Rich and Paul talk through the tech layoffs, explaining why they happen, why they suck, and what you can do about them (very little) and what you can do for the people involved in them (far more).
A conversation about the robots taking our job—and how various forces have been taking our jobs for a while, and personal experiences with jobs and robots.
Rich has an idea about how to completely revolutionize the remote workplace. Typical hijinks ensue.
Paul and Rich talk about modern shopping experiences—and how big box retail is increasingly like a warehouse for online orders, while more and more commerce becomes focused around community and live events.
Rich advises Paul (who is pretending to be a guy who works in video editing) on whether to quit his job or not. Together, they look into THE VOID. The VOID looks back. Paul digresses on corporatist epistemology. In the end everything is okay.
Rich and Paul come back to the office after the holidays just full of predictions for tech, politics, and the economy.
The last episode of 2022! Paul and Rich talk about the World Cup, in a general way, but then they start to talk about how soccer functions as a platform in the world—how to see it as a kind of technology.
Rich has been a Customer Success Manager Level IV for Salesforce for 13 years—and he's panicking. He heard a cable bill got renegotiated by a robot and now he's convinced the robots are coming for his job. Paul unpacks that with him and helps him see that there could be new ways of working and doing things for him and his team, and then Paul and Rich demonstrate the absolute state of the art in AI technology.
Paul and Rich talk conspiracies: Where they come from and why people keep going in for them. Paul pretends to be a guy named Jeff who is falling into QAnon. They talk about where conspiracy thinking comes from, what to do, and how to handle Christmas Dinner.
Paul role-plays as Jim, a hapless and cranky young product/project manager at some company or other. Jim hankered for a promotion, oh how he hankered, but now there's a recession looming, and Jim—well, he's never experienced one before. So he's come to ask Rich for advice. How do you thrive in a recession? What do you need to do to get the big account, or the big promotion, when things are looking kind of dire? Rich, of course, has bullet points.
Twitter seems to be cooked (or is it). Where do we go now? We talk to Jason Goldman, former VP of Product at Twitter, and to each other, of course, and Paul admits that he really likes Mastodon.
Paul has a big idea: There's a strong case to be made that Queen Elizabeth II was the best CEO of the last century. So he makes it to Rich, outlining what makes a great CEO in the process. Rich buys in to the theory, then changes the conversation to chocolate.
Crypto exchange FTX has melted down, whatever that means—and it turns out nothing means what it seems to mean, especially the word "exchange." Paul and Rich invite two friends to guide us through the latest crypto maelstrom, finance journalist and crypto chronicler Matt Levine and polymath crypto advisor/journalist Aaron Lammer. Can they explain what's happening? Can Aaron convince Paul that crypto is just getting started? Why is our first podcast about crypto?
AI is completely changing tech and tech careers. Want to get ready? Come meet Reqless, the podcast where Paul and Rich, two fast-talking NYC software industry veterans, take a clear look at how AI is changing the entire industry, how to make sense of that change, and how to make the best of it.
