Sometimes, when people get a bunch of money, the, the app gets worse.
It does seem that way, strangely.
How come that happens?
Maybe they just get complacent or something. I'm not really sure.
Or maybe it just gets harder as you scale up the. Huh? How many people?
Yeah, that's true too.
Yeah. Like how many people you have at, at, on Laravel now, full time?
Well, we're kind of in a transition period because we'd recently lost two people and like the leanest we've ever been.
Whoa.
Um, so right now it is two, three, it's like four of us.
Okay.
No, five of us, five of us.
Including yourself?
Counting like. Yeah, including myself, but not counting like my co-founder of Laravel Nova. I guess you could say like five and a half to six. Yeah. Yeah. We lost two developers essentially. Um, one I think was just kind of like burned out on development. Maybe both were, I don't know. Um, and then the other was kind of in the, uh, kind of in a, sort of a life transition of moving to a new place.
Kinda start starting fresh in a new location and like was pursuing some opportunities there, I think in person, not even remote. Oh, wow. So we are bringing on several new people to sort of, um, um, get back to like our normal. You know, our normal staffing level. Um, because right now it's like, if we lose one more person or even if just someone gets sick, like we're in trouble, pretty much in terms of maintaining what we have.
Yeah. Is when you say several, do you mean like. Like six or you mean like two or three or?
Yeah, so right now I've got, um, three people signed on. One of them is part-time and they're all starting. Two of them are starting in April and then one is not starting until June. Um, so, um, two of the developers. Um, our starting in April and they're going to work on like Laravel Ford, which is our biggest product, as well as some open source Larabar stuff. And then, um, a guy is starting in June.
That's going to help out with Laravel vapor, which is like our serverless deployment tool for Laravel. Um, I try to, I like ideally. Um, when we were really small, I liked having one person dedicated per project, but as we've gotten bigger, like it's really ideal to have two or more people per like commercial entity that we're serving customers with. Just so people can take vacations or whatever
Is that stuff stressful for you? Like hiring, managing people. How do you manage all that?
Yeah, it is stressful. It's partly stressful because I don't like to talk on the phone and like, and, um, when you're hiring, it's like, you know, you feel obligated to have like these zoom calls and these sort of like formal interviews. And I just hate that, you know, it's not necessarily stressful finding talented people because I think there are a lot of talented people out there in the Laravel ecosystem.
I think what's a little bit stressful is making sure that once they get here, they're not like, well, this blows like, and, and it's not like it just sucks and they hate it. Like ideally they get here and, um, you know, they're happy and feel, feel fulfilled and are interested in what they're working on. And I think it's, it's, I think that's been tough for Laravel in particular, because.
Laravel has like, um, it's done a lot for developers in the PHP ecosystem and they just, a lot of them just love it. You know what I mean? Because it's like Tailwind and CSS. It just like revitalized their whole view of this language and ecosystem. Um, and so like they imagine, I think a lot of them probably imagine that working at Laravel must be like going. Disneyland, you know what I mean? Like just, it must be amazing every day. And the reality is it's.
I do think it's better than most development jobs in the sense that it's pretty laid back. It's pretty flexible. It's fully remote. Um, we do work on Laravel and its products itself. So if you're interested in Laravel you kind of get to contribute directly, but like, there's still a lot of just normal work stuff too. Like there's bugs. We have to fix their support tickets. We have to respond to, you know? Um, and I think that, I don't know, I've, I've tried to be upfront this hiring round about.
You know what we do here and what people will be working on. So it doesn't necessarily feel like you're coming to Disneyland, but that's hard too, because I don't want to like, be a downer right out of the gate and be like, well, this is a normal job. It's going to suck, you know? Um, so it's hard to find like a good balance, but that's definitely what stresses me out the most, I think.
Yeah. And I, I think you would have the additional pressure. Because so many people know you, like when you give a keynote at a Laracon it feels like Steve Jobs is giving a keynote. Like everybody is there. And you do have a certain amount of gravitas, you know? And it would almost be like, in some cases maybe going and being a roadie for your favorite band. It's like, they're your favorite band, but now it's at the end of the day, you got to haul cables and
yeah, exactly. And it's like the drummer doesn't wear deodorant and like, um, you know, there's just like trash everywhere. Um, I don't, yeah, I think you're right. It is kind of like that. Um, yeah. I don't know. I, I still think it's better than a lot of development jobs. It's better than other development jobs um, I've had like, in terms of just flexibility and projects to work on, but at the end of the day, it is still a job. Yeah.
Yeah. And what's your pipeline look like? Do you just have a list of people you're keeping an eye on or how do you source hires? Like for Transistor everybody we've hired and we've only hired two people and some contractors, but they're all people I know and have had like a relationship with, you know, multiple years or Jon has known and has worked with before or something. So how do you do that?
