0:00

Welcome to Syntax. Today,

0:02

we have Topher Martini on the

0:04

show, a former engineering program manager

0:06

at Apple. Topher started at Apple

0:08

all the way back in 2001

0:12

as a tester working on the Mac,

0:14

iPod, iPhone, iPad, all the stuff, right?

0:16

All the iStuff. Topher's career has taken

0:18

him to wild places in 23 years,

0:22

like spatial computing, self-driving cars,

0:24

light field cameras, and

0:26

even the original iPhone. So

0:28

we've been wanting to have Topher on the show for

0:31

a long time, and now that he's on sabbatical, it

0:33

seemed like the perfect time. So welcome to Syntax, Topher.

0:36

Thank you very much. So excited to be here. And

0:38

nice to make the connection with you, Wes, as well.

0:40

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I know

0:42

we're talking about career stuff

0:44

here, but am I allowed to

0:47

ask what working on the first iPhone was like? Can

0:50

I go off-plan already? Sure,

0:53

sure. I mean, enjoy the ride. You know,

0:55

it's interesting. I think broad strokes being like

0:57

working at a company like Apple is, you

0:59

know, for a lot of people, it's kind

1:01

of that hallmark in their career, the benchmark

1:03

that they aspire to. And having worked at

1:05

Apple for over 15 years, you

1:07

know, it's a truly unique experience. And I think, you

1:09

know, more so than the products, it's really the teams

1:11

that have shined. And so working

1:14

on amazing products like iPhone, you know,

1:16

granted, I had a very small role

1:18

as a tester in a very large

1:20

product ecosystem. But the ability to work

1:22

with amazing teams is really kind of

1:24

the differentiator in seeing how amazing products

1:26

are built. You know, it's interesting

1:28

in retrospect, you know, it was so exciting

1:30

to deliver a product like that. But many

1:32

years later, you think about like, man, am

1:34

I addicted to the phone in my pocket?

1:36

You know, it's almost not like buyers were

1:38

more to developers remorse. But like, when you

1:40

have the longevity in your career to look

1:42

back on certain things, like, did that move

1:45

the needle for everybody? For me, kind of

1:47

in the later stages of my career, one

1:49

of the areas I've been really excited about

1:51

is helping people navigate, you know, the kind

1:54

of iceberg field that can be career development.

1:56

So having worked on amazing technologies and different

1:58

products and everything, a really great capstone.

2:01

But beneath it all is really I can look

2:03

back and say that was a truly amazing team

2:05

that did that work or more recently working on

2:07

Vision Pro and Reality Kit. Amazing exceptional teams and

2:09

it's always hard to say goodbye when it's time

2:12

for you to move on. But those are some

2:14

of the things you navigate to do the right

2:16

thing for you in your own career cycle. It's

2:18

funny that you mentioned Vision Pro when we first

2:21

met you were not able to tell me what

2:23

you did at Apple and I was

2:26

telling my wife I'm like I bet it's a headset. And

2:28

at one point I think Topher

2:30

showed up in the what's now

2:32

the syntax discord and people were talking about VR

2:35

headsets and he was asking people what they thought

2:37

about the Sony headset or one of the headsets

2:39

the Quest that just came out and I was

2:41

like oh yeah it's definitely the headset he's coming

2:43

in here asking about headsets. So

2:46

it's really cool to be able to chat

2:48

with you across the release of that product

2:50

because it went from being something that you

2:53

couldn't even mention you couldn't even describe to

2:55

something that's real and out there something that

2:57

I own and really enjoy. But like that's

2:59

a huge project in general and I mean

3:02

when you started Apple 2001 that was

3:04

the year the first iPod was

3:07

released. That was yeah. Yeah

3:09

what was it like being at Apple for

3:11

the iPod release was there like because I know

3:13

it wasn't like the third one that it really

3:16

caught on. Yeah you know

3:18

iPod was a truly unique product at the

3:20

time you know Apple was a computer company

3:22

you know my role was working on storage

3:24

technologies and underlying NAND storage that was inside

3:26

and hard drive for the first model but

3:28

so very small role again but looking back

3:31

on how you know that was a pivotal

3:33

moment for the company of it was Apple

3:35

Computer Inc. no consumer

3:37

electronics and so looking

3:39

at you know the whole industry shifted to

3:41

you had your rios you know Zune came

3:44

out a little bit later that everybody likes

3:46

to poke out a little bit but having

3:48

a great technology does not make a great

3:50

product and the ones that resonate over time

3:52

you know are just fundamentally different. It's interesting

3:54

now kind of later I have people who

3:57

weren't even alive when the iPod was out

3:59

in 2000. 2001 I worked with and it's

4:01

like oh Welcome intern and

4:03

you know, it's uh, so it's

4:05

always interesting to see kind of you know the complexion

4:07

of how things change as well Yeah,

4:10

totally. I mean I was in high school when it

4:12

came out so for me, I remember

4:14

the first time I saw one and the

4:17

thing I thought was cool about it beyond just having like

4:19

a Little hard drive in there

4:21

was like some kid in my class was playing breakout

4:23

on it like a little the little breakout game And

4:25

I was like this thing cut break out. Oh, man

4:28

It was so Unbelievable. Yeah,

4:31

totally It's true though. Like

4:33

that was so long ago I

4:35

saw somebody the other day that had

4:37

kids and their name was Aiden and

4:39

I was like there's Aiden's that have

4:41

kids Already, you know Wild

4:45

people are growing up Yeah,

4:47

so you arrived at Apple like really early

4:49

on in your career, right? How did that

4:52

transpire? Like how does that even happen? Yeah,

4:55

so I actually was transferring colleges I grew

4:57

up in California Bay Area native and had

4:59

actually gone to University of Denver for my

5:01

freshman year of college and Effectively

5:03

dropped out and found, you know, CSU

5:06

Monterey bed And the goal

5:08

was I'm gonna finish school and I'm gonna

5:10

get a job and you know, luckily through

5:12

a worldwide developer conference I landed an internship

5:14

at Apple in 2001 and at

5:16

the conference, you know Basically got an

5:18

on the on the spot job offer which

5:20

was really exciting and kind of you know

5:23

Wildest dreams like never could have forecasted that

5:25

that could have happened when you're an intern

5:27

You're obviously low person on the totem pole

5:29

and you know, I was just hungry for it all of

5:31

working late nights You know all the things that

5:34

you really fueled by in the flow all those

5:36

different areas, you know Working with a great team

5:38

and on the product. It was an awesome ride,

5:40

you know Ended up graduating early and was extended

5:42

a full-time offer, you know It's interesting to see

5:44

two of Apple in 2001 and tech in 2001 was

5:46

a very existential moment People

5:50

didn't know if big companies were gonna be around

5:52

and several of them are not and so, you

5:54

know It's interesting when looking at kind of your

5:56

role within the company, but also, you know, is

5:59

the ship I'm sailing going to make it to

6:01

shore or is it going to, you know, how's

6:03

that going to fair? Yeah, I

6:05

guess in 2001, you know, like we said

6:07

pre iPod, pre iPhone, I mean, Apple was

6:09

certainly not the company. Granted, I had a

6:12

iMac G4 in 2004

6:15

was my first, I guess I had an iPad

6:18

or an iPod first, but I think those are

6:20

like my first real forays into using Apple full-time

6:22

as a professional, even at

6:24

that point, the high school student. But

6:27

so it definitely was a different, probably

6:29

a different landscape. But like, you have

6:31

that opportunity to talk with Apple, you

6:34

are currently in school, how does somebody

6:36

land something like that? Like,

6:38

is there anything that you did to make

6:40

yourself stand out in a special way? Or

6:42

did you have just the creds that they

6:44

couldn't deny? The landscape then and the landscape

6:47

now is very different. But back then, it

6:49

was really kind of the hunger and the

6:51

desire to learn. There were a lot of

6:53

different storage technologies at the time, that was

6:55

kind of the team I ended up working

6:57

on with storage technology. So, you know, the

6:59

fact that I knew DVD authoring, which was

7:01

incredibly rare at the time, and other aspects

7:04

were kind of the foothold into, you know,

7:06

hey, why does an intern know about like,

7:08

you know, DVD mastering technology? Full disclosure, I

7:10

mean, you know, I was a college kid,

7:12

piracy was a non-zero part of that. So,

7:15

and so and that grows. And I

7:17

think, you know, not having a preconceived

7:19

notion of what an internship should be,

7:21

if anything, I felt like completely under

7:23

qualified when, you know, I knew maybe

7:25

bash and pearl at the time, but,

7:27

you know, week one, here's someone learning

7:29

Objective C and developing applicants, like you

7:31

feel just completely outclassed from day one.

