EP458 – WordPress and an Industry in Flux

Jason Tucker
This is episode number 458, WordPress and an industry in flux.

Sé Reed
[inaudible] Oh yeah.

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
That ampersand should be… I just want to move it to the up on the graphic.

Jason Tucker
I’m Jason Tucker. You can find me over at Jason Tucker dot blog.

Sé Reed
Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
Oh, I’m Séreed and I make WordPress, teach WordPress, preach WordPress at Sayreed Mina on the things and I’m killing all the flies today. That’s not a metaphor.

Jason Cosper
And you all know who it is, it’s your boy Jason Cosper, aka the large language model, back at it again on the world’s most influential WordPress podcast.

Jason Tucker
Speaking of that, go find us wherever it is that awesome podcasts can be found, and you can come hang out with us in our Discord. *laughing*

Sé Reed
Okay.

Jason Cosper
Se was very serious. She has one of those zapping fly swatters.

Sé Reed
[laughs] [laughs] [laughs] [laughs]

Jason Cosper
Hey! And Doc’s in the chat as well as Hos.

Sé Reed
[laughs] Okay, my office, I’m so hot now ’cause I just like went on a marathon, like fly murdering session. I, my

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
That’s why we’re four minutes late,

Sé Reed
office is in the back. [laughs]

Jason Cosper
is because we just got to spend about six or seven minutes

Sé Reed
[laughs] [knocks]

Jason Cosper
watching Sage just go shithouse crazy,

Jason Tucker
[LAUGH]

Sé Reed
Murder. [laughing]

Jason Cosper
murder rage on flies.

Sé Reed
[clapping] So,

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
they’re not actually kidding. I’m just gonna put this over here. I left my office door open. That’s what I did. And it’s summertime

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
in California, and it’s

Jason Tucker
Yep. Please do.

Sé Reed
hot and the flies were like, “There’s coffee in there. I’m gonna go eat that coffee.” Hey, not to like get us off track before

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
we even get on the track. But I was working really late this morning, this night, until like 4.30.

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
And around, I don’t know, so I was waiting for a site to propagate. I was having DNS problems.

Jason Tucker
(laughing) (laughing)

Sé Reed
Because it’s 2023 and no one’s figured out DNS. My favorite thing is when they’re like, yeah,

Jason Tucker
(laughing) (laughing) (laughing) (laughing)

Sé Reed
you know, could be a couple hours, could be two days.

Jason Tucker
(laughing)

Jason Cosper
That’s

Sé Reed
This, it’s like, it’s like when you reach the point in quantum physics where you’re like,

Jason Tucker
(laughing)

Jason Cosper
I mean, hosts have started to set TTLs on like the timeouts

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
I guess I just believe in fairies. And that’s what’s happening. You reach the point where like, everyone’s like, we don’t, we don’t really know what happens with the DNS.

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
It’s just sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.

Jason Tucker
(laughs)

Jason Cosper
for DNS like way low.

Sé Reed
I know! No, Bluehost, which is where I was transferring from, obviously,

Jason Cosper
Mm-hmm. 600 seconds, baby.

Sé Reed
said a four-hour minimum, and I was like, “You can just go stick your four-hour minimum right somewhere. It’s what you can do.”

Jason Cosper
600 seconds.

Sé Reed
Yeah, come on.

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
Anyway, my point in saying this was not to complain about DNS, although, you know, it’s kind of like… I also had a caching problem yesterday, so… I’m just going old school over here.

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
These are things that we’ve never had problems with. That’s so weird.

Sé Reed
I know. I’m like literally like what year is it? I just can’t believe this isn’t solved.

Jason Tucker
So unique. Well, well, hey, DNS.

Sé Reed
Around, I don’t know, like 4am or somewhere in there, you can

Jason Cosper
[ Pause ]

Sé Reed
go timestamp it, the whole WordPress.org website went down. Exactly, exactly. It was an upstream thing. I just thought it was really funny because I was

Jason Tucker
It’s always DNS. It’s literally on the laptop, and if it’s not that, then it’s

Sé Reed
was writing a marketing notes for the marketing meeting during the Jason, Jason, Jason just held up a sticker that said

Jason Tucker
TLS.

