Mike Monteiro

S1:E6

Todd Libby: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Front End Nerdery podcast. A podcast about front end development and design. I'm your host, Todd Libby. My guest today is one half of Mule Design, author, speaker, and all around terrific guy. Don't let anybody know that. Mike Monteiro. Mike, how are you today?
Mike Monteiro: [00:00:24] Hey Todd, how are you?
Todd: [00:00:26] I'm doing well.
Mike: [00:00:27] I didn't. Wow. Finally, finally, two white guys on a podcast.
Todd: [00:00:28} I know.
Mike: [00:00:33] I thought I was never going to see the day.
Todd: [00:00:36] I didn't think so either.
Mike: [00:00:37] How long have we waited for this? Groundbreaking. Groundbreaking.
Todd: [00:00:42] Years. It's been years in the making.
Mike: [00:00:45] Oh my God. Could we talk about tech too? Because that's then it's then we're just like lining up the, the, the groundbreaking accomplishments.
Todd: [00:00:53] Yeah.
Mike: [00:00:53] Okay. Two white guys talking about tech.
Todd: [00:00:56] Yeah. I want this to be an award-winning episode.
Mike: [00:00:59] I mean, it's groundbreaking just, just by, just by our own existence. We've broken ground.
Todd: [00:01:06] Yeah.
Mike: [00:01:06] Yeah. We don't really need to try any harder than this.
Todd: [00:01:09] No, I'm giving it as little effort as possible. I don't know about you.
Mike: [00:01:13] Our existence is our gift to the world.
Todd: [00:01:15] So why don't you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself?
Mike: [00:01:18] I don't know. Shit. I mean, what do you, can you curse on this podcast?
Todd: [00:01:22] You sure can.
Mike: [00:01:23] I don't know. What, what, what about me? I'm a designer.
Todd: [00:01:26] Okay.
I'm a designer. I run—I, I'm half of the company at this point, Mule Design. We've been around for 20 years. The other half of the company is Erika Hall. She's smart, smarter than me. We've been, you know, helping people do their shit for 20 some years. I've been, you know, designing shit for longer than that. I mostly write these days—cause I enjoy writing. Cause that's design too. Designing a whole nother thing. And I've been, I don't know, I don't know about you, but I've been sitting in my house for like the last 14, 15 months you know buying odd things and you know, organizing weird corners of the house and stuff like that.
Todd: [00:02:15] Yeah.
Mike: [00:02:18] But yeah, that's me. I'm a terrible human being, probably.
Todd: [00:02:25] Well only 34% of the internet thinks so. That's the statistic I saw.
Mike: [00:02:30] Well, I mean, as long as it's the right 34%, I mean, they probably have a case.
Todd: [00:02:34] I mean, you have a better approval rating than the last president.
Mike: [00:02:39] Jesus Christ. This is off to a hell of a good start.
Todd: [00:02:44] I know isn't it? So, what I like to ask my guests, first question right out of the gate.
Mike: [00:02:49] Who did you have on here last week? You had David Dylan Thomas on here.
Todd: [00:02:53] David Dylan Thomas. Yes.
Mike: [00:02:54] You should have just had him on again.
Todd: [00:02:56] I ran out of questions. I asked him all the questions I had—and a few more.
Mike: [00:03:05] He's, he's really smart though. You just have to ask him like one question and then just listen to him for an hour and you learn all sorts of stuff that you didn't know before. And, you know, it was pretty amazing. Like, I, I listened to him for longer than an hour and you're just, you're just like, you know, just soaking it in and he's a good storyteller too.
Todd: [00:03:25] Yeah. Yeah. It was a great conversation that we had.
Mike: [00:03:28] Yeah. So, this is a hell of a downgrade. Go from him to me. Alright, go ahead.
Todd: [00:03:37] I wouldn't. I wouldn't say so, but—
Mike: [00:03:39] Alright.
Todd: [00:03:41] Well, how did you get started in design?
Mike: [00:03:43] Oh Jesus. How did I get started in design?
Todd: [00:03:48] Yeah.
Mike: [00:03:52] That was a long time ago. I got started in design because I went, I went, I went to art school. I was one of those dumb dumbs that went to art school and when I got to art school, I, I, you know, I wanted to do art things.
And one of the things that was happening when I was in art school was man, people were like really making like great, like street art and poster art.
And, you know, like the Guerrilla Girls were doing their thing and Robbie Conal was doing his thing. And, you know, lots of other people like that and Gran Fury was doing their thing fracked up and it just, it just felt like where change was happening, where the excitement was at least, you know, for, you know, for a kid who like, you know, grew up in punk rock.
We're, we're all of like, you know, people, you know, where people were, were like making change and, you know, being fearless was all happening in this other world that wasn't happening inside a painting studio.
It was happening, you know, out on the streets with, you know, people making posters and, and, and, and collages and shit like that. And I said, “I want to do that.”
And that led to me having to, you know, sitting, standing or sitting in front of a Mac for the first time like laying, you know, putting laying words out so that I could print them out and then like glue, stick them onto a poster that I would make.
And that was like my entry into design. Was making that shit. And that led to, you know, eventually like, you know, getting a job as you know, I—my first, my first design job was at a, a desktop publishing company in Austin, Texas.
And I don't think, you know, there's, there's, there's nothing like that around anymore, but this was, you know, computers existed, page layout existed, things like PageMaker and Freehand and other wonderful all those products.
And so, you could get, you could get a business card or a restaurant menu type set on a computer, but you didn't have a computer at home yet. It is still a little too early for that.
So, you go to a copy shop and, you know, you would show up with your restaurant menu, like all hand printed out. And I was the one who, who type set that for you and I, I, I would also make your logo for you and, you know, the, the best thing about that, that job was that it didn't matter what the job was.
You had 15 minutes to do it. If, if, if you could plead your case, your boss might give you an extra 15 minutes. So, I have to do like a double-sided tri-fold restaurant menu. I can't do this in 15 minutes. Okay, you have 30 minutes. So, we have 30 minutes for something like that.
If we were making a logo for somebody, we had like an open piece, we had like two open pieces of clip art on our desktop. We had the state of Texas and we had a, a, a Longhorn. And whatever the company was, you would, you would drag both of those pieces of clip art and into Freehand, and you would write the company's name on them.
And then you would tell them, like, you can choose between the state of Texas or the Longhorn. They'd be like, “Oh, wow. These are both so great. I can't just choose one.” That was my first design job.
And the thing that I learned at that job was, was how to produce, how to produce and how to produce things on time. Because even now, even now, you know, and I mean, we're doing stuff that's, you know, incredibly more complex than that.
I still tend to think in terms of like 15 and 30 minute pieces at a time. I mean, I, you know, I've hired people who, you know, “Hey, how long will it take you to do this?” And, you know, it'll, you know, and I'm not like, you know, like an entire company strategy for something, it'll be like this, this very contained piece of work. “Oh, a couple weeks.”
And I'm like, I don't know how to measure that. Like, you know, tell me an hour, tell me like an hour and 45 minutes. And you know, Erika has had to pull me aside a couple of a few times and, and just go, “You know, you're really fast. Like you're really fast at this shit. You can't like keep that in mind when you're asking other people for deadlines.”
So that's, that's been my secret super power. And that's how I got it cause my first job is just, you know just cranking, you just cranked stuff.
Todd: [00:08:41] My first program was QuarkXPress and over in that realm.
Mike: [00:08:49] Quark 3.31 baby!
Todd: [00:08:52] It might have been after that, but yeah.