Yeah, it's definitely part partly that, um, so we actually did just put up like a job listing, traditional job posting on Larajobs.com, which is run by Ian over at UserScape. And so people applied and the people we ended up going with two of them, I knew, um, w we weren't like best buddies or anything, but I interact with them in the Laravel ecosystem. They had contributed, and maybe they'd written some blog articles or whatever. One of the, one of the candidates.
Is, um, someone I had heard of, I didn't really know them, honestly that well, so it was more just like, um, some of the people that worked here had interacted with him a little bit and had good things to say, and then I didn't mention this earlier, but I'm actually looking at bringing on another person that's not really finalized yet to focus just on customer support, sort of like a head of customer support and this person, I actually don't know very well at all.
Um, so, but, but most of the people that work here. Uh, it's kinda like you, um, I had heard of them, or I knew of them. I didn't necessarily approach them first, but they just happened to apply to the job posting.
Yeah. Interesting. I mean, one thing about Laravel that's that is fascinating to me is that so much incredible talent has kind of incubated in the Laravel community. And like, even for me, as, you know, I'm somewhat technical, but not super technical. I could just tell, like, some of these people are just exceptional. I, I tried to hire Miguel Piedrafita, you know, like it was just like, this kid is he's on fire, you know? And, uh, you got Caleb Porzio with Alpine stuff, doing incredible work.
I mean, Adam and Tailwind and everything that he's done has come out of the Laravel ecosystem. So it's just like all these incredible people. I see that Aaron Francis just got hired by Tuple as their head of marketing, I think, and all of these really exceptional people that have kind of bubbled up. And if you, if you trace their roots, they go back to Laravel and yes, I'm always wondering for you, like, is it just like.
Because everything, and you're quite social at Laracon, like you're walking around, you're seeing people, you're sitting, having lunch with them. Do you, is that part of it? Are you, are you starting to like keep an eye on people or is it more just like when the time comes to hire you're you're like, okay. I got to brainstorm or I got to just put up an ad and see who applies.
Yeah. It's, it's both like, I'm always open to like surprises. So I don't want to go into like, hiring with preconceived ideas of who I think I should hire, but I definitely, yeah. I'm keeping an eye out and familiar with who's who in the larval ecosystem. And it changes over the years, you know, there's, there's a lot of new faces in the Laravel ecosystem that are like, um, you know, have done a lot of cool things recently.
And like Aaron Francis that you just mentioned, just kind of one of them, like, I don't know, I don't know how long he's been using Laravel, but to me he's, he doesn't, I don't remember him as a Laravel OG.. You know what I mean? Like he seems like pretty recent, um, up and comer in the ecosystem. Um, but yeah, I kind of have people in mind, like when I put a job posting out, I'm like, Hm, I kind of hope they apply, you know? Um, Uh, so yeah, definitely
It's time for like another it's time for another Laracon, because that, for me, that's like, where, I mean, you could have Jack Ellis talk about like Fathom now, now. The, the one thing I noticed at the previous Laracons: there was examples of SaaS companies using Laravel like cart hook was using it. And some other people are using it. But it seems like in the indie SaaS world, the number of examples of like popular or successful indie SaaS apps that are using. Laravel has really grown.
And now you've got all these cool use cases about people who have been building in public using, um, Laravel Vapor to build Fathom and like scale these crazy, like an analytics company! Like who would have, like, who would have thought that somebody would be doing that? There's there could be some really cool talks. I know they've been speaking at Laracon online, but there's really nothing like Laracon are you, are you going to do another one soon?
Yeah, I think so. Um, we're going to definitely do one in Europe this year. Um, as far as the us goes and I don't know, like when the best timing is going to be, it's kind of late in the game for the summer. Um, and so I actually had a venue reserved for, um, July. I think it was, um, penciled in and then. At the beginning of the year, Omicron kind of like just was getting going. Um, and it was, it was still unclear, like how serious that was going to be at the time.
I think it, I think in hindsight, like it ended up being milder than, I mean, we, we had hoped it would be, you know, mild and it kind of turned out that way a little bit, but I kind of was at a, it was a point in time of the year where like I needed to like, decide, am I going to do Laracon or not, and with just so many unknowns, I just, I just like backed out of that venue. So I kind of lost it for the summer. So I agree with you though. Like I think not having in-person conferences.
Not just Laracon, but just in general, like took more wind out of the sales from people than maybe people have realized. Like just in the PHP ecosystem in general, there used to be other PHP conferences besides Laravel. And, you know, they happened every couple months in various locations, different people would run PHP conferences. And I think without having those for two years, I've just noticed that in the PHP ecosystem in general, people don't seem like.