7:33

And that's that defeatist kind of

7:35

mentality can really jump in quick when you're

7:37

early in your career, and especially as an

7:39

intern. So, you know, moving away

7:42

from that and how to like, you know, how

7:44

do you make value for the team? Like, there's

7:46

no shortage of problems to solve at any sizable

7:48

company. And so that was kind of the accelerating

7:50

factor of where is it we're spending a lot

7:52

of our time. And there was kind of the

7:55

first hockey stick moment in my career was, you

7:57

know, we spent an insane amount of time. There's

7:59

a game. getting systems ready to test every

8:01

day. So if you imagine

8:03

a lab of 100 different computers, new builds every

8:05

night, how do you get them up and running?

8:07

Transitioning from testing to software automation was, I did

8:09

it because I didn't want to have to install

8:11

new software on 100 different computers every day. It

8:14

kind of got tedious in mind then. And

8:16

so how do you look at, what is it

8:18

about your workflow that improves it for you, but

8:20

also improves it for the team? Yeah, and it's

8:22

funny about the piracy thing. I would say definitely

8:25

a portion of our audience has turned back

8:27

their clocks on a Windows computer to get

8:29

Adobe installed at some point in their lives. So

8:33

we are familiar with that. So as

8:35

you're working at Apple, you're interning, you get

8:38

extended to a full-time job. And as that

8:40

kind of is happening, Apple's

8:42

really blowing up in a lot of consumer

8:44

ways, like we mentioned. What did that do,

8:46

I guess, for your career? And as that's

8:49

happening, how did Apple change to work at

8:51

in that same time? The company got very

8:53

big, with Apple retail especially,

8:55

but also with just the size of the

8:58

company and the different products everybody's working on.

9:00

It was a really exciting time. There's

9:02

the old thing of Dunbar's number. It's

9:05

the 150 people that you can have a

9:07

meaningful social relationship with. When

9:09

you grow like wildfire, you kind of lose

9:11

that Dunbar's number effect. And so

9:13

there are whole teams that you might not even

9:15

know who they are. So things got

9:18

big really quickly. And being

9:20

on the younger side, change can be exciting,

9:22

but change can be scary as well. That's

9:24

also when I decided to transition roles. Unfortunately,

9:27

ultimately, when Steve passed away in the end

9:29

of 2011, that's when I decided to

9:32

make my first big career pivot as well. And

9:35

there's a time when you can stay at

9:37

an opportunity long enough to enjoy the opportunities

9:39

that come up and the new experiences. And

9:42

then there's times when you can stay a little bit too.

9:45

It had been building that starting when I was

9:47

19 years old, working on this amazing team for

9:49

over a decade, is 10 years too much. And

9:52

so that was when I made my first jump

9:54

to a startup company. You worked at Apple for

9:56

10 years before Steve Jobs passed away. That is

9:58

wild to me. Yeah. Did you

10:00

ever get to meet him? Do you have

10:02

any stories? Yeah. So

10:05

every year they intended to do kind of

10:07

an intern presentation where the different executives across

10:10

the company would come and, you know, Steve

10:12

and hire executives with their calendars

10:14

you never know. You know, I was fortunate for

10:16

two of the years I interned that he did

10:19

give a presentation and, you know, it was kind

10:21

of a Q and A format, a little bit

10:23

like this, but, you know, him sharing his life

10:25

experience at the time. You know, some of those

10:27

moments are private, not really public, but learned a

10:30

lot. And I think the biggest thing was following

10:32

your passions of, you know, he had rejoined Apple

10:34

in late nineties. He had helped

10:36

to redirect the company, like hearing someone share

10:38

like what it means to be committed to

10:41

an idea and really passionate to drive it

10:43

forward was really exceptional. So

10:45

one of the things we're really wanting

10:47

to dive into in this episode is

10:49

some of your lessons in career development

10:51

and just know personal professional development. You

10:53

know, you definitely had a lot of

10:55

time as program manager, technical lead manager,

10:57

those types of things. You had a

10:59

lot of managerial experience overall in all

11:01

of your adventures, I'd say for employees

11:03

out there who want to be better.

11:07

What were the best employees to work with the

11:09

best employees to be managed, the best employees that

11:11

you would end up saying at the end of

11:13

the day, yeah, this person, I will vouch for

11:15

them at a base level. I think treating everybody

11:17

like a peer was a really big kind of

11:19

catalyst, not only for micro cycle, but like in

11:21

the teams I worked with as well. You

11:24

know, yes, you have a manager. Yes, there's

11:26

a hierarchy within an organization, but you know,

11:28

the people I've really enjoyed working with and

11:30

the feedback of people who joined to work

11:32

with me are, you know, what we truly

11:34

treated ourselves as peers and we have different

11:36

skill sets. And how do we really compliment

11:38

each other? Well, and I think when looking

11:40

in more of an employee manager relationship, it's

11:43

people who are open to open communication

11:45

in the sense of you

11:48

could be really worried or concerned about something as

11:50

an employee and your manager should be

11:52

your biggest advocate, not your biggest adversary. And so

11:54

I think, you know, early in my career, own

11:56

career cycle, I would see my manager

11:59

as the person limiting me. from the next step or

12:01

what I wanted to do. And there

12:03

was something that really pivoted later on, where it was

12:05

how to have a better

12:07

communication cycle to be very direct about what

12:09

it is I'd like to do. And

12:12

when there's a gap, how to help

12:14

close that. I'm curious, do you have

12:16

any examples specifically of that where you

12:18

were managing a developer and they

12:20

came up to you and said, hey, X, Y,

12:23

and Z needs to happen. I'm just trying to

12:25

say like, what does that actually look like? Somebody's

12:27

in their job right now and they're saying,

12:30

I wish I could do something else. How does

12:32

that look? Yeah, you know,

12:34

at a base level, it's kind of under

12:37

if it's driven by unhappiness or dissatisfaction. It's

12:39

really at the core of that first. I

12:41

think there's this kind of the fork in

12:43

the road of someone who's super motivated, wants

12:45

to do this big

12:47

transition or acceleration. On the

12:49

other side, there's people who are like, I'm dissatisfied,

12:51

you know, burnouts kicked in some element of fat,

12:53

and it's really helping them navigate that part. At

12:55

the root of it, for a lot of people,

12:57

it's like you have your core values and

13:00

your actions can either compliment your core

13:02

values or deviate from it. So people

13:04

who come in that situation of like,

13:06

I'm super burnt out. We worked on

13:08

this project. It didn't turn out all

13:10

the different negative, you know, self-talk and

13:12

team talk that can happen. But

13:14

it's I need to make a big change. And

13:17

coming from someone who's currently on a sabbatical, I

13:19

always advocate for the appropriate

13:21

big change. And oftentimes, instead

13:23

of a big change, like your

13:25

job role or your team, it's

13:28

probably some small daily action that can help

13:30

get things back on course. So

13:32

for more of like the tactical example, Wes,

13:35

it's usually people come very frustrated. They

13:37

want a big change to happen. But in

13:39

reality, it's they didn't get to that point,

13:41

like overnight. And so it's how do you

13:43

help correct that day by day? It could

13:45

be how you communicate with them in status

13:47

and standups, you know, kind of scrum, it

13:49

could be the work that they're assigned to

13:51

do and the agency they're given in how

13:53

to deliver it. A lot of

13:55

people, they feel like they are being controlled

13:58

or compelled into doing something. And

14:00

so how do you give them the control

14:02

in the agency to deliver their best work?

