Hustle Culture Satire Warmup

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Welcome back to Corporate Strategy, the podcast. It could have been an email. I'm Anthony. And I'm Michael. I'm bringing an intensity today. I'm bringing intensity. And we're coming at you. Coming at you.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Hardcore corporate tips. If you want to hustle, bro, if you want to climb the ladder, Gal, then you're in the right place. This is where you do it.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Bro and Gal, huh? That's what she got.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

That's what I got. That's my aggressiveness right there. Good. I like that. Hustle culture. You do it all wrong. You gotta do it this way. This way is the right way to climb the corporate ladder. If you want to do a serious coup on your boss who's a real pain in the down under, we're gonna give you all the tips here today.

The Million-Dollar Startup Myth

SPEAKER_00 1:04

I saw a post on LinkedIn. Like this is real. I saw this. And it was like, you know, I followed the LinkedIn Lunatic subreddit, but I don't even need to anymore because now whenever I log into LinkedIn, I just see this stuff myself. It's great. Uh someone said it is so much easier to start a business if you have a couple of million in the bank ready to go. So you can just use a hundred thousand dollars here and there for for you know your business expenses. And I'm like, are we being real? Is this a real post by a real hustle, bro? Like, or am I being punked right now? Like, oh yeah, start a bit. It's so easy. It's so easy, Michael, to start a business. You just gotta have a couple million in the bank, bro. Bro, come on.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

It's so easy. I don't know. You know, sometimes you just gotta quit your job and do it. I was watching, maybe it was a LinkedIn hustle thing, but they were like, I keep on hearing everybody just say, I want to start a business, but I'm just waiting for the right idea. Well, that's the wrong way to do it. Just quit your job, go start the idea, you'll figure it out. And I'm like, have you considered all the factors of the normal person that they don't have millions of dollars in the bank that they can just go take a risk like that? That they have families that they have to support and provide for, that they may have health care or illnesses or things that just put them out of the yeah, yeah, being able to survive, like you realize you are like the 1% that has the luxury to like go and do that, right? And I put myself in that camp of like, how many people get to jump out and start their own business like I did, right? And that was because of what I worked towards. But just if I were to do that in like the very early years and I had a family, like that would have been the stupidest thing I could have

AI Rich-Quick Ads And Weird Math

SPEAKER_01 2:49

ever done.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

Have you seen these batshit uh claw uh not claude? I haven't seen one for Claude, uh Chat GPT and Grok ads that are like, oh, the best way to make money these days is to use Chat GPT to go and buy a local laundry business and flip it. And I'm like, I've seen that happening right now that I'm getting served this ad. Or it's like, oh, I used grok bots to manipulate the market. So now I'm constantly having my grok bot buy low and then sell high. And I just made $10,000 this week. I'm like, these are legit ads paid for by these companies, serving up to gullible suckers on the internet. And I'm just like, how is any of this legal? Also, also, since our conversation last week was about AI reverse engineering and everyone's using Claude, did you see, Michael? Did you see Anthropic is operating in an $80 billion loss for the first half of 26? Yeah, but they're still on track for a 1.5 trillion IP. Like that math.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

What is any of this? What is it? Well, to be fair, isn't there like recurring monthly recurring or not monthly recurring, but some sort of recurring revenue metric like 65 billion? So it doesn't matter. Like an 80 billion dollar loss is like you're just a little under percentage-wise. Just a little, just a little under, just 80 billion. Just a little bit, just a little bit of money, just a little bit. Well, 80 minus 65, you're really only 15 billion. It's all mar it's in the margins, you know. They said 80 billion. 80 billion profit loss. I mean, like, in the whole. It is absolutely wild how these companies blew up and the sheer amount of money that is in them. It's just insane. It's absolutely insane. I but don't worry. I don't know. Don't worry. And DropEc has created a fund for the public benefit where they've given away all their profits because they don't care about money.

SPEAKER_00 4:52

That's it. That's it. Well, I did, I did also, I mean, are you keeping up with all of these cybersecurity PHP incidents that are

The PHP Vulnerability Nobody Explains

SPEAKER_00 4:59

literally happening?

SPEAKER_01 5:00

I actually don't know that I should know more about it. I don't know a lot about it, but I heard a lot of jokes about it.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Do you know why you don't know anything about it? Why? Because for whatever reason, it's being covered up. Like it's really sus. Like this is the most sus thing I think I have seen in the news in a while. Because basically they came out and said, like, yeah, we use Claude, uh, you know, a bunch of bad actors use Claude. They were able to reverse engineer in like a day and find something that would have taken a human two years to find as far as the security gap goes. And it affects 70% of PHP systems, which is like, you know, most of the internet and apps on your phone. But like, no big deal. It just, you know, gives them access to everything and they can go in and just muck around everywhere inside of the application once they have this backdoor access. So, like, nothing to worry about really, except the entire internet is compromised. And like, if you look this up, there's very little news. Like, there was one post, I think it was on TechCrunch, that was like, read this article while you still can't. And like, it's so weird to me because this is a huge deal. This is really bad, right? Like not being anti-AI here, but like AI has been used to find a vulnerability. Yeah. And good, glad we found it. I mean, I would have been more happy if it wasn't, you know, the bad actors that were the ones who are like, you know, perpetuating this kind of thing, but like glad we found it. But it's not fixed everywhere. And like it's taking time to roll out, and it's such a widespread impact, and we don't know what like the actual implications of access and vulner this vulnerability are. And I just feel like interesting. Given that all of us at this very moment, if you're listening to this, watching this, doing something with this, or on the internet, and likely have something, some PHP app open on whatever your device is right now to do this, like shouldn't we be a bit more informed and concerned about this specific thing? And like part of me wonders, now I'm gonna put on the tinfoil. I'm waiting for the tinfoil to come on. Hit me. Is this the AI? Like, we're saying like it's bad actors, but like, really, though, is it the AI? Like, is this the first move? Is this the first chess piece on the board? You know what I'm saying? Like, you know what I'm saying. I don't gotta say it, but you know what I'm saying. Like, is this the first chess piece? And that I don't know. But that's my I'll take the tinfoil off now.