As fired up, like outside of the Laravel world. Interesting. And I don't know, I, you know, I don't know if it's just like, I expected it to not really matter that there wasn't conferences in person conferences and I'm suspicious that like, it mattered more than I expected in terms of seeing people face to face. And, you know, like when you leave a conference, you just feel kind of jazzed up and like ready to work on things or like work on new ideas.
And I think not having that for a couple of years has been. Like more detrimental than people may realize for some people. Yeah,
I think you're right. I mean, I got fired up. I remember the first time I went to Laracon I just, I was fired up on multiple levels because like just, you've got your story, which is fascinating.
And if people haven't heard that other interview that we did, uh, go back and listen to it, but your story is just like, it's the classic bootstrappers story, you know, you got married young, you had kids young, and I know what it's like to have that hunger to be like, I got to make something, you know, I got to like stay up and burn the midnight oil on this cheap laptop and try to build something. And then you did it. And. It didn't just work. It like really worked, you know?
And so your story is interesting from a kind of indie bootstrapper perspective. And then you've just got the business of Laravel, which is super unique because you have an open source project, but then you have this like, uh, ecosystem of really successful in the SaaS apps. Right. You've got forge. And let me see, is it forges the most profitable
forge and then vapor and then Envoyer and Nova, and then now the Spark. So there's actually five commercial things. Yeah.
And like each of those could be a business unto themselves,
actually. Yeah. Yeah.
And you've been running those with a pretty
lean team. Yeah, very, I mean, very lean, I think, compared to what it's almost like I remember in the Laravel documentary, um, there was a section where Adam Wathan was like, Laravel is like, you know, four people running five SaaS companies, which is just ridiculous. Like it is actually just, uh, just about a month ago.
"the way I'm running laravel is laughable." Um, we, uh, any other company that was making, um, millions of dollars in revenue would have like a dev team of like 15 people.
I mean, like if you go out to, if you go out to like the competitors for Laravel force and go to like, you know, their little about page or their team page, it's like 30 f-ing people and it's just, and then you log in to learn about, and it's just like on Forge, it's just like, James one guy, and it's just like, what am I doing? And so that's why that's really what kind of kicked off. Like I've got to get a few more people, at least, uh, on board here.
Um, just so we can like have more velocity and make more progress and really kind of take things to an even another level and be better than we've ever been. Um, cause we were just way we're just way too lean right now.
Um, and I think because I was scared, um, because I wasn't, I've never been a manager before, you know, I started Laravel and I wanted to keep people happy and I wanted to like make sure that, um, I didn't get overwhelmed, but it's just not possible to run the company so lean like this. I don't think anymore.
How do you. When you work with the team, how, how often do you work with them? Are you doing like team meetings every week? Are you doing one-on-ones? Are you doing dude, pair programming?
Get this. We just had our first team call ever, like last week or two, two weeks ago, because I was on spring break last week, we had never had like a full team call. And that was part of me just saying, what the heck am I doing? You know, like, I've got to stop, I've got to start treating this like. Company like a real boss. Um, I've got to like put away my like, meeting phone anxiety, and just get on zoom and like have some actual um, audio conversations with the team, you know?
Do you think they were missing that?
I think they, I mean, they said they enjoyed it. I think they liked it. And I think like, it just makes everything feel a bit more tangible, you know, like we had been working in slide together for years. Yeah, without doing that, like literally two or three years. Um, and it was just like, this is, I'm just being stupid by not doing this. So yeah, we, we did that, but as far as like working directly with them in terms of coding and writing features, um, I don't do a lot of that.
Uh, I do all of like the, kind of the review, the code review of the features they write and kind of, kind of QA them and test them and see how they're looking. Um, and we do have like daily check-ins, um, where everyone kind of types up a little, a few sentences or a paragraph about what they did that day. So everyone can kind of see what everyone's working on.
Um, but one of the goals with bringing on new people also was to kind of build up a little bit more of a pair programming culture here at Laravel. Um, so it's like if we have two people working on Vapor, I don't necessarily intend for them to both be working on two separate projects.
Like I might assign a project to vapor and then they both like pair on it and work on it because I just think that the quality and like figuring things out is going to be faster and better with two people working on it. And they both learn how that feature works. You know. Um, so I think I'm going to try to encourage that. And we used Tuple here at Laravel for that kind of thing. Um, try to encourage that when those new people get here.
You're still building a lot of the, like the big products, like the initial release is still mostly you. Right?
Uh, as far as when they first came out, Yeah. Yeah. Like I built in a vapor. Yeah. Like I coded the whole thing. So like when I read the code, it still looks like pretty much my code, you know? Um, uh, same with forge. Like I wrote it by myself back in 2014 or whatever, same with Envoyer, um, and Spark too. Um, so I've, I've always kind of taken like the R&D role at the company of kind of spiking out new. Projects and definitely new commercial projects.
