Jenny, you are our superfan. You listen to every single episode, I believe, and you've even listened to the episode that hasn't come out yet.
I have, yeah that was my homework.
I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
No, do not recommend.
Hello and welcome to Metacast, the podcast about podcasting. And today we have a metasote, so an episode where we talk about our other episodes, about our experience running a podcast. And originally we started doing these metasotes because we were lazy.
What do you mean we were late?
From Metacast Inc. For more information, visit our website at www.metacastinc.com.
Also, I think this metasode is for our episode. The last one was the women who code and it just didn't feel right having a metasode about our podcast about women who code without a women who codes.
Yes. Oh, by the way, this is episode 17, not 15. It is a prime number, so it's almost a prime-isode. Right. Right. So today with us on the record, we have Jenny. And Jenny, before you introduce yourself, I remember listening to a podcast many years ago where they were talking about how people introduce themselves these days. And it's like, people always just say where they work and what they do the first time they meet other people. And they were just discussing how this is not
portraying the person in their entirety. Basically, we just use labels like shortcuts for who we are by just using our jobs. So I'm curious, Jenny, how would you introduce yourself in this show?
Well, yeah, I know it's funny because I actually prepared introductions of both of you because I know from like the Czech police episode and many others that you often forget to introduce each other. So I'm gonna not listen to directions and start off by introducing both of you.
Thank you because Ilya did not introduce me for the record.
I didn't even introduce myself, by the way.
Yes, hello, that is Ilya, this is Arnab.
Yeah, we've got two hosts, Arnab, and he is a singing extraordinaire, especially talented at metal songs and headbanging and great dancing.
Wait, are you serious? I've not known that before.
I think our listeners, including Ilya, our host, may need some context, which we should not go into.
Well, Jenny, I've known Arnab longer than you have. I've never heard of him sing, actually.
I think you haven't gotten me that drunk yet, so that's why.
We had a team trip to Virginia DC. This was like 2022 May or something?
Yeah, April, May, something like that.
Yeah, we really let loose. We got a karaoke room and then surprisingly only one person got COVID after that. But everyone was sick, but only one person touched it often. And yeah, Arnab brought the karaoke singing talent for sure.
What was the song that made a lasting impression on you, Jenny?
I think there's video of this song. I'll share with you later on.
I think Arnaud mentioned that there was some alcohol involved, so I can't say if I remember specifically the song. I just remember the feeling of hearing it and loving it.
I think this is off to a great start. I think I'm gonna mark this episode explicit.
Yeah, that's a good idea if you're recording me talking for an hour.
How much alcohol do you have today?
None, sadly. Ilja, the other host. I don't know Ilja personally as well, but I worked with him as a PM, and I will say he has all the superpowers, but his special, like, super-est superpower of them all is getting team-branded swag of all kind. Stickers, shirts, like, everything.
What a glowing endorsement!
And I've seen that you guys already have Metacast shirts, which I really would bet that Ilya orchestrated ordering that. Yeah. And as I've already told you guys before we started recording, I'm wearing some of my swag courtesy of Ilya today.
This was actually Ilya like pretty much created. I'm using the word created a bit loosely but you pretty much created the thing that Jenny is wearing right now.
I guess we shouldn't maybe say the names just in case. But the logo of that product was created by, I think, a third-party agency that helped us actually do that. And then, yeah, I fought tooth and nail to get those hoodies ordered because I think each of these hoodies is like 70 bucks apiece. And they're really good. That was like 2018, 2019 when we got this. And they still hold up very well. I still have both the T-shirt and the hoodie. I have them too, yeah. And the picture is still very good. It's not going away. Yeah.
Yeah, I love this hoodie. I've never owned a free hoodie that was worth 70 or 80 bucks. So the actual, like, the little dongle thing on the zipper has broken, but I can still zip it up fine, and it's my favorite hoodie.
You can put a clip in there.
Oh no, it's broken like you can't even put a clip in.
No, you didn't get... put a Microsoft Clippy in there like a Clippy. I'm sure you can buy one of those somewhere. Clippy next to the product. By the way, this said third party company that created that design, if they had sponsored our podcast, maybe we would have said their name, but they didn't. So we're not saying their name.
Yeah, and we won't even say which microphone we're using today and which tool we're recording this on because none of them paid us to do so.
Yeah. By the way, we were introducing all of us, actually Jenny was going to introduce herself, but since we went on a detour to karaoke and you're talking about t-shirts and swag, I also want to mention Ilia is a person extraordinaire for like swag and stuff. And he actually, I don't know Jenny if you know, but he actually created a company, a t-shirt business that you ran for like a year or so, right? And there were some really cool
t-shirts there. I have a few of them. I have two of them, I think.
Yeah, it kind of went nowhere because I didn't want to spend time on marketing. I just wanted to spend time drawing pictures and this whole like logistics and marketing. It just was too much work and I had a full-time job at the time. So like, yeah, it just wasn't working. However, the t-shirt I'm wearing right now. So I did a collaboration with somebody back in Russia when I was traveling there.