SPEAKER_01 7:32

So I know almost nothing but the memes about this, and I really need to do some research. So I have no idea. I mean, yeah, but that is interesting. Even in your home does run, you know, the backbone of a ton of things that work on the internet, and so for that to be compromised is scary, that's for sure. The downside, Anthony, I hate to tell you this: the only way to combat these AI cyber attacks is with AI cyber defense.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

Yeah, I mean, I don't disagree. Well, it's it's a combination of AI cyber defense and then just good cybersecurity expertise. Because a lot of this stuff is stuff that can be remediated or mitigated by good cybersecurity training, right? And like you you use the AI tool, but then you, the cybersecurity expert, work in conjunction with that to cover each other's tracks because there are things the AI knows that you don't know, but then there's also the human element that you know that they don't know. Like it really has to be a hand-in-hand situation. And I feel like what's happened is the cybersecurity expert is like an enterprise-only level higher, and everyone else is just like, ah, rip it, Claude Bay Blades. Let's go.

SPEAKER_01 8:50

Like just let it ride. Let it rip. Yeah, I remember, and people might not quite understand this, but I I worked with um somebody that I worked with who was incredibly intelligent, awesome at software design and building tech. And he alluded to security, unfortunately, has never been it's never been possible to fully lock it down. No, you can't, you can only put layers in front of it. And so he had always described it as like, hey, there's no silver bullet. What you do is you stack the Swiss cheese. You stack the Swiss cheese with layers so that less things can fall through the cracks and find their way through. But there is no way that you can ever claim that your system is impenetrable. And so you just stack the tools, you stack the layers of security, and that will hopefully prevent you know a security incident from happening. But it's inevitable it will happen. And this was pre-AI that he was kind of telling me about this. And I was like, you're spot on. And now with AI, it's even worse. It's like now these will find those holes faster than any human possibly could doing it manually and be able to decrypt hashes faster than any human ever. And so AI, cybersecurity, if you're looking to invest in anything, we're not invested in any, well, I'm not invested in cybersecurity, but if you're looking for a good investment, cybersecurity companies would be a solid investment right about now.

Swiss Cheese Security With AI

SPEAKER_00 10:13

I will offer one more tip on your layered approach, just because this is like what I talk about all day, every day. Um, I like the Swiss cheese, it's really good. Or the measure cheese. Let's not call it Swiss cheese, but let's call it cheese. The one thing you can do with that cheese that no one does, and it's actually like really easy to do is subdivide the cheese and say, like, Anthony gets this quarter of the cheese, Michael gets this quarter of the cheese. And if Anthony wants to access Michael's cheese, all you gotta do is validate with two other people that Anthony is who he says he is, and then he can access Michael's cheese, but only when you do that. And like that locks down so much of the attack vectors in the market. Because as soon as you use least privilege access and subdivide access and then apply four eyes, the Negation protocol, bro, you are like off to the races on actually locking down your because access is everything. Like, yeah, at the end of the day, like access and scope. Yeah, you can have vulnerabilities in your thing, but if no one can access it, what does it matter?

SPEAKER_01 11:13

Right? Like, so it's a always follow common things, least privilege, access, and make sure you have access and scopes to find to say Anthony can only access his quarter of the cheese, and like that, that's the only scope Anthony can ever do. You protect your system that way.

SPEAKER_00 11:26

Yeah, so what's the moral?

SPEAKER_01 11:30

Moral of the story is AI cybersecurity incidents are going to keep on happening. No, bro, you gotta cut the cheese. That is that is the moral of how you can better protect your system. You gotta cut the cheese. I saw another thing in the news about uh a company that had a cyber incident. And they were one of these like app builder companies that people would deploy their apps on. And they basically said, hey, someone got access to the way that this provider was hosting environmental variables for like security codes to all the access to their systems, and so they found that vulnerability, they reported it out hours after it was already found and online, and everyone's freaking out because, like, hey, all my API secrets are out there in the world at the moment, like we need to be able to turn this down. And then they said, they made a public post about this. They said, and we're shutting down the ability for you to make any, we fixed the issue, but we're shutting down the ability for you to make any deployments at the moment until we can dive into it further. So everyone's like, wait, wait, hold on, hold on. You fixed the issue, but my keys are still out there vulnerable to anybody. Anybody can find these now because of the cybersecurity

Least Privilege And Four Eyes

SPEAKER_01 12:43

incident. But I can't redeploy my app with my new secrets, so my stuff still works, and nobody can take you know any of these uh environment variables from my application. And so it was like the dumbest thing in the world. But they were like publicly, yeah, we're gonna stop you from deploying and fixing the issue, but we stopped the issue from happening. It's like, what are we doing here, guys? What are we doing?

