The sacred, silver, platter

All right, I'm going to attempt to record this episode with somebody using a tile saw in the room above me, and that's not the easiest thing to do, but here we go. This is my silver platter spiel. This is, I don't know what to say. This is incredibly important. This is incredibly important. It's huge.

And it's great for everybody, people who are hiring people to do things and people who are doing things for money. Everybody needs to hear this. You know, you've heard me say it, but let me just put a point on it. Here's the story. Somebody reached out to me, says they got laid off. They need some.

some work, whatever. Typically, I get this kind of message fairly often. I generally ignore this type of thing. It's hard to respond to everybody. This stuff passes through my DMs and stuff, and I just don't really do anything with it for the most part. And, you know, it's like... But yeah, and I think that the generally like a good mode of operating, if you're, you know, running a business or something like you can't really, you can't.

I don't know. You can't pay attention to every person and every little thing, you know? But sometimes, you know, I want to just take a flyer on someone or I just want to give somebody a shot because I believe in magic. And I think...

Like when I was coming up, if I had been given opportunity or when I was given opportunities, I, I rose to the challenge. It's like, give me a challenge and I'll rise to it. You know? So it's like, all right, well, let's give this person a challenge and let's just see what happens. Okay.

And so this person might listen to this podcast. I don't know. And I also, they haven't really done anything yet. I'm not, whatever, this isn't, they've done nothing wrong. They've prompted me, they've prompted me to give this speech, but only because

not because they've like violated it yet or anything, you know, and don't take it personally. Okay. That's out of the way. So I go, I have plenty of stuff and this is, this is how it is to hire people or pay people you have things that you want done right you have a pile of things that you want done and you don't want to do it and you have money so you go i'll pay somebody to do it

I don't have time, but I have money. Let me convert this money into this thing being done. That's what you're trying to do. You're trying to take money and convert it into a thing being done. So you go and you find somebody and you pay them to do a thing.

Well, then they start doing the thing and they go, all right, well, I'm going to need, you know, some context, you know, on the thing. So they try to get, you know, some drive and you go, okay. All right. Well, I kind of just, I wanted to convert money into the thing being done. Now I'm. I'm giving you money and a bunch of context. Okay, I just wanted to give you money. Now I'm giving you money and some of my work so that...

you know, I've wrapped my head around it to kind of guide it and think about what I want from this, how I want it done and what I want the result to be. And it's like, okay, well now I've already kind of, whoops, I'm sorry. I've already done that. That's a painful experience. That was something I want. to pay you to do anyway and now i'm doing that okay well now here's here's some guidance okay go do it

And then, you know, they do some stuff and they come back. OK, well, here's the direction that I'm thinking we could go this way, this way or that way. I just want to get to take the temperature. And what do you think? You know, where should I head? And it's like, OK, well, now you want me to make a decision about what the solution should be. And well, now I'm giving you money. a bunch of research and context, and I'm giving you the solution.

You're just doing all the legwork, you know, and making it, you know, I mean, that's a big deal, but a big part of what I'm trying to pay someone to do is to handle it all. and me not have to think about it, you know? That's the goal. That's what you really want from somebody. I always have that in my mind when I'm asking somebody or paying somebody to do something. It's like, I could sit here. And I could think about all the things and weigh out the pros and cons.

But I would have a lot of questions like, well, what are other libraries doing in this scenario? Well, what's the performance if we take that path? What's the, you know what I mean? So like, those are things that you can do.

There's so, so much of, of good work is, is procedural, you know, it's really just having a really good system in place of like.

of attacking a problem we've talked about that it's like exploration is number one like you have to you there has to be a discovery phase you have to separate uh just you know what did i call explore then execute like you have to separate exploration and discovery from actually doing the work if you do it all as one pile of soup it's incredibly inefficient it's short-sighted things fall through the cracks you miss big things but if you start out

with a big exploration of what everyone else is doing source to have all the open source code out there available that is showing you how to do a lot of these things anyway talk to chat gpt weigh out a bunch of pros and cons

raise questions early on and answer as many as you can before you even begin working. Like a lot of these things are performance related, like do all those bench, do that benchmarking. These are the marks of people who are really good. They, they actually, they pay attention.

to those subtle questions and they answer them up front in an exploration phase right and then when they do the work in the execution phase they do it you know procedurally where they're like methodical about you know about writing as they go and uh or even before they even do that work it's like well whatever okay so so you get that right so what i want when i pay somebody money is for them to go and do all those things

that i was maybe this is my guide for this person who emailed me if you're listening to this this is what i want you to do i don't want to think about this thing so this example is is uh well i don't even whatever who cares it doesn't freaking matter this example is somebody somebody goes i'm out of work i'm laid off whatever and i go you know before i say no i'll say something like I'll say something short of no, but almost no.