And it's a hand sewn piece of code on the t-shirt that we sold maybe like 15 or 20 of these t-shirts to my fans. No, I just, you know, I have an Instagram account with semi-decent following. And a few people bought those t-shirts. That was very nice. I made like a couple of hundred bucks from those 20 t-shirts. That's not a thing. Like the margins are so thin. It's like you have to sell in large volumes.
Is your website still going on? Idiomatic tease, I think, right?
YematicTShirts.com. Now I stopped it because I didn't want to pay for Shopify, but I still own the domain.
Okay, all right. Detour.
We need to introduce Jenny, I guess. Just Jenny. I know you tried to dodge the question, but...
Yeah, you taught me. Do you want me to introduce myself? Finally. I didn't prepare that, but I'm Jenny. I worked with Arnab and Ilya. Arnab for probably like four years, and prior to that he was kind of my mentor for at least a year. And Ilya, I think we overlapped at least two years. What do I say about myself? Well, I was a teacher for 12 years, and I taught internationally for some of those years.
And I decided to change careers, and so I became a software engineer, and that's the path that led me to cross paths with you both and made me a woman who codes, hence me being on this episode.
I think the perfect person for this metasode. Thanks for coming on. Let's hope.
Yes, jumping straight in. I think it was Arnab who recommended you to our team. My memory is vague at this point, but I remember being excited talking to you because it was interesting because you were still in that junior entry role in terms of the engineering. But I think we are give or take about the same age and you were a mature adult, which is like, thank you, compared to other people who are in that kind of role who are just like fresh college grads. So there was this level of maturity and also your experience being a teacher prior to that, which was like,
because we were all kids. Yeah. But to me it was, it was like, wow. I guess the insight I had when I was talking to you is how you can start a new career from, let's say the lowest level in that new career, but your previous experience really accelerates you to go to height. You're a senior engineer right now, right? So you jumped two levels from the time we met? I am. Yeah. That's pretty cool. And I think it's actually probably faster than it usually takes people to get promoted. So I think it's a testament in part to your past experience.
I think that like what a lot of people hopefully find when they work with career switchers, non-traditional backgrounds, is that the previous experience does add a different flavor. Or I think that of course we have coding related deficiencies to make up, there is a learning curve there, but as far as communication skills, people skills, depending on the previous job, I mean you just
bring something different. You're not starting from zero in that category of skills. And the first team that I joined, I was the only one who had worked anywhere other than Amazon, like all of the engineers who were on the team. Well actually there were two other people from my program who were career switchers, but everyone else who had more traditional engineering creds, it was their first
job out of college. And some of them had been with Amazon you know four or five or six years, and so they were more like senior or mid-level engineers, but they still only had Amazon professional experience. So yeah I think I stepped into that team new as an engineer, but had a lot to offer around other skills, communication and teaching each other, learning together, that sort of stuff.
When you say the program you come out of, I want to talk about that a little bit. Can you tell us what program that was? How long did you go through it? How many years of teaching?
So the program I was in is called Ada Developers Academy. And I guess kind of just backing up, when I ended teaching, I knew that there were lots of boot camps or different ways to change careers or get into engineering. I even looked into getting a traditional degree and I was like, well, this is crazy. Why would I spend four years to do this when they're clearly like shorter paths? A lot of boot camps either cost money or they had some sort of contract where once you've done that, you've got to do it.
They take some percentage of your salary.
What? This is crazy! For how many months?
I don't know because I didn't really go down that path too far, but I think it's maybe your first year or your first six months. I'm not really sure. But it's kind of like, so you don't pay up front, but once you get into the new role, then they kind of take that sweet dev money.
I've heard the other way around where these companies that are doing the bootcamps, they charge the company that is hiring this person almost their first month salary or something like that, which is a lot of money for these, the bootcamp company, but I have not known that they charge the candidate themselves.
Yeah, so when I came across Ada Developers Academy, it was definitely unique in my search. This was seven and a half years ago that I was doing this search. And some of the things that make it unique, firstly, it is tuition free. At the time I went, it was seven months of school, five months of internship. I think they have since shortened that to six months of school. But at any rate, for me, it was a year long. You're guaranteed an internship. So essentially,
what happened, I was in the fourth cohort, and there were 24 people per cohort. And so what happens is, even before we started, they had worked with companies to find 24. It wasn't 24 companies, because some bigger companies sponsor more than one internship, but they essentially outright commit to paying for interns. And that's what pays for your classroom portion. And then when we were interns, we got minimum wage for five months. And yeah, at the time I did it,
there were all different size companies all in the Seattle area. So when I got into the school, I moved to Seattle. Yeah, I've lived there ever since. That's what brought me to the Pacific Northwest. And the other thing that makes it really great is that it's a school specifically for women and gender expansive adults. And they target underrepresented groups like LGBTQ, people of color. But really, by being a non-white cis male, you're already more or less
like an underrepresented group in engineering. So yeah, that's the story with Ada. And I had an incredible experience there. The teachers were great. They have a lot of support services around interviewing, learning about data structures and algorithms like standard CS slash interview sort of things, as well as kind of project-based things like learning about sprints and tracking. It's not sim. What is the Trello, like kind of breaking down tasks and using a Trello board and things like that.