SPEAKER_00 13:04

I want to respond. We have a uh we have a celebrity in the chat. Uh, it's previous podcast uh co-host, corporate strategy co-host, Brooklyn Smith Projects. Uh, she asks, how do you balance access protection with friction, especially with B2C, business to customer? Because 2FA, two-factor authentication makes me want to scream every single time. So you're gonna hate this answer, but it's true. Friction means it's working. And the more friction you have, the better it's working. And I know that's a really like hard pill to swallow, but here's my counter, right? Here's my counter to the counter. We used to send facts, right? And that was okay. We used to send actual mail, and that was okay. I think business moves way too fast, and we are so focused on the speed at which we execute, respond to emails, uh, lock this thing down, push to push to commit. Like everything is so in the now that uh any introduction of friction is perceived as uh a de-optimization of the process. But like think about how things were 10 years ago. Think about how things were 20 years ago. We move so fast that even the additional friction of like a four eyes of validation or two-factor authentication or multi-factor authentication, like, yeah, you're gonna lose a couple extra minutes or maybe even hours of your day. But in the grand scheme of things, like the security implication is you will not have that system fail, at least from an access violation, which is

When Vendors Botch Incident Response

SPEAKER_00 14:37

most of the ways they get in is through phishing, social engineering, all these access vectors. If you can prevent that from happening, then the downtime mitigation is worth the friction you're going to introduce in your processes. And again, like we move way too quickly. Like it is okay to introduce a little bit of lag and delay in the ecosystem for the safety of security.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

Yeah, I think if you have options for two of A as well, like one super secure one, well, I guess maybe not so secure nowadays, but what one super secure one is passkeys because they're scoped for the access of whatever provider. You've probably seen them everywhere. Like Google requires it for Gmail accounts now. The target app just hit me with one the other day, like upgrade your account from password to pass keys, like HP, because it's great. Yeah, it's scoped to the device that you're on or a second device that you're on to verify it, but it's super fast because you're already on that device and it can't be impersonated. If someone steals your phone, they still can't use it because it might be on your computer. So scope and access is everything, and pass keys are a great way to do it. Do you remember at Big Corp? Yeah, we had the uh the VPN actual, yeah, the token that thing that we had to get carry on our keychain. So use it to plug that into your computer to like unlock your computer. It's like you forgot your token that day, you're not getting into your system.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

I mean, I have I don't know if it's 100% factual. I it could have been getting memed, but like I saw someone say like that was pretty much the ultimate in cybersecurity, and we should have never abandoned the physical token because again, if it's in your hands, it's not in anyone else's hands, right? Like, yeah, they could steal it.

SPEAKER_01 16:13

Top styles are the perfect, the perfect thing. Like the biometrics, like the face ID, I think is the frictionless way of doing it. Like Apple, with that, I think normalized face ID. Well, people did freak out about that. Well, they're taking pictures, 3D scans of our faces. Like, isn't this like a super worrying thing that we shouldn't allow any company to do? But then at the end of the day, like everyone accepted it. Unfortunately, Apple's pretty great with security and privacy. But like the face is that thing you always have with you. So you don't need a physical token.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

I want to come back to that in a second. I do want to I want to close this out uh before we hit the face ID thing. One more question, which is how do you how do you package this up as like a marketing thing, right? And this is what I do. So the the trick with security and marketing is you are ensuring your clients and your customers that they won't be impacted by any kind of cyber threat or risk that you may face. And it's not a matter of if, but when. So you can even say, like, you know, we follow a zero trust approach. There is no doubt in our mind that there could be systems inside of our infrastructure that will be breached. It is impossible to prevent that from happening. But with the friction we've introduced into our systems and the way we've segmented our architecture and we do multiple authentication with multiple human beings, especially when it comes to our customers, we're ensuring that your data remains safe and secure no matter what. And let me tell you, as someone who works in cybersecurity, there is nothing customers love to hear more than they are safe and secure and you have a good security policy. Like I have found people are willing to deal with a lot more friction if it means their butt's not on the line when things go wrong. So you're just offloading the risk and the threat from them to yourself and saying, we're taking care of it, we're making it as good as it can be. It might take a few extra minutes on your end.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

Yeah. It only takes one

Security Friction Versus Customer UX

SPEAKER_01 18:05

lesson in your career when you don't have the right levels of security or the right level of data integrity to realize how important it is. And that little bit of friction doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_02 18:18

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 18:19

We know this because we work for big data and backup and not having replicated data or not having a dedupe policy where your data is you know basically deduplicated across different availability zones or whatever you want to call it. Like one of those things go down and you lose all the data, I can tell you it is the most scary and worse feeling in the world that you grow about a million gray hairs out of. So it takes one incident. That's all I like for clients that are small that I work with. I always tell that to them, they're like, well, why do we have to do the security piece? Like it seems like you know it's additional cost, and like we're not that big yet. I'm like, listen, it takes one time. It takes one time for something bad to happen, a legal incident, a data outage, a your systems go down and you lose access to everything because of a cybersecurity incident, and now they have access to your bank or something. It takes one of those for you to realize how important it is. Hey Michael.

unknown 19:10

Hey.

SPEAKER_01 19:11

Remember we were talking about face ID?

SPEAKER_02 19:13

Yeah, hit me. Oh no. Your move, creep.

VR Headsets And Always-On Scanning

SPEAKER_01 19:24

So you put these on earlier, and they look they look really good. They're not connected to any external device, right?

