency on-call people use them, because the networks are still, they penetrate better than cellular networks apparently in some cases. So yeah, apparently it's still a thing.Starr:So that's a new pager. Does it have 5G?Josh:No, it's not a 5G pager. It is... They still run their own, the old school networks. I don't know what it is. I think it's like a much lower frequency though.Starr:Oh yeah? That's interesting. I actually, I think I remember a long time ago being like, I should get a pager, but then I just, I couldn't figure it out in 10 minutes and so I just forgot about it I guess.Josh:Yeah. So it's just, it's an experiment I'm messing with and I don't know if it's going to work forever, but I thought if it does, if it works, it's reliable and I mean it's at worst it's a backup, you know? It's just a backup alert and at best it's like, I can just leave it around the house and not worry about my phone or my computer or whatever. So.Ben:That's cool. I still have my pager from the 90s.Starr:Does it work?Ben:I don't know. I haven't used it in forever.Josh:You could reconnect it, Ben. If you have your own pager, they have it on the form, you can just put whatever the ID number is in.Ben:I should totally do that.Josh:Yeah. Yeah. You should.Ben:That's fun. That's great. Having a real pager for PagerDuty.Josh:By the way, PagerDuty supports pagers.Starr:Of course it does.Josh:It has an option for pagers.Starr:Yeah. Embarrassing if they didn't really.Ben:Because I can never turn off my phone. Right. Because I'm always the last line of defense for ops.Josh:Actually, they actually make modern, they make newer pagers. I actually went with this one, this is a refurb from 2003 but I went with this one because the modern one requires a USB charger, this requires a AA battery that you only have to change once a month. And I was like, this is actually selling me more on the old version than the new version.Ben:Yeah. Totally.Starr:2003. I'm trying to think what computer I ran in 2003. I think I may have actually had a pager in 2003 so that might've actually been my pager.Josh:That might've been your pager. Yeah. Yeah. So I'll let you know how it goes.Ben:Okay. Good. Because I'm unreasonably jealous about this now.Josh:Well we could all get one.Ben:Yeah, that's got to be standard issue now for Honeybadger. Anybody on ops gets a pager, right?Josh:I did have that thought. It's pretty cool.Starr:I mean that would be pretty cool. We could put that in our job listing. That'd probably get a couple sort of people who wanted to apply just to see what that was all about.Josh:It's also, I mean, this is an alphanumeric pager, I should also clarify, so it can send the actual alerts from PagerDuty, like what the issue is, and I can also hook it up. It has an email address, like the pager's number at whatever USA mobility, which is the network. And so I can hook that up to whatever Honeybadger alerts or anything I want to.Starr:Oh, neat. Neat. Does it have a mobile web browser so you can browse the web one line at a time?Josh:No. No browser. That's one of the features I would say.Ben:We're going to have to set up nag iOS so you can actually get alerts from monitoring straight to the pager.Josh:Yeah. We'll just, yeah. I don't think we want to take our monitoring into the 2000s, just our alerting.Starr:So speaking of employee perks like pagers, which I think are now going to be standard issue, this week, we are going to be talking about, we've been interviewing for this, our open role, our open developer role, and Josh and I have been interviewing fairly often in the past week, but Ben has been interviewing just a crazy amount. He's waking up from, from bed, from sleep for 10 minutes at a time to screen some guy in different time zone. He's just going right back to sleep. Every time I talk to Ben, he's just like, "Oh yeah, I just screened two more people." So...Josh:He's like, "I'm screening one right now." He's been quiet. That's where he was.Starr:Yeah. If Ben doesn't talk for five minutes at a time, he's probably screening somebody right now.Starr:And so anyway, out of these interviews have come some, it's really been interesting talking to people because you see a wide variety of personalities and you have a wide variety of questions that people ask you, things they want to know about the company and things they're interested in as an employee. And so we thought, it wasn't my idea. I think it was Josh's idea, that it would be interesting to talk about some of the questions that people asked us. And honestly just because we're a tiny company, we haven't had to deal with a lot of these questions before. We're kind of making up some things as we go along because let's be honest, it doesn't make sense to figure out everything ahead when you are a five person company. But yeah. So I think we're going to talk about some of those because they're interesting and might bring up some interesting discussions. What is an interesting question that we shou...

This week on FounderQuest, Josh, Starr, and Ben hypothesize how long Honeybadger could keep going if they went off the grid given the current pace of tech churn. They also discuss going all-in on COBOL and whether framework trends are actually any different than fashion trends. Get lost in this week's FounderQuest!Show NotesLinks:How to Build a Blog in 15 Minutes with RailsLindy EffectProgramming is a Pop CultureLaugh FactoryStar Trek Next GenerationBigelow TeaWallace and Gromit & Wensleydale CheeseCOBOLAngular 1 vs. Angular 2 ThoughtWorks Technology Radar Full Transcript:Starr:All right. I guess we're going to be talking about tech churn today, and by that, I guess we mean the sort of turnover, right? Like you have an app, you build an app, and it's not just done. I remember when I was freelance or like people ... I know these clients who weren't in technology and they would just expect that you build this app and you hand it to them and it works. Sort of like a house or something. It's like you built the house and you expect the house to sort of stay standing up.Starr:But with software, it seems like you build the house and then you have to sort of keep a crew of carpenters on hand to make sure it doesn't just fall down in a couple of weeks. Because dependencies are always changing. And I don't know. Standards are always changing, there's security issues, and stuff like that.Starr:So I guess this week we're going to be talking about that sort of stuff because at this point, it takes a fair amount of work keep Honeybadger ... I'm not talking about running, right. We can go away for a week and it's going to stay up. But if we went away for a year, we would come back and things ... I don't know. I feel like we couldn't just do that. Does that feel like a fair assessment?Josh:I think it's partially fair. There's some parts of our system that operate ... I mean that haven't changed for a long time. And there's some that are constantly changing or trends we have to keep up with. Ben:I think we couldn't go away for a year on the client libraries. Because every different language has its own schedule for releases. GO just had a release recently that changed error handling. And then on top of the languages, you have frameworks. React had some changes to their error handling recently. So that in particular I think we're affected by.Ben:But the core of Honeybadger, I think we could probably go away for ... I don't know. Two or three years before we had really have to change things. Because we picked a lot of boring technologies when we started. And those ... Like for example Postgres doesn't change a whole lot from year to year. I mean, yeah, it's good to upgrade to get new features that come down pipe, can you get better