Project Management
Yeah, at the time it was like Ruby and Rails with some like JavaScript and there was a Capstone project as well. I think now they've moved to Python. I don't know what else. I'm so far. AI. Yeah, I mean my knowledge is very outdated.
It's just programming shell GPT these days.
Chat GPD, what's that prompt engineering? Type me program
Thanks for watching!
That would be great if you could get it down to like one week of class.
I mean, I've tried it. It does make very interesting mistakes.
I haven't tried any of that AI stuff. I'm pretty turned off by it, to be honest. At least like the LLMs. I just feel like it's gonna make the entire internet just trolls and phishing and fakie fakerness. I don't like where it's going.
I really like it on the other hand. Like it has almost replaced Google search for me. Like it's my first go-to. But I think it's most useful when you actually know the domain that you're talking to it about. Because you may have heard about this problem called hallucination, right? And it's very common. Especially in like programming or those kind of topics. It'll tell you great things but also come
up with stuff that just doesn't exist. You have to read the answer and do a double take. Like really? Then ask it really? And then it will say oh no no no that was a mistake.
Wait, so it's like the chatbot is hallucinating? They're just making stuff up?
Yeah, yeah, it's a very common problem because it's all language-based, right? Like it's trying to just come up with what would be the most predictable next word after this word. And so I would say 95% of the time when I'm talking to you about programming, it's really awesome, right? And it saves me so much time that I don't have to go to Google and then go to Stack Overflow or Reddit and kind of fish out all these things.
It'll just tell me all of them. But every once in a while it'll tell me like, oh, just do this. And then I would say, there's no way that's possible.
So what is it that you're using instead of Google? ChatGPT. Oh, I've never even used it. You just go into a web browser and type chatgpt.com and that's what you use? Or is it like Bing powered by ChatGPT?
So OpenAI and then you can either get Microsoft Edge browser and there they have a chat mode which is basically their implementation of chat GPT or there are like various other things I actually pay for I don't want to name the thing I don't know how it would come off in here but
Because they don't pay us, right? Yes, exactly.
But yeah, I pay for a thing that is essentially like a client for chat GPT API. It's pretty cool, but it is also weird once in a while.
Brings an interesting topic though. Search-wise, when you search for factual information, I think ChatGPT is awesome. But I don't want to live in a world where most of the internet is a ChatGPT-composed junk by people who put their name on it. So somebody writes a marketing article and then it's written by the bot. Remember how 15 or so years ago, there were these link farms where there were these websites optimized for SEO, where there was just junk content, which would rank high in Google and other search engines, just because the gamed
the algorithm? They have inbound links. Yeah. So I feel like at some point, Google and ChatGPT itself, for search, they will have to battle ChatGPT-composed content. Because I think Arnab and I were talking about this, maybe on the record even. Like if I read a piece of fiction, for example, I want to read about somebody's experience. I don't want to read the thing that's composed by ChatGPT. I want to read something that's composed by a human with all its imperfections, and not imperfections that ChatGPT puts in there because it knows that
See, that's the thing. Like, how do you tell it apart? You can't. It's so good, so perfect at being imperfect like a human that it's hard to draw.
There's something about art that I'm not ready to give up yet.
Right, right. But I do agree, like, there is a massive problem where more and more content is being generated by AI like that. And the more of that content that is generated, the more it's going to like self fulfill itself, because it's going to learn from the content that is being generated. And I don't know how they're going to avoid that problem. It's a really interesting thing.
Oh, so like the model will be dogfooding its own generated content to learn from its own garbage?
And there's like hallucination in there so you don't know how much of that is true or not anymore. Actually, Jenny, you introduced me to this podcast from New York Times called Hard Fork, which is a very popular podcast. I mean, I had heard about it before, but you were the first person to say like, this is awesome. And so since then, I've been listening to each and every one of their episodes. I think I shared a few with Ilya too.
They have really good episodes on the whole, like all of this, they go to depth. And something that the three of us would not be able to go right now because of time and everything.
On Generative AI, right?
Yeah, so I think listeners should go check those out.
Arnab, what I want you to do is use your chat GPT to have them generate an introduction of you and Ilya for your next episode and just read it out whatever they say.
Oh yeah! It'll be actually pretty good, I think. We'll try that out, Ilya. I think that's a great suggestion.
I kind of wonder, like, what does the internet think of me? Like, what would ChatGPT say about me if I were to say, like, hey, write a summary of Jenny.
Actually, I'm typing this to change video right now. Let's just see what it says. It says it doesn't have access to people information unless they're public figures. Okay. So yeah, none of us are public figures.
I should have led a more public life.
So now I think once you're on this podcast journey, then you're a public figure. And so we just have to wait for chat GPD to catch up to this.
You know, this isn't my first time with podcasting. I shouldn't say on a podcast, but back in 2006, I had a podcast after school club with fourth and fifth graders. Wow.