SPEAKER_00 19:32

That's right. Uh so for those listening, not watching, uh, I am I've donned and am rocking the Valve Steam frame, which is their latest VR kit. Uh it is a it is a virtual reality headset that uh actually works wirelessly using Wi-Fi 7, and it is the smoothest streaming experience I have ever had. And uh the reason why I'm tying this to face ID is one, it doesn't work when I'm wearing this thing, but two, uh it has an infrared mode. So I can look through and see everything around me uh in like, you know, infrared, black, and white. And what I have realized is oh my god, these little devices are scanning our faces all the time. Like I'll be sitting on the couch just streaming a game on a ginormous screen in front of me wearing this thing, and like my phone will be doing this flashing maneuver and it's trying to scan my face while it's like sitting next to me on the couch. Like it is always scanning. And just from a security perspective, and I was like, you know, this is actually kind of nice. Like I know this thing is looking after me, it's it's scanning me. But uh, it is wild just walking around the house with that thing on my face, realizing how much infrared scanning is just happening all the time, it's everywhere. You know, we're we're so worried about listening devices, but it's like, yeah, there's all these devices that are also just like literally getting three-dimensional scans of their surroundings at all times, which you know one more technology hellscape we introduce into our lives. What's what's to lose?

SPEAKER_01 21:04

What's the worst thing that could happen?

SPEAKER_00 21:07

Come on. Yeah.

Career Hindsight And Regret Framework

SPEAKER_01 21:11

Well, that was fun. It was fun. Did we actually talk about what we're gonna talk about?

SPEAKER_00 21:15

Let's do it. We avoided a topic last week because I sent you down the rabbit hole. So uh this week, I gave you an idea for a topic and you're gonna share it with us all right now. Go.

SPEAKER_01 21:25

Yeah, you definitely uh you definitely inspired this. I by no means said it at the end of our podcast last time. Also, we were this close, like I could feel it. We were this close to slipping into another one of those episodes as just us ranting about things and getting and getting on our stools about just how we think about things philosophically. So, to avoid that, we actually do need to talk about the topic for today because I hinted at it last time. All right, at the end of the last episode, I left us on a cliffhanger. I said, hindsight is 2020. And

Passkeys Tokens And Face ID

SPEAKER_01 21:55

Anthony, this is where it gets personal. I want to talk about looking back. At our career, where would we have done something different? Where do we think we may have made a mistake? And we wish we, you know, looking back, you're like, oh yeah, I shouldn't have done that. I should have stuck with this. I think largely, largely for us, it's going to be small things. And the reason I say that is because I think generally, and I know this is this is a very privileged opinion. Generally, I believe that you and I have found our careers to where we are today because of the history. And if I I know for myself, if I didn't take the path and the positions that I had, I don't think I would be running my own AI enablement technology company now. And so I don't think there's macro level things that I would change at that scale, but I do think there's micro level things that I might adjust in my career now that I can look back at it. So I wanted to get your thoughts.

SPEAKER_00 22:57

So you would ask you asked of a similar version of this when we were playing one of those games a while back of like just question answer. And uh I think then I said I would probably spend less time in dev and get to sales sooner. Um I'm gonna answer this carefully. In a year, my answer may change drastically from where I am today, just given all of my circumstances. But if I had to like actually go back in hindsight and change something big, I thought about this a lot recently, actually.

Anthony’s Alternate Life In Psychology

SPEAKER_00 23:41

Uh I would have pursued a psychology degree and become a full-time like therapist slash psychologist. And and it's because I hate what I do. And uh I think it's I I just had this realization, it's like I don't like technology uh as much as I like being a consumer of it. Like, yes, as you just saw, I can advocate for security. I know a lot about security and data management and all that stuff, but like it does not one, it's a little bit of a curse. Because I think the knowledge of how fragile and how bad things are weighs heavy on my soul and ignorance is bliss. But two, I'm helping people on a macroeconomic scale. And I don't feel good about it. Uh and, you know, I watched my wife's favorite show is Frasier, and we watched all of Frasier just to kind of be nostalgic and have something soothe the soul. It's a very funny show. And like just watching this man bumble through psychiatry and therapy and like thinking about my own fascination with the human mind, I love uh learning about disorders and uh all of the different ways the brain can betray you and how even our own brain, you know, lies to us and thinking about that and being introspective, retrospective, open-minded. Like I think a psychiatrist or psychologist or a therapist really would have been my calling. Uh, and I'll I'm gonna back this up in one more thing before I throw it back to you. People come and talk to me all the freaking time. Like they'll say, Anthony, can we do a quick 30-minute chat? And it is never about like something work related. It's about people, problems at work, right? Like, how do I ask for a raise? How do I enjoy my job more? How do I do X, Y, and Z thing? And like what I try and always do is like really consider like, what is the problem we're trying to get to here? Like, what is what is the real issue you have? Like, do you really want to raise or do you want a different job? Like, do you want more salary or do you want more freedom in your life? And like I if I could do that like full time, but not have to deal with technology in corporate, like that really would have been the turn. Uh, but I didn't even know about any of this stuff when I was in college. I literally went into computer science because I thought that's where the money was, and that is where the money is, as I am paid well. So, like that, you know, I went down this path because I didn't know what other paths there were. And knowing what I know about myself now, it was the wrong path. But what can you do except get old and die, which I'm gonna do?

SPEAKER_01 26:19

That's a macro level change of like going all the way back. Maybe a question to that. Do you think you would have been good at that? Yes, without the experience you have now.

SPEAKER_00 26:31

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 26:31

I think it's in my nature. You think so?

SPEAKER_00 26:33

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:34

I think it is in my empathetic person.

SPEAKER_00 26:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:38

You are. You're extremely empathetic. You know how to read emotion off people and you adjust. And I think that's something that not a lot of people are great at, that you're great at.

SPEAKER_00 26:46

Right.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

It's being able to read the room, being able to read the situation, and then like being able to feel what they feel. And that's hard to do. And I feel like you're really good at that. And then asking the right questions to provide value in that situation. So I do agree. I think it's something in your nature.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

Yeah. Yeah. And like, you know, didn't know that then. I was just an angsty little punk ass teenager. So what a yeah, you know, like how can I never do that? So also, I don't think I could have afforded medical school. So maybe in hindsight, sure, there was no way that would have ever happened. There's no option.

unknown 27:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:17

You know, that's just maybe in your future. Like, literally, I've had this thought in my mind for the last I'd say like six months, and just like, man, I could do it all over again. Gone into psychology or psychiatry.