14:04

Yeah, I've always heard that. Like people don't

14:06

quit jobs, they quit managers because like you

14:08

often see people go nuclear and

14:10

just quit something and it's like, well, I

14:13

bet they were super frustrated and either they

14:15

didn't try or they were not able to

14:18

get around what was really bugging them about

14:20

their job. Yeah. It's interesting

14:22

when looking at kind of corporate and

14:24

startups where I found like, you

14:26

know, there's the rocket metaphor of, you

14:28

know, there's a personality that loves to

14:30

be like launching the rocket into space.

14:32

20 people, you and

14:34

your best friends doing a startup company,

14:37

doing a new project within a larger

14:39

company, accelerated growth, not caring about the

14:41

collateral damage or casualties along the way,

14:43

just invigorated by the momentum. And

14:46

then kind of something happens in a startup. It's

14:48

typically around like a series A or first product

14:50

launch or something like that, where

14:52

you accelerate, but your agency

14:55

reduces and your role might shift

14:57

a little bit. A lot more people join in.

14:59

So, you know, you have to have a real

15:01

HR, not just your buddy, you know, kind of

15:03

a thing. And then the last part is you've

15:05

made it into orbit. You know, you're in space,

15:08

you're in maintenance mode, the innovation, the energy

15:10

is not as high, but you know, the

15:12

effort isn't as high as well. And I

15:14

found that when people really struggle, it's usually

15:16

they're in one mode, but they desire to

15:18

be in a different mode. If you're in

15:20

maintenance mode, you want to be in bootstrapping

15:22

mode. If you're in bootstrapping mode, you want

15:24

some sanity in your life. So you want

15:26

the next acceleration phase. I find that

15:29

those kind of step functions tend to be where people

15:31

gravitate towards. And then you

15:33

want to move somebody out of one of those modes

15:36

that you said it's like small steps. What

15:38

is that? Do you give them different work?

15:40

You move them to a different team? I

15:42

guess it probably depends. Yeah,

15:45

I mean, a big believer in like the inner

15:47

compass. If someone can articulate to others what it

15:49

is they want, they're more likely to achieve it.

15:52

And I find that, you know, the first stage

15:54

is people who can't put the words rounded so

15:56

that they can make sure their manager's aware. They

15:58

can socialize to people on other teams of like,

16:01

hey, I want to make a

16:03

big jump. You know, I went from QA

16:05

testing to evangelism and product marketing to program

16:07

management, you know, you don't get there alone.

16:09

And so I think it's really how you

16:11

identify like what it is you want and

16:13

then who's the cohort and the right people

16:15

to put around you to help achieve it.

16:18

Yeah, that tracks so much. I, you know, I think

16:20

a lot of times people do get hung up by

16:22

simply just not knowing what they

16:24

want. And sometimes you're you're so

16:27

clouded by either burnout or just energy

16:29

in general that like you can't even

16:31

take a second to step back and

16:33

even know what you want, which

16:36

can just further complicate things. You

16:38

mentioned earlier on that evolving communication

16:40

style was a big point in

16:43

which people like really develop their

16:45

ability to be a good employee

16:47

somewhere. Do you have any communication

16:50

tips overall for communicating better? But

16:52

also like what does that even

16:54

mean? Yeah, I think one

16:57

area is trying to be as succinct as possible.

16:59

Very early in my career, when I was working

17:01

on these automation projects, our team got

17:03

absorbed by a whole new leadership. And

17:05

I remember having a one on one with the new

17:07

leader and feeling very excited about like all the growth

17:09

and opportunity. And, you know, she sat

17:11

me down and was like, you're

17:13

awesome. You're kind of like a

17:16

twenty dollar I found in the wash. I know you're

17:18

good, but I don't know what to do with you.

17:20

And then her second piece of advice was you

17:23

need a copy editor of the what

17:25

you are sharing with me is great. I

17:28

cannot understand it. And so the point about communication,

17:30

you know, I think in the course of

17:32

my career after it was how to be able

17:34

to recap more succinctly to the point of in

17:36

meetings, even more recently, you know, a huge discussion

17:39

will happen. And at the end, I'll just

17:41

recap the top three or five points. And

17:43

everybody's typically on the same page. Most

17:46

of the conflict that develops, I find

17:48

it is basically a difference of perspective

17:50

when you recap it back to people

17:52

are communicating the same thing. Yeah,

17:55

that tracks. That's how do you feel about meetings

17:57

overall? It's like a means of communication.

18:00

Oh, super conflicted. I became

18:03

a remote employee in 2018 pre

18:05

pandemic when we had moved from

18:07

California to Colorado. And for

18:09

my personality and lifestyle, like remote is absolutely

18:11

where I thrive the most. And

18:14

I think we've learned a lot in both

18:16

the cadence and content of meetings in

18:18

pandemic now, post pandemic or whatever

18:20

we want to call this current phase, but I redirect

18:23

a little bit of like there's an old military

18:25

phrase of planning is essential, but plans are useless.

18:28

And I think meetings are about plans more

18:30

than they're about planning. Huh? That's

18:33

really cool. And I bet you

18:35

do think that we have too many meetings

18:37

as a, I guess,

18:39

I don't know about Apple, but like just

18:41

in general, do you think there's too many

18:43

meetings when you talk to people from other

18:46

other companies? Looking at the slice of the

18:48

tech industry, absolutely. And I think it's omnipresent

18:50

in almost every industry right now of a

18:52

knowledge worker. If you associated

18:54

dollar cost to both the time and

18:57

attendees of a meeting, let's just say

18:59

even $10, something totally unrealistic, and

19:02

you start to put the metric into

19:04

work of how much dollars is this

19:06

consuming? You've note that nominal $10 rate

19:09

and you'll begin to realize for the amount

19:11

of effort money in this case that we're

19:13

using or getting very little value out of

19:15

it. And so I think, you

19:17

know, by making meetings more focused, reducing the

19:19

attendees to the stakeholders, I

19:22

think there's a lot of meeting etiquette that

19:24

gets brushed under because people want the

19:26

perception of feeling busy or perception of

19:28

feeling important. What do you think about

19:30

things like agile, those types of strategies?

19:33

Yeah, I think, you know, Biscrom,

19:35

Kanban, hybrid models and everything. I

19:38

think as a guiding light,

19:40

they're exceptional. As a dogma

19:43

and a practice, I think they can fall apart

19:45

pretty quick in different areas. It depends

19:47

on the needs of your team. You know, there's

19:50

no one prescription for a process. And

19:52

so I think if all the members

19:54

of a team can speak to, hey, we

19:56

do scrum because of reasons.

19:58

We do Kanban because of it. reasons.

20:01

As long as those reasons are the same, I think it's

20:03

the right process for you and your team. Yeah,

20:06

that's interesting. We'd asked earlier

20:08

what the best employees to

20:10

work with and to work

20:13

under you are like, what about the worst

20:15

employees? The employees that you wouldn't vouch for,

20:18

what did they do wrong? Yeah,

20:20

it's always hard. Never to name names,

20:22

but it's the personality traits of obstructionism,

20:26

people who are just mad and can't defeatists,

20:30

they're negative to the point that

20:32

it drags others down. There's the

20:34

old HR-ism of the arithmetic order

20:36

of operation, PENDES, parentheses, exponent, et

20:38

cetera, et cetera. And when

20:40

you get into team members that are subtraction

20:43

and division, that either they subtract, they take

20:45

away from their output to the team or

20:47

division, they take others down with them. Those

20:50

are really the negative side. And

20:52

when you talk about a manager, it's how

20:54

do you transition employees from addition to multiplication,

20:57

not just the effort that they can do, but

20:59

that they multiply around them. And then leadership is

21:01

kind of a parenthetical as an exponent. How can

21:03

you group the right people together and then pour

21:06

gasoline on the fire? Do you

21:08

think those people know that they are

21:10

being that type of person? How do

21:12

you let somebody know that

21:14

they're a subtractor? This

21:18

is part of good one-on-ones, which I think

21:20

is really hard where so many people in

21:22

management don't desire... They were kind

21:24

of that team captain and now they were ascended

21:26

to the coach, but they really want to play

21:29

the game still. I think those are kind of

21:31

the friction point for a lot of good one-on-ones.