2006? That's like the beginning of podcasts, I think.
Well, we didn't publish anything. Back then it would have been to iTunes, but there was this, I've heard it mentioned on some of your previous episodes, an open source software called Audacity. And it was just fun. I mean, it's just an afterschool club and the kids would just record whatever they wanted to talk about and we would play it for each other. But this is my first professional, we'll call it professional, wink wink podcast.
Yeah, we're not getting paid for it, so it's not like literally professional, but sure.
I mean, there's nothing subtle here. I mean, you want to get paid. So if anyone's out there who will pay for any product placement, mentions, etc.
I think I can actually say this is not a lie. This is my only source of income.
and right now it's at zero.
From Metacast Inc.
Yeah, a small negative impact, thankfully.
Okay, so can we go back to chat GPD for a second? So, Jenny, it doesn't know about you. I asked it to write an introduction for Ilya Bezdelov, and it responded with an insult. What? It says, Ilya Bezdelov is a name that appears to be relatively unknown in popular culture, so I don't have any specific information. But, I don't know, there's something about that response that I'm like, ugh. But it did hallucinate about you, Arnab.
It says that Arnab Dehka is a well-known name in the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Oh wow, maybe because I talk to Chad GPD a lot.
But you see how it gets progressively better when asked about Jenny, it knows nothing. Then when asked about me, it just knows that I'm nobody. And then when asked about you are enough, it just goes on to like make you like a God figure. Because I guess now it starts to guess that I'm expecting it to please me. And that's what it does.
Okay, let's go back to our topic. Leave chat JPT behind. Okay, you were talking about Ada and how you came into this. And then I think, how many years has it been, Jenny, for you in like the professional software career? Six and a half years. So in six and a half years, you started as a junior engineer. Now you're a senior engineer. When I had left Amazon, I think you had already, you were already mentoring a lot of people.
You had also brought in other women from other kinds of careers into the program and all of that. So I wanted to hear what is the most common challenge you have seen some of these people go through as they switch careers and come into software.
What I generally see as strengths is people being able to really leave a very clear trail of breadcrumbs around like, this is what I tried, when they have a problem and they're blocked. This is what I tried. This was the result. Then I tried this. This is the documentation I found. So like, I think that they're generally very good learners, very good at asking questions.
And then, more experienced engineers are great teachers. So I think the hardest thing that I see is that it's really hard to get good help sometimes. Sometimes people are on teams that just aren't as good at finding the answers as they, I think, could be. I think I also have a bit of a biased view of this because the way I generally interact with Ada interns is in office hours. So they're coming to me with questions because they couldn't get them answered by the people on their team.
But yeah, I mean, I think that it's very competitive to try to get into Ada. So you can pretty much guarantee, you know, an Ada intern knows how to learn and is just needs to get the engineering specific skills and knowledge, right? Which is, I think, was my experience as well.
It's like, hey, I was very successful as a teacher. I know how to learn. I just haven't learned this stuff yet. So help me. Give me some time. Have some patience. Have some grace. And give me a little bit more time to ramp up. Give me a runway and I'll get there. And I think that that's what I generally see with other ADs as well.
So I'm curious, these organizations like Women Who Code and ADA, they focus on women and also underrepresented people. What does it provide? So for you as a woman, what does it provide to you? So let's say, like, why would you go to an ADA or Women Who Code as opposed to just a general mixed gender bootcamp? What do you get out of it?
I mean, I think that thinking back, it was like a while since I was in the program, but I think that there are challenges around not seeing yourself in whatever field, right? So a lot of 80s don't have anyone else in their family who is in the technology field. I even mentored someone. Her family was like very against her being an engineer because they thought that it was a more male type of role to have.
And so she had to kind of like fight against that expectation of her family to have gone into a different field. There's just I think some inherent privilege to going into some field where everywhere you look you see people like you and there are people in your family who also have done that.
You have a challenge, you have people that you can talk to about like, oh, I'm having this thing going on at work and they can give you advice or whatever, like versus just really feeling alone and feeling like a black sheep. So I think that yeah, being part of ADA helped make us feel like we weren't alone. There are also specifically talks around, you know, negotiation, things that statistics around women making less money than men.
For the same role with the same experience.
And I've tried to fight against this as well, but just seeing job postings where women are more likely to say like, oh, I don't check all those boxes, so I'm not going to apply, where really that job posting is like, hey, we're shooting for the stars here. This is like our absolute 100% best candidate, but they're not actually expecting to get that.
This one was one of the things I wanted to bring up. I had no idea about this when we went into the last week's podcast with Women Who Code, and this is the first time I've learned about it, so I wanted to hear from you. If you see a job posting, like break it down for me, right? Like, that says if you have experience with Python or Java and backend and let's say some front end and
machine learning, preferred machine learning, what would you take out of that? What would you not apply versus apply to?