SPEAKER_01 27:30

That's really interesting.

SPEAKER_00 27:30

Study of the mind. Yeah.

Missing The Golden Big Corp Years

SPEAKER_01 27:33

I don't think I have anything that big. I think I was always destined to make my way into technology somehow. Like even I said this in one of our other episodes. Even when I was a kid, I was fascinated by technology. I would take apart technology and get in trouble for taking apart the remote for that light and breaking it because I just wanted to understand how it worked. And I fell in love with software because I was in full control and I could change things any second I could create things with it. And that was super, super exciting for me. So I believe I was always destined to land in tech somehow. But thinking through the steps of my journey of going from engineering to management to Scrum Master to agile stuff to product ownership to now running my own business, a couple things I was thinking through for this topic is one, I wish I would have stayed in the golden years where we worked in Big Corp together because it was so fun and so unique. You know, it was way before COVID, but us all being in an environment like that, and us having the opportunity to build tech in this exciting time together, even though we had no idea what we were doing, and the freedom we had to just do things every single day, and the naivety to not know like what management was and how corporations worked, in hindsight, and we would have never known it back then. Like that was a beautiful time that we will never get to experience again.

SPEAKER_00 29:06

You know, the thing about those golden years is yeah, it was you and I, but there were a few other people as well involved in those golden years. And all of us were similar mindset, similar, similar level of energy and passion and ability to like not only do our jobs and build the thing that we were asked to build, but also like help each other. And you combine that with the physical proximity of we're all working in adjacent offices, we're carpooling together every day. Like we had effectively sort of that team startup, you know, small group thing that everyone pines for because like, you know, it's the Silicon Valley, you know, but you know, in a corporate office, basically. Like there was just really good camaraderie. And I mean, I would give anything to be on a team like that again. I would go into a physical office if it meant being on a team like that again. But sadly, I just don't there was lightning in a bottle because I think like the the four of us together back in those days just had like real magic going on between us. It's like the Beatles, you know, and obviously, you know, I'm Paul McCartney, and I'll let you pick your Beatle. But uh that was magic, man. And it's because I think the four of us all came from a very similar mindset and we're willing to execute in a very similar way.

SPEAKER_01 30:38

Yeah. It's so hard going back to what you said about psychology, because we'll never get that again, because it was that unique time in life where I just think we were blessed with not knowing what we didn't know. Yes. And I don't think I could enjoy times like that anymore knowing what we know and have learned in this world. And so it's really interesting because it's such like a unique time. And just like, you know, watching The Office, it's like you don't know you're in the good old days until you're out of the good old days and you wish you could know. But it's like that was an awesome, awesome time, even though we weren't paid well. Like looking forward in our 20 years since then, or you know, however long it will be soon enough. Like it was just so unique, and I think it'd be really hard to replicate given the experience we have now and what we've done and where we want to go in life. I challenge, I want to challenge you. You think so?

SPEAKER_00 31:33

I think so, because I love you being an optimist. This is great. Listen, man, if you're if you just have a few million dollars in the bank and a few hundred thousand to throw around on projects every now and then, you could rehire everyone you liked working with. It's that easy.

SPEAKER_01 31:51

You could go, you go to lunch every day, you go to Walgreens, you could play ping pong for two hours.

SPEAKER_00 31:56

Okay. That's all you need is a couple million in the bank. Jokes aside, I do think it is absolutely possible to start something and pick the right people, pick the people you like working with, build it, go execute it. You the the biggest challenge really is funding, right? Like either your people gotta be willing to compromise on uh their compensation and know that, like, hey, this is an investment. This is not a this is not a uh let's start rich story, it's let's maybe get to you know middle class. Um, or you you hit it big with you know VC funding or something where you're you're able to have that kind of culture and lightning in a bottle working with the people you like to work with, the people who buy into the vision and the idea and the dream, uh, but you have to obviously please some sort of large uh stakeholder at the end of the day. But I think there are stakeholders that appreciate that kind of thing as well. It's it's are you willing to one find the idea, two, get the band back together, and three, find someone who's interested in funding that kind of thing. And it can happen. The challenge is the pressures.

SPEAKER_01 33:05

Like I think the hardest part about what you just said is you have the pressures. We were protected by a large organization that took all the pressure off. What we were doing didn't matter in the large scheme of things, right? It was interesting, and I think we had a lot of impact, but in the large schemes, it wasn't a save the company move.

SPEAKER_00 33:25

Let me ask you this. Let me ask you this, because I disagree. What we were building didn't matter, but I absolutely believe we could have built something that did if we were given that assignment, right? So, you know, they didn't trust us because we were young that alone, that alone ruined it, would have ruined it.

SPEAKER_01 33:43

You would have had pressure from an outside party. I think the freedom that we had is what made it magical because we'd got to decide what we worked on, even though we didn't really understand how impactful it was going to be. And we had the freedom of we didn't have to worry about money. We were all getting salaries. There was no pressure on our team to do things really. Like what we built was what we built.