Mike: [00:08:57] Oh, Quark four was trash, that's when it went to hell. Three, three one.
Todd: [00:09:04] I lived, matter of fact, I lived in Orange County (California), was going to school in 2002. And I believe that was what we were using in the class was four something. And it just made no sense. So—
Mike: [00:09:23] That's a company that's shot themselves in the foot.
Todd: [00:09:25] Yeah. Kind of like Basecamp, but we'll get to that soon.
Mike: [00:09:30] Oh God, God, Jesus. Seriously, we'll be talking about that?
Todd: [00:09:37] Maybe later.
Mike: [00:09:38] Okay. I mean, I'm fine talking about it. Just, you know, with the caveat that I know absolutely nothing. I know absolutely nothing. I am, I am running on, on fumes and assumptions and, and, and, and just, you know, reaction to what I've seen publicly.
Todd: [00:10:00] No. So, let's talk about this one first then. How's that?
Todd holds up “Design Is aA Job” book, Mike’s first book.
Mike: [00:10:05] Oh, Jesus. That one, that’s the first book I wrote, Todd. It was the first book I wrote.
Todd: [00:10:10] Yeah. And it, and it helped me. It helped me with what I do.
Mike: [00:10:14] How did it help you?
Todd: [00:10:15] Well, the part about the contracts.
Mike: [00:10:21] Yeah.
Todd: [00:10:23] I was a horrible contract writer, and it was, it's just, it was just me. And it was just me for many, many years, decades, couple decades.
Mike: [00:10:33] Well, who taught you how to write a contract?
Todd: [00:10:35] Me. I had to, well, that book.
Mike: [00:10:38] Exactly.
Todd: [00:10:39] Your video, "Fuck You, Pay Me." And what I was going to ask is if you could tell the listeners, because I got a lot of people that really, I don't know if they are on the design design side of things, but can you tell the listeners about the book?
Mike: [00:11:02] If, I mean, first off, you're on the design side of things. You're, you're making shit. You're helping to make shit real. You're on the design design side of things.
The book, the book basically is Jesus, it's like it's, it's like an owner's manual to how to be a designer. When I was, when I was when I was a young’un, I got a, I got a VW Bug. And the first thing, the first thing I did after getting my VW Bug was there was like this, this, this hippie VW manual that everybody who had a Bug had, we all had the same hippie VW manual. It was all hand drawn and hand lettered. And I think it was a spiral bound maybe, but it was about yay thick.
Mike uses thumb and forefinger to show that the book was about 1.5” big.
But the first thing you did after getting a Bug was you got the hippy manual. And this was like, before you could go to Amazon for this shit, which you shouldn't do even today. But you go went to the store, you found the hippie manual, you threw it in the back seat of your VW, and every once in a while, something would happen, and you would just reach back there.
You'd be like, “Alright. Which, which piece of duct tape do I have to move into what position here to fix my Bug. It's, is, is it, is it open? Is it smoking or flaming? Smoking.”
Todd: [00:12:20] Yeah.
Mike: [00:12:21] Okay. That's piece of duct tape, number three.
Todd: [00:12:24] Yeah, my mother had one.
Mike: [00:12:28] Great cars. And you can, I mean, you can fix them. You can fix them with, you know, a screwdriver and a piece of tape. And oh God, they were made by Nazis.
Everything is shit. Anyway. When, you know, when I became a designer, nobody handed me like a, here's a how to here's how to do the job. And I, I always felt like we needed that, especially cause, you know, so many, like at that point, at that point, like, I don't even remember what we were calling ourselves back in 2012, whether we were web designers or digital designers or, you know, whatever the fuck we were calling ourselves. It changes every three months.
It, it, it’s, it is an industry like still kind of coming to maturity, like in its awkward teen years. And we had no manual for how to do the job and so much of this shit that we needed to be able to do, especially in my position running, you know, running a small little agency all of the shit that we needed to do to stay alive was stuff that nobody had taught us.
I mean and you know, it was kind of understandable back then, because like I said, we were in our awkward, you know, web design was in its awkward teen years, but now it's like, you know, like, shit, it's almost 10 year anniversary of that book. I'm fucking old.
But, but now it it's like, I'm not sure that, that, that, you know, I, I, I talked to to kids who are just coming out of design school and I'm not sure if things are that much better, if at all. Like you're not taught like how to write it, how to, how to, how to get your money.
You're not taught how to write a contract. You're not taught, you know, how to get a client. You're not taught about like how to write a client email. You're not taught like how to present your work to a client.
You're not taught like how to hold the line. You're not taught about like how to, how to get elicit good feedback from people. You're not taught how to like gently disregard shit feedback that you, that you don't need.
And mostly you're getting it because you were never taught how to ask for the good stuff. But you're not taught any of that. And then you're thrown into this pit and you're like, “Okay, go be a designer now.”
And you know, kids are getting, you know, kids are getting run over, their careers are getting derailed, and they end up, you know, basically you know, doing, you know, becoming like little happy cogs in, in, in, in, in somebody, “Oh, that was shady shit.”
In, in somebody’s like production process where you just do what you're told and, you know i.e., birth of agile. But where, you know, everybody's shown like, you know, one square inch of the elephant told to somehow get milk out of that and not really. You know, told any more than that.
Todd: [00:15:25] Yeah. Well that—
Mike: [00:15:26] You sure, you sure you don't want to edit any of this?
Todd: [00:15:29] I’m positive.
Mike: [00:15:29] I'm just rambling.
Todd: [00:15:31] That's fine.
Mike: [00:15:31] Just rambling.
Todd: [00:15:33] I ramble all the time.
Mike: [00:15:34] I know nothing. Anyway. Anyway.
Todd: [00:15:41] Well the book gave me confidence like a fit along with the, with the, with the, the talk that the fuck you pay me talk to, to ask what I'm, what I feel I'm worth.
Mike: [00:15:54] The book was basically here's at that point I'd been running, we'd been running Mule for 10 years. It was like, here's all the mistakes I've made in 10 years and how you can avoid making those. So, like everything that I'd learned in 10 years of running my own shop.
Todd: [00:16:19] And then you wrote this one, which also helped.
Todd holds up You’re My Favorite Client book
Mike: [00:16:23] Yeah. So that one see I, oh my God, that matches my glasses.
Todd: [00:16:28] Yeah.
Mike: [00:16:29] That to me was the companion piece for the first one cause I mean, we worked with so many people over the years who, I mean, like everybody was hiring a designer for the first time, basically, especially the kind of companies that we were working with.
And here we show up and, you know, we're real shitty about telling people what, what, what we need from them. And then, you know, here are these folks and they're not like really sure how to work with the designer.
The designer is not doing a really good job of explaining it. So, you know, there's this vacuum and you know, somebody is going to jump in and fill it. And that's when, you know, the designer gets all pissed off.
Designers get equally pissed off if you tell them what to do and if you don't tell them what to do. It's crazy making. We are crazy people. Anyway, so I wrote this book for, for, you know, people who are hiring designers, you know, it's like, it, it, it was like the, the, the manual that you should have gotten with your Furby.
Todd: [00:17:33] Yeah.
Mike: [00:17:34] So now you've hired a Furby.
Todd: [00:17:36] Yeah. So, what makes a good client?
Mike: [00:17:42] What makes a good client? That's a good question. Money. I mean, let's face it. This is how we earn our living, right? So, I mean, this kinda, this was kind of the crux of the first book. Like let's talk about money, honestly. Because this is, this is why we do this thing.
