Before I show you my talk on what is my

value that I gave at Omicron, I wanted

to give like a little bit of a

precursor, a little bit of kind of

setting up here so you understand what's

happening. So, Omicron just got done

taking place in New York. The conference

was awesome. The talks were awesome.

They're all going to be on YouTube. I

highly recommend you checking them all

out. It's about kind of the celebration

of computers, about our interest in it,

and how they're actually really fun and

like our current future is actually a

pretty cool future where you can build

anything and things are more accessible

than they've ever been. I'd really like

to thank Dell for sponsoring Omicron and

making it possible for me and the team

to come out there and really make this

event awesome. This computer is

absolutely fantastic. This is the best

laptop I've ever used a Linux on ever.

The battery life is incredible. It's

been on all morning and I'm still at

90%. And holy cow, look at this OLED

screen. It is so good looking. You see

Chrome running and I'm not out of

battery? The magical world we live in.

Thanks, Dell. There were a couple few

audio problems, so if the audio does go

in and out, don't worry, it gets fixed

or some of it might be a little bit

missing. So, it's really just like a

peek behind the curtains into what I am

thinking. So, love to hear your

thoughts, your comments, if you're

feeling the same way. Am I just full of

crap? Let me know in the comments. Hope

you enjoy it. I get a lot of messages

and the messages go something along the

lines of, "Hey,

you know, I've been working for 1 year,

2 years, 5 years, 10 years. Hey, I'm in

college right now.

What do I do?

Like, what's the changing environment,

how things are moving? Like, I am

genuinely freaked out. I don't know

where things are going. Is everything

I've done for the last 1, 5, 10, 15, 20

years

is it worthless? Am I worth less now?

And this is a question I just see like

constantly to the point where

at least multiple times a month

someone's like saying they're going to

kill themselves over this. Like, it's

like insane messages going out there

because people are, you know, I think a

lot of people feel this kind of feeling.

And so

I guess in some sense I sympathize with

that because how could you not, right?

Like, I don't know if you've been on

Twitter in the last couple days, but

there's a very aggressive strain of AGI

going on right now. And we're achieving

it daily at this point. So, I

I'd highly recommend a good social

distancing for 24 to 48 hours to help

slow the spread because it's going to be

achieved several more days in a row if

we do not stop.

But for me, I actually feel it quite a

bit in a sense that I feel this exact

same sense of loss and I feel this

confusion and I

things and for the last 6 months I've

kind of been in a

you know, a bit of a funk. Shall I say

if TJ I don't know where TJ went, but

TJ, several phone calls to him being

like, "TJ,

I'm confused right now. Feeling a little

control. And uh and the reason being is

for the last 20 years

I'm not There's a handful of days, but

pretty much I've done 6,000 days of

programming in the last 20 years. I

don't know how many hours that equates

to, but it's a lot of hours. I'm not

that quick with math.

Uh

Of those 20 years, 14 of them have been

spent doing Vim motions of some form,

whether it's an intelligent J or a God

bless my soul, I did VS Code for 6

months. Sorry, Maria. Uh

I did a lot You know, I did a lot of it,

right? And then I eventually landed home

in Neovim. It was a great time. But and

so I look at that

and I realized something kind of

strange, I guess.

See, you guys were out smoking with

cigarettes, partying,

drinking grape juice, and I was out

sharpening my blade, honing my skills,

speed running Vim tutor, becoming the

best you can possibly be at that

program.

You guys were probably having premarital

sex. I was learning programming

languages, okay? I knew Go, JavaScript,

C, Rust, Zig, even some Jai at one

point. Uh I've done I've done them all.

And obviously this is an Arch Linux

conference. I can tell a lot of chads

out there. And so you guys were out

sculpting your bodies, lifting heavy

weights. No. I was becoming the ultimate

generalist. I could build anything. I I

at one point I had to build a Pac

Perturber, sending something that looked

like G streamer so we could test the

latency from JavaScript to when audio

hits HDMI and making sure that, hey, if

we're going to be doing live video

games, are we going to hear pops, right?

Like, I have just been doing this thing

over and over again, building developer

tools, taking some idea and how do you

make it into something people can look

at and feel and test. And

well,

have I invested poorly? It's a question

I keep asking myself over and over

again. Have I invested poorly in my

future?

I guess in some sense it feels like

that, right? I think that a lot of

people can look at that and say, "Well,

no one's

So, I actually don't know what I just

said there and the rest of the audio

blips, which are another six of them

throughout the next 10 minutes, I can

generally guess what I'm about to say.

From here on out you will see one of the

you know, the old Jackie Chan movies,

how the lips didn't quite match up to

the dubs. Yeah, you There will be dubs

going on. That's not worth as much

anymore. And so I kind of feel a little

bit like Jim Cramer. You know, like

maybe there should be like an inverse

prime index fund out there because it's

way better.