The challenge for me is that if I see something that almost sounds like it's describing the job that I'm doing today, then it doesn't sound that interesting because there's nothing new in that, right? So if I were to look for another job, what I would want is something new, something where I'm learning. But then it's like, now I have to convince a recruiter or an interviewer that, yeah, I don't know this yet, but I know how to learn and you should hire me because I will learn
this. I think for me, the things that resonate maybe more in a job posting is the stuff around like valuing pair programming or mentorship, kind of like what is the team culture and not just what is the tech stack. I mean, I can't say how many unsolicited recruiting emails I get about industry disruption, blah, blah, blah. That sounds all well and good. And it would be fun to do something like that. But I'm more interested in like, what is the day to day like, do you care about the humans
that work for you? And do they care about each other? And like, what do you have around supporting that? And I think that that very much comes from my background as a former teacher. I like to learn and teach and for us all to kind of like grow together, which I know, I mean, working with Arnab, that was like the kind of culture that you've always set on a team as well.
I recently read a post on LinkedIn where the thesis was that if you are qualified for the job or fully qualified for the job, you are overqualified because, well, by that person's opinion, which I agree with is when you take a new job, you do it not just for more money or whatever, right? You do it to learn as well, learn and grow. And yeah, if you're qualified, it means you're just doing the same thing over and over again. So that was a very interesting insight that we got out of the Women Who Code interview. It's like, I'll apply for a job if I meet
half the criteria. Like worst case, they just don't respond to me. So I've always been like that, like shameless in this regard.
I think me too and that's why it was like an eye-opening for me but I think hearing Jenny talk about it now and I think Jenny now that you have had the experience you've grown as an engineer and you've been in this area maybe you're like that too now where when you apply to a job you know that okay I'm not going to meet all these things but that's okay I'm going to learn or I'm looking to learn but maybe the point is that when somebody is very new to this area or any area and they're coming from a different area especially women feel like that that
I don't meet all of these why am I applying?
I would say even now it definitely triggers my imposter syndrome and I have to give myself a pep talk and say, I know I could do this, but I would have to convince someone else that I could do this. And the fact that I don't meet all of those check marks, I'm coming at it from like a deficit. I'm already thinking like, okay, I need to convince this person
because I don't check all these boxes. One thing I've seen in some job postings though, which I think should probably just be boilerplate is something that says, even if you don't
apply, even if you don't meet all these criteria, please apply. And the other thing that I have seen is a blurb around like, we have a humane interview process, which again, I'm not actively searching, but I do read these, like sometimes I'm like, if I were to apply that, that would be the one that I would pick because they say like, we have a humane interview process. And if you don't feel like you check all these boxes, you should still apply because you
don't have to check all the boxes. Like, okay, you just gave me a pep talk. You saved me having to give myself the pep talk. It's right there in the job description.
One more thing, one more aspect, which is Ilya and my reflection also, was that our team, after you joined, and I think as more and more women joined, it seemed to accelerate to the point where by the time I had left last summer or fallish, I think there were more women than men in the team. How much of that is like generic? As a person applying to a job, I think actually Ilya, you brought up this example that somebody
had two options, our team and another team, and they decided to join our team because the director or somebody was in a leadership position of women.
Now it was actually somebody on our team. So, and this person, she said that, I really enjoyed talking to Jenny and that the other role that she had the offer for it was all men on the team. And she picked our team because it just felt better for her that there are other women on the team as well. And then I think, yeah, it just started to go from there. And I also feel like in our larger org, because we had a female VP and a bunch of senior managers who were women, I think it just like snowballed into attracting more middle
manager women. And I think also women engineers, I think this was amazing. And I show my current team. So we have a director who is black and in his org, we have two other black guys on it. Actually, it is the first ever team I work on where there is at least one black guy. And here we have like three of them. So which, you know, I never asked that question explicitly, but I feel like it might be the same dynamic in place here. Yeah, that just tends to attract new people who may feel or are underrepresented.
I'm just trying to choose the right words because like I'm a white male. So like, it's easy for me to say things that will put me in trouble, you know.
Right. I think it's important to do this because of exactly what we talked about like 10 minutes back where the job posting, if I was creating it, I would write it from my perspective and put in like all of these things that maybe we'll use Python someday, maybe we'll use Ruby on Rails, and maybe a little bit of machine learning if you know that's great, because my point of view is like that I wouldn't expect everybody to know all of that. But this is where having diversity on your team really makes it beneficial.
Right. Because somebody on your team like Jenny would read that and say, hey, this is fake. Like there's no way anybody could know all of these things and they're not going to apply for it. So, yeah, have being explicit about it, having diversity of opinion in your team. That's why it is important.
When I changed teams to join the team with you both, I had also never worked with anyone who was a parent. So at the time, I was a single parent. And I can't say like how powerful it was for me to have Arnab and Ilya who were both seniors to, you know, write in Slack, my kid has an ear infection, I need to drop, I don't know when I'll get back on today, I might be off for the rest of the day, things like that.
I was a junior, just joined the team, the only parent, the only older person, I was like late 30s.
You were not empowered.