Like—so, you know, if they don't have money, they're not a client. If they do have money, then they might be a client. And you know, if they have a problem that I want to fix and that I can fix and that, you know, they're willing to work with me to fix, then that makes them a good client.
If they understand if, if, if they're, they're willing to understand what I bring to the table, they make a good client. If they are more interested in solving the problem, then in saving their reputation, they're a good client. Basically, what I want from a client is the same thing that I'm willing to give them.
If you don't know something, tell me, because if you can admit that you don't know something, then we can learn. And I mean, I've, I've worked with so many clients who were like, so afraid to admit that, you know, we don't know what's going on here we don't know why this is wrong.
So, you gotta be, I mean, you, you, you have to be you have to be open to doing good work and you have to be working willing to do it together and, you know, honesty on both sides.
Todd: [00:19:24] Yeah. Good. I, I remember you and Erica telling the story of, very briefly about it, you, you, correct me if I'm wrong, I probably am, where you thought you had to fire two clients total.
Mike: [00:19:40] Yeah, I think in 20 years we've maybe fired two clients total. And I don't like doing it. Well, I don't like firing anybody, client, or employee. Cause it means, it means that we screwed up at some point, it means that we, you know, screwed up at, you know, possibly evaluating who we were working with. It screwed up. We screwed up somewhere along the line, possibly.
I mean, some people just want to watch the world burn. But you know, every time that we have to do that I, I always, you know, look back at, you know, what did we do? How was there a way that we could have fixed this?
And, you know, sometimes the answer is no, because one person can't fix a relationship, but you know, sometimes you find it sometimes like, “Oh, that's where we screwed up right there.” Either, you know, we said something that we shouldn't have, or we suggested something that we shouldn't have, or more likely than not, we ignored a signal.
We ignored a signal. That was usually the case. It's like, when, you know, when we were interviewing this client and you know, they were, they were showing us who they were and either, you know, we really wanted to work with them for whatever reason, or we really needed the money to keep the lights on.
We ignored that in order to get the job. But when we when we went back, it's like there, it was there. They were telling us all along how they were going to behave. Firing people should be hard.
Todd: [00:21:09] Yeah.
Mike: [00:21:13] I was at, I was at like an every, some weird retreat for company owners once and somebody asked me, how can I, how can how can we make firing people easier? I was like, “I don't know, be a sociopath? What is wrong with you?” That I don't think that should ever be easy.
Todd: [00:21:33] But it, it seems like it is in tech, design, or development-wise.
Mike: [00:21:39] There's a lot of sociopaths in tech, Todd.
Todd: [00:21:46] To go along with the, what makes a good client question that I had. So, what signs can somebody usually see that they've teamed up with for the lack of a better term, a “bad client”?
Mike: [00:22:01] "I'm just do it the way I'm telling you to I'm paying you." That's, you know, sign number one. They they refuse to work with you basically. I mean, you know, if you're working with the right client, it's somebody who knows their business, they know their business inside out.
They might not know how; you know this little piece of their business. Maybe they don't know the digital part that well, maybe this is a new thing, but you know, Stanley's been selling sprockets for 20 years then, you know, I don't care how much research you're going to do, you're never going to know as much about selling sprockets as Stanley does.
So, it would be stupid of you not to not to use Stanley's expertise to the benefit of the project. What you bring is your own expertise and the two of you working together, it's like shebang, you got, you know, you got a recipe there for making a good project.
But you know, so a good client is somebody who you can like have an honest conversation with and, you know, shoot ideas around with. Oh, I remember we always, we always approached client relationships like this.
A client has to see you as an equal if a client sees like, I, I, I would purposely like we got contracts every once in a while, where we were referred to as a vendor and I would send those back.
Like I'm not signing anything that calls me a vendor. I'm not a vendor. I'm a partner. Yeah, change that. Well, it can't mean anything to you. Well, now, you know, it does, it does. It means something.
If, if, if you don't see yourselves as equals, you're not going to have the sorts of conversations that you need to have. And, you know, man, you’ve there's some difficult conversations that we've had to have with clients even really good ones, even really good ones where everything went great.
And I, in fact, I'd say that that's probably why things went great is because we were, you know, willing to have those difficult conversations and the, and they were open to hearing them. That I think that's a key to a good client partner relationship.
Todd: [00:24:20] Yeah. That book also helped me when navigating through conversations that I had when I was doing freelance projects in dealing with clients that for instance, one brought in a developer to look at the code that I had done, change a few things. I saw those changes. And without knowledge from both those books, I killed the project.
Mike: [00:24:56] Yeah. We had we had somebody bring in a designer in the middle of a project once. Cause they weren't happy with what we were doing. And they were like, “Well, you know, my, my buddy is a designer, so they're going to take over. So, you'll just build what they do.” That was, that was one of the clients that we fired. Cause it's like, man, if this is what you want to do, do it, but you know, we're not gonna build this shit for you.
Todd: [00:25:23] Yeah.
Mike: [00:25:24] It's I mean, it's, it's explicit. It's right there in the contract that you can't do this.
Todd: [00:25:28] So—now onto the next book.
Mike: [00:25:37] We just doing all of them in order.
Todd holds up Ruined by Design book
Todd: [00:25:40] Yeah, the ones that I have anyways. I haven't ordered the one you have. This book. I thoroughly enjoyed that one.
Mike: [00:25:49] What'd you enjoy about that one?
Todd: [00:25:52] From the first page to the last in what was in between. I mean the whole book.
Mike: [00:25:57] I like that. That's a good answer.
Todd: [00:25:59] It was—the, the, the part I like, you know, especially.
Todd holds up Ruined by Design book and points to a page inside.
Mike: [00:26:12] I can't see that my eyes are bad, and I wrote it.
Todd: [00:26:15] The, the snake.
Mike: [00:26:18] There's a person inside that snake.
Todd: [00:26:19] There's a person inside that snake. And you have the caption underneath that says, "This person is changing things from the inside."
Mike: [00:26:27] Yes, they were.
Todd: [00:26:28] Yeah.
Mike: [00:26:29] They were providing providing protein.
Todd: [00:26:32] Yeah, that happens a lot, doesn't it?
Mike: [00:26:36] Yeah, it does. It does. That book, Ruined by Design. I, I think, you know, that was the book that I always wanted to write. For some reason I felt like the other two had to come out first maybe to get, to establish a groove or to get people to understand, you know, why should I be listening to this person?
Cause it was like, here's my bona fides. Here's like me helping designers, here's me helping clients. And then here's me like destroying both your houses. But that's the one that I really wanted to write. And that one that one took a while, took a, awhile to to get to it. It simmered, it simmered for a really long time.
Todd: [00:27:20] Well, this was also in in, you know, I got the zine that you had accompanied with it.
Todd holds up Ruined by Design zine.
Mike: [00:27:28] Yeah, I was a little pissed off when you pulled out the paperback, because to me, the zine is the canonical version.
Todd: [00:27:34] Ok.
Mike: [00:27:35] Like I, so there's a whole story here. I don't know how much you want to get into. But you know, basically I had a nice publisher who did my first two books. Cause, you know, they're, they're like, you know, very friendly, here's how you make things, books.
And then I presented them with this, like here's fire and brimstone and they were like, “Whoa, dude, we write, you know, like happy, how to manuals. This isn't us.” And I was like, “Alright, fine.” And then I ended up just doing it myself cause you know, that was fun. And I learned some things.