You know what I mean? This actually just happened yesterday. Again, some folks reached out to me about a sponsorship for their product. Now their product is good. Other people in the community have wrapped their product. I'd probably like it if I used it. It looks good. I could probably. in clean, I could probably with a clean conscience.

um rep this product and make something promotional i've never done anything promotional in my life but i there's a world where i could do this but okay i'm this is a derail it is not focused on my current tasks at hand. I don't need to do this. I don't necessarily need that money, you know, but this is something I always remember from my days as a wedding videographer, as I learned this from

Ray Roman, like a pretty high-end wedding videographer, he would say, like, you never say no. You never turn down a job. You just tell them an absurd number. Like there's always a price, right? Like you'll do anything for a price. Just instead of saying no, tell people almost no, you know? And sometimes they'll pay you. you know, um, and then that teaches you a lot and you make whatever. So

I don't know. So that I use that in wedding videography where it's like, if I was too booked up, it's like, don't just be like, Oh, I'm so booked up. It'd be like, I don't know. Either you're like business is so successful. I'm so booked up for like, Oh, I'm so busy. I'm so booked. There's this huge backlog. It's like, just raise all your prices.

and instead of sending people away just start raising all your prices it'll it'll lower you know the well whatever there's kind of two lessons being conflated there but you get it anyway this person reaches out about a sponsorship and i'm about to

Well, I actually ignored it the first time they've reached out again. And I'm about to just say like, no, thanks or ignore it again. I go like, you know, what is the price? So I reached back out to him. I said, you know, I'll record a video for you for $20,000. Essentially, I think I said $17,000. I said, and I said it in like a pretty courteous way. Like I normally would say no to this, but I'm going to tell you something just short of no. And there's no chance that you would want to do this.

But I'm at least going to give you the opportunity to say no. And I said, how about, I said, you know, I'll do this video for 17,000 bucks. And they came back with like, lol, no. But what came out of it was, well, we were thinking something more in the ballpark of this. Okay, so I have already accomplished something here. They've come to me with a new number for a smaller project. And it's like, oh, so...

to get to that number would have been awkward and hard anyway. But because I massively highballed them instead of saying no, they've come back to me with A, Okay, well, they didn't tell me no, actually. They said, well, we'll run that by our whatever team and maybe they would want to do that in the future. So there's a chance that somebody does come to me and says, yeah, we do want to pay the 17 grand for that video. But they came back to me and they said, here's us.

many thousand dollars less for something less that we could do and it's like oh you know i don't know if i if i was bored right now if i had some time i'd probably do it like i don't know it sounds like it's actually like a decent decent thing. So, and that came out of that. Anyway, we're on a tangent. That tangent is just, if you're, if focus is the most important thing in the world.

And when I'm describing this, don't say no thing, it goes a little bit against that because I do think that you're better off just not like taking little opportunities that distract you. Um, I'm not sure how I feel about that actually. But it's not me. I am not pure focus. I am a little distracted. I like a little fun. I like a little magic. Let's shake it up and meet some new folks and do some interesting stuff.

right so don't say no say something absurd so this is what i did in this scenario again this person reaches out to me they say hey i'm laid off can i do some work for you and i'm about to just say no or ignore them but i go here okay let me give you an opportunity to rise to a challenge I'm thinking in my head, there must be something pressing that I need right now. That if this person, if I pretend that this person is a genius or is a clone of me.

Doesn't have to be a genius, just has to like know all the things that I would want, you know? So if they're that person, then like they should be able to do this and I'd be happy to pay X amount of money for it. So I said, here, here's a problem.

If you can solve it for me and send me a pull request that I feel great about, I'll pay you up to X amount. I'll pay you for your time up to X amount. Cause I'm not like trying to just pay you X and that, you know, this is already it. I'm already kind of like. I might regret this because they might come to me with a really high effort.

but like not mergeable pull request and now it's like do i put a bunch of work into this or do i not merge it and then if i don't merge it they did put a bunch of time into it did i did they think that i was going to pay them hourly no matter what like it's like you know now i'm burning money so it's of stupid a little bit but but hey it's a chance for somebody to change their life maybe by

it's a chance for somebody to rise to a challenge and here's how to rise to it if you're listening to this i've already covered this but it's the silver platter it's the silver platter it's what you do when you're given an opportunity You require nothing from the person. And I know what this is like. It's a painful thing because you're in a scenario where you're you're you feel like under equipped to make decisions and you're like.