performance and bug fixes and things like that. But generally speaking, Postgres doesn't change a whole lot. And so you can stick with that for a few years.Josh:We host this meetup in town here in Vancouver, Washington called Vancouver Full Stack. And this last one, my brother, who's also named Ben, gave a talk on ... It was titled, I think, Building a Rails Blog 15 Years Later. And so it was kind doing the same thing that DHH did in the famous blog in 15 minutes video that got us all into Rails.Starr:Oh, yeah. That was like a huge deal back then because it was ... Nowadays, it's super common. It's like you done with some of your framework, you run some generator, and bam, you have some sort of working, basic web application like a blog. But back then, that was unheard of.Josh:Yeah, you basically either strung it together yourself out of a bunch of PHP or Perl or whatever files. Or you used WordPress or Typekit, maybe, as I recall. Was that the pro version?Ben:Oh, yeah.Josh:Yeah.Josh:So yeah, that was huge. Like being able to bootstrap your own relatively custom application.Ben:It was a movable type. That's what you're thinking about.Josh:Movable type, that's what it is.Josh:It was interesting, though, going through his talk, not a whole lot has changed in Rails as far as building a block in 15 minutes. I think the generators generate a little bit more code for you now. Actually, they're a little bit more explicit about ... So they put the code in your controller instead of just hiding it in the framework. But other than that, there was not a whole lot that has changed with Rails as far as the basics. Which I found really interesting because it's like how it's been 15 years. Because I think it was 2005 that that video came out, if I recall correctly.Josh:And of course, I mean, Rails has gotten a lot better since then. But also it has kind of just quietly done it's work for a lot of people, I think during that time. And they just had to upgrade it and ... You have to keep up on it. But compared to some of the other tech stacks that you could choose that aren't around anymore-Ben:The funny thing is that Rails itself, it's been around for long enough. But it's funny that you should say not much has changed. Because if you were around back for Rails 2 and upgraded to Rails 3, that was huge. And the upgrade from Rails 3 to Rails 4 was also nontrivial. And it hasn't been as bad like 5 to 6.Ben:But there some pretty big adjustments that happened in Rails. But yet, even still, the philosophy has changed not so much. The approach of building apps has barely changed. Like you said, it's a very similar of how it was back in the beginning. So I think that says a lot about the vision and the foresight that they had with baking in the original stuff in the framework.Starr:It's an interesting-Josh:Right, and I mean like-Starr:It's an interesting case. I just wanted to say it's an interesting case because with Rails, I have a feeling that ... How long ago was it? 15 years ago, you said?Josh:Mm-hmm (affirmative)Starr:Between 15 years ago and now, I imagine there's no code in the framework that is still there that was there 15 years ago. Or if it is, it's like a line containing a closing bracket or something. And yeah, from the standpoint of your brother trying to make the blog app, it seems very similar. And so I wonder ... It's almost as if you could say that Rails, the framework, the actually code of Rails, has had a huge amount of tech churn. But its certain aspects of like user interface have been made a bit more sort of stable.Starr:So in terms of a basic blog, and sort of functionality you need for that, the user interface that Rails presents in order to create this blog is pretty similar to what it was 15 years ago.Josh:Yeah, the user interface is pretty much the same. And a blog is the simplest Rails application you can build. That's why you chose that, I'm sure. As a straight example-Starr:Yeah, and I just want to be clear. By user interface, I'm stretching that a little bit. I'm meaning like all of the sort of public ... The things that a programmer would use in Rails to make the blog. So all-<...

This week Josh, Ben, and Starr talk vintage console games and announce details about Honeybadger's upcoming RailsConf blow out. The episode then pinballs over to dismissing FU money, insights on hiring and more. Hold on to your headphones!Show NotesLinks:RailsConfWazaRemus & RomulusSAMLDHHTableauCalendlyM Night SyamalanFull Transcription:Josh:It all started with Remus and Romulus, am I right, Ben?Ben:Oh, yes.Josh:Yeah.Starr:Oh my gosh, Remus and Romulus, those were the names of our first two servers.Ben:Our first database serversStarr:Our first database servers, I'm sorry.Josh:Was it Snickers was the ...Ben:Yes, Snickers was the first.Josh:Yeah, Snickers was the first.Ben:Yeah, so back in the day when we actually named our servers we named them after candy bars, so we had-Josh:First came Snickers, then came Remus and Romulus, and would you say that today Honeybadger is kind of in the late ... Like the decline of the empire stage?Ben:I hope not, no. We're still-Josh:I hope we didn't predestine ourselves ...Ben:Right.Josh:... with our server naming.Ben:We're still in the vigorous days of the republic.Starr:Yeah, I mean, we're referencing the Roman Empire, right? Remus and Romulus, they were ... You just said that they were like the, sort of like second servers that we set up, and before that was Snickers. I just wanted to say that you're implying that in the foundation of the Roman Republic before there was Remus and Romulus, like the official story, there was somebody named Snickers who really kicked it off?Josh:There was a Snickers, yeah.Starr:Little Snickers ...Josh:Snickers was the god that no one talks about.Starr:Yeah ... Maybe Snickers was the name of the wolf that raised Remus and Romulus, right?Ben:There you go.Josh:Right.Starr:Okay, that's a good name for a pet.Ben:I like it.Josh:Snickers the wolf.Starr:I love that so much! I love that so much, oh my gosh.Ben:Now we need some-Josh:I am totally going to name my next dog Snickers, by the way.Ben:That's awesome.Starr:That's a great name.Ben:I miss that server.Josh:Yeah, that was a good server.Ben:The good old days.Starr:Welcome to a special Valentine's Day episode of FounderQuest. We're talking about love. We take reader questions on romance, and how to ... I'm just kidding. We're going to be talking about ... Last episode we talked about, briefly towards the end we talked about how we were going to be doing the Honeybadger ... What's the official branding? What are we officially calling it? The Indie ...Josh:I think we're calling it the Honeybadger Indie Lounge.Starr:I like that. You know what would be even better than that?Josh:Tell me.Starr:The Honeybadger Indie Ultra Lounge.Ben:With sprinkles.Josh:Yeah, with sprinkles.Starr:Overstuffed furniture in there ... I don't know. I've never been to an ultra lounge-Josh:We should give out Snickers bars.Ben:I was thinking the same thing.Starr:Yeah, you should.Ben:You can have that party pack of Snickers in a bowl. Yep.Josh:In honor of our first server, yeah.Starr:That's a great idea. Actually, I've been legit hungry at conferences, so I feel like we'd get a lot of traction if we just had like a fruit bowl, just like bananas, just like free bananas.Ben:That's a good idea.Josh:We're going to have something really good there.Ben:We're working on getting a popcorn cart, actually.Starr:Oh, really?Ben:Yes.Starr:That's so cool.Ben:Yeah. Because who doesn't love popcorn?Josh:It's good to snack on, yeah.Starr:Maybe we should explain a little bit about what the heck we're talking about. We're talking about ... First of all we're talking about RailsConf. RailsConf