And one of the things I learned is you don't have to ask anybody permission to do weird shit with your book. And I always felt like that book needed to be a zine. Like you needed to get your hands dirty reading it and it it and it should, it should be like, you know, something that designers find in like the dark places.
And you know, in like union meetings, a thing that gets passed around and, you know, very like hushed tones, like rolled up and passed between people in hallways. And like “Shh! Don’t tell anybody it's all rolled up.” Like, like, we've like, it's, it's, it's in like the, the, the, the secret bottoms of like briefcases and stuff.
And I got to do that. I got to do that because I didn't ask anybody. And at the time I thought, I, I, I really want it. I really want it as a zine, like just to hold. Because that'll make me happy and then I'll have this thing that that I wanted.
And so, I contacted this, this small press in Union City, California. And it was the same press that printed Maximum Rock N Roll, which they had recently just stopped printing cause it went, you know, digital only.
And, and I said, “So what you're saying is that the press is free?” And they're like, “Yeah, we got nothing.” I said, yes, let's do a zine.” “Well, what, what, like what kind of ink? What kind of paper?” Whatever you have for Maximum Rock N Roll, like same fucking thing, do it the same, same way. And they're like, “Well, you know, the minimum is 5,000.“ Oh, Okay. How big could that be?
And like two weeks later, which, you know, in the world of book publishing two weeks is like—and this truck pulled up in front of the studio and just opened up the back gate and it was just full of zines.
And I said, “Okay, which ones of those are mine?” And they were like, “What do you mean? Which ones? This is all yours.” Like, holy shit! What? And I, I had, I had not thought through to step two at that point. I had not thought like, what will I do with these once I have them?
Todd: [00:30:47] Cause you had pallets.
Mike: [00:30:49] Huh?
Todd: [00:30:50] You had pallets of these.
Mike: [00:30:52] I did. I had pallets of these.
Todd: [00:30:53] Yeah.
Mike: [00:30:53] But this is kind of a running theme cause I mean, one of my, one of, I don't know if this is a blessing or a curse, it's probably both, but when you learn how to do things really quickly, like we were talking about earlier, you you tend to just do things without really thinking through why you're doing them or what you're going to do with them when they show up.
Which, you know, leads to like, you know, a lot of dumb pins and buttons being made without, by the time they show up, you're like, “Oh, why did I do that?” But you know, here we have 5,000 zines showing up at our door and I had no plan. On what to do with them.
I just opened, I just opened one of the pallets and got my zine and thought, “Yay this is as much of this as I threw out.” as I, as I thought through was just holding the one. But by the end of the day I, I had it all set up to sell them online. And by the end of the day, I made back the cost just, you know, selling zines, which is something that a publisher would have never let me do.
Todd: [00:32:02] So I just noticed this morning when I grabbed this to put it on my desk, that you have a picture of one of our favorite people right here.
Todd holds up Ruined by Design zine and points to a picture of a person (Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter).
Mike: [00:32:14] Yes.
Todd flips over the Ruined by Design zine and points to a picture of another person (Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook).
Todd: [00:32:14] And another one of, one of our other favorite people on this side. Yeah.
Mike: [00:32:20] Yes.
Todd: [00:32:20] This side right here. Yeah.
Mike: [00:32:22] Yes. That's, yes. They're not good people. And you just noticed that?
Todd: [00:32:30] It happens sometimes, it takes a while to sink in.
Mike: [00:32:32] Todd, it's on the cover.
Todd: [00:32:34] I know.
Mike: [00:32:37] Okay.
Todd: [00:32:37] I glance at a cover and then I go right
Mike: [00:32:41] Okay.
Todd: [00:32:42] Into the meat and potatoes. You wrote about, as it says right here, “How designers destroyed the world and what can they do to fix it?”
Mike: [00:32:50] Yeah.
Todd: [00:32:51] Is it still fixable? Can we still fix it?
Mike: [00:32:54] I don't know, honestly, I don't know. In 2019, the end of 2019, I got in this habit where I write a talk every year. I write it, you know, usually over Christmas break sometimes, you know, in, in January. And then, you know, I throw it together like a few events locally where, you know, I kind of like workshop to talk and then I do a talk.
Then I, I, I, you know, do it for a full year, updating it as I go adding local flavor when I'm, you know, go to a certain place, making sure that the references are, you know, up to date and stuff.
Every once in a while, like, you know, Zuckerberg would do something stupid and there's a new slide that gets inserted. And the talk that I wrote in December of 2019 was called a, “A Small Sliver of Hope.”
And that was the talk where I was like, “Okay, if we're going to fix this thing, we, we've got like our, we've got about this much space to do it in. Like our opening is about down to here. And if we can all agree that things are broken and if we can all agree on how to fix it, and if we can all agree on who gets to define these things, and if we can all agree on so many things that we've never agreed on before. Then, then and only then, then we might have the smallest, smallest sliver of hope of fixing this.”
And it was supposed to be a hopeful talk. It was, it was like, yes, Woody the Wabbit! We can do it, we can do it. We can become our best selves, which we've never been before. And, you know, we can stop being like racist fuck stains, which we've never done before.
And we can, you know, include like the actual best representation from all people in figuring out how to solve this shit, which we've never done before. If we do those things, then maybe, you know, we stand a chance of fixing things. And I got to give that talk once. I flew down to Miami for you know, Alberto Cairo.
Todd: [00:32:36] Heard the name.
Mike: [00:32:37] Well, he did, he put together a thing in Miami, flew me down there. And I, I did the talk down there. And I, I remember walking, you know, walking off stage thinking, “Okay, I know what to fix now? I know what this talk needs now.”
Cause you know, the first time it was the first pancake and flew back home and like a week later COVID hit, and we were shut down and like fucking everything changed for everybody.
And you know, my lucky ass has been able to sit here in this chair and you know, for 14, 15 months now I've been able to sit here and earn and you know, I set up, you know, all sorts of weird, crazy ways to do that.
But you know, I've been lucky enough that, you know, I, I, I had, I had the runway to do that, and I had the platform to do that. And people were like, you know, “What crazy shit is he up to now? Let's go take a look.”
And, you know—yeah I w—I w—I worked hard for that platform, but so many people also worked hard and never got the fucking chance, never got the fucking chance.
So, you know, I've been incredibly lucky that I'm still here. But if I was telling you, I mean, I was, if I was telling you like 15 months ago that we had like a very, you know, small, tiny sliver of a chance to fix shit, if we could just agree on certain things right now, I can't fucking tell you that 15 months later after a pandemic. I can't tell you that we're okay.
I can't tell you that I'm okay. You know, we all know people who died in this mess. We've all lost people. I mean, some of us have lost people, very, very close. Some people have lost their jobs.
Some people have lost their homes, you know, and you know, our biggest problem right now is that there are assholes out there, you know, arguing that this shit isn't even real.
And no, I'm not going to get a vaccine cause this isn't real. So, you know, every time that we have this opportunity to just lob in an easy victory, it's like, all right, free vaccines. We'll figure out how to get them to you.
We'll get herd immunity. Everybody just needs to agree to do this. It's like, okay, that's that sounds, that sounds like, like logistically very fucking difficult.
And you know, let's hope we do that right. But at the same time, it's like, okay, free vaccines for everybody. We know what we need to do. It's going to take some time. We just need to get shots in people's arms. Let's make sure to get shots in people's arms for the people who need those shots the most.
And we couldn't even fucking do that right. Like, I, I, I, I know, like I have friends who, who, like, you know, were like running to the front of the line. You kn—it, despite, despite being in the same position that I was where, you know, they could sit on their ass and earn, like they were running in the front of the line, like, you know, pretending to be like essential workers and shit.