Um, and then once they're out, the team kind of comes in and, and kind of takes it from there, you know, but I haven't, I haven't launched a new commercial project since vapor in, um, 2019.
We'll get, I'm going to get back to that in a second, but I, I just logged back into forge. We use Forge at Transistor for deploying our marketing site, and then my personal sites been on Forge for a long time, but you don't need to log into it. You set it up once and then you're pretty much good to go. Right. But last time I was in there, I noticed a bunch of UI updates. So something like that, where the UI gets a facelift, who, whose idea is that?
And then who assigns it, who decides who's going to work on it? And then how does that actually come to, you know, get out the door? Is it somebody on the team saying, "Hey, I'd like to freshen this up," or?
Yeah. So that was a pretty big project. And that one was my idea. Um, so I wanted to. I was kind of going through a lot of our commercial stuff and just sort of giving it a fresh coat of paint and forge was kind of next on the list. And so I reached out to the designer, we were contracting at the time, um, and said, Hey, I want to redo the forge UI.
And I worked with them, kind of, without the involvement of the team super directly to get the, I worked with, I worked with the designer to kind of get the mock-ups ready to get it all ready to go in Figma. And I got some feedback from the team, like, as we were going, of course. Um, but I was kind of the one spearheading getting that design figured out. Um, once the design was done, I like just got in slack and was like, you know, I, at the time we had a couple of people working on forge.
Um, and I was like, you know, who wants to tackle this? Or, or maybe it may have even said that like y'all can work on it together. And a Claudia Claudia, one of our developers, um, who's, who's since moved on to other things, he was like, oh, I really want to tackle it. Like, I really want to knock that out myself. And so he kind of took the reins on doing that whole project itself and, um, actually did a really good job on it.
Um, and I'm really happy with how that turned out, but yeah, that's pretty much how something like that went down.
And when you give it to him, he just takes it and just knocks it out, and then you just review his PRs every day or every week or something?
Yeah, pretty much. That's pretty much how it goes. Yeah.
Do you think, you're going to be, like your willingness now to hire more people, jump on a call, uh, start doing meetings. Is that something like you're excited to push yourself to do? Or are you feeling like I just got to take this seriously? What, what's your kind of feeling as the CEO and manager and hR officer and everything else at Laravel?
I actually do feel excited about it and I think it's going to be good for me personally. To sort of push myself out of my previous comfort zone and kind of, um, get used to new ways of doing things. And I think within the law over the last few months, I've had a lot of different thoughts about like where Laravel is, where web development is in general, how Laravel fits in to the next 10 years of web development. And there've been times where I've entertained, like maybe.
Maybe I should like sell a big chunk of Laravel commercial properties, say 80% of the company, some, um, to some entity that does that kind of thing. You know, there's several out there and then I'll stay on board as like kind of an advisor and also still sort of steer the open source side of things, but let someone with more like business, um, an acumen and sort of more managerial experience. Dictate the business end of things.
You know, in terms of marketing, in terms of hiring, even marketing people or community people or support people or whatever they think we need to like take the company to the next level. Yeah. And I'll just stay on board and kind of give feedback on that in as necessary, but mainly steer like the open source side of things. Um, and just take a lot of money off the table.
Um, and so I actually, um, I've never talked about this publicly so far, but I actually got, you know, some offers on dollar values in terms of people that were interested in doing that. And obviously it was a, it was a big chunk of money. Um, but I did like thought about it for weeks and eventually decided like, you know what, I think I'm going to just go down with the ship.
Like, I'm going to be the guy playing the violin on the Titanic, basically all the way down because, and I kind of pictured it. Like I kind of built this thing from scratch and I really would prefer to just see it all the way. Um, one, just to, just to see like how it ends, how the story ends for myself, and then also to be like the last person that turns off the lights, you know, on the way out of the store for the last time.
Um, which I think would, I would find really satisfying and I don't know how many years that will be, but I think once I decided I wanted to be. That way. Um, then I sort of committed myself to, okay, then if I'm going to do that, I need to change some things and explore like some new territory in terms of what I'm comfortable with and how we've done things in the past. And I need to really embrace being, um, a better manager, a better leader, a more visible you don't manage more manager.
Just for the sake of the team and like to build, um, kind of a different atmosphere and a different culture around.
Yeah. That must have been super clarifying once you decided, because if you're in limbo and you're like, I could sell it, that's a very different direction then like choosing, I'm going to point my ship this way and I might go down with the ship, but you know, it, it definitely could clarify some things, doesn't it?