is going to be when, like in May?Josh:Yeah, I think it's in early-Starr:It's in May, it's in Portland ...Josh:The first week.Starr:Portland is the Pacific Northwest, we're in the Pacific Northwest, so we're like, "Okay, we've got to really represent." If it was across the country, I mean, let's be honest, we just couldn't be bothered, but ...Josh:Also we have ... This is part of our origin story. We kind of launched at RailsConf, Pdx ...Starr:That's right!Josh:Was it RubyConf or was it RailsConf?Starr:It was RailsConf, yeah.Josh:It was RailsConf. Yeah, last time RailsConf was here ... I forget what year that was, it was ... I know it wasn't like 2012, but it was like a couple years after that, within that time span I think. Yeah, we went to RailsConf and we couldn't afford to sponsor, because RailsConf is a pretty hefty sponsorship price-Starr:Josh, we couldn't afford tickets.Josh:Yeah, you're right, we couldn't afford tickets, right?Starr:We didn't even get to go inside, we just sort of hung out in the hallway.Josh:We did the hallway, yeah, the hallway track. We basically bombed the hallway track, and put stickers on tables and things.Starr:Yeah, that was a lot of fun. That was one of the first times I've actually spent much time in Portland, so ...Josh:I totally forgot that we actually couldn't even afford tickets.Starr:Yeah, I remember sitting outside in the hallway ...Josh:Good times.Starr:... doing some client work for somebody, because I was still freelancing part-time, and just sort of doing that, and felt like such a rebel.Josh:I'm trying to remember that ... I don't think ... Was that before Waza?Starr:I don't know.Josh:If so, that was like my ... I had never been to a conference before.Starr:No, Waza was first because we met at Waza, right?Josh:That was first ... Oh, that's right, I guess you're right, okay. Okay, so I've been to one conference before.Starr:Cool.Josh:RailsConf is back in Portland and-Starr:RailsConf is back ... You know another cool little-Josh:This time we can afford tickets.Starr:You know another cool little sort of like circling of the circle? I don't know, looping back of the snake that eats his own tail?Starr:Yeah, so Portland has this awesome video game and pinball bar space called ... What is it called?Josh:Ground Control.Starr:Ground Control, it's amazing. That's where I first learned to enjoy pinball. That was actually on the night that I'm talking about. GitHub basically rented out Ground Control and opened it up to RailsConf people, and I looked enough like a RailsConf person that I sort of snuck in and played a bunch of pinball for free on GitHub's tab. This time, though, this time we're going to be actually renting out Ground Control ourselves, right?Josh:For a ... Yeah, for a little p...

The honeybadgers have been busy this week! Ben, Josh and Starr each have work that shipped this week that they want to brag on. This episode strides over vast expanses, covering issues like compliance, open-source marketing and content marketing. It all builds up to a big reveal at the end, where we finally announce a new Honeybadger effort: the RailsConf Indie Lounge. Full Transcript:Starr:Can I tell you the nerdiest thing that has ever happened to me, that I've ever done? The nerdiest, most embarrassing thing that I've ever done?Josh:Sure, as long as this isn't reciprocal.Starr:No, it's not reciprocal. It just reminded me of that. When I was in junior high, I was a super big computer nerd. It was the 90s, the mid 90s, so that wasn't cool back then. It wasn't seen as some sort of path to fame, riches, or anything. There was a song, it was really popular, I think it was by INXS and it was called More Than Words. It's this really sweet love song, something about my love can't be expressed by words and I was like "this is how I feel about my computer."Ben:Nice.Starr:See, I'm editing the show this week so I feel safe. I feel safe disclosing that because I can just edit it out if I want to.Josh:And you were listening to this on, what would it have been, CD probably?Starr:The radio.Josh:The radio? Wow.Starr:No, the radio. Yeah.Josh:When did we switch from cassette tapes to CDs? I don't remember.Starr:It was around that time. There were definitely still cassettes around. People still had cassette players.Josh:Yeah, but definitely wouldn't have been MP3 downloaded from anonymous FTP server or something. That feels like five years later.Starr:Yeah. I don't know what you're talking about. Are you from the future, Josh? Are you some spaceman from the future?Josh:I am, actually.Starr:Okay. So, we didn't fully discuss it but we discussed it in chat a little bit, talking about sort of what's been going on. It's been a pretty eventful week, we've shipped a lot of stuff, we've had some stuff happening on the job search front. Is that what you guys would like to do?Josh:Works for me, if that works for Ben.Ben:Sure.Starr:Okay. What should we start with?Ben:Let's start with the most boring part of the week.Starr:Oh, really?Ben:Yes. That was the most of my week, which was writing policies.Starr:Yeah?Ben:Yeah.Starr:I'm sorry. You seemed a little bit low energy too. That makes sense now.Josh:It's funny because the most boring part of my week was reading Ben's policies.Starr:Oh. Sick burn.Josh:Ouch. Sorry.Starr:So, what are these policies and why are you losing so much of your life force working on them?Ben:We are working on Site2 compliance. We have customers who would like to get our Site2 report and we don't currently have one. We'd like to have one because all the cool kids have one. The idea being that a Site2 audit gives you the stamp of approval that you're running your business in a way that's secure and does things that big boy businesses do, I guess. A lot of part of the compliance is, you have to define how you run your business through policies and then the auditor comes and checks that you're actually running your business like you say you are. We have a lot of things that we do at Honeybadger just because that's the way we've always done them, that's our MO, but this is actually documenting those processes like, how do we select a vendor? We actually do care that our vendors have security policies and we follow up on that. All these policies that I'm writing and getting done, basically just put into words exactly how we run our business.Josh:Yeah and we're mostly doing this so we can work with customers that require this, right? I think we've been finding that it has been a helpful process to actually go through and document these things just for the sake of having it. It makes us think about how we do things.Ben:It's a good feeling. It's a good corporate hygiene and it's nice to be able to say, yes this is what we believe at Honeybadger and we're putting our signature on the line saying this is actually what we're doing.Starr:I feel like in early years it would've been a much more simple policy document. It just would've been like, I do what I want.Josh:Just shrug.Starr:Yeah. Whatever.Josh:The shrug emoji didn't exist back then but it would've been the ascii version, or whatever.Starr:Yeah.Josh:The text one.Starr:Oh, that's too complicated. You have to use lots of characters to make that one.Josh:You can figure it out.Starr:No, I can't.Ben:Just use /shrug in Slack.Josh:Yeah, well. This is probably before Slack though. Campfire, maybe.Starr:Yeah, so...Josh:Sorry, Ben, I didn't mean to say that I was bored out of my mind with your documents.Ben:That's totally fine.Josh:To be honest, it's not your first choice in reading, I would imagine, for anyone but I think it has been enlightening in any case to learn some of these large business practices and terms that we're not typically exposed to. And if all the cool kids