SPEAKER_00 34:05

Okay, so like I wanna, I wanna, I'll drop the veil here. Michael, me, and a couple other individuals built automation systems to test a really crappy product that everyone hated. Uh, every time there was a new build, we built a system that like went through and tested this thing. So we didn't have to do it by hand. But up until this point, it was a it was a by hand process. And we automated everything. And it was like, it was a pretty decent system given what we knew, how we executed on it, and like what it produced at the end of the day. So we were given a task, which was go test this thing by hand every freaking day, sometimes multiple times a day, like a brain dead job. And what we did was we built a complete automation system for it to alleviate the manual testing. And then shortly thereafter, they saw that we were talented and put us on other projects that would eventually fail. And I think the thing that I'm not willing to relent on is if you took the same group of people, which are now spread across the United States, and you put them back together again in a room and said, Hey, you guys can go to Starbucks, you guys can pull the frisbee for half an hour a day. But what you're gonna do is you're gonna go build an app that uh evaluates, you know, commonalities and and medical patients. And if you said that's our problem that we're gonna go solve, and here's your budget, I want to see a release in four months, we could do it. We could absolutely do it. Because I have full confidence in that team and our ability to look at the problem, execute it, solve it, and build something good. That's not gonna happen because everyone's spread across the United States. Can't get that band back together. Ringo Star is Ringo Starr is doing it. He's got kids now.

SPEAKER_01 35:51

Uh oh, he gets me Ringo?

SPEAKER_00 35:55

Oh, you wanted Ringo! Okay, I see how it is. I knew that would spark something. But I I think I don't think that dream is lost. I just think it's not you can't recreate it one-to-one, but I do think you can do it again. I do think you can do it again. You just gotta get the people that believe in the problem that you trust to solve it. And I think you can create that culture. You can you can do this even at like an executive level. And yeah, I think some of the proof is like, you know, the company I used to work for, the company I still work for, I don't even know how this works anymore. Because when you're an acquired company that gets acquired, uh, all of my executive leadership has worked together at like the last six companies they've gone to. And they have a great relationship. They're incredibly productive. Like they're some of the most like talented execs I've ever worked with. And I attribute a lot of that to the fact that they all know what each other is good at and they can rely on each other and they protect each other. And it's like it's a really healthy, good working system. Like in my mind, I think maybe they go play frisbee and get Starbucks, you know, whenever they're in the same locale, because they have that thing going for them. So I think you can do it. I think you can do it at the very top, too. But yeah, I mean, it's can you get the funding? Really? I think that's the hardest part of all of this is can you get the funding?

SPEAKER_01 37:11

Yeah, Will Edwards in the chat is like, why doesn't private equity just fund the fellas having a good time? I agree. The fellas had a good time or the fellas solved the problem. I guess what I'm saying, you know? I do agree. I think maybe there's a chance. It just like looking in hindsight of my career. I think that was one area where if we knew how good we had it, we probably would have been like, let's just hang out a little longer. Maybe we're not gonna go to those teams. Dude, I didn't want to go. Do you remember? Yeah, I didn't want to go. That's true. You got well, we all got forced into it away. Yeah, so I was like, can I stay?

SPEAKER_00 37:45

And they're like, no, you cannot.

SPEAKER_01 37:47

Yeah, you will see you will do what we tell you to do.

Scrum Master Detour And Leadership Value

SPEAKER_00 37:51

Look how that turned out.

SPEAKER_01 37:52

I think the other the other the other micro switch I'd probably make is staying closer to engineering rather than going into like scrum mastering. And I think it's because tech was going to be and still is like the future of everything. And I wish I was I stayed more involved and closer to that path. Because I think eventually I would have had the bridge over to like a technical product management role, anyways. I think I would have found myself to that. But the scrum mastering and kind of management layer, I don't think added that much value out of skills I didn't already have. You know what I mean? Like in the engineering world, I had to learn engineering and tech and all that. In the management role, I had to learn how to manage people and teams and all that. But the like scrum mastering piece was it was like, hey, this is just basic project management and I did this already. Now I'm just telling people to do it too. You know what's like that period, I would have leaned off that a little bit and tried to find more technical things.

SPEAKER_00 39:04

So I don't want to toot my own horn, but uh I disagree. I disagree with your micro change because I've taken all of that scrum training that we went through and have applied it successfully to two different marketing departments. And like people have told me I could not imagine running projects any other way than this way now. And it's because of the all of the sort of rigor and form that we learned in that scrum master phase. Like, I've taken that and and I've made it work in a marketing world. And let me tell you, dude, there's no going back. Once you get it set up, I agree with the principles. You can't go back.

SPEAKER_01 39:42

I agree with the principles, but I think even as an engineer, you had the principles. It just was about thinking, working different. Yeah. The functional parts of being a scrum master as a full-time thing just I just think was unnecessary because like I could have done that and also been an engineer at the same time, which I did. I did them 50-50 for a long time before I went like, yeah. And so I think it's one of those things that it wasn't. I don't recommend that as a career path.

SPEAKER_00 40:10

Someone told me recently the only way, who told me this? The only way that like you can be a good leader. Oh no, I think it was Rustrepo. We Rustrepo and I were having dinner, and he told me he's like the only way, I'm gonna paraphrase, so sorry if I get it wrong, Alex. Uh, the only way to be a good leader is to understand the work of the IC and be able to jump in and do it. And like a hundred percent agree. And when you and I were Scrum Masters, we were both still developers. And yeah, all of the other Scrum Masters that we worked with were not. And I think that greatly hampered the process. I don't think we you know, we talked we had a whole episode talking about uh HR manager versus sort of like actually able to get things done manager. And I I truly believe the HR manager over a team of individual contributors is a fail state. Like you're never gonna find success there. Your manager has to be able to do the work it you know, to an extent of all of their team. Like if if Janice decides I'm out of here, gone. Your manager should be able to step in and do that job, at least to an extent. Hit the hit the MVP for Janice's role while you're hiring someone else, right? So like I think that's a bigger problem than the scrum itself, is I think you and I experienced Scrum fail at a macro level because people weren't applying it properly or we were. Yeah. But I wouldn't give it up simply because I learned so much about being a servant leader in that role that I've applied to, especially now that I am a full-time manager, like my current management role.