Yeah, I think so. And I think like my decision may have been. Five years ago, you know, um, if I had gotten offered a big chunk of money because I wouldn't have saved as much money already. Um, and it would have been truly like a more life-changing event.
Um, but now it's like, since I've been running the company for seven or eight years, I've had the opportunity to sort of stash away retirement funds and, and sort of set myself up to where even if I sold the company, it's like, what does my life really change in any meaningful way? That's like Saturday, Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm probably just going to be like bored, you know?
Um, and also, I, I think I would feel bad, you know, that like these people, they believed in Laravel and in a lot of sense, Laravel is very wrapped up in like me as a person and like this personality cult almost. Um, and would they feel like betrayed, you know, that Taylor's sold off a big chunk of the company and it's not the same anymore.
Yeah, no, it was all, cause it's always been sort of this underdog thing, I think, where it's just such as it is such a lean team and it's just like, you know, delivering a lot of value for people. Is
that part, does that part, the, the personality cult stuff. Is that hard for you ever or is it been okay? Sometimes,
sometimes it's fun and sometimes it's not, you know, I mean, um, I think it helps people feel it has benefits and drawbacks. I think some of the benefits are it helps people feel. Attached to the framework in some way, or like attached to the story and they get inspired by it and it sort of inspires them to pursue their own bootstrapped ideas. Um, at the same time, it's like any criticism of Laravel becomes sort of like criticism of you.
Um, and so like if I put a feature out that's bad, Um, since it's not a very big team effort, sometimes it's like, wow, this sucks is very much like Taylor sucks as a coder, as a developer. Um, which is kind of, which is kind of painful sometimes, but I think you get used to it over like a period of years. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. And how do you deal with that? Like, do you just ignore it or do you just, do you just get so much inbound and so many mentions that it's just easy to not pay attention or. I mean, some people really struggle with that. You know, that the personal stuff is like it, uh, it really gets them down and other people, it doesn't seem to bother them
as much. I wonder if it's just like a callous, you know, that just like over time, it's just like your soul is just scarred. It's unable to feel pain any longer. Um, I think like, okay. I mean, it just depends, like if the, if the criticism is constructive and helpful, um, that doesn't actually bother me very much at all. If the criticism is like from this really hateful place, um, I tend to think like a lot of people online that.
From this place of like anger and bitterness and hatred are in like a really dark place, uh, personally, you know, um, you don't really know like what's going on in their lives. Um, you don't really know like their backgrounds. And so I try to like, remember that and not take it too seriously. Um, Because a lot of people are just going through a rough time, you know, like honestly, um, maybe they have a rough home life or a family life or rough flak relationship. And it's just.
They're not coming from a healthy place. Um,
yeah. I find that helpful to you. It's important to remember, I think, yeah, every once in a while. I'll and I mean, people starting out, this is hard for them too, because any sort of feedback just seems amplified. Like if you hear something good, it's just like, oh, it just feels better than anything. And if you feel something bad, it's like it's debilitating. But as you get more. Experience and more messages like violent.
Actually, I mean, it doesn't solve every problem, but sometimes more volume is just nice because, you know, it's like if, if I get a hundred messages a week, people talking about transistor and you know, two are bad. It's like, well, who cares? 98 people liked it. But if I only get two messages in a week and that week one person hated it, it's like, fuck. You know, it just makes you want to go.
Yeah, I agree with that for sure. Yeah. It's I think also like it, w w what I found interesting is it kind of works. It's hard to keep percentages like in your mind. Um, so like if Laravel, if the Laravel Twitter account has 120,000 followers or whatever, and a couple of people tweet something bad, it's like such a minuscule percentage. Um, and what I found interesting is like, it kind of works the other way too.
Like I've had to kind of coach the team a little bit where just because three people like request. Um, not necessarily the Laravel employees, but people will be like, a lot of people want this. A lot of people are asking for this and it's like five people. And in the context of like the whole Laravel ecosystem, it's just like a blip, you know?
And I think when you're, when I've had to get used to that as well, like when you're first bootstrapping a business, there's so many features that you could build, you know, there's so many ideas that you could pursue. And if you're, if you're constantly swayed by. Uh, a tweet here and there, it's just like, you're going to be so pulled so many different directions.
Yeah. It's true. And all that gets amplified. Like when you only have a few voices in the room, uh, you know, it's easy for one of those voices to be real loud. Uh, but yeah, if you have a thousand people in the room, you know, it's almost like if. Like, I don't know what the metaphor is, but if you, if you've ever been at a concert where everybody knows the song and they're all singing it at the same time, that's kind of like what a good feature request feels like.