do this and all the cool kids are rich, then we definitely want to be like the cool kids.Ben:Definitely. The thing that's been interesting, though, as I've sat back and looked at some of these things and in light of the hiring that we're doing right now, it is useful to have all these things on hand for the new person that shows up. For example, one of the policies this week is the Change Management policy, which defines how we do software development at Honeybadger. We've always said it's a pretty loose process. We're pretty independent and that sort of thing but we actually do have some controls in place to make sure that we don't put bad code in production.Ben:We do pool requests and we do require someone else to review big changes and we do have automated CI/CD. We do have a way to revert changes, right? So, all of these little bits of how we do business are now documented and when a new hire shows up, it'll be easy to point that person at a document and say here's your 30 second introduction to how we do things at Honeybadger.Josh:Nice. We could probably also summarize or copy some of this stuff into our handbook then smooth over some of the legalese areas. We probably don't want to just send them to all of our compliance documents. It would be like, okay your first week is also reading our compliance documents from start to finish.Starr:Yeah, and you know we'd have to quiz them on it to make sure they actually read them. Otherwise, nobody would really read them.Josh:We could have an 80 question, multiple choice quiz on each document.Starr:There you go.Ben:Well, I mean, there is a policy that says that everyone has to receive these policies and sign off on the handbook and things like that.Josh:Yeah. Nice.Starr:You know how people are with stuff like that. It's like the terms of service on every software application, that I'm sure we've all read in detail.Josh:Yeah. Well we could probably summarize it for the handbook and then link to the long version or something like that too. Just so they receive them.Starr:By the way, I'm officially stating that I'm not undermining our policy that all employees have to read the appropriate documents. I'm just being a smart-ass.Josh:We'll speed that part up, like they do the small print on radio...

In this episode the Badgers talk about their predictions for the future of work. They also discuss some of the pros and cons to working remotely and how to prevent loneliness. Conveniently enough, Honeybadger is also hiring a JS developer. Learn the secrets of becoming a Honeybadger!Show Links:Job ListingCode[ish] PodcastBuddhism - No Mind Justserve.orgFull Transcription:Josh :              Speaking of remote controls, I told you about the ridiculous garage door I put on my home gym.Ben:                I am jealous of your garage door.Starr:              Wait, You did? I never knew this.Josh :              I did. Yeah.Starr:              When was this?Josh :              Let's see. Well, the whole thing took a while to install, but yeah, I finally gave, it was finally completed this week. But it's been in for a while.Starr:              Okay.Josh :              So it's this like, it's like one of those full, they call it a full view, but it's like, it's all glass for the most part. Like it's framed like glass panels with a metal frame.Starr:              Oh nice. So you can look outside.Josh :              Well, it's the glass, it's like opaque, like it's fogged or whatever. So you can't actually see through it. But it lets a lot of light in. So the light is awesome. It's the brightest room in my house now, I think, from the natural light. So, I might actually just move my office in there and then I just, never have to leave. But, so I got the garage door opener that goes with this system. It's like one of the top of the line. Residential ones, anyway. It's a LiftMaster and it has wifi built into it.Ben:                Oh yeah. I have one of those too. So awesome.Josh :              So do you have the... What did they call it?Ben:                MyQ?Josh :              Like the garage hub,though?Ben:                Yes.Josh :              It goes with?Ben:                Yes.Josh :              Okay, so you can open your garage door with Siri.Ben:                Yeah. So awesome.Starr:              So you all know garage doors opener, garage door openers don't have a stellar record of security?Josh :              Security. Yeah, I do.Starr:              At least the old style garage door openers, basically, it was like a four digit code. Like they transmitted like a four digit code so somebody built a device that just transmitted all the four digit codes and so you could just walk down the street and open everybody's garage doors.Josh :              Yeah. And I've known people who've done, I never, I never did that, but I always wanted to. I never got my hands on one.Starr:              I'm sure that since it's got wifi you can SSH in and use a private key on there.Josh :              Right.Starr:              Use a key pair for authentication.Josh :              Just transmits a public key for authentication.Starr:              Yeah, no, I mean, your little remote would transmit the public key and then the hub would like check it against the private key.Josh :              Yeah. Well I'm sure Apple does something like that.Starr:              Oh, probably. Yeah.Starr:              I mean, it's Apple though. Nobody tries to break into Apple products cause they're just too cool.Josh :              Yeah. Yeah. I mean if windows had a garage hub, I'd be extremely worried. Microsoft, Microsoft garage. But yeah, it's cool. And then, whenever it opens, I also get note of it. Cause through HomeKit, I guess. This is my first HomeKit device. So, I am officially a connected house, which I swore I would never do. But, I'm probably going to do more now.Ben:                Of course, you are.Josh :              Cause now I want to control my front lights. So that they're, put them on a timer or something.Ben:                Oh yeah.Starr:              Is HomeKit like the Apple home automation thing?Ben:                Yep.Josh :              It is. Yeah. So it's all integrated in a MacOS and iOS. And so, when my door, when the garage, if anyone opens the garage door at any time, I'll get a notification. The garage door just opened like on my computer.Starr:              And then you'll see the garage door open.Josh :              Or I'll be in there. But like if the kids open it. Yeah. But if my office is in there, I'll just see it.Starr:              So, what are we talking about today? We were talking about maybe doing a sort of future of work thing where we're talking about remote working and all that. But then, also, Josh suggested that we, since we have a new job opening and we're a remote company, you could say that Honeybadger is the future of work. Do you think that's too bold?Ben:                No, that's right on.Starr:              That's just bold enough. Okay, we are the future of work and we have a new job position. So I think we're going to use that as like a lens to discuss the future of work. Is that correct?Starr:              Yeah, that sounds good. And I don't even know. Yeah, I really don't think it's that bold, because we're one of the companies that are, I think, pushing the boundaries here.Starr:              Okay. That's good. That's good. Listeners can't see this, but everyone's looking at me like I'm so full of crap. Right now.Ben:                Maybe we need to ditch the whole remote thing though. We should all work from Josh's garage.Starr:              That's a good idea.Josh :              We're going to going to do the central office again. Yeah.Ben:                In yo...

