Polly Want a Market? Meta Sez Yaaaas!

JR Reynolds: Hey, hey, hey, folks, it's Yelling at Robots episode Giant Sweatbox. Action! Get ready. It's time for world-famous Yelling at Robots, starring tech legend Joshua Raphael Reynolds and Ian Thalonius Bosberry. The show starts now. Yeah. Folks, Ian Ian Ian Thelonius Fosberry really demanded I told him when I told him ⁓ what the temperature was in the in in command central and yelling at robots command central here. which is thirty thirty four degrees up here, thirty four. Wow. Yeah. That's is that a lot? I don't you know, I still haven't really acclimated to the ⁓ to Celsius. Yeah, that's pretty hot, dude. It feels like a lot. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ yeah, yeah, I told him We I will be I will be It's weird actually. So there two things are happening inside of me right now. One, I want to get through this as quickly as possible. Two, I'm having a hard time thinking and articulating my thoughts. This feels difficult. Like what am I gonna do? This this episode could very well end with me scrambling to find Mary's phone number and be like, get upstairs, your your husband is dying. All right, folks. Up first today. We will talk about meta, we'll coin a new term for what's happening inside of it. It is bad, hilarious, strange. Really a moment to observe the unfolding of humanity. ⁓ second, we will talk about ⁓ Ian sent me two other things, I guess. ⁓ I mean it was a meta thing I was really talking about. So we'll have a we'll have a two minute segment at the end where Josh explains how you interview. Good news, hiring managers across the world. Hiring in an age of AI isn't hard. It's easy. Just let the robots do it for you. You check out, you go to the hacienda, have yourself a tropical mojito. This is where my head is going right now, by the way. I'd love to be in a hacienda having a tropical mojito. ⁓ yeah, and then let an agent do it for you. ⁓ actually, the answer, Ian, is digital twin. Have we talked about my digital twin that I'm building? ⁓ yes. Folks, in the next few episodes of Yelling at Robots, you will see me replaced with a digital twin who's going to conduct and behave and perform exactly as I do, with flawless execution. It's okay. You'll be you'll forget it by tomorrow because you're not gonna remember any of this. Guys, tomorrow I'll probably be dead, to be honest. So no worries there. cool. Well, with that, ⁓ let's begin. You miss a hundred percent of the shots you do take if you're Mark Zuckerberg. Up first meta and coining our term for what's happening inside of meta. yeah. What do you think? I mean meta plosion wasn't bad. Yeah, what are you are you googling what's happening inside are you googling the prediction market thing right now? No no no I'm asking Claude what would be a funny name and see if it can come up with anything. Okay, while you're doing that, I'm gonna s use meat space technology. So I'm gonna use my meat space technology and just think. I'll do some brainstorming. You can ⁓ meat like actually okay. So at first I was like, is he saying meat like steak? And then there's like, no, maybe he means like meat like meating. And then now I'm like, no, he means meat like steak. The meat between my ears. Yeah, so mud a so call kind of zucchification. Ooh. well No. Zuckiness. Yeah, well you do have some good ones? Go ahead and springboard it or springboarding. No, there's an obvious one that's not it's that is ⁓ it's not really funny, but it's accurate. It's face metastasis. Things are metastasize ⁓ metastasization, yeah. Yeah. Metastrophe. Metastasize. Metastrophe, yeah. I mean Okay, sure. Yeah, okay. Let's keep going. Metastrophe. ⁓ Zucker dive? I mean, I don't like I don't hate using Zuck for something. It's kind of like a Zuck, yeah. Because Zuck is the cause of a lot of this pain. And folks, so for those of you who haven't seen the news or don't know what we're talking about, ⁓ meta has fallen apart. ⁓ but recently Zuck de I guess decreed to his underlings, his peons, his domain do Zuck slopping. Keep going. This is There's something to slop and zuck. So far I'm not Zlop. No. Yeah, Zuck, Zlop, Z Zuck, Zuck, Slop, Slop, Llama Plosion, Zuck Zubble, Gabbubble, Zuck Zuck and Zuck. Zu Zuck Zucker. Mother Zucker. Mother Zuckification. Mother Zucker. Zuck Zuck and Zuck is good. ⁓ there's something there. Yeah, I don't know if we're gonna get it, buddy. I know. The zucking sound of impending despair and failure. Slop zuck. Zucker slop. I think I think trying to force slop in there is is too hard. All right, folks, we're halfway through the show. We're at the midway point. I think we're gonna go ahead and move forward. Our homework. So gentle gentle viewers, listeners, view listeners, ⁓ we have a comment. ⁓ yeah, challenge. ⁓ yes. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Ian. This is this is why we're partners, man, because this is beautiful. What we're gonna do is we're starting a contest right now. You leave a comment. And also don't forget to smash that like button and subscribe. ⁓ leave a comment with your p pitch for the name for what's happening inside of Meta right now. All the things, right? The layoffs, the forced labeling, the we're get we'll get to the prediction market in a second. Prediction market? Yeah, you heard that right. Prediction market. Zuck wants the trifecta. Metaverse VR AI labeling. AI. He's just like, ⁓ what's the latest fing hype technology? Have they started a blockchain yet? Have they done a blockchain? Are they crypto? ⁓ that's a question. Has Meta gone crypto? It's next. Mark my words, folks. What's up next? Just meta will pivot to crypto. So your challenge: leave a comment, give us a potential name. We will pick the winner, and the winner will get the first piece of yelling at robots merchandise. ever created. It will be if I can find a supplier in China, it will be a plushie of our yelling at robot mascot, Carl, that is the robot with a lobster head. They did try to they did try to crypto. It was gonna be in twenty twenty. So they've already tried to cry it was originally called Libra. ⁓ yes, that's right. Uh-huh. ⁓ And then Project before December twenty twenty. Libra blah blah blah. Silvergate wrote off their DM investment in twenty twenty three. ⁓ yeah, they shut it down in twenty twenty two. They were like, nope. Needless to say, a a crippling failure. I mean, trust me, whatever Zuck touches turns to sh. So this is Yeah. But Good to hear that they've already hit that one because he wants he's like he's got his ⁓ tech billionaire failure bingo coming on here where it's just like And what's up next for him, Mr. Fosberry? ⁓ we talking about the prediction market? We're talking about the prediction market, my friend. Yes, absolutely. Yes. Came out this week. ⁓ the New York Times and a few other ⁓ places, ⁓ but they are Allegedly building an experimental app internally called Arena. It would theoretically be independent from Facebook and Instagram, so it's like a new a new thing. It's something new, something you've never seen before. to compete with Polymarket and Cal ⁓ Calshi. Calci? How do you Calci? Kalshi. Zuck wants ⁓ he wants some he wants the wet his beak. He wants a taste of the prediction markets. Why? Like, what do you think is going on in his head around this decision making? Like, literally nothing? Or do you think like I honestly this is what this is this is the sort of thing So remember back when I ⁓ we talked about this originally like back I don't know when we kinda started the podcast around that time because it was like we were it was like two months, three months into the The the craze ⁓ from the holidays and the new the new world we live in. ⁓ the new world order. ⁓ actually sorry, no no no maybe well we talked about it, but I was talking about it like for me last year when I was using like ChatGPT and like when I first started to like just ask it for like help with like coding. And I could feel the offloading all cognitive ability and critical things. I could feel it just draining from my body. I feel like this is what it looks like for a C level executive. If you don't if you don't keep that in check. Okay. Here you go. This is what happened. Interesting. Interesting. I wonder hypothesis. I wonder, yeah, well, because you know, one of the things we've also talked about on the pod is ⁓ is his clone, right? His AI clone. Right. And he has two clones, one for himself to help him CEO. ⁓ And one for the peons that they can talk to, complain to. Maybe I don't know, asks for more labeling tasks when they're done. and maybe he's like maybe the clone is in charge. Maybe he's ⁓ like just like this is just a ⁓ Zuckclaw that's been running since sometime in late January. Breaking news here first. Mark Zuckerberg has died. He's actually died six months ago, and his company has been run by an AI clone since. This explains everything. So great story. Not much to say on this one. Stupid idea. Way to go, Zuck. It honestly feels like he's doing whatever the opposite of like if you were to read the fifth discipline. Just do the opposite. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. All right. Cool. Just don't just call it like reverse invert every one of the like twelve twelve laws or whatever in their the twelve principles. And then whatever the opposite of systems thinking is, do that. Fifth discipline for those of you who aren't aware, ⁓ Peter Senge, I don't know how he pronounces his name. Seminal book on systems systems thinking, just like loops, feedback. I mean he's Understanding how humans work in a company and like at scale. And he's the one who was it in that book where he's talking about kind of like the criteria for satisfaction being like mastery, purpose, something like that. Is that that book? Or ⁓ whatever, doesn't matter. point being sometimes. Point being, ⁓ Mark Zuckerberg has lost his fing mind. And is just flailing. It's flail yeah, we gotta work flail. ⁓ d I'm not gonna try to interrupt the contest, but flail is there's a breadcrumb there, folks. Flail flail. cool. Well, that's it. What's next? ⁓ Bad news. Agents are coming for your job. Good news, they're coming for your boss's job too. We got ⁓ eight minutes left. What's your so wa were you did you ⁓ were you serious about ⁓ having some thoughts on interviewing, or you just think just be agent driven and f it? What do you want to know? We've we've done a lot of interviewing together. You and I've scared the s out of some people. Yeah, we Ian and I were reflecting, by the way, on our time together at Reactor, so we would frequently be paired up for interviews. Maybe we talked about that on the show and we might come in with exactly this energy, if not more intense, because we just like get away. The better the candidate, the more accepted. We both were. Well, and also it's like the audience is right there, guys. He's right there. And I think we lost a lot of good people that way. Do you remember the time? ⁓ wait, wait, wait, sorry. Let's just reminisce for a minute. Remember the time? I think it was like our second time together. And this would have been in ⁓ 2016, maybe 2017. It was probably 2016. So I was I still had like Ruby on the brain or whatever. ⁓ yeah. God, this guy was a real I asked I we there was a pause and it was like, I don't know, we gotta come up with another question because it was this was the technical round, so it was a two hour interview. ⁓ it was a lot of like discussion just about deep tech stuff. And I think I asked I asked the candidate if something something something have you heard of s of solid principles. ⁓ my god. and after the interview with Josh was like, What the f was that? Well I was just like Dude, like, ⁓ have you read the the Gang of Four book on design patterns? I'm like, I mean, yeah, sure, relevant, indeed. I mean, and if you're doing it, like, but still, it's just like I don't I feel like that was ⁓ yeah. But I was appreciated that. No, I I never asked. Tell me about the Liscott substitution principle. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. ⁓ so there's a lot of different ways that I think, and I think actually the The way that we did stuff at Reactor, like having deep conversations and trying to kind of like find the edge of of someone's experience is definitely something that I incorporate to this day, still holds. ⁓ but another thing that I've ⁓ done more recently, actually no, and we did do it at Reactor for a bit too, was actually a pair programming like session with a person. Yep. Yep. that would not work the same way it used to. Why not? well maybe it would. I don't know. Maybe maybe seeing how they use ⁓ it's yeah, I guess that maybe the way the well, because here's here's the thing, right? Like the way that I I I like I don't believe in like f elite code or f making them go into Google King Commons. Whatever. Like I'm very much like, here's the repo, you download it, you you work in your environment, your machine, you work where you are comfortable, however you want to do that. I don't care. But that's all usually free, right? Like VS Code doesn't cost anything. In NeoVim doesn't cost anything. I'd like I I feel like asking a candidate to be like, hey, let's burn some of your tokens on your personal account. Well let me tell you how we're doing it. ⁓ Okay, go and first off, folks, if you are watch listening. And you actually do hiring manager interviews and you think that lead code is an effective way to interview and understand somebody's technical sill skills, please hit the unlike and unsubscribe button. You are a piece of human sh who doesn't understand how to build anything, and you should be not I mean, you you should just you should be ostracized. You should be shamed. No, you should just think about what you've done and and change, because it's not good. so we're doing a One, like, you know, so it starts our process is it starts with a hiring manager interview and I'm asking qu like and that's pretty standard just to get a sense ⁓ and I really try to make it conversational, just kind of like, is this actually a good match? Let me give you I can give you some of the landscape. You can tell me what your mindset and approach to building things is and how you ensure quality and trade-offs and stuff. Okay, cool, good match. Next We have a system interview, but the system design interview, it is literally just can you express yourself around abstraction and systems and system relationships visually? Can you communicate using that language and and express these ideas and have a good conversation about those ideas? Sure. We might throw something at you and see how you think about it, but it's really again about exploring