It's just like everybody at the same time singing the song. And you're like, okay, I can hear, I can tell you on it. But if one guy at the front of. Play, you know, play that one song off your third album and nobody else wants it. You're like, no, I'm not going to play that beside for, you know, it's a, it's okay. To end to end. I want to talk a little bit about, I listened to your interview with Tobias or Tobias's interview with you and there's this one part that just kind of confused me.
And I think it's because I'm uninformed. You on the alpha list podcast, you were had this conversation about the future of the full stack developer. And the reason it confused me is in the indie SaaS world. It's all about the full stack developer, like full stack developers. That's what you want. You know, Jon Buda is just an incredible Rails developer. He's a good enough designer and he's just got an incredible product sense. That's even more full stack, you know?
And that that's who you want to build a business with. Right. Is those kinds of people you've got, you got Jack Ellis and you've got Paul Jarvis with fathom, you know, Jack Ellis is full-stack developer: he could build that whole first version to one, two and three or whatever he did. And so if the idea that there's like, There's something else going on in the developer ecosystem that I'm not aware of?
Is it like bigger companies are moving more to like a separation of front end and backend or what's going on in there that I don't understand,
bro. I wish I wish I knew. So like here's the thing. I think partly it's very hard to tell, like what is real in web development because you're on Twitter and certain things are amplified. That do not, they're not, um, they're being amplified on Twitter, but like the correlation to real life is not the same as Twitter. So like on Twitter it feels like everyone's building react. Front ends are calling API APIs and graph QL, API APIs or Firebase or whatever else they're using.
But I know deep down. The reality is 99.9% of web applications are not that. Yeah. And so, but I think like me and Adam have talked a lot about this. It's like, and, and we're just so confused because the kinds of things that like the makers in that space are building are not things like vapor and transistor and forge they're much like simpler things.
Yeah. So it's been hard for me, and this is something where I have to like, Stay really grounded and not get pulled a lot of different directions because deep down, I know like Laravel and rails and like full stack development is like the bread and butter of real, most real things happening on the ground. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but on Twitter, it can just, like you said, it's just like a magnification thing where it feels like, man, everyone's just kind of doing something else now.
I don't, I think you're right. Like, I don't think that's actually the case necessarily.
Yeah. So is it a little bit of pressure from like, you just feel like the young kids are getting into this new stuff and there's some of that pressure, like yeah,
I think it's true that like the young kids are not are, are all starting with JavaScript, um, as their, as their first language and they're kind of building their first websites or web apps or whatever with JavaScript, and maybe they're getting more into backend later, whereas. People that are our age didn't necessarily start that way. A lot of them started with like a scripting language on the back end, actually, um, like PHP or like rails or something like that.
And that's kind of how they got into web development and they learned JavaScript later when they needed to do more complicated front end stuff. And it's like, all the kids are learning JavaScript first and they're learning backend late. Yeah, and they need to do more complicated backend stuff. So it's kind of reversed. And so, and a lot of the, I think a lot of the younger demographic, it's just more active and more excited and more public on Twitter.
And so it kind of feels like, um, things have changed and shifted in that way.
This is like something I've talked to Adam Wathan about it. It's a, it's a big project, but like, if, if, if Adam hired me, like, let's say transistor just drove in the ground. And I was like, Hey, you come work over here and see what you can do. The biggest thing for Adam is you want a pipeline of people, hopefully young people that are super excited about tailwind and in order to grow or incubate that kind of a pipeline you'd need to plant some seeds. You need to like sponsor some bootcamps.
You need to like, get a bunch of steps along the way, so that by the time these kids graduate and, you know, they're, they're super excited about bringing some new ideas to whatever company hires them. They're saying now tailwind is great, you know, and I wonder if. For whatever, like the JavaScript community has done a good job of getting into bootcamps mostly.
And, um, I almost feel it on the hiring side, like to hire a good rails developer right now, they're all in their thirties, forties, and fifties. And it's like, it's like, how could we hire a young, somebody young in their twenties, uh, who knows rails? And there aren't any, and so.
Eh, it's almost like there needs to be some community, some community work there in the sense of like planting some seeds early on and getting people excited about, you know, building web apps, these ways, because eventually they're going to, they are, I mean, you can go. Uh, you know, whatever one of these startup companies, and they'll probably be excited about the new stuff, but there's a lot of like old crusty, grumpy guys.
Like John Buddha was like, I don't want JavaScript in my, like, we have so little, you know, like that was, and we, but finding young developers that are excited
about it. Yeah. And we, uh, we've even talked about, um, we being Adam and I. Um, well, we talk to some of these newer developers, um, we realized like, they've, they've never written like a database query, you know what I mean? They've never, or they've never written a job that runs in the background and does stuff. And so, like, we were, we were talking to, um, some kind of, um, prolific figures in that community and we kind of pointed that out.