Ben and Starr have an informal fireside chat about recent tax changes and how to navigate them when running a SaaS company with nationwide sales. Learn about some of the surprising rules some states have around business classifications and why you might have to pay sales tax in one state but not another. Uncle Sam is crashing the internet party, listen and make sure you're prepared!Links:Justin JacksonSouth Dakota v. Wayfair, IncAvalaraStripeIan Landsman Write for HoneybadgerFull Transcript:Starr:              Josh is not with us this week and I'm, I'm not actually sure, do we know what Josh is doing or is he just out?Ben:                He's just out gallivanting, I suppose.Starr:              That's all right. We, we respect people's privacy here at Honeybadger Industries LLC and yeah. So Ben and I are just going to do a little fireside chat episode. That's when there's only two of us around. We're only... we just sort of chat about whatever is going on and on our mind. And this week that is sales tax.Ben:                Super fun topic.Starr:              Yes. So is it okay if I set the stage a little bit?Ben:                Please.Starr:              Okay. So being an internet company and specifically being a software as a service company, Honeybadger Industries doesn't usually have to worry that much about sales tax. We are located in Washington state, which is actually one of the only places that sort of historically has had a sales tax on software as a service or services in general, I guess. And so it's really not been that big of a deal, but some things have changed, sort of... it, I don't know, I just feel like the party is, is coming to an end on the internet. We had all these great times and then now the government's coming in, the party's over and everything's owned by Google and now we're just having to sort of keep up a little bit. So. So what's been going on with the sales tax, Ben?Ben:                So you mentioned that we're in Washington and that they do charge sales tax. So we do pay a sales tax and our accountant handles that for us, figuring out what that number is. We don't actually charge sales tax to our customers though. We just decided early on that we would just eat that cost. And so we, we charge the same amount to all our customers everywhere.Ben:                But recently, the changes you've alluded to include a Supreme Court decision. So this is in 2018. Wayfair and South Dakota, and the state of South Dakota sued Wayfair because Wayfair wasn't paying sales taxes in South Dakota. And the Supreme Court overturned previous rulings, which said that basically if you were, if you didn't have nexus in a state, you didn't have to pay a sales tax in that state. So nexus being some sort of location, like a headquarters or an employee in that state. So, Wayfair is arguing, "Well, we don't have nexus in South Dakota, we don't have our offices there so we don't have to pay sales tax there." But, the Supreme Court decided that South Dakota had a point and that Wayfair should actually pay sales tax in South Dakota. And so that kind of changed everything for everyone who sells across state lines in the United States. That was kind of a big deal.Starr:              Yeah, I felt, I remember feeling sort of, it kind of felt like a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I felt some, some tingles happening. Yeah. Just because it's just so... You know, we're a tiny company, we're five people and we... possibly soon to be six. But you didn't hear that here... possibly. And yeah, and we're developers and we don't really have people on staff whose job it is to worry about sales tax and stuff like that. So, so yeah. So for me, hearing that, okay, suddenly internet people are going to have to pay sales tax sort of injected this bit of uncertainty into my life where it's like, "I don't really know what we're supposed to do." And so I actually... I emailed our accountant, which is what you do when you get anxious about sales stuff or tech stuff.Starr:              I do this all the time, mostly with my personal accountant, but sometimes with the Honeybadger accountant and... so I was like, "Okay. What, what this? Please? I'm anxious. Please soothe me." This is the new law, right? Everyone's got pay sales tax, so it's law. So it has to be really... there's just an obvious way to do it. And she was like, "Oh... actually right now nobody really knows how to do that. All the regulations are kind of up in the air. Every state is doing it differently..." And all that. And this was a year, maybe ago, I don't know... six months to a year ago. And so I was just wondering, do you know if that's still the case?Ben:                Yeah. So yeah, like I said, this happened in the summer of 2018 and we basically ignored it for a while, like most small companies did, I'm sure.Ben:                And yeah, we started looking into it and there is some, some vagaries, some, some confusion. And when the new year rolled around... 2020 started, we started look at this again because our accountants like, "Oh, you should probably pay attention to this."Ben:                And so I did a little bit of digging. And to answer your question... yeah, there's still a lot of ambiguity about going... what's going on. But it has settled down a little bit and there are some, there's some rough guidelines you can use now to know whether you should really worry about this and have to give props to Avalara. They are a company that sells a software that helps to manage sales tax reporting and remittance. And they, I chatted with them to find out, "Hey, what do we need to do and do we need to be concerned about this?" And their people were very helpful in getting started. You know, they have all those software as a service companies out there that don't have pricing on their site and you're like, "Oh, that's so terrible." Right? You know, because it just... "Give me the price, man." And Avalara is one of those where they don't have pricing on those sites. Like, "Contact us." It's like, Ugh. All right, fine. You know?Starr:              Oh yeah, of course. Because what's your other option? Like, hire your own staff of lawyers or-Ben:                I don't know, yeah.Starr:              I didn't actually know it was a product. I assumed it was just a consulting company since you sort of got this information from them. So I assumed that they were consulting for it.Ben:                Well, I don't know. Maybe they do some consulting as well, but they definitely have some software in the mix. So maybe it's a hybrid. But, they were helpful. They were actually helpful and talking to them even though they d...