21:33

In any one-on-one, it should really be bi-directional. Once

21:35

again, a meeting appears. But how

21:37

to give constructive feedback is really the

21:39

core of that answer. So,

21:42

hey Wes, I have some things to share

21:44

with you. Are you in a good place?

21:46

Use a check-in first. Because the last thing

21:48

you want to do is deliver bad news

21:50

when they're in a negative place. It

21:52

also sets the stage for, hey,

21:54

if you're not in a good place right

21:56

now, let's work together so you can be

21:58

on the same level playing field. And then

22:01

recapping back, using their words, like,

22:03

I want to share some things,

22:05

but you tell me more honestly, like, what

22:07

are you seeing in the workplace? What do

22:09

you think of your performance? And then that

22:11

way you can have more of a bi-directional

22:13

conversation. You never want to just be the

22:15

dump truck and unload the negativity on someone,

22:18

have them go process that usually they're not

22:20

capable of in the time. I

22:22

wanted to ask about hiring as well, because I

22:24

presume you've probably hired your

22:26

fair share of developers in your day. My first

22:28

question is, are you a genius? You know, like,

22:30

what does it take to get hired at Apple?

22:32

And I think the answer is you might be

22:35

a genius, but often I see people who get

22:37

jobs at these large companies and goes, oh, wow,

22:40

that's a sweet gig. I'm impressed that they

22:42

got that. I'm always wondering, like, man, what

22:46

was it that the manager at

22:48

Apple saw to hire this person?

22:51

Yeah. You know, moving away from Apple more than

22:53

like the tech and screen startups too, because I

22:55

think it's universally applicable, is like, you want to

22:57

find good teammates. There was that old movie, The

23:00

Internship, about who were the two actors. Oh,

23:03

Owen Wilson, maybe. Yeah.

23:06

You know, I think there was the paraphrasing, the

23:08

infamous Google test of, like, if you're stuck at the

23:10

hotel bar, like, who or the airport bar, who

23:12

would you want to have a drink with? I

23:14

think there's some amount of you want

23:16

someone that has some level of domain expertise,

23:18

or at least acknowledges the domain expertise they

23:20

need to grow into. So they're

23:22

coachable, and they kind of understand where they are

23:25

on the talent spectrum, and

23:27

that they're a net positive to the team. You

23:29

know, the water boy metaphor of, like, this person

23:31

might not be the best on the field contributor,

23:33

but he helps raise the whole team to play

23:36

at their best. Yeah. Yeah.

23:38

That really tracks when we were hiring

23:40

positions for syntax. That's definitely something that

23:42

you just think about the whole time is

23:44

how well will this person fit in

23:46

with what we're trying to do, both as

23:48

a personal teammate, you're going to feel

23:51

comfortable giving them feedback, receiving feedback from

23:53

them, like, all those things, I think, mattered

23:55

so much more than people give it

23:57

credit for, because especially developers are so like,

24:00

I'm smartest at React. I

24:02

killed my technical interview. Why didn't they

24:04

give me the job? And it's not

24:06

always about that. It's a lot more

24:08

about the personality as well, be able

24:11

to suss that out. Is there any

24:13

questions that you would ask them in

24:15

these interviews that would either

24:17

throw up red flags or maybe show you

24:19

a few green flags? Yeah,

24:22

one question I always, typically when I'm in the

24:24

interview process, I'm more of like the sociology, the

24:27

team side of things, not like the technical domain

24:29

expert for a field. And so

24:31

I usually give the hard redirect questions of one

24:33

of my favorites is, in your

24:35

own words, what's your definition of work-life

24:37

balance? Oh, and what

24:39

have you heard from that as answers?

24:42

I mean, mostly deer in the headlights. It's

24:45

people who want a pre-canned sounds

24:47

good. Cause it's all about the

24:49

authentic self you want to portray

24:51

rather than the authentic self you

24:53

feel inside. And so I think

24:56

a lot of people give, I do

24:58

time boundaries, I carve out this,

25:01

or it's something they've heard in like a TED

25:03

talk before. Yeah, can I give

25:05

my answer and you tell me what you

25:07

think? Please. All right, so

25:10

my thought of work-life balance is that I

25:12

finish off my day job and I am

25:15

still excited to do other things in my

25:17

life. I want to dabble in hardware technology.

25:19

I want to go to the gym. I

25:21

want to spend time with my family. And

25:24

if I'm doing well in

25:26

my day job, I feel like I'll

25:28

have good energy for that in my

25:31

off time. Do

25:33

I get hired? Yeah, I

25:35

mean, follow up question, follow up question.

25:38

Is that the first time like you've really thought about

25:40

it, whether on the moment or like, you know, a

25:42

lot of the words were great. I've never thought about

25:44

that before. But as soon as you said that, I

25:46

thought like, hmm, like what is it to me? Like

25:49

obviously I have nothing at stake here. I'm not trying

25:51

to get a job. So maybe that has some flow

25:53

into it. But like I do

25:55

think about, I guess I do think about like, what

25:57

does work-life balance mean? Yeah. So

26:00

if you think about like a funnel, you know,

26:02

for the top of the funnel, the first response,

26:04

awesome, all the core elements were there. And I

26:06

think as you sit with something, especially something as

26:08

important like work-life balance, you distill it

26:10

down and eventually you get to the elevator pitch that

26:13

both sounds authentic but also represents what you

26:15

want to share. And if

26:17

you want to see all of

26:20

the errors in your application, you'll

26:22

want to check out sentry at

26:24

sentry.io/syntax. You don't want a production

26:26

application out there that, well, you have no

26:29

visibility into in case something is

26:31

blowing up and you might not even

26:33

know it. So head on over to

26:35

sentry.io/syntax. Again, we've been using this tool

26:37

for a long time and it totally

26:39

rules. All right. I

26:42

think that authenticity is super important. You know,

26:44

we've talked a little bit about like passion

26:46

in your career. I know for some folks

26:48

it's they don't know what they want, but

26:50

maybe they're like, what am I passionate about?

26:53

Is my passion even important to

26:55

getting a job? So how do you feel

26:57

about that relationship between being passionate about something

26:59

and making it your

27:01

career? Yeah, the

27:03

balance of aspiration and attainability,

27:05

the idea of something versus what would

27:08

that really feel like? And I'm going to

27:10

mispronounce it, but there's a Japanese phrase of

27:12

ikigai or ikigai. It's I-K-I-G-A-I. And

27:15

it's kind of four Venn diagrams of what

27:18

you're good at, what you love, what the

27:20

world needs and what pays you. And

27:23

kind of the life philosophy behind it, as

27:25

I understand it, is the central point of

27:27

that, the balancing point is kind of ikigai.

27:30

And so oftentimes if you're struggling with something, you're

27:32

like, oh, I want to be earning more. But

27:34

it's like, does the world need you to earn

27:36

more? You know, it's a way to

27:39

get to check some balances. And the other side

27:41

effect of that is people think

27:43

it's one thing. Like there is a perfect

27:45

job out there that is ikigai. And

27:48

kind of West here, coming earlier, it's really the

27:50

sum of many parts. Like I want to be

27:52

motivated and go work out. I want to spend

27:54

time with my family. I want to be motivated

27:56

to this career path. And so when

27:58

you look at it as kind of a balancing point, point,

28:00

it's, are you putting the chess pieces in

28:02

the right quadrant? There are times work

28:04

might be super exciting. And it's that hard

28:07

conversation with family of, hey, I need to

28:09

spend more time at work. I won't be

28:11

around for these things. Like, but that's the

28:13

balancing point is that it's never a static

28:16

point. It's something that's always fluid and evolving.