Sé Reed
sorry, I’m late. It was DNS. So anyway, I don’t even know what

Jason Tucker
(sobbing)

Jason Cosper
Yep.

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
All right.

Sé Reed
I’m saying anymore. Point is, DNS sucks. No, the point is even WordPress.org can be down and they were like, Oh, no, it’s upstream. It wasn’t our thing. You know, some, some server

Jason Tucker
(laughing) Speaking of in flux, geez.

Sé Reed
somewhere having a problem. All the make sites, all the dot org sites, everything was down. And fun though, is everyone jumped

Jason Cosper
Sure.

Sé Reed
into the meta channel and reported it from like everywhere. They’re like, it’s out in India. It’s out in, you know, Australia, because they were all awake. And me, I was like, it’s out in California.

Jason Tucker
(laughing)

Sé Reed
Well, exactly. So it’s not totally unrelated, but I think I could segue into it because, you know,

Jason Tucker
Yeah.

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
I like to segue into things. We have problems that have been here for a long time. So we have, you know, obviously we’ve talked a lot about technical debt, but we have not really talked about industry debt. And the checks that the tech industry has

Jason Tucker
Mm.

Jason Cosper
[Cow moos]

Jason Tucker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
has been writing that their body can’t cash or whatever that, that’s probably an inappropriate expression or right? Oh, no, it’s like don’t write a check that your mouth can’t

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
cash or something or your fist can’t cash something.

Jason Tucker
Then get a different big account.

Sé Reed
If you can’t cash the check, get a different video.

Jason Tucker
(laughing)

Sé Reed
Yeah, stop. Stop committing fraud.

Jason Tucker
Yeah. Yeah.

Sé Reed
Yeah. Anyway, I the we have these problems that have been accumulating. Obviously, you know, there’s the big ones racism sexism all

Jason Tucker
[ Pause ]

Sé Reed
that fun stuff. But there’s also a lot of industry debt in all the big checks that everyone’s

Jason Cosper
Thank you.

Sé Reed
been writing to everybody for so long. And I feel like that has really… In the last

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
few months, I think that I have felt, not personally because I don’t work for anyone. I work for my clients, but I don’t work for a company. But I feel that all those salaries

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
that everyone was getting at Twitter or other social networks that are now looking like they weren’t so much of an investment as they were just like pouring money down a tube. Because if you’re still having to buy crabs to support your habits, your social media habits, you can look it up. You can just look it up. But whatever it is, right? Whether

Jason Tucker
This is a new currency to me, but it was funny when you brought it up.

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
(laughing)

Sé Reed
it’s um it’s uh Elon saying um yeah I want your eight dollars or other people say it’s you know there the the cost the literal physic not physical the literal economical cost of the overvaluation of the tech industry is has has come to the head has come to be called in before I remember

Jason Cosper
Yeah.

Jason Tucker
Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Cosper
Great.

Sé Reed
Not everyone’s old enough to remember that, but I am.

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
And it feels like it’s coming around again, and in a different way. It’s coming around again in a human capital cost.

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
I mean, if, you know, there’s, there’s not a school that everyone goes to that

Sé Reed
Jason Tucker
teaches you about the trials and tribulations of the tech industry. And so when you, when you enter the tech industry, you don’t come with this,

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
like this idea of here’s all the things that went wrong last time we went through this thing and I know it’s such a great idea for you to come up with and it’s so original for

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
this decade but by the way this shit happened last decade and we hurt hard because of it.

Sé Reed
for this last two years. [laughs] Yeah, we hurt hard financially and then they’re just

Jason Tucker
So yeah, you have the Verizon.

Sé Reed
doing it again. Like, they’ve done the exact same thing. Like, what it comes down to, right, with Twitter and everything is that it’s just, um, it’s not, it’s not making money. And now we have more of them not making money.