History is made this week as FounderQuest welcomes its first ever guest, Justin Jackson, co-founder of Transistor.fm! A debate ensues around whether it's better to build a product for a niche market or target the larger market as a whole. Also, the next time Jeff Bezos corners you with unsolicited advice for your bootstrapped startup, just ignore him. Listen to find out why.Show Notes:Justin JacksonTransistor.fmMitch HedbergRightMessageProduct Journey podcast Kevin Kelly - 1,000 True FansJohn Gruber and Merlin Mann talk at SXSWJawaAdam WathanPeldi Guilizzoni Tyler TringasSuperhumanMicroConfJason FriedFull Transcript:Justin:             You just wait for someone to say something funny?Josh:               Yep. We just got to wait. We don't start until someone says something funny.Justin:             That's so much pressure. That reminds me of the old Mitch Hedberg bit. Do you remember that bit?Josh:               No, I don't.Justin:             He's like, "My job is to sit around and wait and think up things that are funny, but sometimes I'm too far away from a pen. So then I just convince myself that what I thought up wasn't funny."Justin:             Mitch Hedberg's my spirit animal. If you haven't... I think he's better on audio, but yeah, just look up some of his old stuff. It's just some comedians are... they'll get into a bit and the bit has stages, and they'll sometimes hit the same thing over and over again, and it'll be 30 minutes. Like Chris Rock, "Barack Obama." He'll just keep saying the same thing over and over again. But Mitch Hedberg is like fastball after fastball. It's just all one-liners. Yeah, he's so funny.Josh:               Nice. We'll have to find some links for the show notes.Justin:             Yeah. Definitely worth checking out.Josh:               And speaking of, for our listeners, I was going to say if you think that Starr sounds a lot like Justin Jackson today, it's because Starr, unfortunately, couldn't make it. Her daughter's sick, and so she's home playing caretaker. But luckily Justin was available, and so we're going to... I guess this is the first guest episode of-Justin:             Is this the first time ever?Ben:                You're our first guest host.Josh:               You're the first ever guest.Justin:             I should've worn my Honeybadgers shirt today.Ben:                Totally.Josh:               Yeah.Justin:             I love that shirt. I don't even know what I was thinking.Josh:               To be fair, you should always wear your Honeybadgers shirt. But especially on FounderQuest.Ben:                We should send you six more so you can wear them every day.Justin:             Yeah, just so I wear them every single day. I've got the Godzilla one. It's so good. Is there multiple shirts, or is that the only one you guys have right now?Josh:               There's two. Godzilla's the latest, and then the other one was like a badger ripping out of the chest of the shirt. We actually have a couple other designs that we should probably get going, get to the printers.Justin:             I think folks could learn a lot from you just in terms of swag. You definitely have the best swag. I think you set the high bar, and everyone else is just trying to catch up to you.Josh:               Well, thanks. We love our swag.Ben:                It's been a lot of fun.Josh:               It's fun. Yeah. And we like to have fun.Justin:             My least favorite thing about going to conferences... I'm going to get into trouble for this. My least favorite thing about going to conferences is somebody comes up to me with a shirt that they made for their startup, and they're like, "Hey, take a shirt. What size are you?" I'm looking at the shirt, I'm going, "I'm never going to wear that." I'm not going to wear your shirt that's for... See, I can't even talk about it because some people will know.Josh:               Hypothetical company incorporated.Ben:                They make the great painting shirts.Justin:             It's almost like people forget. They do all of this, well hopefully, they do all of this thinking about building something people want with their software product, and then they make a shirt that just like, their dumb logo or something with the .com in it or the .biz. And then-Josh:               It's an afterthought.Justin:             Although, actually, I will wear a .biz shirt. If you have a .biz domain, I will wear that shirt.Ben:                How about a .ca shirt? Would you wear a .ca shirt?Josh:               A .ca?Justin:             I will definitely wear a .ca shirt. That's fair.Josh:               You got to rep the CA.Justin:             I've had a few Americans go, "What the hell is this .ca?" I'm like, "It's Canadian. It's .ca."Josh:               .ca. That's good.Justin:             Because the C in French is ca-Josh:               Yeah. Yes. I caught that.Josh:               We're a little bit cultured here.Ben:                We are in the Pacific Northwest. We're close enough, right?Josh:               Totally. Yeah. Well, if you... I know you're a Laravel guy for the most par...