28:18

Yeah. By the way, you were pronouncing it

28:20

correctly. Ikigai definitely correct. So it's beautiful. I'm

28:23

already working on a meme for

28:25

Ikigai where it says JavaScript in the middle.

28:30

What you love, what the world needs, what you're good

28:32

at, what you could be paid for. Oh my gosh.

28:34

Yeah. That is a very on brand for us. Yeah.

28:36

And what's your point earlier too about like, you know,

28:38

the top of the funnel, I think a lot of

28:40

the same elements you shared are actually very similar to

28:42

my own. And so as you talk

28:44

about these things with a lot of people, you

28:47

kind of refine it down. And by way of

28:49

example, you know, the place I've come to on

28:51

work-life balance is to identify and honor your personal

28:53

and professional values. Yeah. Yeah.

28:56

I love the way you think about these things, Topher.

28:58

It's always one of my favorite parts about talking to

29:00

you is that you always say, I don't know if

29:02

it's just like metaphors or what you always seem to

29:04

have a great way to like put things into perspective.

29:06

I think your, your career is evolved in such an

29:08

interesting way. I'm curious, like, so we

29:10

have a lot of people who listen to this show that

29:12

are trying to break in or

29:15

they're in a job and they, they

29:17

don't know what to do. I

29:19

guess I want to get into a little bit

29:21

of like, for these people,

29:24

what is out there to

29:26

take them to the next level, to

29:28

get them a job, to get them

29:30

that promotion or if they

29:32

even want a promotion. What types of tips

29:34

do you have for people to

29:36

actually grow within their, their career

29:39

path? Part one is always being

29:41

clear on what the goal is. When you're first starting

29:43

out, that goal is wildly different than you've been a

29:45

10, 15, 20 year veteran

29:48

at something and are looking to accelerate. So

29:50

I think being, once again, able to articulate what the

29:52

goal is, I think there's a

29:54

little bit of the apprehension when you're first starting

29:57

out of the, here's all the

29:59

barriers in my way. And I think what's

30:01

beautiful about software, especially web development, is there

30:03

are none. You can

30:05

go spin up any project you want,

30:07

go contribute to an open source project

30:10

that already exists. There's ways to just

30:12

start. And to that

30:14

point about aspiration and attainability, so

30:16

many people starting out like the idea of

30:18

something, especially in the tech industry, compensation tends

30:20

to be a driver for a lot of

30:22

people. I see

30:25

my friend who started making these apps

30:27

and overnight million, all the different anecdotal

30:29

stories. But then the question is, is

30:31

that right for me? Is

30:33

this the type of work I think I'd enjoy? And

30:35

it's easy to analyze it from the sidelines, but

30:37

it is actually easy just to jump in and

30:39

do it. Yeah, you know what? I think about

30:42

that a lot where we, I

30:44

know Wes, you probably have this too, but

30:46

being a developer educator in this space, I

30:48

have a massive amount of either friends or

30:51

people I've known, old coworkers or even family

30:53

that you're like, I'm thinking about getting into

30:55

tech. Like, what do you recommend? What do

30:57

I do? And like 99% of

30:59

those people, they actually try it. They give

31:02

a code test to challenge and then it's

31:04

like, all right, I'm out. But

31:06

the 1% of those people that can

31:09

take it and turn it into something like

31:11

really, really do. Yeah, so like,

31:13

what you're talking about is the development lifecycle,

31:15

a little bit of, you know, people who

31:17

can take something from the idea to a

31:20

shipped product and to iterate continuously for it.

31:22

But I think your habit tracker is an awesome

31:25

example of this, of like, build something you'd want

31:27

to use when you're first starting out. Because even

31:29

if your customer base is one for the lifecycle

31:31

of the product, you've achieved success. And

31:34

I think so many people think they need to do

31:36

such a big project to start or something that would

31:38

be impressive if they're applying to another company. But like,

31:41

if you build something you would actually use, like that's

31:43

where, you know, really things start to move. Yeah,

31:46

you have something to show for it. You

31:48

have something to hang your hat on. You're

31:51

currently on a sabbatical. What

31:53

does that actually mean or entail? And

31:55

like, why might somebody take a sabbatical?

31:58

Yeah, I jokingly say preempt. of burnout of

32:00

like, there's times to come back to the

32:02

part about like your values and kind of

32:04

realizing there's certain actions you've taken that have

32:06

deviated from your values. You know,

32:09

I was in this most recent role had

32:11

a really long commute between Denver and Boulder, Colorado,

32:13

which is about an hour there and about

32:15

90 minutes home. And just it

32:17

wasn't working out over time. And so

32:19

for me, taking a sabbatical is, you

32:21

know, reconnecting with the personal identity of

32:23

my family, my partner, you know,

32:26

really taking a break to understand, you know, we

32:29

have this amount of time, you know, one

32:31

key aspect of taking a sabbatical is just

32:33

financial viability, making sure there's some coins in

32:35

the piggy bank. So when you take the

32:37

hammer to it, you're not stressed about, you

32:39

know, if I'm not professionally employed

32:41

at this time, like how can I make

32:43

the best of it while not feeling that

32:45

stress upon you. But I always encourage people

32:47

whether it's at some point in your career,

32:49

you know, at every point you can take

32:51

a step back, you learn so much about

32:53

yourself. It's so easy to put something

32:55

on the backlog and say, Oh, whether

32:57

it's, you know, chores and maintenance around the house

32:59

or personal development work, I'm a huge advocate for

33:02

therapy to understand more of like what you think

33:04

and what you feel. But there's

33:06

so much you can suppress when you're in the grindstone

33:08

of a big project. And so for

33:10

me taking a sabbatical, this is kind of my

33:12

second major sabbatical in my career is really about

33:14

self discovery. And every time I've come out of

33:17

something, it's been to something fundamentally different. Yeah, that

33:19

that is like we were saying, like, sometimes you

33:21

don't know what you want because you're too there's

33:23

too many factors weighing down on you. There's too

33:26

much way in to take a step back and

33:28

be able to do that. That's got to be

33:30

pretty amazing. I know, you know, one of the

33:32

things you're doing is working a lot with your

33:35

kids right now. I wonder

33:37

about your thoughts on like teaching technical things

33:39

to kids or just in general, like what

33:41

kind of tech does somebody who worked at

33:44

Apple basically, you

33:46

know, not your entire career, but a good chunk

33:48

of your career. What does somebody who does that

33:51

do to teach their kids with tech? Yeah,

33:54

I mean, it's such an amazing time to be alive

33:56

and especially as a parent now of like as a

33:58

child of the eighties, like. Oh man, I wish

34:01

we had this instead of, you know, speaking spell

34:03

or, you know, all the different like flight years

34:05

ahead of like what is available in the STEM

34:07

and STEAM curriculum at most schools these days. And,

34:09

uh, you know, it's been interesting

34:11

to see taking a step back of once

34:14

again, to the technologies or products I've developed

34:16

that maybe not super thrilled about, like the

34:18

impact they've had on kids or, you know,

34:20

having worked on iPads, like, you know, now

34:22

to see my kid glued to them is

34:24

like, oop, uh, better take that away and

34:26

enable screen time real quick. But, you know,

34:28

so I always look as technology for good. And

34:31

as someone who grew up with learning differences and

34:33

different challenges along the way, like I can see

34:35

the huge benefit of technology to help people, you

34:38

know, break through different barriers that wouldn't be able

34:40

to otherwise. So how to apply that towards not

34:42

just kids, but adults as well. I

34:44

think so many people, you know, the job market

34:47

is not pretty right now in the tech industry

34:49

and people are looking to either change careers

34:51

or transition in roles and feeling a little

34:53

bit stuck. And I think there's no shortage

34:56

of, you know, learning opportunities out there. It's

34:58

just like, how do you get to step

35:00

one? And so back to your question about

35:02

like for kids, it's giving them

35:04

like a step one and a step two, but

35:07

giving them the environment that they can find step

35:09

three and beyond. That's really interesting.