And you know, these like fucking tech millionaires, fuck them. And you know, you, you, you confront them about it. And they're like, “Every shot in the arms a good arm.” It's like, “Fuck you. Like yes and?” Like, yeah, we're selfish, selfish. I don't know that we, I don't know that we deserve to be saved quite honestly.
Todd: [00:39:27] Yeah. I don't know either. The whole, well, I mean, we touch upon the Basecamp thing. The whole Basecamp thing started at, a—
Mike: [00:39:36] Jesus fucking Christ. What a, like who the fuck needed that to happen now?
Todd: [00:39:44] Apparently DHH, and Jason Fried.
Mike: [00:39:48] Did they get their feelings hurt?
Todd: [00:39:50] Well, one of them was the, they would be, there would be no more societal and political discussions at Basecamp.
Mike: [00:39:59] I shouldn't do that. I’ve been told not to do that.
Todd: [00:40:03] Sensitivities are at 11.
Mike: [00:40:08] I'm sorry that they got their feelings hurt while, you know, having everything just fucking lined up perfectly for them. Look, I got, I, I, you know, I, I know Jason, I've talked to Jason in the past.
I know DHH only through reputation. You know, they always seemed Jason has never been anything, but nice to me, I'm a white guy, so, you know I'm not, you know, a woman of color who works for him. I'm not, you know, I only know what he's like when he in front of me and in front of me, he's always been this way.
But what the fuck? Why? Like, I can't imagine, like this day and age, putting out a message that’s like ah—boy people talking about, you know, not being looked down on and you know, not being treated like shit at work.
That’s really getting to us. We're exhausted talking about you demanding to be treated like a human being. That's really exhausting to us, like fuck off.
Todd: [00:41:16] David mentioned Huxley and what he wrote in the Doors of Perception in this long, and I mean long, and I'll forward you the link, this long blog of his Jason's which also shared the link to what David had to say, but there's just, it's—
Mike: [00:41:37] You know, if we're going to talk about this, there's an open letter that was written by Jane Yang.
Who's I believe a current employee there at Basecamp, although that might not be true by the time this airs, but she wrote it. She's she's currently on leave. Do you do show notes and stuff?
Todd: [00:41:55] Yeah.
Mike: [00:41:56] Okay. I'm going to ask you to add this to the show notes.
Todd: [00:41:59] Okay.
Mike: [00:41:59] Because if we're going to talk about this, we should include something by, by somebody who actually works there.
Todd: [00:42:06] Right.
Mike: [00:42:07] And, and she's, I mean she details out some shit. And I read this letter and I just got angrier and angrier at them. Ah, God the letter’s so good. It's so good.
Todd: [00:42:19] But yeah.
Mike: [00:42:20] I mean, I'll, I'll, I'll do the, I'll post it to you and then you put it in the show notes. But it was, it was really well-written and powerful and, and it had a lot of details and, you know, reading what she has to say is going to be 5,000 times more informative than hearing anything that we have to say.
Todd: [00:42:39] Right.
Mike: [00:42:39] I will say this though. I will say this. Jason has always been a role model for people. By people and I, and I mean, let's be honest, mostly white dudes.
Todd: [00:42:49] Yup.
Mike: [00:42:49] Mostly white dudes. He's been a role model for them. And what he did here was he just gave all of those people cover for acting like assholes. He just gave every single person, every single white dude who looks up to him cover. And that's kind of not unlike the Trump presidency where all of a sudden, it's like, “Oh wait, we get to say the quiet shit out loud now? Nice, nice”. And yeah, you know what? I just compared them to Trump and there you go.
Todd: [00:43:27] Yeah.
Mike: [00:43:27] I, you know, he's, he’s, he’s a smart guy. He's a libertarian and that's a fucking problem and a half. But.
Todd: [00:43:36] Well, we talked about libertarians before.
Mike: [00:43:39] Yeah, we have. We have you know, it turns out, you know, there's a lot more people. I knew a lot more libertarians than I thought, because you know, when the vaccine schedule was announced in San Francisco apparently all of my friends are libertarians because they all thought, you know, it was their turn. God, I can't, I can't.
There's people that I just can’t even talk to anymore. Anyway, there was, you know, and when Jason posted that thing, it w—it, it was kind of like, like if you were to summarize that whole post it, it, it’s, it's like journalists dig here.
If you are looking for a story, you will find one because there is no way that I post this if I am in my right fucking mind, like the only reason I take this private, this horrible private policy, private company policy public is because I've, I've, I'm out of my fucking mind.
Todd: [00:44:51] So I heard something that I don't know if you're aware of, but there was the Config Europe conference recently. And Robyn Kanner who you did a podcast with was giving a keynote and she works for the Biden, or she worked for the Biden campaign.
Mike: [00:45:15] Yes, I believe that's true.
Todd: [00:45:17] And it was a terrific keynote.
Mike: [00:45:20] Fantastic.
Todd: [00:45:22] But yet you had every, and I don't want to assume, but I'm going to assume it's every white guy across the globe that was there. “Why do we have to put, why do we have to bring politics into this?”
Mike: [00:45:40] How the fuck can we not? How can we not? I mean, fuck you, the only, the only people who are screaming about that are the people for who everything is working out, right now.
Todd: [00:45:53] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's, it’s, it’s, it's like, I know people in the rural areas that I live in. Okay.
Mike: [00:46:06] In Maine.
Todd: [00:46:07] Yes. And the place in New Hampshire where my parents are.
Mike: [00:46:10] Oh you got two homes?
Todd: [00:46:12] I did.
Mike: [00:46:13] God damn.
Todd: [00:46:14] I'm not. I'm not Mr. Rockefeller by any means.
Mike: [00:46:22] Mr. Todd Rockefeller with two homes, two homes. Any of them on wheels?
Todd: [00:46:28] No, none. No. That was when I was married 20, 30 years ago.
Mike: [00:46:34] We don't have time to discuss that.
Todd: [00:46:36] No, that I don't want to, anyways, that that’d bring me right back into therapy again.
Mike: [00:46:40] That's for, that's for our men circle podcast.
Todd: [00:46:44] Exactly. But the people I would hear complain about immigrants, you know, when jobs taking their money, but they were the first in line to grab those stimulus checks and cash them.
Mike: [00:46:59] Yeah.
Todd: [00:47:00] And I made that point very clear to a few of them. We don't talk anymore, which is fine with me because that's less people like I have to, you know, talk to during the day.
The thing with the, with the, with the, with the conference was just out of out of hand. And you know, I've said, you know, after it sunk in with me, yeah, design and development, tech is political.
Mike: [00:47:26] It's always been political.
Todd: [00:47:28] Yeah.
Mike: [00:47:29] I mean, who you hire is a political decision, the shit that you choose to work on is a political decision, the people you don't hire is a political decision.
Nobody, I mean, you know, there's, you know, when, when, when you believe that every white dude that walks through the door is inherently capable, at least worth, and worthy of an interview, that's a fucking political decision.
That's a quota system is what that is. And you know, these, these, these idiots, these like bargain basement edgelords, you know, what, what they're complaining about isn't that we're talking about politics is that we're talking about things that don't benefit them by default.
Todd: [00:48:07] Yup.
Mike: [00:48:09] So they can all go fuck themselves. They can all line up and go fuck themselves with their tiny little bargain basement edgelord peniis and they can all like get in a river and fill it with their man tears and float the fuck off.
Todd: [00:48:28] Yeah.