This week Josh reveals his super secret project that he's been working on and it will...BLOW...YOU...AWAY!!! Just kidding, you and your surroundings are most likely safe but it's pretty darn cool! Want more? The Founders get contrarian and talk about why they sometimes go to the trouble of building tools instead of buying ones that are readily available. They also make a case for using separate apps rather than an all-in-one solution. Ancient viral video fans rejoice and get ready for some reminiscing about The Hamster Dance and The Badger Song.Show NotesLinks:Badger Badger BadgerHamster DanceIntercomHelp ScoutZohoUnixSegmentJosh Pigford BaremetricsHaskellKramer SoundsSQLPostgresSQLHey Ya (song)Write For UsFull Transcription:Josh:               Should we have to all say 'Badgers when we clap instead of just you, like we all say it?Ben:                Yes, but in different languages.Starr:              Yeah, and it's all going to come back in slightly different line times. So it's just going to be like 'Badgers, 'Badgers, 'Badgers.Ben:                Mushroom, mushroom, mushroom.Josh:               Mushroom, mushroom. Nice.Starr:              That was... What was that from? That was from an ancient meme, wasn't it?Ben:                Yeah, it was a video.Josh:               Badger, badger, badger-Ben:                Badger, badger, badger, mushroom, mushroom.Starr:              Oh! Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got it. I was totally referencing that. I was totally referencing that, guys. So have you guys heard the song Raining Tacos?Ben:                Nope.Josh:               Mm-mm (negative).Starr:              Because my little girl is super into it, and it's a song about it raining tacos. I think it's new, but it's a very old school internet type song.Josh:               I haven't heard that one.Ben:                Have you shown Ida hamster dance?Starr:              No, I don't know what you're talking about. What's that?Ben:                You've got to check it out. You've got to check it out.Starr:              Hamster dance?Ben:                I don't even want to spoil the surprise.Starr:              Okay. I'll write it down.Josh:               Everyone should check it out.Ben:                It is like the original internet video meme song catchy thing.Josh:               Viral video. Viral song.Starr:              Okay, I probably seen it, but... Yeah, I probably seen it, but all the new viral content has pushed out the old viral content. It's like a stack that just overflows. It's like a stack overflow.Ben:                Exactly.Starr:              They should name a website that.Ben:                So deep.Josh:               My question is do we actually want to check out any of these videos, because it'll be stuck in our head and our kids won't shut up about them?Starr:              No, probably not.Ben:                Come on, Josh.Josh:               Is this like the ultimate troll, Ben?Ben:                You're spoiling the surprise.Josh:               Is it like Baby Shark or whatever?Starr:              Yeah, this is funny. So it was Ida's birthday the other day and-Josh:               Nice. Happy Birthday, Ida.Starr:              Yeah. So we did her birthday party, and we gave her her CD player, and I got her a couple CDs. She's got like four favorite songs, and they're all wildly eclectic. So we got her a Jewel CD, because she likes Jewel's rendition of Twinkle Twinkle. And we got her a Bob Marley CD, because she really likes a Bob Marley song, and some weird country western CD because it's got a Rudolph Red Nose Reindeer on it that she really liked. And what was the last one? Oh, yeah. The Wiggles, just for fun. Yeah, so yesterday... So I was very strategic about this, because kids birthday parties are chaos. So I was like, "Let's open the CD player first. You get one CD, the Jewel CD, which is super mellow." So I was like, "Why don't we just play this while we open the rest of your presents." So we had this super mellow acoustic music playing, and it made it a little bit more chill. I don't know.Josh:               Did you have a lot of kids there or was it manageable number?Starr:              There were no kids.Josh:               Oh, okay. I was going to say.Starr:              She had her party at daycare-Josh:               Okay.Starr:              -and then at home we just did it with... because all of her friends were at daycare, so at home we just did-Josh:               That's genius, actually.Starr:              -an adult thing. By adult, I mean her parents and her aunt, and that's it. And then 1000 phones on FaceTime. A complete camera crew.Josh:               Well, good for you. I've never been... I don't know. The whole invite 50 parents to your house from school or whatever thing terrifies me.Starr:              Yeah, that's why we were like no we're not going to...Josh:               Yeah,...

In this episode Josh, Starr, and Ben talk about each of their results from taking the CliftonStrengths assessment and debate the validity of the results. They also discuss if having differing strengths and weaknesses has helped or hindered them working as a team.Show Notes:Links:Macklemore 5 Minute Dungeon Common Sense With Dan CarlinStrengthsFinderStrenghtsFinder 2.0 (book)Cliff ClavinComparative AdvantageMike Perham Fieldstone MethodMyers BriggsWhat Color is Your ParachuteHarry PotterWoo Strength Full Transcript:Ben:                So, how's the vacation been everybody?Josh:               Good. For the most part.Starr:              Yeah. What have ya'll been doing?Josh:               Well, so I've been a little cynical today maybe because my family has been sick for the past few ...Starr:              Oh no.Josh:               My wife specifically. She's not feeling well and I've been on kid duty and kids are cooped up and tired of dad.Starr:              I'm so sorry, Josh. That sounds so rough.Josh:               But we'll get through that. Well, it is what it is.Starr:              Well, if you need to take a little break and go away, wrangle some kids.Josh:               Oh. I am ready to get back to work.Ben:                Just remember what Macklemore said, right? "These are the good ol' days."Josh:               Yeah. It is true. I have been enjoying the time with the kids for sure, especially after they go to sleep and I have time to reflect on the day.Starr:              Yeah. So, was Christmas great? Did your little ones just love it?Josh:               They did.Starr:              Did your little ones love it, Ben? Your slightly bigger ones.Ben:                Well, if they both hadn't had the stomach flu, they would have loved it.Starr:              Oh my God, everybody is sick this Christmas.Josh:               Everyone is sick, yeah.Starr:              Even when one of my friends back in Arkansas. I was like, "How was Christmas?" And she's like, "Oh, I got the flu." So, I don't know what's going on.Josh:               Yeah, my brother's daughter got the flu over Christmas too. So, it seems to be going around.Ben:                But we did get a new board game as a family thing?Starr:              Which one?Ben:                Five minute dungeon. If you haven't heard of that-Josh:               I have it.Ben:                ... it's a co-op card-based game. It's got a five minute time limit thing. So, you're rushing, you're playing cards to try and beat the monsters and obstacles to get through the dungeon. And it's pretty frantic and it's a lot of fun, so yeah check it out. It's three to five players. It's eight years old and above, I think. It's a lot of fun.Josh:               Pretty cool. Can we link that up in the show notes?Ben:                You betcha.Josh:               With an Amazon affiliate link.Starr:              It's so cool that you can just say that and somehow it'll happen. I'm not sure anymore how it happens. It just does.Josh:               It doesn't have to be an affiliate link for the record, Ben. But if it is, you're totally covered because I've just disclosed ...Ben:                Well, Ben will just slide his own affiliate link in there.Josh:               Right.Starr:              Yeah. So, I know for a long time, Josh, you listened to Dan Carlin's Common Sense podcast, which is now I think pretty much defunct. I listened to that too. He always talked to his producer ... I think his name is Ben, right?Josh:               Yeah. His name is Ben yeah.Starr:              And the joke is like you don't know if Ben is real, but he's just talking to Ben throughout the show. And so, I think maybe we should start doing that with our own Ben Findlay.Josh:               He really is our ... he's our producer, so yeah. I love him.Starr:              Yeah. Got our marketing expert, Ben Findlay, who is involved in the production of this podcast, so we should just start doing that and that would be really weird.Josh:               The dynamic on Common Sense was great though because he's always making fun jabs at him. And then, like any intro's like the announcer voice is taking jabs at Dan because I'm assuming Ben is writing the scripts for those.Starr:              Oh yeah. Fun fact. Our cheesy announcer voice was a direct ripoff of that show.Josh:               Yeah.Starr:              Cheesy announcer voice.Josh:               We're fans.Starr:              I don't have any original ideas, so what are we talking about today? We're talking about StrengthsFinder, right?Josh:               StrengthsFinder, yeah.Starr:              Should I set the scene?Ben:                I'm looking at it right now and, Starr, your number one strength. I'm just looking at it right now. Is id...