But it's better to ask the question than to make the wrong decision, right? Not necessarily. You know, it's yes, but it's actually, there's a third option. And it's make the right decision how it's all about making. That's what separates people. That's what separates the, you know, the average developer or worker or something, I guess, from.

from the very, very, very valuable ones. It's the ones who make those right decisions on their own. It's the ones who make decisions on their own and it's right. And here's the thing. It's not rocket science to make right decisions. You do research. First and foremost, you use reasoning and you look to the trade-offs that they make in their own work, the person that you're doing this for.

So if I'm doing something for Taylor, I'll look to what are the tradeoffs he makes? Like what's his vibe generally? Do you, is it, you know, like his vibe is like not. purity at all costs not like conceptual purity at all costs or performance at all costs it's pragmatic it's simple it's pragmatic pragmatic it's expressive it's serene those are his qualities so if i was doing work for him i have

mountains of prior art to look to. What are the decisions he makes, you know? And that's part of how you do that. A, you have your own process of just being a thorough quality decision maker by exploring and discovering and writing. Writing, writing, writing, writing, writing. That's how you make good decisions is you write about them. And when we, I've talked about our framework in here. So here's, here's my proof for why this works. So I believe, so I'm remembering.

A lot of where I came up with the silver platter idea was I would think about how I would do work for my heroes. When I, my first hero job was before Titan, it was Jack McDade. He hired me. to do a code review for one of his clients or something. Um, and it was a big deal to me. It was Wilderborn LLC. And I was like, this is crazy. Jack McDade.

because i had been on twitter a little bit and been tweeting and whatever he recognized my name i reached out and i'd been a laravel junkie by that point i was like all in like i can do this i got experience i can do this And he gave me the job and it was like, there was nothing else in the world that was going to stand in my way for this.

I will, I will spend a hundred hours and bill you five, you know, like that's always been my attitude with these types of things. And it served me very well. It's like, I will just like pour everything into this.

and come back to him with a, with a final product. And that's what I did. And, you know, that was great. And then more opportunities came from that. And then I ended up getting hired at Titan and that didn't work out working with him anymore. But, but with Taylor, you know, there's been a few things. with him and you know his style is so just like he loves a low touch engagement he loves not talking at all and it's very tricky to work with somebody like that

But what it does is it forces this out of you. This basically forces you. That's the beauty of it is it forces you to make all the decisions. and to anticipate the right decisions. And it's like, anytime I'm like dying to go to him, like, oh, like I really just need to ask him what he would think about this.

you know, cause that I've realized that it's almost always a cop-out. It's almost always like, I don't, this decision is too complicated. I'm going to pull Taylor in so that it's easier on me, you know, but then it's like, put yourself. Like, like, it's like, have the imaginary conversation in your head or write out the conversation as if you're talking to him directly over telegram or whatever, write out the back and forth and you will probably have solved the problem.

you know or you would have already figured out what he would say like that works with people you can do that have noticed that prompting to pull somebody in for input and think why do i want to pull them in for input And can I just, can I have a fake conversation with them and get past this on my own? And nine times out of 10, you can. I don't know. That's what I found. Okay, so where's my evidence? Like I said, I have my evidence for saying that this is possible.

this is possible to work this way because the alternative a reminder the alternative is is managing people that sucks managing people sucks what and what i mean by managing people is chopping up tasks, defining them for them. doing this research in the context, getting them over hurdles, evaluating solution trees and picking a path and following up and retroact retrospectives and all that stuff. That's work a day, you know.

People at big companies, there's managers that do that and make sure that that process is in place. But individual, independent solo developers are capable of doing all of that on their own. And I can tell you that that's true. For those two reasons that I mentioned, the first one is that I've done this for people. And the second one is Josh Hanley is doing this for me. He is at this level now. So I started and a lot of this is lead by example, which is the hard part, but.