SPEAKER_01 41:49

Yeah. Yeah, it's really interesting because I do agree the principles of being able to jump in and do the work with the team, being able to get your hands dirty. I mean, it's one of the things that when I was an executive at Universal, I didn't enjoy about the role because I felt like I was so abstracted away from any of the work because there were so many. I had managers managing other people who are managing other people. Like there were tiers of our team, and I was at the top of them. And it was largely a lot of like, I honestly don't even know what this person over here is doing at this point. And I couldn't know how to help them even if I wanted to, because I'm so abstracted away from the work. And I think that's when you get into the point of like, am I actually providing any value to that person? And that is the part that makes me question

Valve’s Flat Org And Middle Management

SPEAKER_01 42:31

it.

SPEAKER_00 42:31

Do you think that's necessary? The level of abstraction that existed in your management role.

SPEAKER_01 42:37

With a big company like that, I do think there is necessity if your organization is not allowed to it has to match the other organizations, if that makes sense. Like tech was not, obviously, we're a theme park company, so we deliver attractions and theme parks and awesome entertainment experiences and hospitality. And so doing tech different than all of that would have made everybody more confused. And so we kind of matched the management layer and the promotion layer because that made it easier to explain. Right. This person is a senior director, this is the salary they get. It just is because we had to succumb to the broader organization. Do if I don't think you have those guardrails and you don't have that organizational oversight that doesn't understand tech, I think a more flat structure is always better.

SPEAKER_00 43:24

Well, and that's that's what I was wondering because you know, Valve, my favorite company, the people who had that headset, they uh, you know, their model is when you show up, you get a desk with wheels on it, and uh you go find a project to push your desk towards and join. And like what, you know, everyone's getting like a flat salary there. It's good salary, but it's flat. And really, your bonus is determined by what you ship and customer reaction and reception to what you ship. So, you know, it's a very self managing ecosystem. Like, I don't want to work on this project anymore. I think I'm gonna go work on this other thing over there. I'm gonna work on the VR headset, right? Like that's an interesting way to manage the. I'm surprised we haven't seen more companies adopt given Valve's just insane level of success as a company. But I mean, maybe it's maybe the problem is is it's a little too transparent in you know how things actually get done. You you don't have middle managers at Valve. They don't exist. That just does not exist, right? Like there's there's shared leadership on a team, there's a team leader, and they all report up to the big guy Gabe. Like right. That's the structure.

SPEAKER_01 44:28

But they're also given, I think that's the beauty of it, is they are given the autonomy, yeah, and decision-making power to have full control of their destiny. At a large corporation, you just don't get that. So then you need management to incentivize everybody, and the different layers allow for career growth and different salary levels, and like you have to have that. But if you're willing to give your team the autonomy and control to make decisions and do what's best for the company, you're always going to get a better result because people are working for the bigger picture, not for not for themselves.

SPEAKER_00 45:01

Pros and cons. Yes, and Valve being a small private company managed to manages to make more money than all of their competitors combined every single year. So I don't know, just chew on that big corporate, just chew on it. Think about it. Just give it a little chew. Give it a chew. Give it a little chew, spit it out. I do think to that point, and to the larger point, middle management, executive layers, and sort of the protected class of the, I don't know, let's just call it arist aristocratic management, right? Like the people close to the top and closer to the top, and I would include myself in this, even in my current role. Like if you are not capable of doing the jobs of those underneath you, you're in a broken corporate structure. And you you actually don't provide value and you are part of the problem. And this is why I'll never get hired by another big company, and that's fine. I don't want to work in a big company. Um, but I like I just I see it over and over again with these big corporations. It's like when you have these bloated management structures of high-level people who get paid a lot of money to do very little beyond show up to meetings and occasionally travel to a QBR and present things they don't understand. Like that's the problem, right? You can be paying, you could take that role away, create a servant leader on the team that's representative, pay everyone on the team more because you no longer have this executive leader layer. And suddenly morale improves because they're getting paid more, they have more autonomy, they have more ability to execute, and they're all responsible for what gets delivered versus the abstracted layers of management that you know obfuscate exactly what goes up and what comes down. So I don't know. It's funny.

SPEAKER_01 46:48

Yeah, I mean, it's kingdom building. It's like, oh, well, Anthony, we're just gonna ship this team underneath you. And you have a choice. You can say, well, I don't understand anything about this. Like, I don't think I'm gonna be successful because I have no idea how they do their job and what they do and how the systems work. I'm like, I can't help them unless like I truly need to learn and understand it first. And I think if you're a leader in that scenario where you're like, I don't know what Sally does, you should probably go learn what Sally does because you'll be a more effective manager if you understand her world and what she does and the value she provides. And it goes back to what we were talking about uh with the LinkedIn kind of jokiness um uh in the in the earlier uh section, because when people buy laundromats and they know nothing about running a laundromat, the chances of success are not high. Yeah, like you can't just go buy a business, turn on AI, and be like, no, we're running it. It's gonna be much more successful. You will fall flat on your face because you don't understand it. You're telling me ChatGPT lied? Do you think you can do that? AI's just go on the internet and tell lies. But it is funny because like those stories, sure, it can work. I'm not saying it's impossible. Anything's possible. But people that take that advice and go buy like these failing landscaping businesses and don't expect to have to actually go out in the field and work with the landscaping to like get this business off the ground and do that work and they can just run it with AI. Good luck to you. I am not betting on myself not knowing how to do any of that, that I would be able to do it. Now, Anthony here is a landscaping expert, so I think he'd be just fine. Maybe that should be your next side hustle.