Yeah, I felt like if my kid had an ear infection, I mean, of course I had to take care of it, but I always felt bad or I was worried that it reflected negatively on me. So yeah, I think you guys have talked about like labels and how they don't fully express who a person is, but if I think of certain labels like woman, it does help to have other women on the team. Parent, you know, is like incredibly helpful to have other parents on the team and like the more you know your
teammates, the more you can draw those connections. It can be as simple as like, oh, Ilya likes to play the guitar and I also like to play the guitar. Just those connections help us, don't they? Understand each other. It's all about empathy, isn't it?
I think the point about parents is really, really spot on. I get goosebumps right now. I just remember many years ago, before I had my first child, I was working on a team where nobody had kids. Also, all of the people on the team, they were all men. They were all older than me, at least 10 years. One person was like five years older than me, but everybody else was like 10, 20 years older than me. None of them had kids for different reasons.
And we would drink three times a week, and it was just a very different lifestyle. I was like 25 back then. It was fine. But now, yeah, sometimes I do have to just jump off a call because whatever, my younger one has a meltdown. It's not even an ear infection. It's just, you know, but somebody who doesn't have children, they will never be able to understand what it's like when you just can't control things. Things just happen to you.
You have to take care of them because they'll go away unless you go and actually take care of them. And being able to just drop in the chat that like, hey, my son has a meltdown. I have to drop. If you have an environment where there are no other parents, people will be just like, what is it? But if let's say two or three people in the chat would occasionally
do things because of their kids and they'll see kids on camera and stuff like that. Even if these people don't have their own children, it helps them develop the empathy because when they see the pattern, it's just easier to accept some things. So speaking about the podcast, so Jenny, you are our super fan. You listen to every single episode I believe. And you've even listened to the episode that hasn't come out yet.
I have, yeah, that was my homework.
This is the super fan experience, right? If you listen to all episodes, then sometimes you get to listen to episodes before they come out. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing though.
No, do not recommend. Well, the recording you shared with me, Ilya was super, super quiet. And so I turned it way up. I was walking, so I had my earbuds in and I could hear Ilya and then someone else talked and it just like blew my eardrums. It sounds like turning it up, turning it down. I eventually just decided to ignore Ilya. I was like, whatever he said, I'll figure out based on context. I can't keep doing that.
It's not important. So I think what we do, this is what Ilya and I do usually, is we just download the raw full recording from...
From the tool that we don't name...
This was shaping up to be the unknown tools episode but I killed it. Anyway, from Squadcast, sometimes Ilia you edit it a little bit and then share with me. But lately, yeah, this is what we do. We listen to the whole thing unedited, get the full picture and then record the metasodes. Yes.
I love listening to the episodes because I know both of you and it makes me feel like more in contact with both of you. I stop myself multiple times during the listening of an episode to text you and say like, oh, yeah, I agree or I've read that book too or whatever, because I think that would be super weird on your end. But yeah, it is probably like more of a one way connection going on. But it is fun to, you know, listen to minor podcast celebrities who I know.
That's actually a very interesting insight. So I have my own other podcast on the side that I occasionally if I have the right mood, I would just speak for 10-15 minutes to the microphone and post it to Telegram channel. It's in Russian. And sometimes people would write back to me saying things like, I feel like deep connection with you. And I felt like we just had to walk in the conversation together. And obviously, yes, it just goes one way. But when that person shares with me, then it starts to become a two way street.
And we may even have a conversation. And I start to get to know that person a little bit more and stuff. But there is something about the voice medium that unless it's written by shut GPT, and then narrated by generative AI, whatever text to speech. Yeah, that really resonates. So yeah, I was actually I was gonna ask you why you you've listened to us rambling for like, whatever 20 hours at this point. But I think you kind of answered this question already.
So what is it like for both of you to just record something, send it out into the unknown, and never hear anything back? I mean, we hear you at the end of every episode begging for comments.
So that's how people perceive that. All those two guys begging for comments.
Well, it started with five stars, but then over the course of some episodes You're like, ah, forget the five stars. Just like write us
and thus 25 cents via mail.
At least like our substack post or something.
Yeah, I actually haven't done the substack thing yet. I should follow that.
Ah, you're not a superfan then. We missed you.
Well, if I did that, would you make me some superfan swag? Would I get a shirt in the mail?
Yes. I think once we have some revenue, yeah.
I won't hold my breath.
Thanks for the vote of confidence!
So actually, Arna, we should track down people who listen to our podcast and invite them on our metasodes so we can get some feedback. Because actually that's the best piece of feedback we've received so far. Or I guess it's the most expensive piece of feedback we've received so far.
Actually, I listen to a podcast where at the end they play listener responses so like people can record a response and send it in and then they like might play a few.
The Hearts in Taiwan podcast I think our episode 10 they do things like that yeah.
Okay, I've been meaning to that yeah, I've actually listened to some other podcasts via your podcast the edit audio Was with Emily someone was her name at any rate? She said that they had a troop crime podcast and I was like, oh, I love true crime So that sent me into a binge listening tailspin of a day. Oh, did you listen to it? Yeah, nice Yeah, it was really good
I don't listen to true crime but yeah.