Mike: [00:48:29] Is this what you normally talk about on this podcast?
Todd: [00:48:33] Well, usually front end stuff, but I tried to go—
Mike: [00:48:36] Well, you know, the bargain basement edgelord peniis would be on the front end.
Todd: [00:48:40] That's on the fringe. Yeah.
Mike: [00:48:42] Well I mean, it would be on the front end of, I mean.
Todd: [00:48:46] That’s true.
Mike: [00:48:47] Right. No shame, no shame.
Todd: [00:48:51] None.
Mike: [00:48:51] No shaming, no shaming.
Todd: [00:48:54] Nope. Nope.
Mike: [00:48:55] Yeah.
Todd: [00:48:55] So I'm at the part where I usually ask three questions to my g—my guests. So, I'm going to turn this to them. But before I do that though, I do want to hold up that. And if you want to hold up your book.
Todd holds up a little zine that says “My People Were in Shipping.”
Mike: [00:49:13] What, oh, you mean this book?
Mike holds up the “Collected Angers” book.
Todd: [00:49:15] Yes.
Mike: [00:49:17] So this is this is the one that came out this year. This is my, this is my pandemic book. Look how handsome this is. Look, there's a picture there’s a picture of my dog.
Todd: [00:49:30] Yup. Yup.
Mike: [00:49:32] And that's, you know, we were at the beach, and he was smelling some weird shit that you probably know what that is. Coastline.
Todd: [00:49:39] Yeah. I would get coastline, but I've never seen anything like that before.
Mike: [00:49:41] I don't know what the hell it is, but it came out of the ocean and my dog was like, do I eat it? Do I pee on it? Let's do both.
But this was, this was the book that I did during the pandemic. It's it's really, it's just essays from the last 10 years that I've thrown together cause you know, some of these essays turned into, you know, were used as bits and the other books. some of them were just out there by themselves.
And you know, one of the things that, that it's become really apparent this year is like at one point we were like, “Hey, let's all use these platforms to put our thoughts in.” Like most, most of the shit in this book was on Medium. We're still on Medium for the time being. but you know, they decided to be union busters. So, I'm glad that shit's on here now.
Todd: [00:50:29] Yeah, because I don't read any well, I try not to read anything on Medium.
Mike: [00:50:33] Anyway, I'm setting up a blog. Do you believe that?
Todd: [00:50:35] I can. I can believe that.
Mike: [00:50:38] Yeah, I'm setting up a real blog? It's like 2010 up in here. Yeah.
Todd: [00:50:50] Well that book, I still have to get that book because—
Mike: [00:50:55] I can't believe you haven't gotten it. What's going on?
Todd: [00:51:00] So many changes lately in the past six months.
Mike: [00:51:03] Oh, do you, do you want me to send you a copy?
Todd: [00:51:05] You can send me a copy.
Mike: [00:51:08] I'll send you a copy.
Todd: [00:51:09] I would appreciate that.
Mike: [00:51:09] Do you want me to autograph it?
Todd: [00:51:11] Yeah, you can autograph it.
Mike: [00:51:12] You want me to draw a heart?
Todd: [00:51:13] You could draw a heart, write a note, whatever you want to do, feel free.
Mike: [00:51:18] I'm you know, I'm happy to draw a heart in here. I've got mad love for you, Todd,
Todd: [00:51:23] Well I appreciate that and the feelings mutual. Cause you have, you know, I have almost finished your, your zine.
Mike: [00:51:32] Nice. I think, you know, you know, you know, old dudes like us, we have to be okay expressing mad love for each other.
Todd: [00:51:37] Absolutely. I have no problems doing that. Yeah, I have no problems. So—
Mike: [00:51:42] I’m, I'm going to Sharpie a heart in this book. I'm going to write your name on it and I'm going to send it to you.
Todd: [00:51:49] Well, I appreciate that. I appreciate it.
Mike: [00:51:53] I'll sneak in some, some extra photos.
Todd: [00:51:57] That'd be great because, you know, I, I would reciprocate with of course, another gift box of lobster rolls if I have to.
Mike: [00:52:05] Oh my God! Those were so good.
Todd: [00:52:07] I know. Aren't they?
Mike: [00:52:09] Tell me about, tell me about the Its-Its.
Todd: [00:52:17] I had—
Mike: [00:52:18] Eri—Erika sent Todd, a box of Its-Its.
Todd: [00:52:20] About three, four dozen of them it seemed that were in my refrig—were in my freezer for quite a while. I rationed them out pretty good.
Mike: [00:52:32] You know, that shows a lot of constraint right there. Restraint.
Todd: [00:52:36] Hmm. I'm you know, I’m wishing I could open up that, you know, in that freezer and find one tucked in there somewhere, but I can't, I already looked. They were great.
And never had anything like them before. And I thank you both for that surprise that came with the two crabs that I still got stuff in there that I made out of those crabs that are in my freezer still.
Mike: [00:53:00] Dude those crabs, the, crabs are like tardises is it's like a tiny little crab contains like 10 crab’s worth of crab meat. They're bigger on the inside.
Todd: [00:53:16] Yeah, they are! I, it took me a good one evening to take all the meat out of it.
Mike: [00:53:21] It's a lot of work. It's, it's, it's, it, it feels good though, to do that work.
Todd: [00:53:25] Absolutely, I made, I made chowder, clam rolls, bisque. I made a bunch of stuff.
Mike: [00:53:35] You made, you made clam bisque?
Todd: [00:53:37] Yeah.
Mike: [00:53:38] Wow. How was that?
Todd: [00:53:41] It was good.
Mike: [00:53:43] You know, I'm getting hungry. Just listening to this.
Todd: [00:53:47] So am I.
Mike: [00:53:49] It’s good shit.
Todd: [00:53:50] I don't have any lobster anymore though. I did have my lobster rolls the other day. So, I can't complain.
Mike: [00:53:55] Is it—Is lobster season over?
Todd: [00:53:56] No, it's just starting up. they're looking at, oh yeah, it's I believe, May.
Mike: [00:54:03] The food it It feels like you're eating lobster year round.
Todd: [00:54:06] Yes, because I can, because I have places that sell it that are open
Mike: [00:54:11] Okay.
Todd: [00:54:12] Fish markets or commissaries, like the one I go to that have, they just do lobster rolls, and they do others, a little bit of side stuff like that, but mainly the lobster rolls, no pun intended.
Mike: [00:54:26] What do you have on the side with a lobster roll?
Todd: [00:54:30] Usually—
Mike: [00:54:31] Like potato salad or what's the deal? Corn?
Todd: [00:54:35] No, corn is—those, maybe other people do, but I don't. I leave those when there's clambakes and stuff like that.
Mike: [00:54:44] Fries?
Todd: [00:54:45] Sides would be fries, chips, or coleslaw for me.
Mike: [00:54:50] Well, I like a good coleslaw.
Todd: [00:54:51] Yeah. Me too.
Mike: [00:54:52] Alright.
Todd: [00:54:53] A nice, a nice Cole slaw that's got apple juice and apple cider vinegar. No mayo.
Mike: [00:55:02] Nice. So that little, that little the little zine.
Todd: [00:55:06] Yeah, the little zine.
Todd holds up a little zine that says “My People Were In Shipping.”
Mike: [00:55:09] The little zine.
Todd: [00:55:10] You've been doing talks for a few months on these, about this topic, right?
Mike: [00:55:17] Yep.
Todd: [00:55:18] Yep
Mike: [00:55:39] I got another talk set up in the near future. Do you know Fred Oliveira?