35:11

Landon and I, my son, for the people

35:13

are, we're building a video game right now.

35:15

So we're, we're both in Godot and it

35:18

is funny to try to teach a seven

35:20

year old how to work with

35:22

an application building thing like a dough. He's

35:24

just like, why don't we have

35:26

him do this now? The character do this. I'm

35:28

like, well, we have to program that first. Let's

35:31

figure out how to do that. Let's get into

35:33

it. And then like, just to see his brain

35:35

work to be like, Oh, things don't just exist

35:37

out of nowhere. We have to create them. We

35:40

have to program them. We have to understand how

35:42

this thing works. I think it's really been, even

35:44

though he's not coding, I think it's been changing

35:46

for him in terms of how he sees things

35:49

happen. I know at one point you had worked

35:51

on self driving cars. This is an off the

35:53

board question, but I'm curious about what your vibe

35:55

is on the self driving cars. I

35:58

think about this all the time. I worked at

36:00

an amazing startup company called Aurora, which

36:02

kind of did self-driving vehicles to begin

36:04

and pivoted to autonomous trucks. And

36:07

so I kind of distinguished between trucking versus

36:09

like ride sharing. And I think

36:12

it will take a long time for

36:14

ride sharing, both from a regulatory and

36:16

like a cultural perspective, to be like

36:18

everybody's comfortable. Like San Francisco had that

36:21

honking incident with Waymo recently. There

36:24

will always be a headline. But as

36:26

someone who also was in a very traumatic car

36:28

accident as a young kid, the human drivers are

36:30

not safe. We have this perception of what safety

36:32

is. And I

36:34

think that was a unique part both in my career

36:37

and just technology development, to look at how can we

36:39

build tools to make things safe again. And

36:41

so trucking, I think will be more

36:44

widespread earlier. But if you go to

36:46

San Francisco or Chandler, Arizona, like there's

36:48

places you can go now and ride

36:50

in a self-driving vehicle. And it's

36:53

uncanny the first time you do it. And

36:55

then it's very uneventful because it's just like you

36:57

have a virtual chauffeur that drops you off. So

37:00

it's kind of a weird, exciting, then anti-climatic experience

37:02

to be a rider. I think about this all

37:04

the time. I want them to make the car

37:06

out of the black box of the airplane and

37:08

then just put my kid inside of it and

37:11

then have that take him everywhere. So that way

37:13

he never has to be a 16 year old

37:15

driver. That's my goal in life. You know, the

37:17

safety and redundancy systems and how you develop. I

37:20

mean, it comes a lot from aviation

37:22

and rocket science of like, you're not just building a

37:24

web app and shipping it over to an SRE team

37:26

to go deploy it. Like this is a very end

37:28

to end system. And you have to think about safety

37:31

as the paramount goal for everybody. Yeah,

37:33

wow. What did you specifically do when

37:35

you worked on the self-driving tech? Yeah,

37:38

so this was started in 2015 when

37:41

Deep Rail Networks, DNNs were all the new

37:43

rage. And training data was

37:45

a huge segment of the industry. And

37:47

so my role was program management and

37:49

corporate development to build large high quality

37:51

data sets. You know, when transitioning to

37:54

Aurora had a larger role there that

37:56

really enjoyed. But if you think about

37:58

it, you're educating a neural network. a

38:00

machine learning system from the ground

38:02

up so that you have to teach it both true

38:05

positives, false positives, false negatives,

38:08

all the different taxonomy, the different objects you

38:10

need to identify. Failure is

38:12

really bad in those cases. And

38:14

so if you look at a small

38:17

detector on your phone doing object detection, it is

38:19

worlds apart from a vehicle doing

38:21

it at such high speed and low latency. That's

38:24

fascinating, that whole area. Sorry, go ahead, Scott. No,

38:26

I was going to say, it is working on

38:28

a team like that where safety is so paramount.

38:30

Is that stressful to the team to work on

38:33

knowing that there's such high stakes? It

38:36

can be, but especially a lot of

38:38

the safety critical work of aviation and

38:40

other industries, we're building

38:42

on existing foundations of how do you

38:44

make sure in a regulated, highly controlled

38:47

safety environment, that foundation makes

38:49

you feel really affirmed that I'm not going to

38:51

put in the wrong semicolon, and that's going to

38:53

land on a vehicle. The

38:55

number of steps between an individual commit

38:57

and on a vehicle are almost

39:00

infinite. But that's what the whole

39:02

process of a safety framework is about,

39:04

because you can think about it

39:07

that as an engineer, if I'm

39:09

concerned that if I do

39:11

this, a catastrophic event might happen, that can

39:13

induce bias in the actual work I'm doing.

39:16

I could be overprotective of things, which in turn

39:18

could make things run worse. So

39:20

there's a lot of making sure that you

39:22

have a safety framework that supports doing the

39:24

right thing. Yeah. So

39:26

you've been involved, obviously, now in machine

39:29

learning for a while. I know that

39:31

you use LLMs personally. What

39:33

do you think that looks like for somebody

39:35

who's looking to get into tech? I know

39:37

there's so much negativity about AI taking our

39:40

jobs. Do you feel like that greatly evolves

39:42

the career path going forward? It's

39:45

definitely made an impact how measured that impact will

39:47

be. I think we're writing that page as a

39:50

history today of there's an old phrase that if

39:52

technology can make your job easier, it can also

39:54

make it irrelevant. And while that's

39:56

been a joke, I think now we're

39:58

seeing that where some people are sections

40:01

of industry, a paralegal, an accountant, things

40:04

that are highly professional and

40:06

credentialed professions can be done

40:08

by certain LLMs. I think

40:10

the trust factor is still something we're

40:12

acculturating to of when I'm getting an

40:14

answer from insert favorite LLM here, like

40:17

I want to plan a trip for

40:19

me and a family where all the

40:21

different criteria, it's amazing for things like

40:23

that. But we still have the

40:25

rationalization effect or hallucination effect as some people

40:27

like to call it, is

40:30

this answer real or is it fabricated

40:32

based on a limited understanding? Yeah,

40:34

how much longer do you think that's going to,

40:36

I know you're not a soothsayer here, but like

40:39

when do you think that barrier ends up

40:41

disappearing? I know candidly in

40:43

certain areas, we're there. I think people

40:46

look at the capability of crossing the

40:48

finish line in one area versus everything's

40:50

across the finish line. Do I want

40:52

an LLM to operate on me as

40:55

a surgeon? Nope. I

40:57

wanted to make a much better recommendation than

40:59

anything I've ever had before, absolutely. Yeah, I

41:01

get that. I know there's certainly a lot

41:03

of things that I do use it for

41:05

that I do. The trust sometimes

41:07

isn't 100%, but I think

41:09

that's one good part about being a developer,

41:12

especially if you're using it for coding, is

41:14

that your abilities are there to validate that

41:17

trust or to filter out

41:19

what could be something detrimental that you're adding

41:21

to your code base. I know coding seems

41:23

like a ripe thing to be encompassed

41:26

by AI. What do you

41:28

think developers should do to make themselves

41:30

stand out or even be relevant? I

41:33

think it's interesting. Maintainability comes up in a

41:35

very big way of just

41:37

because an LLM or a co-pilot,

41:39

insert name of product here can

41:41

generate something for you, does

41:43

that mean it's the ideal solution to deploy?