SPEAKER_00 48:24

Uh, you know, there was a to close

Landscaping Lessons And Real Skills

SPEAKER_00 48:28

this out. Uh I was a landscaper for four years in college, did it full time. Um, a few weeks ago, we noticed just like an absolute unbelievable amount of water in the street of our neighborhood. And my wife comes in and she's like, hey, come look at this. What is this? And like I'm like, oh, it's uh it's a busted sprinkler. It's a busted sprinkler pipe. And she's like, it's not the water main. I'm like, no, because the water main would be closer to the street. And so then I put on my sandals and I go walking through this muck and like there's literally like six inches of water, and I find the broken sprinkler pipe, and like was able to go and turn off the irrigation system and stop the absolute insane amount of water from pouring out into our street. And you know, that is the value of doing four years of landscaping in college is I just saved our homeowners association, you know, a few hundred bucks in a waterhouse money.

SPEAKER_01 49:20

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 49:21

I'll tell you this, Michael. I would never go back and change that. Uh that's that is the most stable thing in my life, I think. I would always go and be a landscaper. Maybe not four years. If I could afford to, I would do it maybe for two. But like that, fingers in the dirt dealing with some of the most mentally unwell people I've ever met. Uh, but you know, real common clay of the earth individuals who are actually living paycheck to paycheck, understanding their problems, working alongside them, like building beautiful gardens. I would never ever change that part of my life because I think it's so valuable to who I am today. And realizing like the importance of hard work, working with people that you you might not understand but can learn to, and building real beautiful outcomes. So uh that's something I'd never change.

SPEAKER_01 50:17

That's the biggest, that's the biggest takeaway.

What To Take From Hindsight

SPEAKER_01 50:19

I think if you look in hindsight, it's easy to focus on the things that you would change or where you went wrong or how you do something different. You have to look at it from a perspective of what did I learn? How did it change my trajectory? And also remember that it's too late now. You can't go back and change things. You can't go back. Take the positives out of it and be like, what did I learn? How did I, you know, change my career trajectory? How did I pick up a skill? What did I take away from this that I can use and leverage in the future? And it's a great example of what you said. I mean, I've I've remodeled large portions of houses and worked on small motors and like all those things are just skills and things you add to your toolkit. Be like, hey, did I spend too much time on that? Maybe. But now if there's a shower leak or if I need to repair a shower, guess what? You know, I'm I'm the guy who can do it. It's a tangible skill I can take away. And looking in hindsight at my career, I think everything set me up for where I am now and the career path I'm on now. And I'm very thankful to every role. And even though I might change those macro or those micro things and kind of shift how much time I spent another, I think it was necessary to learn the skills that make me an effective business owner now. And I think you'd agree. Like largely, if you look at it with that positive outlook, the reality is you needed that to get to where you are today.

SPEAKER_00 51:34

Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Well, hindsight's 2020. See you guys next week. Foresight is 4040. Oh, he's gone.

Discord Patreon Website And Closing

SPEAKER_00 51:43

All right. Well, uh, thanks as always for joining us on Corpus Strategy. The podcast could be an email. If you want to hang out with Michael when he's not running away from the podcast, you can do so by joining our Discord. And you could do that by finding the link in whatever the thing that's run by PHP and it's leaking all of your secrets uh right now. I think Discord also has PHP in it. So it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter where you go. We're all screwed. It's everywhere. It's everywhere, it's everywhere. And join our Discord, join our Patreon. We've got good content on there, especially good content of me telling you how to present a good presenter. Uh, let me tell you, that's a course I would charge company a lot of dollars if they were asking me to present it. I charge you one to 10. So uh please think about supporting the show if you'd like to. It really means a lot to us. None of this money goes into our pockets, it actually goes back into the podcast platforms and all of the AI tools and things that we use to make the content that you are engaging with right now. So uh thank you for our patrons that continue to exist. And if you'd like to be a patron, it would mean so much to us if you would be. We have a ballin' new website. Michael, tell us more about it.

SPEAKER_01 52:53

Website's fresh, been revamped. I that was ballin' if you were curious what that uh hand motion was. Yeah, brand new revamped website. We actually had somebody reach out today, our first pro per person going on there recommending a new topic that we should talk about. So you can contact us directly on there. You can find links to everything that we're on YouTube, Instagram, Discord, Patreon. You can even buy baby onesie. Why would you not want to buy your newborn a corporate strategy onesie to get them prepared for the world they're about to step into? Come on, come join us. But yeah, like, share, subscribe. We're trying to do big things in this podcast. Every year we're growing little by little, and we would want you to be part of it. It's fun.

SPEAKER_00 53:33

Please do. And uh, if nothing else, you've heard another hour-ish episode of us going down every rabbit hole possible. If you think today's episode would have helped someone, uh, please share it with them. And if you don't want to share this one, we have an absolutely banger of an episode from a couple of weeks ago with Brooklyn Smith of Brooklyn Smith Projects. Please go share and watch that one. It's fantastic. So much to learn, so much to take away. She is our favorite guest. I mean, we can have a favorite guest, but you know, if we did, it'd probably be Brooklyn. So please go check that out, share it with your friends. And if you need her services, her information is in that episode. Thank you as always for your patronage and your listenership. We appreciate you. We love you. And we actually listen to you too because of the PHP holes and all the apps you use. So, you know, that's just that's what we do now. Uh, as always, I'm Anthony. And I'm Michael. And you're on mute. We will see you.