"This Episode Is A Cognitohazard" with Efron Licht
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What is the episode’s opening and who is the guest?
Hey everyone, uh it's Nick. As promised, against all expectations, we're getting an episode out on a sort of regular cadence, like once a month going forward. Today's episode is with uh Efron Licked. Ephron is a super talented programmer I met off my blog uh I wanna say a year and a half ago. And despite the fact that running a business takes up a lot of my time now, I do give him a call every Thursday morning where we either talk about video games or uh more frequently he gives me advice on programming. His blog, which I'll link in the description, is the number one place I send programmers that have got the basics down, but want to get more serious. Uh meaning I I go there a lot 'cause data engineering is sort of like it's a fake software engineering subdiscipline.
Don't tell anyone. So yeah, uh phenomenal place to go and a lot of Efron's philosophy and engineering has influenced how we run the company. So we we've had a lot of really successful engagements lately. And a lot of that is just doing things Efron says we should do, which has been awesome. And I also wanted to give many thanks to Sarah who edited this episode. So the audio quality is a lot better than previous episodes, which is awesome. She runs a band. Sarah's a cool band with the amazing name of Domesticated Incels. So you should hit her up if you're looking for Either podcast, music editing, anything like that. Uh and she's also taught me how to set my microphone up. So the next episode will probably sound great, which is good.
We're we're all very it's a very professional operation here. And yeah, enjoy. How's your day going?
Uh my day's going pretty good. Uh consulting, like I've got this this major client right now, and we're we're right about to wrap up. And it's like I don't know, it was kind of a big nervous thing for me because like I talk a pretty big game and I certainly know my way around software, but this is my first time like leading a whole team, right? So at this point it's not me complaining fr but from the sidelines like, Oh, well if you had done it my way, it would have been better. We're actually doing it my way, right?
Right.
So that has a certain kind of like Uh there there's a really good quote from uh George Orwell where he says that uh in his uh What's the there's a word for When someone passes away and you're writing something about them wasn't quite a eulogy because he didn't like Kipling that much. But he said that uh You know, when it He uh Kipling identified with himself with the ruling power and not with the opposition. And a gifted writer that strikes us as kind of sick, if not actively wrong. But it does have the advantage of giving you a certain grip on reality because you have to ask yourself, like, if I were in this situation, what would I actually do? Right. Whereas if you're on the sidelines Uh, you know, d he has some complaints about the mid century British Labour Party, which I can't um
can neither confirm nor deny. Right.
Right.
Uh and and that was very influential on me. Not not not super related there, but here I'm, you know, watching and being like, oh shit, is it all going to work out? The good news is yes. It turns out that I was right all along. And if people had just listened to me, things would have gone smoothly.
You know, th that has fucking a hundred percent happened to me, right? I I used to get so many shitty hackers comments from nerds who were just like, Well, you know, you don't understand what leadership's like and you know, if you're so smart, why don't you start a company? It's not gonna be that easy. It like sort of is. Like it's it's not easy globally. Um it took a lot of work to be good at some things. Uh but I'm like, Yeah, everyone should listen the whole time. Have tests in your code base, you degenerate. Like what are you talking about?
Yeah, and and I mean that there's lots of things here, right, that I didn't do cor I I wanna be clear here. Uh uh it's not like this is some kind of perfect job. I would give us let's say like a B plus or an A minus on how this is going.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the episode’s opening and who is the guest?
0:00–4:44
2
How does the host’s “how’s your day” conversation lead into consulting work?
4:44–7:58
3
What are the main points about leadership, planning, and software development challenges?
7:58–14:05
4
How does the discussion move to the Elixir time‑library issue and performance optimization?
14:05–1:06:19
5
Why are software dependencies and storage decisions becoming a problem?
1:06:19–1:10:08
6
How do efficiency, resiliency, and redundancy affect software design?
1:10:08–1:13:01
7
What does Rich Hickey’s “Simple Made Easy” talk teach about simplicity and language complexity?
1:13:01–1:19:42
8
Why do hiring practices, company culture, and bad actors matter for tech teams?
1:19:42–2:13:30