41:46

And much like having the intern refactor,

41:48

the piece that's been in production for

41:50

20 years, there are certain

41:52

things you don't touch because of

41:54

the mission criticality to whatever your

41:56

product is. And so I

41:58

think for day to day, day kind

42:00

of work, I think are inspiration of

42:03

how to move forward with a problem

42:05

in engineering, like excellent for brainstorming. I

42:07

think when it comes to not just

42:09

implementation, but deployment into a production environment,

42:11

oftentimes I think people rewrite a whole

42:13

bunch that they'll have, you know, their

42:15

LLM, you know, generate something for them

42:17

and then refactor it. And then instead,

42:19

you know, opportunity cost of if you'd

42:21

just written it yourself would have taken

42:23

less time. So yeah, I think that

42:25

gap is what people are focused on

42:27

right now. Interesting. Yeah, totally.

42:30

From a different lens, you know, people who are into

42:32

no code of, I

42:34

think there's a lot of interesting application to

42:36

extend, you know, no code IDs and frameworks

42:38

to, you know, actually have functional code that

42:41

they can better understand and make cool products.

42:43

You know, you might have an idea, but

42:45

not the capability to go implement. And I

42:48

think the amount of ideas that can be

42:50

accelerated through that is phenomenal. Yeah,

42:52

the amount of people that is no code

42:55

is a gateway drug to actual

42:57

code is amazing, right? Like I

42:59

don't blame people for doing

43:01

that type of thing. Like even an Excel

43:04

spreadsheet is no code, right? But at a

43:06

certain point you realize, hmm, this is so

43:09

complex and fragile. I

43:11

think I want to learn a little bit of code now and I

43:13

have the whole mindset for it now that I've

43:15

been working on this. Yeah, I

43:18

started with no code stuff. I mean, Dreamweaver,

43:20

there's some Adobe software, we dragged everything onto

43:22

a grid was no code to an extent.

43:24

And again, at least at the gateway. Yeah,

43:27

I know totally right. So

43:31

Topher, to sum up kind of what we're talking about

43:33

on career development, you have any like final

43:35

statements here on career development stuff

43:37

that could wrap this up in

43:39

summation? Yeah, especially for

43:42

those who are just starting out or looking to

43:44

make a transition into, into tech,

43:46

into a new field within tech. It's at times

43:48

you can be your own biggest enemy and it's

43:50

so much easier to start than, you know, oftentimes

43:52

we make it up to be in our head.

43:55

So when looking at starting

43:57

a side project, learning a new skill,

43:59

doing. something that once again is for you

44:01

as the primary customer. I think these are all

44:03

great ways to better discover and explore what it

44:05

is you want to do. And

44:08

naturally over time, I think those will connect the dots to

44:10

the right team and the right products. Nice.

44:13

Are you familiar with Kaizen, Topher?

44:16

Not so much. So we're about to,

44:18

yeah, we're about to drop our second Japanese business

44:20

philosophy on this podcast. Yes.

44:23

Kaizen is a Japanese term for

44:26

a continual small improvement. There's a book,

44:28

I think it's called like One

44:30

Small Step Kaizen or something. Definitely

44:32

worth your time because it resonates a lot

44:34

with what you're saying. Paul Coppolstone of Superbase

44:37

told me about it. And man,

44:39

it definitely fits in with a lot of what

44:41

you're saying about this. It is easier to start

44:43

one small step here and there and you can

44:45

make a big difference. You worked on light field

44:47

cameras. This is off the wall question. What

44:50

is a light field camera? A

44:52

light field camera is capturing an

44:54

image from multiple centers of perspective.

44:58

Stanford University had developed an array camera,

45:00

so a big wall of cameras effectively.

45:03

And when you look at capturing an

45:05

image of that scale, you can actually

45:07

shift and create a three dimensional image.

45:09

So this is long before, this is

45:11

very early computational photography, but

45:13

you could put this wall next to bushes and

45:15

see through them. There's amazing things that you could

45:18

do. And so the company

45:20

Lightro was founded to miniaturize that technology into

45:22

a single camera. It was a camera camera

45:24

to start, but it allowed you to take

45:26

one picture that you could refocus after the

45:28

fact. Everything was 3D. This

45:31

was in like 2012, 2013. So

45:34

3D TVs were all the buzz. And

45:36

I think that's an example of an

45:38

amazing technology and a great team, but

45:41

the product didn't really fit within the

45:43

environment at the time. And so as

45:45

a lifelong passionate photographer, it really resonated

45:48

for me to have a technology and

45:50

a camera company. But a lot of

45:52

good life lessons from a startup company,

45:54

how they rose and ultimately fell

45:56

as well. I remember this product,

45:59

seeing this photo. When you had

46:01

said Lightro before, I didn't put it together, but I

46:03

do remember when this came out. I was like, it

46:05

was kind of like black magic to see that as

46:07

like a field of view. Yeah. Yeah,

46:09

the focus coming out. Yeah, that's pretty wild. I

46:12

want that for just my cameras right

46:14

here, you know? If like, if I go over here

46:16

or if you want to pan into the side, you

46:18

know, wouldn't it be nice just to... One

46:22

of the synthetic depth of field was

46:24

actually one of the big effects that,

46:26

you know, you were always shooting at

46:28

effectively F2, so very shallow depth of

46:30

field, and you can synthetically increase the

46:32

depth of field using real pixels data.

46:34

So phenomenal technology, I think selling

46:37

a third camera to photographers where their first

46:39

camera is like an SLR, their

46:41

second camera is a smartphone, you know, there's not enough

46:43

room in the camera bag for kind of a third

46:45

camera in a lot of cases. Yeah,

46:47

now that iPhone with the cinema recording,

46:49

I mean, you can change the focus

46:52

point at any given point in it.

46:54

Do you know if that's being done by

46:56

recording like just multiple streams at once? Yeah,

46:59

a lot of it is just by stereoscopy,

47:01

having two cameras with overlapping fields of view.