Jason Tucker
Yeah.

Sé Reed
[laughs]

Jason Tucker
I mean, you had like, you had like Verizon and, and, and, and Yahoo and you have

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
like, just think of all the different ones that are there.

Sé Reed
[whispers]

Jason Tucker
It’s just like, there’s so many of those things that just, yeah.

Sé Reed
And we’ve seen that…

Jason Tucker
Have just consolidated, consolidated, consolidated. You got Microsoft trying to buy Activision right now. You got,

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
When we have the, even, even the open source debt that is accumulating,

Jason Tucker
there’s like all sorts of different, those sorts of things that are happening in this industry. Yeah.

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
and the very obvious, very coming up clash, very, very ever-present clash between open source and corporate,

Jason Tucker
Uh huh.

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
Mermermer, which I feel like I’m sort of trying to get a little bit of headway on, maybe avoid the worst crash component of it.

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
Um, but I mean, you’ve got Microsoft is in an amazing space right now.

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
Right.

Sé Reed
It’s who knew, right through an investment in GitHub. And in LinkedIn learning, I mean, someone knew obviously, because this is a strategy.

Jason Cosper
Great.

Sé Reed
Just randomly doing stuff.

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
Great.

Sé Reed
But they, you know, they’ve got GitHub, they’ve got LinkedIn learning, they’ve got open AI. they’ve got, Bing is horrible, so I don’t count that.

Jason Tucker
Mm-hm. Thank you for binging to find your way to WP Water Cooler.

Sé Reed
That doesn’t, they have a foot, you know, they’ve got open AI, let’s just say that, yeah. It’s like, I really just want to say to Microsoft,

Jason Tucker
It was great. (laughing)

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
(laughing)

Sé Reed
stop trying to make Bing happen, okay?

Jason Tucker
[laughs] [laughs]

Sé Reed
That was a dated 90s reference for any of you

Jason Tucker
That’s trash.

Sé Reed
who are, did never see Clueless.

Jason Tucker
[laughs]

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
[laughs]

Sé Reed
But yeah, so like these problems,

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
so the Elon era of social media,

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
which I’m christened it, we should call it that now, has really ushered in, I think,

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
along with of course all of the COVID backlash, the people, how much do workers cost,

Jason Cosper
[ Pause ]

Sé Reed
how much do remote workers cost.

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
WordPress has been, because of Matt Mullenweg and Automatic and his distributed focus has been, kind of on the leading edge of that for a long time, but there are also costs there. I don’t know if any of you, I don’t know if it was a podcast or an article, ’cause I read everything in transcripts, but he recently had a,

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
there was a show where they were talking about, or maybe it was WP Briefing.

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
I don’t know, some content somewhere from the project, it’s a great source, was talking about how the,

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
no, it wasn’t the project, it was automatic. They were talking about their meetups

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
and how they have not had their meetups for the past few years because, you know,

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
COVID and travel and all of that. And they talked about the amount of money

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
that they’re putting into in-person meetings for the teams and the grand meetup and all of that.

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
And so there is, because even,

Jason Tucker
I thought you just, I thought you just pay them once and then you just duplicate them

Sé Reed
so even a distributed, a fully distributed company acknowledges that there has to be some component in-person interaction to really make it work. Otherwise there’s just a bunch of people floating around. And then it turns out that people cost money. I don’t know.

Jason Cosper
Huh. Turns out.

Sé Reed
We keep forgetting this part. Hmm. [laughs] Yeah.

Jason Tucker
over and over again with AI.

Sé Reed
I think that’s what they’re hoping is going to happen.

Jason Tucker
Isn’t that what’s supposed to happen?

Jason Cosper
Right.

Jason Tucker
Right.

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
And I don’t, you know, I don’t, I don’t want to point the finger at anyone in general, because everyone is trying to figure out how to make AI work, right?

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
Everyone’s trying to see like, how can we cut costs by implementing AI solutions?