When I, so for Flux, I, or I remember early on, like it'd be more interesting to have him here to represent himself, but I'm just going to do it for him. Sorry, Josh, he's sleeping right now, but. Um, earlier on, like he might submit something that I had questions about, or I felt was half baked or a decision wasn't made properly or a writeup wasn't done well enough or something. And so if I, I would.

i would do it i i would you know there'd be like a part of me that would be like like like you know i'm paying somebody to do something and and now i have to you know but it's like wait no this is actually good because i will take this opportunity to show him what I would want him to do. So I would do...

like my own giant write-up. Like I'll roll up my sleeves and I'll do all the things that I want him to be doing. And I'll do my version of the giant write-up where it's like, I told you about these where it's like the problem. or the scenario this is mostly for github issues but it really applies to everything it's first the scenario where you lay out like what's happening and ideally you have a gif or like a you know a screen recording or something if it's a bug but it's like what's happening

When you do this, this breaks. That's the scenario. Okay, what's the problem? Well, the problem is, you know, or what's first it's like, yeah, the scenario is just think it sounds weird.

that that it's not just problem and solution but it's actually like helpful to have a scenario portion up front that's just like what is the user experiencing and then the problem is like well what's the bug and what's going wrong you know that's where you explore everything that's where you deep dive on what's actually going wrong so the first is the scenario like oh i click this and it shows up twice

well what's the problem okay well then you really spelunk you have to understand the problem at the deepest level you have to do you know whatever your step debugger in your browser you have to source dive you have to talk to chat gpt you have to do all these things to fully fully, fully understand the problem and lay it out using code snippets. Code snippets are hugely important. It's such a shortcut to just write big paragraphs. Using code snippets, demonstrating the problem.

and understanding it deeply. Okay. And now that you've gotten to this point, you generally have a really good idea of what the solution should be, or at least what the possible solutions are. So then you write out the solutions and it's always a... a list of them because very rarely do you just know the solution right away so in this write-up you say solution a and then you explain well we could do this and then you walk through all the trade-offs of that solution b

And so by the time you're done with this, after you've laid out the scenario, you've laid out the problem, and then all the potential solutions, By the time you're done with it, so like that's all that's required. Just submit that. You don't even have to solve all the problems. Just submit that. Well, whatever. By the time you're done with that, you know the solution. Often when you're halfway through writing the potential solutions,

It reveals itself to you. Clears day. It's crazy. It is magical. So then at the end of it, you write, well, what's the solution that we should pick? What's your proposal? So it's like the scenario, the problems, the solutions, the problem. the solutions, and then your proposal. And when you've done all these steps, there is no better way to work.

so i started doing this and doing these giant write-ups for trivial things because that's the nature of this thing this game is like any single tiny little thing is so deep it's always deep everything is always so deep So you just treat it that way and you give it these, you give it your written attention and you write and you make this big thing and then you submit it and you're there. Okay. So I started doing that. So then Josh started doing it.

Everything changed overnight. Everything Josh does now, there's a write-up like this. It makes my job so easy. There's very, very little babysitting or anything.

you know not that there was before josh has always been good but you know what i'm saying like this isn't i'm not trying to make this about josh but but our working relationship is incredible because he doesn't need me to give him all the context he doesn't need me to make all the decisions sometimes i weigh in on decisions for sure but most of the time he comes this is josh hanley he comes to me with the silver platter

Of all the pull requests that he's done this with, he goes, here's all the problems that we identified. Well, here's all the solution. Here's all the deep explorations on them. So now it's a shorthand. When we're having a conversation and something comes up, I'll often say like, yeah, just do a write-up on that.

And what I mean by that, he fully understands what I mean by that. But what happens is like, yeah, just do a write up on that. And we both know that, okay, that will get looked at incredibly deeply. It will get this whole process of logic and reason and writing and, you know, and it will get worked out because that's how these really tough things get solved.

And it's just a great, great, great, great workflow. So this whole episode is about the silver platter, how incredible it is to pay somebody to, to for them, you, when you're paying somebody, you want a silver platter and it's rare. It's very, very rare.

So maybe this is a guide for you. If you're somebody, I mean, this is how to be, this is how to be incredible at your job, whatever your job is. This is how to be incredible at it. And this is also maybe helpful for people hiring is like, get this process i don't know i'm not a process guy i'm not a guy who reads books about process i'm not a systems guy i'm not in the apps or anything we don't use trello we don't use any of that it's just

there's always problems because they come through on github there's always things we want to do we're aware of problems we're tackling solutions we have things to ship we have deadlines you know like lara con or whatever and And we just get in the mud and this is our process is these write-ups. That's what it is. These write-ups are our process. That's the core process of Wirable LLC.

is these silver platter write-ups um and yeah that's the culture i guess if there is a work culture that's what it is it's write-ups have to happen for everything And they have to happen independently. Like you do them on your own. It's so efficient. And then what you're pairing on is, you know, reviewing the write-ups.

and reviewing the final product. And, you know, you're pairing on brainstorming and high level thinking and things. It's like, we're almost never pairing on like deep implementation stuff or research. It's like, you don't have to pair on that stuff. Um, in my mind. So anyway, I don't know. There's some things here, right? We seeing you.