47:04

And then, you know, so effectively spatial video works

47:06

in a lot of areas too with a LiDAR

47:08

sensor where you can get depth information. One

47:10

of the big features of Vision OS 2

47:12

as a vision OS, a fellow vision OS

47:14

owner, is, you know, photos can actually take

47:16

photos you've taken traditionally, 2D images, and

47:19

use computational photography to make them spatial

47:21

photos. I don't know if you've

47:23

had a chance to do it yet on the

47:26

developer betas, but it's amazing. Like, especially the parent,

47:28

like you do relive the moment that you would

47:30

otherwise. I know people, you know,

47:32

if people haven't used it, they wouldn't know. But

47:34

the spatial media is such

47:36

a killer feature of the Vision

47:39

Pro overall for me. Like turning

47:41

photos spatially is like an emotional

47:43

experience. Or like I recorded my

47:45

son singing in his

47:47

first grade class and I

47:50

recorded that as a spatial video. And then I could

47:52

do that before I even had the Vision Pro. And

47:54

then I watched it back on the Vision Pro and

47:56

was just like, man, it is

47:59

such a cool. experience to really feel like

48:01

you're not like you're there but you're you're

48:03

experiencing something that's real rather than just a

48:05

like a video of it man it's just

48:08

such cool stuff can I ask you real

48:10

quick about the stuff that's in your background

48:12

so anyone not watching the video right now

48:14

there's a bunch of

48:17

cube squares that has some Minecraft stuff on

48:20

it and a bunch of stuff

48:22

over here just there's a my some beer

48:24

actually and Scottson landed a really good friends

48:26

from kindergarten and first grade so that's kind

48:28

of one of the small world connections here

48:30

but my son is all the things Minecraft

48:33

and these are little

48:35

pixu dive whom LED

48:37

boards and the moment he saw that it

48:39

could be minecraft it was all the things

48:41

Minecraft so yeah yeah Landon

48:43

is so into minecraft right now but the

48:45

funniest thing about Landon is he just makes

48:48

up so much stuff about it like he'll

48:50

tell be like dad did you know that

48:52

I could kill the the unicorn on this

48:54

planet and minecraft I'm like I don't think

48:56

that's a thing I don't even know where

48:58

you're coming up with my kids are getting

49:00

into it recently

49:03

as well I'm learning all about obsidian and all

49:05

these and they asked me questions like like I

49:07

know everything about it and it's hilarious we have

49:09

to go look it up especially from a parent

49:11

perspective to it's funny you know Landon and bear

49:13

think they're in the same world but they're both

49:16

playing locally on their own device but I left

49:18

this thing for you in the loot box did

49:20

you see it and it was like I don't

49:22

have the heart to tell about guys that's not

49:24

possible but it's adorable Landon and I had a

49:27

world that we were doing together and I branched

49:29

his off just because I didn't you know he

49:31

was playing creative and whatever he's like dad I

49:33

did this to your house I blew up your

49:35

house I'm like you didn't blow

49:37

up my house I'm sorry but I yeah same deal

49:39

I haven't told him but I I think we do

49:42

we do have to get a an actual server going

49:44

it at some point because that would be a lot

49:46

of fun actually I have one more question about Apple

49:48

stuff before we go what was something

49:50

just just because we got you on

49:52

here what was something wild that happened

49:54

while you were working at Apple that

49:57

you could share just a wild experience

49:59

for you I think, you

50:01

know, going back to the theme of like

50:03

starting something, making it real and like seeing

50:05

people use it, when Apple retail first started,

50:07

which is around the same time I joined

50:09

the company, like the ability to work on

50:11

something so hard and then go walk into

50:13

a random shopping mall and see people like

50:15

using it for the first time is like

50:18

one of the coolest things ever. And

50:20

for me kind of in private working on

50:22

vision pro for so long, like to really

50:24

demo it to people or have them go into

50:26

an Apple store is like that weird like Christmas

50:29

morning effect of like, it brings me a

50:31

lot of internal motivation and joy to see

50:33

something I've put so much energy into and

50:35

so a large numbers of teams and people

50:38

and to have it, you know, have that moment.

50:40

A lot of products are judged over time, iPhone

50:42

being a good example of that. But like, you

50:44

know, it's to really enjoy that moment of when

50:47

people experience something and go, wow, this is just

50:49

cool. So yeah, I

50:51

do feel like that is a thing with

50:54

vision pro, especially that like, when people really

50:56

get to use it or experience it for

50:58

its strengths and the reality of it, they

51:00

really see how incredible it is. So yeah,

51:02

it's a really cool product. I think for

51:04

me personally, in that regard, using it on

51:06

the airplane was like the biggest thing in

51:09

the world for me to be able to

51:11

code with a giant screen on the beach

51:13

in the airplane. And I had

51:15

RoboCop over here, which RoboCop incredibly violent movie,

51:17

I can watch it on the airplane and

51:20

not have to worry about little kids

51:22

seeing thousand squibs go off in

51:24

a boardroom shootout scene. So it's

51:26

like, for me, that was just such a cool moment to be

51:28

like, oh, this is like, this is really

51:30

transformative in a lot of ways. And I'm excited

51:32

for more people to experience that. So

51:35

now since we were wrapping up here, this

51:37

is the part of the show we get into

51:40

sick pics and shameless plugs. Topher, did you come

51:42

with sick pics and shameless plugs? I

51:44

did. So two days ago,

51:46

I took the leap on getting a 3D

51:49

printer. After a much debate.

51:52

And I had one like in 2010, the

51:55

MakerBot thing-o-matic, I think it was called, but

51:57

early, early stuff. I

52:00

mean, it is nonstop, you know,

52:02

fidget toys and everything like I

52:05

had to turn it off. So the audio didn't

52:07

bleed in here for the call, but you know,

52:09

this printer has been running nonstop for 24 hours

52:11

and they're 48 hours and it's been super fun

52:13

to learn something new. Which one

52:15

did you get? You got the bamboo labs

52:17

P1S. I can send a

52:20

link for the show notes, but there's

52:22

an automated material system that can do

52:24

multicolor printing and, you know, it's a

52:26

bit apprehensive. And they're not cheap, but

52:28

it's, you know, diving into something new.

52:31

But just once again, that thrill of

52:33

kind of doing something new and yeah,

52:35

it's been fun and the kids absolutely

52:37

love it. It's you know, Santa's workshop

52:39

at home. Man, that's

52:41

cool. This is going to be a

52:44

thing now. Topher and I were talking about this this

52:46

weekend or I guess it was last weekend, maybe even.

52:48

Man, it's exciting to hear that you went with

52:51

it. This I bet Landon will be stoked to

52:53

check it out. He has such lofty ideas. We

52:55

were going to get him this like cheapo 3D

52:57

printing pen for Christmas that just

52:59

like it's like dragging and he thinks like,

53:02

I'm going to be able to make all my toys with

53:04

this and I like I got

53:06

to set expectations, man. It's not going to do

53:08

that for you, but maybe a real 3D printer.

53:10

Yeah. Yeah. It

53:12

was funny. Like

53:15

this has been in a family. Like

53:17

there's always like, you know, hey, dad

53:19

wants to get the 3D printer. Oh,

53:21

that's nice. It was a bento 3D

53:23

design is a really cool

53:25

kind of reactive web app that allows

53:27

you to create an interactive bento box.

53:30

So one of the big challenges I always have

53:32

is like camera batteries or insert name of Landon

53:34

thing here and you can make the

53:37

completely unique custom bento box and just

53:39

download the STL file to the printer.

53:42

And you know, in our kitchen we have like,

53:44

you know, whatever off the shelf cutlery organizer that

53:46

went to my partner. I'm like, we could just

53:48

make our own that actually works instead of the

53:50

one we've been struggling with for 10 years. And

53:53

that was the pitch. Like that's what sold that we're getting

53:55

a 3D printer today. It

53:57

actually fits the drawer. Yeah. Exactly.

54:00

Yeah. It's really cool. I've

54:02

been watching this for a while and I've I've been

54:04

on the cusp of getting a 3D printer for probably

54:06

15 years now. And it's

54:08

almost one of the ones where if you're trying

54:11

to visualize what this is, it's like a CSS

54:13

grid where you can infinitely add

54:15

rows and columns and split things up and

54:18

it will just figure it out. So if

54:20

you do have a drawer

54:22

that you want to perfectly section off, that's

54:24

what it is. And wow, I want to

54:26

do it. Who made this? This is a

54:29

great web app. This web app

54:31

really solves the precision problem. Like you can go

54:33

download, you know, Blender or any app you want

54:35

to go do. But like by the time you

54:38

actually print it, it's not millimeter accurate. And above

54:40

and beyond the design of this website, it's

54:42

the fact that everything's millimeter accurate is really

54:45

cool. This thing rules. This is a

54:47

really cool web app. Japanese developer

54:49

Shuntaro Naka. I'm not even

54:51

going to try, but man,

54:54

Japanese are taking over this episode

54:56

today. Wow. Yes. Wow.

54:59

Cool. This is sick, Topher. Yes.

55:02

Dope to see what you guys end up making with

55:04

that thing. What about shameless plugs? Is there anything you

55:06

would like to plug? Yeah. So

55:08

speaking of doing new things, I've been

55:10

attempting to start a YouTube channel for

55:12

probably a decade. And so I have

55:14

youtube.com/Topher Martini with zero videos and one

55:16

follower, one subscriber. So in like weeks

55:18

ahead, I really want to continue conversations

55:21

like these and, you know, share more

55:23

of what I've been able to learn

55:25

through my career trajectory to help others.

55:27

So that's one place I hope to do

55:29

it. Yeah. Give

55:31

Topher a follow up because he's one of the the

55:33

wisest people I get to talk to on a regular

55:36

basis. So I sincerely appreciate you getting to come on

55:38

the show Topher and like share some of that with

55:40

our audience, because I know when we chat all the

55:42

time, it always feels like it feels like I'm picking

55:44

something up left and right. So thank you so much

55:46

for coming on the show today and getting to share

55:48

that with the audience. So yeah, go follow Topher on

55:50

YouTube. We'll have the links for all the stuff in

55:52

the show. And yeah, thank you so much

55:54

for coming on today. Really appreciate it.

55:57

Thank you for the conversation. Of

55:59

course. Anytime, man. you