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
And you know, speaking of Matt, he posted about another, you know, learned this deeply missive in, I believe it was actually in an, it was an announcement, right? you told me it was an announcement on the Slack Make channel where he posted Mark Andresen’s

Jason Cosper
Right. And Jason.

Jason Tucker
Andresen.

Sé Reed
I don’t know how to say his last name. That guy. Yeah. His missive. Missive about a missive.

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
About AI and the impact. And at one point I had commented on something again somewhere

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
that hopefully as we’re implementing these AI solutions, we can keep in mind that it could make the people

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
that we have more innovative and iterate faster and take the process and make it better

Jason Tucker
Hmm Yeah

Sé Reed
and faster and smoother.

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
Instead of gutting all the people and rebuilding an entire infrastructure based on AI. I don’t know, just seems like, yeah, that might cost less,

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
but what are we building? You know, like, what are we getting towards here? Like, that’s what I see happening.

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
That is one of the industry trends that I see happening, which is that it’s the

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
economy or the market or whatever, or it’s AI, but there is a strong industry

Jason Tucker
Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I’m gonna go ahead and get that. I’m gonna go ahead and get that.

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
trend of, let’s say, I mean, there’s been layoffs, there’s been actual layoffs,

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
but there have also been just firings. What, you know, like within, and this is not one company, it’s not a single company that’s doing this,

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
this is a lot of companies. And I don’t know any of the technical legal differences

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
between a layoff and a firing, and I’m sure that there are some. So I’m not gonna make any legal claims that anyone is laying people off and not abiding by, you know, labor protection rules.

Jason Tucker
Sure.

Sé Reed
That’s not my job.

Jason Tucker
[laughs]

Jason Cosper
Right.

Sé Reed
[laughs]

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
I don’t want that to be my job. But I will point out that it is happening. Whatever you want to call it.

Jason Tucker
Yeah.

Sé Reed
Whatever rules you want to follow for it.

Jason Tucker
Yeah.

Sé Reed
People are losing their jobs.

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
And I…

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
It makes me wonder, you know, like, this is what happened in 2008, right? Like, we just did a huge big… everyone cut their human capital and then reinvested

Jason Tucker
(silence)

Sé Reed
and then like, you know, kept getting rich again and just uses the people in it like automaton, replaceable chattel.

Jason Tucker
Mm.

Jason Cosper
Yeah, you know, to think about it really, this is kind of a combination of the bubble bursting in the late 90s, early 2000s, and the crunch that happened.

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
Is that when that was?

Jason Tucker
Yeah. Yeah

Sé Reed
I can never remember. (laughs)

Jason Cosper
Yeah, and then the crunch that happened through 2008, as we kind of–

Sé Reed
Mm, mm-hmm. It’s both.

Jason Cosper
So there’s economic turmoil, there are these things that are very much–

Sé Reed
Jason Cosper
Something that you got into a little earlier is this corporate consolidation.

Sé Reed
Okay.

Jason Cosper
we see WordPress businesses kind of, even just in WordPress, you know, not to speak of tech, but

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
we see WordPress plugin businesses, theme businesses, etc. get rolled up by these larger players.

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
And they turn into what Cory Doctro and Rebecca Giblin in their book, Chokepoint Capitalism,

Sé Reed
Jason Cosper
refer to as like choke points, where effectively you have to go to like just a very small handful

Jason Tucker
Uh-huh.

Jason Cosper
of players to get something done in, you know, almost any space. You know, you want to buy

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
an audiobook or, you know, you know, you want to read books. Okay, well, you can buy the physical

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
Jason Cosper
book at Amazon, you can also get the audiobook through them. Oh, well, I’m more of an ebook

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
reader. Well, they got one of those too. And they’re the most dominant in all three. There

Sé Reed
Mm-hm.

Jason Cosper
are like alternatives to their platform. But they they work so hard with this like vertical

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
integration, that, you know, you end up seeing things like that. And you end up seeing this stuff

Sé Reed
Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
in WordPress businesses too. Like I looked what used to be called WPDB Migrate from Delicious

Sé Reed
Yeah.