So we are micro-influencers.
What did Jimmy say? I forgot the exact phrasing but that was perfect.
Yeah, the microcelebrity, so... We were sticking to the meta point a little bit. While we were trying to organize this recording, we were coordinating over text messages and both Arnab and I have iPhones. So for us, the messages come through iMessage and you have an Android phone, Jenny. And this whole experience was actually, it felt a bit jarring. I mean, first of all, it's a miracle that we can have a
cross-platform messaging experience. But on the other hand, let's say you like a message that iSend or Arnab send and both Arnab and I get the message like Jenny put the thumbs up emoji on it. I don't know, this whole thing felt very weird to me.
Just trying to explain that so yes
I'm less anxious to explain them.
It's audio so everybody does. So in iMessage, I guess in Android too, if you're talking to somebody Android to Android you can react to a text message, right? And when you react that reaction shows up embedded kind of on the text message itself kind of like in WhatsApp or Signal and other places versus in text message between iOS and Android when Jenny likes our message
Then it sends a message back to us saying Jenny liked within double quotes blah blah blah Which is kind of bizarre But I think that's more to do from what I remember Ilia has more to do with Apple not agreeing to do certain things Maybe Jenny is nodding her head. I think she probably knows more about this being from the Android camp
It used to be like if I was in, you know, group text or texting with iPhone folks for me, like it would say so-and-so liked a message. But I wouldn't know which message. That was also the fun thing. But now I haven't seen that in a long time. So I think Android has fixed that. So this is the first time hearing that this is the experience for you both. The times that I've lived overseas, everyone defaults to WhatsApp, where it doesn't matter what type of phone you're using. Everyone has the same experience. But
I think in the United States, everything is still pretty Apple-centric.
Yeah, WhatsApp is a great app, by the way, even though Facebook acquired them, I think they managed to avoid future bloat. It's a really great app. What I found interesting is when I travel or when my wife travels, basically when one of us is in a different country, we always use WhatsApp because it really saves on data. It compresses the images, it's really easy to control. But when she is back or when I'm back, and we are both in the US, we always revert back to iMessage. For whatever reason, iMessage is so default on the iPhone.
Also, sharing pictures and all that over iMessage, you retain the metadata and the full quality, versus in WhatsApp you don't. But totally, I think, when I am traveling. Actually, when we were in Mexico recently, it's insane. In the US or Canada, businesses have not picked up WhatsApp like that. But in Mexico, every single thing, they had like a WhatsApp QR code, and that's how you talk to them. And the customer support was amazing for everything. Yeah.
Alright, so now let me do this. Let me go to chat DPT and say what is the polite way to say let's wrap up.
I think this will be good. I'm betting on it.
It's a polite way to say let's wrap up is to use a phrase such as, I think it's time to conclude our discussion.
You don't sound like a robot at all.
Another option could be to say, before we end, let's summarize our key takeaways.
Now that's for the meta meta-so now you need to do that on the reflection of this episode.
Right, no, but talking about that, were there any other reflections, Jenny, from the Women Who Code episode that you heard, that we didn't discuss yet?
I really wanted to talk about the job posting thing, so I'm glad we did. That was like a big thing that resonated with me.
Let's hear about your favorite podcast, Jenny. True crime.
Well, yeah, true crime, but...
That's such an M!
We're not affiliated with Meta.
I know a couple of minor podcast celebrities who have a...
Minor podcasts, not even micro influencers.
Yeah, minor also like as a musician I'm thinking about the minor scale so it's kind of
I like funny things. So there's an advice podcast called Don't Ask Tig, and it's got Tig Notaro, who's a comedian giving bad advice with a different guest each week. And then also Smartless, which has got Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, who was like Jack from Will and Grace and Will Arnett. And they just rip on each other and they have a surprise guest every week. And I mean, these are things that just make me laugh out loud. And then all
of the daily New York Times ones like, what was the other one you said? Hard Fork.
The New York Times, is it actually news? So you listen to news? Podcasting?
Yeah, the daily is like 15 to 20 minutes every day about a given topic. They kind of dive deep into something that normally was like an article on the front page. Yeah, I really like that one. And there's a parenting podcast called The Longest Shortest Time and also Death, Sex and Money. It's a little mixed bag, but
Wait, that's Sex and Money is a parenting podcast?
No, the longest, shortest time is a parenting podcast. And I just love that title because I feel like that how parenting feels really like, especially babies, it feels so terribly long, but it also is like gone in the blink of an eye. And Death, Sex and Money is like kind of an interview format podcast where they like talk about these topics related to death, sex or money. And it's really like thoughtful, varied.
So basically they can talk about everything.
Yeah, but it's the hard topics, right? Like the things that sometimes people are like uncomfortable about. Yeah, those are the things that I think are kind of famous for being like, can be a little bit gut-wrenching to bring up if it's going wrong.