Todd: [00:55:25] I do not. I did see the notification for it though on event, the Eventbrite app that I have on my phone.
Mike: [00:55:33] Oh, okay. So we are, I'm going to get you a URL for that for your show notes. Fred, Fred is a, a, a Portuguese gentlemen like me. So, so this, this, this talk is about, you know the Portuguese history of colonization.
And what it's really about is how people like white people, white men like me and like you how we need to just get over our shit. We need to deal with our shit. And how once we start dealing with the w—you know, what's on the other side of that can be so much better because normally, I mean, you know, we get called out on shit. And, you know, we, we started getting really, really defensive. And we get angry because, you know, w—w—w—what it, and our feelings are like a candy bar.
And, you know, it, anger is like the chocolate and, and it's surrounding the insides, which are like you know, nougat and nuts of like shame and guilt and all that chocolate. Anger is just holding it together.
So, you know, as soon as we get into a conversation with this, it's like anger, anger, anger, anger, anger. And, but it's a, it's a mask, it's massing masking all of this guilt and this shame that we feel about, you know how the, how we fucking behaved you know, for generations on end.
And, you know, if you work at a place like Facebook or Twitter or Uber, like the shame and guilt that you feel about, you know, having built stuff like that.
And you know, so we get super, super, super defensive when people call us out Mister Basecamps, instead of like you know, listening to what they're saying and, and being like, “Well, wait a minute. Let's let me actually hear what they're saying. Let me actually you know, give them the decency of, of trying to understand why they would be saying this.”
There's so few people out there who want to pick fights for no reason. Well actually, no if you want to pick, you know, white boys like to do that, but honestly the people who are out there, like, you know, saying, “Hey, we've been treated unfairly.”, “Hey, we deserve a break.”, “Hey, you've been, you know, systematically fucking us over that over for ages.”
They're not doing that for grins. They're not doing that cause it feels good. They're doing that because the shit's legitimate
Todd: [00:57:55] Yep.
Mike: [00:57:56] And you know, we react act defensively because we don't want to have to feel the weight of that shame. So, we react with anger, and we end up making the whole thing just so much worse.
And you know, if you just let go of that anger and just, you know, get to that juicy nougat of shame, and just start dealing with it the sooner you can like actually start, like, then I have hope for you. Then I have hope. There we brought it back around.
Todd: [00:58:37] Yeah, see?
Mike: [00:58:38] Yeah. Alright.
Todd: [00:58:39] We're trying to make, trying to make this production look as little professional as I can.
Mike: [00:58:47] That ship sailed Todd.
Todd: [00:58:48] Yeah. So those three questions I have for my guests
Mike: [00:58:52] Alright.
Todd: [00:58:53] What about the web these days that excites you or design and keeps you excited in what you do?
Mike: [00:59:04] What about the web
Todd: [00:59:06] Or design? It can be about design too.
Mike: [00:59:08] Or design. I like to think that there are things going on in the web and in design that I have absolutely no idea about. Not because I'm not paying attention but because it's like, you know, it's like the shit that kids are doing like the shit that we were doing when we were kids that, you know, we're not gonna tell our fucking parents about this shit.
This shit is too cool. And they'll ruin it. I I like to think that there are kids out there who are doing that right now. And people like us will, will be and should be the last to know that it exists. I'm excited for that. Also, I love TikTok. I have no idea how to use it and that's fine.
Todd: [00:59:59] I was on there, but I couldn't, I just,
Mike: [01:00:03] Just fucking enjoy it.
Todd: [01:00:05] Yeah. You you know, I did, but it started eating into my time doing other things and I just can't.
Mike: [01:00:10] Because it's really enjoyable. Yeah.
Todd: [01:00:13] But yeah. Yeah. So, if there were one thing, yeah,
Mike: [01:00:16] There's, there's there’s a freedom that comes there's a freedom that comes when realizing that not everything has to be built for you. That's, oh my God. It's so liberating. I just sit back and watch this. This is great. I mean, the shit that kids are doing on TikTok with the editing.
Todd: [01:00:38] Yeah.
Mike: [01:00:39] And, you know, the, the production values. It's like, God damn
Todd: [01:00:44] The, the reason why I, one of the reasons why is the article I read, and I'll have to pull it up and I'll put it in the show notes that the CEO or the CEO and the other big wigs, they factor in the decision on what goes viral and what doesn't.
Mike: [01:01:05] Probably, I don't know. Somewhat.
Todd: [01:01:08] So I was like, you know, if, if, if this is all pre-planned by them, then what you do, you stick it to the little guy.
Mike: [01:01:17] Well, I'll tell you this. And about three of your listeners might understand this Daniel Bryan wasn't WWE champion because Vince McMahon wanted him to be. So, there you go.
Todd: [01:01:32] So, if there were one thing you could change about the web or design that we know today, what would that be? And I think—
Mike: [01:01:38] It's very existence.
Todd: [01:01:39] Yeah.
Mike: [01:01:41] I would like the web not to exist.
Todd: [01:01:45] Why?
Mike: [01:01:46] We, be—because we've shown that we can't handle it. I mean, we it's, we can't handle, we can't handle communicating and being connected to 4 billion people at a time.
Like we can, like you should, you should need to know the names of everybody who lives on your block before you get access to the next block.
Todd: [01:02:16] Yeah. Okay. What's your favorite part of front end development or design, and that you really liked the most that you nerd out over?
Mike: [01:02:27] Alright. The part, when somebody shows me something and I get upset that it doesn't exist yet. Cause you know, and, and you know, you see this every once in a while somebody presents you with something, you know, either that they're working on or, or that they're you know about to launch.
And you're like, “Holy shit, how the fuck did that not exist yet?” That's perfect. That's great. And, and, and you're like, upset. Like, how the fuck are we just getting to this now? I love that.
Todd: [01:03:07] Yeah. So, you got a bunch of stuff going on. So, I usually close out the podcast with letting my guests, let the listeners know what's going on with them and where people can find you online. So, the floor is yours.
Mike: [01:03:20] Don't listen to me, don't follow me. Seriously. My God, there's so many like this, this should be the last podcast that you listen to with two white dudes. It was a good one.
But this should be the last one, go out and find some that, you know, don't have any white dudes on them. Cause you're going to learn shit and it's going to feel awkward at first and you're going to wonder like, “Oh wow am I even allowed to listen to this?”
But just go, just sit back, listen to what people have to say. Learn. If you know, if it's making you slightly uncomfortable, it's probably because like you're, you're, you're, you're rigid little heart and brain have started like growing with new information and feelings and, and don't, don't follow me. Listen to Todd's show though. There ya go.
Todd: [01:04:07] I appreciate that. So, well, you do have the Quarantine Book Club, which I, I, when and I'm usually there, but you know, when I'm not, I kind of miss it a little bit because I enjoy those.
Mike: [01:04:26] When when you're not there, we, we we wonder how you're doing it, we worry about you.
Todd: [01:04:31] Well, I'm, you know, staying away from the bears. So—
Mike: [01:04:35] At this point, so we started Quarantine Book Club when we first went into lockdown 14 months ago or 15, are we at 15 yet?
Todd: [01:04:43] I think we're at, yeah, it’s all—
Mike: [01:04:47] And we, we, it was going to be like a two week, a two week thing. Like, “Hey, let's do this for two weeks. It'll be, this'll be fun. We can't go to the office. well, let's meet some, let's meet some, some authors let's see who’s got a book coming out. Let's talk to them.”