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
Brains, now shortened to WP Migrate. I saw their plugin page on the WordPress plugin directory,

Sé Reed
Mm-hm. I just saw one of those as well, a search and replace plugin, because we were talking

Jason Tucker
Yeah Yeah

Jason Cosper
and it’s WP Migrate. And it threw me for a second because it said the developer

Jason Tucker
Yeah Yeah Yeah

Jason Cosper
instead of Delicious Brains was WP Engine. And I was like, oh yeah, that’s right.

Jason Tucker
Yeah Yeah Yeah.

Jason Cosper
Yeah. exactly. Yeah. And

Sé Reed
about that last week or whatever. They have one of those too. And that raises complications from a, Jonathan Wold had brought that up, that why would Bluehost,

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
for example, or any other hosting company want to feed their customers and equip them

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
with tools from other hosting companies? Because a few years ago at WordCamp Long Beach, here in Long Beach, they had this new thing that was like WP Engine’s digital experience. There was a blip in time where there was like a, I don’t remember what that term was, it was like a full experience, DXP, right, exactly.

Jason Cosper
DXP… Digital Experience Platform

Sé Reed
It was like, right.

Jason Tucker
[LAUGHTER]

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
I don’t know where that went. It was like a buzzword for a minute. And everyone was like, “We bring you everything.”

Jason Cosper
[ PAUSE ]

Sé Reed
You know, and that’s when they partnered with HubSpot also. And so they’re just really trying to put it all into one bucket. And, you know, that is a really interesting, this has really interesting implications for some place, a community like WordPress,

Jason Tucker
– Yeah.

Sé Reed
because that chokehold is financial,

Jason Tucker
But you may, because you’re gonna have 900 of these products

Sé Reed
like, because then there only become certain players

Jason Cosper
Mm-hmm. Right.

Sé Reed
in the industry. So even for like sponsorships, like you can’t sponsor a WordCamp with like two companies,

Jason Cosper
Yeah.

Sé Reed
you know, like, or three companies,

Jason Cosper
It’s–

Sé Reed
you know what I mean? You need that breadth. And sometimes… Oh, right.

Jason Cosper
In– in– in–

Jason Tucker
and they’re all gonna be owned by like three hosting companies.

Sé Reed
Right, so they’ll all have a different brand.

Jason Tucker
And they all showed up on the same plane and then they all came in and they go

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
All their different brands will be there, but like they’re all actually owned by the same people.

Jason Tucker
like,

Sé Reed
(laughs)

Jason Cosper
Right.

Jason Tucker
I already know about these products and services that are being offered because

Sé Reed
Jason Tucker
I was in the meetings when these things were acquired by these little guys who, you know, we, we scooped them up and now we have our search and replace plugin and our SEO plugin and our caching plugin and our form plugin. It’s like,

Jason Cosper
Yeah. Yeah. Great.

Jason Tucker
It’s like, come on guys, this is all, you’re building your own little, your own little infrastructures. Yeah,

Sé Reed
Fiefdoms. They’re building little fiefdoms like feudal lords.

Jason Tucker
exactly. So, and this is why we have these problems.

Sé Reed
We have edge lords, now we have feudal lords, like digital feudal lords is what this is

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
And this is why we have these problems at these,

Sé Reed
coming into.

Jason Tucker
at these meetups and these word camps and stuff where everyone who’s there

Sé Reed
Which brings me.

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
works for the little,

Sé Reed
Right.

Jason Tucker
the little company that used to be the search and replace plugin or whatever, who are now hosting companies. And then the hosting companies are like, Oh,

Sé Reed
But now they work for…

Jason Cosper
Right, yeah, in.

Sé Reed
Right. [sniffing]

Jason Tucker
look, all four of us hosting companies showed up and all 96 of our products. Let’s walk around the four booths that we have here.

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
What? [laughing]

Jason Tucker
It is itself. It is itself.