And so you know, perhaps this is just

like part of being on X. You know, it's

not necessarily the most healthy

platform to be able to have any sort of

correct perspective. It is just a

platform to have a perspective.

Speaking of perspective,

have you guys heard of introspection?

Figured at least one person would like

that. Marc Andreessen out there, I'm so

sorry if you ever hear

I introspected by accident. I won't do

it again, I swear. I'm not giving in to

communism, don't worry. Uh so

last 6 months I have been doing this. I

have been introspecting and I have I

keep asking myself the same question,

which is

do I have value? What is my value?

Is my work history

less?

Is is like my time now worth less

because of what the changes and all

this? And I I know that a lot of people

are feeling the exact same thing. So, I

just have to answer that question. What

is my value?

And for a long time I guess I kind of

gave into this notion or I started

thinking about this notion or testing

this notion like, is my value just

having taste? This is that fancy word

VCs keep using. I don't really know what

it means, but apparently what that means

is that your value as an engineer is how

nice you can make a website look or

maybe how nice your command line flags

can be eaten by Claude Bot because

that's what's going to happen, right? Or

sorry, not Claude Bot. Sorry for the

trademark infringement, Dario. Please

don't come after me. Open Claw. Uh and

so

is that it? Is that Is that what we are

as engineers now? Just taste?

Just making sure things look nice? Make

circle not square?

Uh

Maybe. No, I mean, I hope not, but

that's that's what it kind of seems if

you read a lot of the writings right

now.

I guess another thing I thought about is

like, okay, is it lines of code? Because

during my peak, during my my heyday,

non-Adderall supported amount of lines

of code could be like 15,000 in a week.

I could I could type really fast. I can

Vim hard, man.

But then

Gary Tan does like 37,000 in a day.

And he goes like 7 days a week.

Like, there's no way I can compete on

lines of code. So, my value it can't it

can't be in that either because that I

mean, I'm getting mugged left and right

by a guy who dressed in a lobster

outfit. Like, that's not it's not going

to work out for me.

Um

so this is kind of the difficult part of

the talk.

I didn't really know how to do this. Um

mostly because the transition is really

bad.

Trans

we're going to do We're going to talk

about a time when I was much, much

younger.

It was changing a job. I just got done

by purchasing a house in Bozeman,

Montana. Okay, if you don't know

anything about Bozeman, Montana, it's

now like

Beverly Hills of Montana. Very

expensive. It's ridiculous. But I bought

mine on a handshake deal for 205. Look

at it in the books, that's it's crazy

it's crazy different now. Uh and

part of that is that I lived in this,

you know, nice little house outside of

town and I had a nice job. My wife

actually worked at the company called

Zoot where she learned how to use Vim

before me. Huh? Hubba hubba. That was

crazy. That was very very attractive. Um

I I hope she liked that. She might not

like what I just said there. Okay,

anyways.

So,

I got an offer to go work at a different

company. And this company ultimately, I

would say, became the company that

shaped who I am as an engineer. I think

a lot of people can kind of remember

that one company that maybe pushed them

a lot harder, did all that, you know,

however that looks. And for me, I had

that company. It's called WebFilings at

the time, now known as Workiva.

But I didn't know that at the time,

right? When you take a job, you don't

know how a job's going to be. And I I

was sitting there thinking like, I By

the way, I'm really bad with debt. I

hate debt. And so just like sitting

there, I was just freaking out. I just

bought my first house. Now I'm going to

a job. Am I going to be good enough for

this job? I was just like so in the

zone, focused on just these things that

could possibly happen going to a new

job. And I remember, I was I was my wife

was right here and I was just walking

We're walking to our neighbors and I was

just so focused on it. And for the first

time in my lifetime

life hit me in the face.

And by life I mean a 2 by 4 that

happened to be sticking out of a truck.

And due to the fact that I was so in my

head and so upset, I walked directly

into it and I was laying on the ground

and I was shocked. It was a very

shocking experience.

And that was actually the thing that

snapped me out of it. Surprisingly

enough, when you're super pissed getting

hit in the head with a 2 2 by 4.

Slightly recommend it, but it has to be

on accident.

But that moment I realized like I was so

focused on a future that I was crafting

out of a narrative that I don't even

know

that I didn't see the actual real and

obvious danger directly in front of me.

I made up dragons that didn't even exist

until I was laying on the ground. And

kind of

that that same thing happened to me

again just recently.

Sorry.

Which was

I had the same kind of two-by-four

moment. And so, for the last 6 months, I

genuinely have been very, very worried.

Uh I've asked the same question, what is

my value? What am I doing here?

Um I for the last 2 years have had a

couple medical issues. It's just like

everything doesn't seem to be lining up

like it normally has for some portion of

my life. And so, it's been it's been

difficult. And my second two-by-four

moment, if you will, was I saw this

tweet.

And I'm not going to name names, and I

don't want to make fun of anyone for

this.