Like, Hey, it feels like, you know, a lot of these developers are really talented, but yeah. No, how to query a database. Yeah. And they saw that as like, why, why should they know? You know, like, why should they know? And it's like, well, um, if you're working on like 99% of existing web apps, you're going to have to know how to query a database. Like I don't, you know, the world is not actually running on Firebase. It's running on my sequel. Yeah, exactly.
And so, I don't know, but like, I, I don't, I also don't want to be like a curmudgeon. That's just like always hating the new stuff, like you and your, I hate the new fancy rat music, you know? Like, I don't want to be like, like that. It's just, it's not a good vibe. And like, I want to figure out like, how can Laravel fit in to this sort of new crowd in a way. It's compelling and make sense.
And I think you're right, that it's actually smart to plant seeds, like at the front of the pipeline, so that, um, when people do want to do like kind of graduate to some kind of complicated backend stuff, it's like, oh, well Laravel would be a natural choice, you know? And. Land and our ecosystem
that way I appreciated that part of your interview with Tobias. You were saying, you know, I want to, I still want to be open to something being there. It's like, I've been super critical of web3, and I think, see there's two sides of this. Like people say, well, I don't want to hear any negativity on Twitter hating or whatever. It's like. Yeah. But on the other hand, it's okay to have some people pushing back on ideas, you know, not all new ideas are good.
And the whole idea of having free speech is so we can test ideas in the comments. Let's have it out. Let's talk about the pros and the cons and for sure older people. Uh, we are more attached to old ideas. I know that's true, but, and we can be open to new ideas, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't challenge them either. You know? So there's like this balance there that I find sometimes it's difficult, but I think we do need to be open to new staff. I'm still open to this idea.
You know, in a decade, there's going to be something that comes out of web3 that's incredibly compelling. Um, I haven't seen it yet. ... that's not buying drugs. Yeah. I'll be like, I need to buy drugs and I'll be like, shit, I should've learned some web3, that's the only way you can buy them now. So I like that.
And I agree pretty much.
I mean, it's probably for you, it's probably also worth returning to your youth and thinking through the reason you and your buddy chose PHP in college was because it was the thing. He was like, this is the coolest, easiest, funnest way to build a website or web application. And that's just branding, you know, that's just a PHP, whether intentional or not at the time being like, are you going to build it in Perl or are you going to build it in PHP?
And it's like, well, we're going to build it in PHP. Are you going to build it in .net? Uh, and have to buy a license. No! You're going to build it in PHP. And so some of that's just branding and, uh, maybe rails and Laravel and these other things it's just about branding is it's about saying, you know, this isn't uncool, it's actually.
From an indie, like punk rock, bootstrap kind of perspective it is the coolest shit, because you're going to be able to build stuff on your own and maybe make a life for yourself, uh, outside of having to work for Facebook for the rest of your life.
Yeah. And when you were just saying that, one of the key words that stuck out to me was easy. It was the easiest at the time. And I think, um, going forward. I'm trying not to, um, like rest on our laurels and assuming that Laravel is easy for, for a new developers. Um, and so one of the, one of the new hires we're bringing on is, um, a woman in Australia named Jessica Archer and actually one of the first.
Yeah. So one of the first projects that I've kind of already given her like a sneak peek, like, Hey, I think it would be cool if you worked on this, when you get here is basically taking DHH's "build a blog" in Rails tutorial, and really revitalizing that for Laravel and for the web ecosystem as it stands today.
So like maybe it uses, maybe it does use React with Inertia on the front end that it uses Laravel on the backend and how to build that in a single repository so that it feels really great and make it all really, really accessible, really interesting and catchy and you know, attractive, um, in terms of marketing and branding so that we can. Re actually ensure that Laravel feels like the easiest way to get started building a serious full stack web application.
Because I think for the past few years, I've sort of assumed like, well, of course it's easy, like go to the documentation. And I think I've kind of realized like, okay, well I have to go to the installation page and read how to install it. And that seems easy. But now I have to go to a different page to read about how to get stuff out of the database. And then I have to go to a different page to read about how to like validate my forms.
And it's like, man, it would be really great if we just had one cohesive. Build a build a blog style tutorial, but probably not a blog since I think that's kind of like old school web, um, that actually walked you through a cohesive story of like shipping something, maybe all the way to Laravel vapor on one page and walked you through the whole process and made it really simple. Um, so that's that we're doing a lot of work behind the scenes on that right now on a Laravel vapor.
Um, and I think Versal has really inspired. In that regard to make vapor even easier to onboard. Um, because that's one of the things that Marcel has done really well is like, if you have a, a next application or whatever, and you just can deploy it so quickly and so easily. So we're, we're trying to do that.