The trio is morphing into a duo on this week's episode of FounderQuest, Fireside Chat edition. Ben and Josh talk about their 2020 resolutions, upping their serverless usage, side projects, and holiday plans. Ben also drops a major update from a previous episode. Links:Cliff Mass Weather BlogContinuous Integration (CI)Unicorn ProjectPhoenix Project DependabotJenkinsGitHub ActionsBuildkiteFull transcript:00:15          This is our first fireside chat with the two of us, right?00:18          So you're ready for Christmas?01:28          I think so.01:31          How about the kids, are they ready for Christmas?01:34          They're ready for Christmas. Everyone's been a little bit cooped up because of the winter weather, but I don't think we're going to get any relief there.01:47          No, I saw that they had this like, what is it called? The pineapple express. This weather pattern that we have where this big stream of moisture comes from Hawaii into the Pacific Northwest and that's what we're doing right now. We've got this big rain storm coming in and I was looking at the visuals from Cliff Mass blog and there was just like the moisture was indicated with colors, right? Like you usually see on a forecast, and it was deeply red. Like all the way from Hawaii to the Pacific Northwest and the end of it, as it passes the U.S. Coast, the kind of like a fist and so people were calling it the Hawaiian punch.02:36          Hawaiian punch. That's awesome.02:39          Yeah, we had a road shut down near us because all the rain caused the soil to get unstable and so there's a little bit of a mini land slide, I guess what happened, and some trees fell down and... yeah.02:56          Ouch and Hawaiian punch, that's like a weather reporter's dream, isn't it like?03:01          Yeah, basically.03:01          Getting a name like that you can say.03:04          I'm pretty excited for Christmas. There's not going to be any snow, but that's okay. It'll still be fun. Oh, it's follow up though, for like a couple weeks ago, I think it was just Starr and I who were having the chat. I don't think you were there for this one, we were talking about the Christmas lights and-03:26          No, I was there.03:27          Oh, you were there?03:28          Yeah.03:28          Okay. All right. I bought some Christmas lights for the outside of the house.03:32          Did you? Nice.03:33          So, now I have one string of lights draped over my garage door and it's-03:40          That's what I usually have, except I didn't put them out this year yet because I was waiting for my garage door to go in and so now Caitlin and the kids are kind of bummed that they're not up, so I might put them up this weekend just because it doesn't look like it's going to be here.03:55          Totally.03:57          Throw them up for a little while anyway.03:58          It's kind of fun and it is fun, like Starr said, to see them when you're coming home, get that holiday cheer.04:07          It does, it kind of changes the atmosphere, for sure. So I thought we could talk for a second about a work related thing. Just because I think people are going to be getting this. I mean, this episode's going to go out next week, which is a couple of days before New Year's and so I thought we could, or at least I could share a New Year's resolution, which I normally don't do because usually if you share your resolutions, they don't happen. But I'm just going to throw caution to the wind here, but anyway, I think I posted this in chat before, but one of my resolutions is not to wait on a CI unnecessarily.04:52          Oh, we got to do the Starr thing though. What is CI Josh?04:58          So, CI is Continuous Integration, but there's a bunch of services that do this for you. It's like an automation feature that runs build steps on your software basically every time you push into your code repository, like github.com or whatever.05:13          So we have a bunch of tests, test code for our application and the CI service runs all those tests for you and lets you know if they passed or failed, right?05:24          Exactly. Yes. Being around for a while, the badgers getting up there in age, we have a lot of code repositories laying around now that we have to maintain and a lot of those happen to belong to me and they all have CI, and so they all have test suites that are running on every code push and that's fine. We've used a bunch of different services in the past but I think we've been using like Travis and Circle for the most part.06:04          Normally it's fine, like, if I push code and I'm not doing like a ton of changes or I'm not working on a ton of repositories at once, but lately we've been using Dependabot, which is kind of a newer automation tool which automatically submits a dependency updates to your repositories. So it's a good way to keep like your dependencies up to date so you're not like having to go and do like this massive upgrade of all your things at once. What it does is it submits a more granular like, it submits one pull request for each dependency that has a new version that's come out. So on a lot of these repositories, a bunch of them anyway are NPM packages and as you know, NPM is a super low number of dependencies in an NPM project.07:07          Like usually an average project, like a hello world might have a couple of hundred, more like an actual project might have a couple thousand. I forget how many it is, but it's a lot.07:23          It's a lot.07:26          Every time an NPM package that we're using gets updated, Dependabot on what submits a PR, when you want to go and merge all those things together especially, say like the other day I was doing this for six repositories at once that each had a bunch of a Dependabot PRs open. So it's like every time you merge it's generating a new test run, every time Dependabot opens a new PR, it's generating a new test run, every time you merge one PR and then it makes Dependabot need to rebase all the other open PRs, because it changed a package lock file or something and it needs to regenerate that for all the other open upgrades that are in process. Like 50 CIs runs need to happen. Basically I was stuck in this hell of like waiting for CI to run just so I could merge these tiny little PRs.08:30          So finally I...