But, the tweet looks something like

this.

Man, I'm trying to solve this really

trivial issue. Has anyone figured this

out yet?

And then there's a screenshot. And the

screenshot was Claude or some one of the

one of the many robots having its

internal monologue.

And inside the internal monologue, it

said,

"Hey, forking Chromium is a really

interesting question.

We should pursue dot dot dot dot dot."

And I thought,

"How do you build a web project

in which the result of whatever you've

made choices of as engineers led you to

forking Chromium? This is the worst

decision I've ever seen. There's nothing

trivial about it. Modern 2023 to 2025

hardware takes 6 hours to compile the

project. Like, this is not a How did you

get here? Like, this is insanity." And

then it just kind of dawned on me there

that

all the decisions I've made and learned

and earned along the way,

those only get, you know, if AI is to be

a true multiplier, then every one of

those little decisions actually do

matter. Because if you don't, you're

forking Chromium. Again, it is a

terrible idea. Do not fork Chromium for

any reason. Like, there's very few

reasons you should do that. And I just

sat I just sat there, and I was like,

"You can't explain to a date like you're

not going to just magically end up with

a Boyce-Codd normalized database. Yeah,

shout out Boyce-Codd. Where's my

Boyce-Codd boys at? Anyways, but you're

not going to just

end there unless if you know what it is.

You're not going to know why you should

break that. You're not going to know why

you should use standard in and standard

out versus a web server. You're not

going to know why you should make all

these individual choices and these these

decisions, they compound over and over

again. It's not some sort of like, 'Oh,

you have a five end problem.' No, you

have a two to the end problem. And every

one of these just get more and more

weighty. And so, yeah. Maybe you use

Neovim and open code.

>> Trad coder, I don't know if you know

that, but I'm a big fan of it. But, I

could see why generation of code is

super fantastic. Because

if it works like with TJ, you could just

have magical next to Machi theme just

come popping up, and that's like super

fantastic. And there's a lot of problems

that are just simply really, really well

understood and documented 5,000 times.

built another parser. I don't think

anybody needs to build another parser

except in bash. Am I right? Uh

Sorry, this is

very stupid. Don't don't worry about

that. Don't Ignore that.

Um

I forgot where I was. It was very funny

though. I um

And so, with that, it's like I guess

the the big two takeaways is what do you

do if you have all these skills? Well,

even if you don't somehow we do get to

this future where you're never typing

another character. It is actually so

valuable to have experience. If

anything, if the cost of a line of code

has dramatically dropped, then the cost

of the right line of code has

dramatically increased. It has to.

Because that means everything is free.

And when you have a bunch of options,

like, who here's made their own pizza?

Your first time you make your own pizza,

it's terrible. You're like, "Dude, I

love onions. Oh my gosh, SAUSAGE IS

GREAT. OH, I LOVE PINEAPPLE. HEY, I

love" And then all of a sudden you just

have every ingredient underneath the sun

on your pizza, and you're like, "This is

the worst pizza I've ever made in my

entire lifetime." Cuz when you have

every option, it actually becomes

dramatically harder to pick the right

option.

And so, for those that don't have skill,

I'm throwing around a hot new term.

Probably get this on on some of those

highfalutin podcasts out there, but

toxic productivity.

You don't have to be productive at all

times. Like, earning experience is more

valuable than completing something

instantaneously. Like, I think there's

this mindset or this idea that if you're

not continuously showing having some

sort of end result that you can click or

do something, then you haven't been

productive. But, I can tell you the

biggest and most influential moments in

my life have not been from making

something that's clickable, but from

failing over and over again to

understand why we do something a certain

way. And sure, I could have read the

friendly manual. But, I decided to save

5 minutes of reading the friendly manual

with 6 hours of debugging, and I learned

a lot from that. And so, please, if

you're new, like, there's still so much

hope. There's still so much cool things.

We live in a world where you can

actually be like, "Write me an OCaml

parser." And like, that actually can

happen. You can just do that now. That's

neat. Even though you wouldn't want to

maintain it, you can still do that.

That's super cool. And so, I don't want

people to get lost in this weird kind of

world we have crafted where everything

happens to be the end of the world.

AGI's being achieved. Dario, once again

I said, "Coding will be gone now in 12

months." It happened again. Can you

believe that? It's just like, "Well,

maybe.

But, good decision-making can't be gone.

Like, I don't see how you can get from A

to B without someone with good

decision-making. And I don't mean taste,

I mean actual engineering

decision-making that goes into this. Why

should you pick this data format versus

that data format? Why should you

serialize? Why should you do There's I

mean, The decisions are endless. And so,

that's all I really wanted to say.

Because that's how I got over my last 6

months of swirling around. And I know

that a lot of people are swirling

around. And I hope you realize the fun

have

and the goodness. And finally, I'll I'll

I'll end with a DHH quote. It's fun to

be competent.

>> [applause]