And I think, um, I'm excited about that, you know, to try to ensure that we actually are the easiest, because I think it's, you know, as you get older and as you've used things more, you just kind of assume things are easy when they no longer.
Well, and even thinking back, if you listened to any podcast, if you listen to you, how you got started, if you listened to so many people say, well, I got started, I got interested. I got hooked when, uh, flash programming stuff and flash or programming stuff in HyperCard or programming stuff in Microsoft access, you know, like tons of people got started like that. And the reason is if you're 12 and you're want to build something, you want it to be easy and fun and accessible.
Like those are the three things. If it costs too much money, I can't do it. If it's not fun, I can't do it. And if I can't get something on the page where I feel the magic. Like in podcasting, the magic is when people publish their first episode, submit their whole feed to Spotify. And now they're in the Spotify app with Justin Bieber and everyone else. Right. They can show their friends like, Hey, look at this on my phone. I'm I'm in Spotify. That's the magical part.
The magical part with anything you've built yourself, self is like showing people like, look at this. Program I built at HyperCard, you know, look how fun this is. And, um, yeah, I, I love that idea. Are you, do you know what you're going to build it around? Is it, you said it's not going to be a blog. What is it going to be?
No, I actually don't know. Um, and that's something I'd like for me and Jessica to figure it out together, I just feel like blog feels like very web 1.0, you know? Yeah. Uh, nobody actually does that anymore. Like, I feel like very few people even blog in that style anymore.
The one thing though is that this is so hard to like figure out teenagers. I've got, I'm going to four teenagers this summer, my youngest turns 13. So I'm going to 13, 14, 17, and 19 all in the same house and figuring out the zeitgeists of what is cool right now is tricky, but one of the things that's in the mix right now is old nineties stuff is super cool. Like old nineties clothes, old nineties music, all that stuff. I could see a return to like Myspace type things, Geocities type things.
Um, people might wanting to go back and try out Tumblr or whatever. Uh, I bought each of my kids their own domain name. And just recently they've all been a little bit more interested in it, like, huh, like how would I do. Um, webs, like how would I build a site? You know?
And yeah, I think those projects where kids can build something and feel good about it, whether it's, you know, a simple application, a blog, a website, uh, you know, whatever it is, something that makes it that's cool that they can show their friends that, yeah, there's something in there.
I mean, you're probably right. Especially like. The one thing I've noticed is they're like Facebook is not cool anymore. Um, um, so I think that does leave like a huge opening for something else. In terms of this place to share more long form thoughts, you know, like you would do on like a Tumblr or maybe a MySpace.
I wrote, I wrote some super cringy stuff on my Geocities site, but I was expressing myself and it was great, you know, I, I loved it. So I think like, even like, I think somebody is going to build a new guest book system. Like we used to have those old guest books. I think there's something like that that could make its way through the pop culture, especially with kids where that something like that will be cool again. Like something that feels old.
It feels kind of retro, but kids are like, oh man, you got to leave a comment on my guest book. Um, I can see something in that vein becoming cool again. And uh, I mean, you never know what it's going to be until it happens, but. You know, I, I feel, and even looking at Carrd uh, uh, CARRD.CO, you know, the simple one page sites. I think like the number one user of it is BTS fans. You know, that, that, I think it's Korean pop group. Like they build like thousands and thousands of pages on there.
Like just MySpace style fan pages. That, you know, people just want to add gifts and, and, you know, have fun with it. Yeah.
The web lost a lot of it's like personalization feel from the old days and yeah, I could definitely see that coming back.
Well, if anyone has any ideas. DM me, and then I'll tell Taylor the best ones. Well, this has been great to catch up, man. Um, yeah, I think I, we got a little bit about how you work a little bit of a future full stack web developer. This is good, man. Um, I should have you back in a couple months because I think this evolution with you, like pushing yourself this way. Um,
Talking on the phone!
Talking on the phone! That'd be interesting and how you solve it. There's lots of ways to solve it. You know, like that what's worked well for Jon and I is that we are just ying and yang, you know, like I, the stuff I get fired up about, like, I, I love our Thursday meetings and. You know, when I, when I'm there, I generally am kind of guiding them. I just kind of naturally fall into that, that space. And it's nice to have this back and forth with us where.
We can do that where he, you know, he knows he can release a feature and I'm just like, it's like, what does he call it? He's like, he's just unleashing, you know, the Justin dragon or whatever, you know, like I just want to get out and promote. Yeah. There's, there's different ways to do it, you know?
Yeah. That's true. And we'll see, we'll see where our groove settles into, but it'll be interesting for sure. Yeah.
Cool man. Great talking. Thanks for doing this.
Alright, thanks.