Yeah. So I once stumbled upon a podcast. I will not remember its name. I was looking for a specific topic and then that podcast came up and I listened to that episode. It was very good. I started looking at the other episodes that they have. It's two women talking about sex. And then I listened to one episode, I forgot what it was about, but it almost made me cringe. You know, like it was very interesting because it was really interesting
to see those two women discuss very intimate things about sex. But I'm like, God forbid anybody sees that I have this on my phone. Yeah, like you can discover all sorts of interesting content on podcasts. So you said it's Sex and Money, what was the third thing in that name?
Death, sex, and money. Yeah.
Okay, Ilya, I think it's time to ask for ratings and reviews, or maybe we should not anymore. Or beg for money.
Wish That Jenny is Back on Her Behalf!
This is why we brought you on, Jenny!
Are there any podcasts that get Patreon or whatever that website is? Like, they don't make money from ads, they make money from fan donations or something.
Yeah, Buy Me a Coffee, Patreon, those are I think popular ones.
Mm-hmm y'all can do that next time.
We haven't set up any because, I mean, to be honest, we are not looking to make money with this.
Yeah, I mean if it was like it's in the tens of thousands of listens per episode, that would have been worth taking a look at. But now we are like under 100 from off.
Few magnitudes less! Yes, a few magnitudes less!
Well, 100 of listeners. Please like us on Facebook. No, like us... what are you on? Substax. Substax. Wherever you listen to your podcasts, give us five stars. Send us messages on the email.
Hello at metacastpodcast.com or just a comment on the substack link. Yep.
And we're also now exploring Reddit, so we posted the link to Justin Frankel, the creator of Beatnump and Reaper episode on Reddit. It already got 5000 views and a bunch of positive comments. I mean, none of those comments were about our podcast. They were all about how awesome Justin Frankel is and his work.
There were a few comments about, oh, that's awesome. I want to listen to it right now. And we have been seeing a lot of, I think, a lot more listens in our hundreds of range caused by that.
Yeah, we see a spike today and I think for the next couple of days people will probably continue discovering this. So yeah, maybe Reddit is our next frontier because we are failing everywhere else. Well, I wouldn't say we are failing, but it's like it's an interesting issue because people who know us on LinkedIn, they know us for different things. Like there are no podcasters in that network. And then Twitter and Instagram, Substack, we haven't built a following yet. So we're like projecting into the void.
Well, I'll tell you, you'll have one less listener on this episode, cause I'm not gonna listen to myself.
Actually, actually that was one of the first things that we discussed and it was still after discussing too. It was a bit shocking for me like how it sounds like but I think Jenny you'll be pleased when this episode comes out because of all the sound engineering work that goes in and content editing and all that. Thanks to Masha and Misha.
Alright, maybe maybe I'll pour myself a whiskey like yeah
Yeah, so my mom was telling me, she listened to my other Russian podcast and she's like, I was telling your dad just like how awesome you sound and like how clean your speech is. I'm like, okay. I told her. I had to admit how many edits there were in that specific episode. After all those edits, everybody sounds a lot smarter than they sound unprocessed in the raw form.
To take a word that Jenny introduced, or not introduced but said about us, they sound almost professional.
Almost Professional.
That should be on the next t-shirt, like Metacast. Almost professional. Almost professional.
Okay, Jenny, do you want to be foundable on the internet? If so, where can people find you?
I think LinkedIn would be the findable place. Everywhere else, I'm not.
In LinkedIn, I'm sure there are a lot of Genies out there.
We'll put them in the show notes. We'll put my link in the show notes. I always love hearing that in a podcast. I've never gone to the show notes, but I find comfort knowing that that link is there in case I want it.
And see, that's where ChatGPT will learn from about your Internet celebrity status. Well, micro-celebrity status.
Yeah, budding. Well, this has been great guys. Maybe I'll listen to this and actually text you just a stream of responses this time. I always hold myself back, but this will be the texting episode.
Cool. Ilya, what did ChatGPT say? The nice way of like, let's wrap it up.
Let me read one of the other options. Let's wrap up by discussing any final thoughts or questions.
No, no, we're done with final thoughts and questions.
I think chat GPT sounds like Microsoft, to be honest.
What would Clippy say? Click the X.
Oh, what would Clippy say to politely end the recording of a podcast?
Do you want to end the podcast now? Should I call mom?
Clippy would direct you to press the red circle on the screen.
Okay, so Clippy was a computer program that was famous for offering tips and suggestions in Microsoft Office.
Famous might be Microsoft's take on that.
It was infamous.
Yeah, I think the famous is Microsoft's influence on OpenAI too.
To be fair, Chad GPT says, so it's not clear how he would end a podcast recording, blah blah blah. So that's what Clippy would say. Thank you so much for joining us for this episode. We hope you found it informative and enjoyable. Please be sure to subscribe to our podcast and leave a review if you liked what you heard. We look forward to bringing you more great content in the future. But only if you subscribe to Live on 5th It was fun.
So if it's an outlier, should we call it a tri-esote? Tri-esote. Because we have three people. It also sounds like a dinosaur.
From Mr. Royal or a Geni-Sode. I think Geni-Sode is a good name.
My daughter will love that.
Alright, Jenny Soto, there is them.