And at the, at the beginning we, we scheduled two a day. Two a day, five days a week. And I mean, at that point, people were like, “Yay, Zoom. It's fun. It's crazy. It's new.” And I'm going to talk to authors and we're we had publishers calling us like, “Hey, how did you do this?” It's like, well, I mean, it's not hard.
Todd: [01:05:25] Yeah, no.
Mike: [01:05:27] And like, like hire a fucking kid. They know how to do this shit.
Todd: [01:05:31] Yep.
Mike: [01:05:32] I've seen them edit shit on TikTok. So, and you know, over the, over the last 15 months, we've kind of like ramped down to what we can sustain. And right now, I think we're doing it once a week, maybe. I think is the current official schedule once a week, maybe.
Todd: [01:05:55] Okay. Then you have your workshops “Presenting With Confidence.”
Mike: [01:06:01] Workshops are going ballistic right now. I love doing them cause, you know, people like me, like the first time I ever presented work to a client, I threw up, I threw, I, I was a mess of nerves. It was, it was awful. I hated it. And you know, I think before going in there, my boss was like, we're all depending on you. And I was like— (gagging noise)
Todd: [01:06:25] Yep.
Mike: [01:06:26] And I mean, it's it’s kind of like, “Hey, jump out of a plane. We're all counting on you.” It's like nobody ever taught me how to do this. Nobody had ever given me tips on how to do it.
It's just something that, you know, people expect designers to be able to do. And, and yet it's, it's a, a, a totally different skill than, you know, and any any of the shit that we're taught.
And in fact, a lot of designers are just straight up lied to, and, you know, you're told that, well, you know, good work, it sells itself by lazy teachers who have failed at life and should not be allowed near children. But you know, I, I, I teach folks how to, you know, get past that fear and, and how to, you know, give them some, give them some trips—tricks on how to present their work so that, you know, w—when they're in those situations, they're not freaked out anymore. I love doing that.
Todd: [01:07:18] Yeah, they helped me. I even did, two.
Mike: [01:07:20] You did. You were great.
Todd: [01:07:24] Well, thank you. Because the first time I ever presented to somebody. I sweat through a, a t-shirt and my dress shirt and—
Mike: [01:07:34] It’s nerve wracking.
Todd: [01:07:36] It is, it looked like I just run the Boston Marathon and then presented to these people.
Mike: [01:07:42] That could not have gone well.
Todd: [01:07:45] It didn't, but I still got the job. I don't know how, but I still got the job. It wasn't—
Mike: [01:07:54] Well congratulations.
Todd: [01:07:56] It was like a hail Mary. So—
Mike: [01:08:01] (whispers) You got it because you were a white boy.
Todd: [01:08:03] Yeah.
Mike: [01:08:04] Yeah.
Todd: [01:08:06] Privilege.
Mike: [01:08:07] We don't, we don't really have to do too well at job interviews, you know that they just give them to us.
Todd: [01:08:12] So I, I know, cause I read the newsletter and I'll put the link to that so you can get some, hopefully get, you know, two of the four people that listened to this podcast. Subscribe. You have any, any other projects going on?
Mike: [01:08:29] I've got I've got the workshops going on. I'm mailing zines out to people. I'm actively taking notes trying to figure out like, what the heck I want to do next. Got the, you know, the book club.
I honestly, all I can think of right now is that next Tuesday I get my second dose. I get my second dose on Tuesday, which means two weeks from that I will be fully vaccinated. The president just said this morning that, you know, if you're fully vaccinated, you can go out maskless as long as you're not in a crowd.
I've been dutifully wearing my mask. But you know, as somebody who also wears glasses and a mask, fucking pain in the ass, but you know, you do it. You do it cause you're not a selfish prick, but I'm really, really looking forward to not, not having to do that.
And you know, looking forward to other folks, not having to do that. Me and some friends here who live in town we've we figured out like when the last of our group is getting full vaccination, achieves full vaccination and, and, and that's the day we're planning a barbecue. And oh my God, we might need some lobster for that.
Todd: [01:09:47] I get my second shot on Monday.
Mike: [01:09:51] Nice.
Todd: [01:09:52] So if I get the invite. I'll fly out with the lobster.
Mike: [01:09:57] I am not flying until the end of the year
Todd: [01:10:02] I'll take that chance. I actually have a flight booked in June.
Mike: [01:10:06] Do you?
Todd: [01:10:07] I do.
Mike: [01:10:07] I still can't do it because I see like videos of people in airports and, you know,
Todd: [01:10:12] Yeah.
Mike: [01:10:12] just fighting with each other and arguing with each other. And it's like, I can't do it. We might like, maybe we'll rent a cabin. Maybe we'll drive up the coast. I mean, we live in like the most beautiful fucking part of the world and there's like a sliver of the California coast where, you know, the, the pot growers won't kill you. That has cabins that we might stay out from, you know.
Todd: [01:10:36] I could drive three days out there, but—
Mike: [01:10:38] I, don't do that
Todd: [01:10:40] Lobster after three days in a car is not a good idea.
Mike: [01:10:44] No, plus, I mean, if we go to Maine, like we could see Maine things
Todd: [01:10:50] You could
Mike: [01:10:52] which, you know, I just wrote down Stephen King and then ran out of things.
Todd: [01:10:58] Well you know, talking about—
Mike: [01:11:02] Those big cats.
Todd: [01:11:03] The Fisher cats.
Mike: [01:11:05] The Maine Coon cats.
Todd: [01:11:06] Coon cats. Well, we got Fisher cats too.
Mike: [01:11:09] What's that?
Todd: [01:11:11] They’re they're ornery. They're big cats. And if you do a search on them—
Mike: [01:11:21] Alright.
Todd: [01:11:22] They're mangy.
Mike: [01:11:24] Oh good. That sounds fair. All that sounds good. Anyway, I got to go. We're like a half an hour over. This is amazing.
Todd: [01:11:29] Acadia National Park.
Mike: [01:11:35] Oh. We’re talking Maine things still.
Todd: [01:11:36] Yeah. Plenty of stuff. Plenty of stuff to keep your riveted. I could, I could, I could take you to where the big blueberry gift shop is. That's like a blueberry.
Mike: [01:11:51] My, my first trip, once we're fully vaccinated might be renting a car and driving to Waldron.
Todd: [01:12:02] You lost me on that one.
Mike: [01:12:04] Look it up.
Todd: [01:12:05] Yeah.
Mike: [01:12:06] Yeah. All right. I really do have to go.
Todd: [01:12:09] Okay. So, I want to thank you for coming on. Always a pleasure.
Mike: [01:12:15] Well, thank you for having me.
Todd: [01:12:17] You're welcome. We'll have to do this again sometime.
Mike: [01:12:21] All right. Hey, bye Todd's listeners.
Todd: [01:12:25] And yes. Thank you, listeners, for tuning into the Front End Nerdery Podcast. I'll be back next month with a new guest.
Mike: [01:12:30] Brought to you by My Pillow.
Todd: [01:12:33] No, absolutely not. New conversations about front-end design development and other topics. If you would please rate this—
Mike: [01:12:41] Brought to you by The Joe Rogan Show.
Todd: [01:12:42] Absolutely not. Oh, geez. No. If you would please rate the podcast on your podcast device of choice, like subscribe and watch on the Front End Nerdery YouTube channel, links, transcripts and show notes are there. I'm Todd Libby and this has been the Front End Nerdery Podcast. Thank you and see you next time.
Mike: [01:13:05] Goodbye.