how somebody is thinking and reasoning in the abstract. At a higher level in into relationships and systems. This is extremely critical in the age of AI. And this has almost no like not a big change there for me in terms of the Yeah, that's true. Like if someone was like just, ⁓ I'll just ask Claude, then I would be like, But however, it's like in our interviews too, it's like you can use n like agents or AI as much as you want. And if it's kind of like, ⁓ you know, I I remember something about like I'm not sure whether that would be better to like put a load balancer in front of it or put a load balancer behind it. Hold on, let me just see what this thing says. And then I'm reasoning with that information. I don't have a problem with that either. That's fine. That's true. That's my point. Can't hold everything in my head. So we're encouraging people to work as they ⁓ would work and using that accordingly. For the technical interview, we're doing essentially more of a refactoring exercise. So and we we have two options for the candidates. We either provide them with a code base and in ⁓ you know, then you can download it, share your screen, use your own tools, or we provide them we've provisioned I mean unfortunately it's Microsoft based, so it's a Windows environment, but it's wired up to our own open AI. We've got like VS code wired up to our provisioned open AI server. So we you can use the intelligence, right? Use our intelligence, but you have to use the tools, which is just VS Code and or I think we have Claude. But like so, we'll give you a system you can use, but you you know might be a little bit more awkward just because it's also you know, I think RDP or whatever, ⁓ you know, whatever that that platform is. But sure. And then you just refactor code together and talk about it. And again, use the tools as you would. And it's because that's super useful information. I like the refactoring one. That's good. That's better. Because I I d I'm I've I've done more of the like here here like let's get set up and here's a s here's a ⁓ kind of a shell skeleton of an application. Sure. In whatever language. And then ⁓ and then here here are some things we need to work through and like process some data or like put a React component on a page or whatever. But that's more like ⁓ blank slate. I like the refactoring. Well the refactoring's good because we can insert Poor quality and and and and play like and that's also by the way, like a lot of ⁓ you know, folks if you're working in software the majority of work's gonna be fixing sh that got broke when somebody did it dumb the first time and like let alone the agents. So yeah, I mean it it's kind of like it it is similar, you know, I don't know if you remember at Reactor, we would we would give them a piece of code and just talk about it and talk about kind of and stuff. But this is actually like let's jam, like let's just sit together and actually rework this code. So you're making them work in Java, is what you're saying? Why would I what was Was this with the visa code and reactor? Or was it a open source job? I had to translate that into TypeScript once or We did, but you can never achieve the same level of pure garbage. You know the hilarious thing? You can still like that is still the code that runs that tool. Wow. ⁓ A hundred percent if you are running c on your Java thing. Nice. There is some real gnarly s in there. There's some stinkers. There's some stinkers in it. Insane. Yep. Nope. Folks, looks like we're at the end of the half hour. ⁓ Ian, any thoughts to close us out with? Nah man. Good to see ya. Glad you're ⁓ glad you survived. Okay, folks, that's the episode. ⁓ thanks for coming. Thanks for joining. Don't forget to hit that like and subscribe button. And in the future, if you can, please try to conserve energy and stop contributing to global warming. I'm hot. That's a wrap. ⁓ yeah, by the way, it's only because it's personally inconveniencing me. I don't what? What w what did you have I'm sorry? What is under the scene? What's under the scene? Well, you know, normally I put a number there. That's the you where I put the episode number. Amazing. Incredible. This is This is just ⁓ this is actually an incomplete summa summa summation function where it is ⁓ it's the sum from one to n where i equals zero. ⁓ I don't think I have an incremental actually I've I need to I ⁓ you have a it's a function it's a G it's a function in F of G of I. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure. F of G of I. Sure. Yeah. Actually that is good until you get to N. No, it works. I just don't know what G Or FR, so. Folks, stay tuned for the next episode when I will reveal one of the functions composed in this summation. Exciting! ⁓ reason to come back for all the math nerds. Alright, folks, have a good week. Bye. You just survived another episode of Yelling at Robots. Better luck next time.