Sé Reed
It’s like, it’s not just eating itself,

Jason Cosper
In. Yeah, so they don’t have to fly home with them.

Sé Reed
it is literally the Ouroborrean, it’s eating itself, like it’s literally like the hosting companies are like

Jason Tucker
And then they’re trying to just give away the TVs that they all brought,

Sé Reed
marketing to the other hosting company representatives.

Jason Tucker
you know, that they just bought at Walmart.

Sé Reed
At what point are we all just like…

Jason Tucker
And now they’re trying to get rid of them and at their booth, and they’re

Sé Reed
(laughing)

Jason Tucker
just going to exchange TVs.

Sé Reed
Sorry, it’s just so funny.

Jason Tucker
They’re just going to exchange TVs before they leave. And then that’s it. It’s just, it’s, I don’t know. It’s weird. You know, it just, it’s, it’s, it’s so weird.

Jason Cosper
Right. In, and maybe, yeah, maybe we should have a book club or something like that, because

Sé Reed
We should have a book club.

Jason Tucker
It’s like doctors working on other doctors.

Jason Cosper
specifically in Chill Point Capitalism, yeah, in, okay, please.

Sé Reed
That’s a great idea. How have we never thought of a water cooler book club before? I’ve been trying to spin up a book club for work.

Jason Tucker
Alright, we’ll make it happen.

Sé Reed
I don’t, sometimes I just don’t see obvious shit. Sorry. Okay. Sorry.

Jason Cosper
Yeah, but in in choke point capitalism, they specifically discuss anti competitive flywheels,

Sé Reed
Go ahead. Go ahead. Sorry. No, wait, not to be confused with flywheel.

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
which basically like lock in. I mean, they’re just in that case, they’re just saying the

Sé Reed
Bought by, bought by WP Engine. Sorry. I just had to.

Jason Tucker
[LAUGH] What’s up?

Jason Cosper
quiet part out loud, I guess, I don’t know. But effectively, these companies rolling things

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
Yeah.

Jason Cosper
up to lock in users because, hey, you know, oh, we bought Genesis, we bought, I mean,

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
Jason Cosper
look at not to just pick on WP Engine, I’ll pick another example, take GoDaddy. They bought

Jason Tucker
They own a lot of properties.

Jason Cosper
SkyVerge and they bought Pagely. And now like they have a WooCommerce offering that, you

Jason Tucker
Okay.

Jason Cosper
know, like they say, Oh, we can offer these extensions that you would have to buy on the WooCommerce marketplace because

Sé Reed
Jason Cosper
those skybridge extensions are still available on the Woo

Sé Reed
And then they’re just paying for like a multi-user license.

Jason Cosper
Commerce marketplace. But hey, we include them here for free. Ain’t that neat? Like can’t you know? Exactly. Yeah. And they’re

Jason Tucker
These are called value adds, my friends. Value adds.

Sé Reed
And then they just like literally license, like it’s not even a different model or anything. They’re just like someone’s going in with a credit card

Jason Cosper
not even they’re not even doing. They’re exactly they’re not even

Sé Reed
from their like buying the, buying the multi-level license.

Jason Tucker
Thank you.

Sé Reed
Value adds.

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
doing what places like, you know, liquid web slash Nexus is

Sé Reed
A lot of companies actually.

Jason Cosper
doing where for their manage WooCommerce stuff. They like

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
developed partnerships with people they did buy some companies, you know, like, Oh, yeah, like, you know, you’ll you’ll get cadence for free. If you are on liquid web, you’ll

Sé Reed

Jason Cosper
get but see, it gets you this lock in because then it’s like,

Sé Reed
Mhm.

Jason Cosper
Oh, I built my site on top of cadence. And I’m using some of these premium features. So you have to start thinking, oh, shit,

Jason Tucker
Mm-hmm.

Jason Cosper
if I’m going to move from liquid web to, you know, WP engine to

Sé Reed

Jason Cosper
dream host to, to site ground, whatever, you’re like, okay, now

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
you have to do the mental calculation of what is this new

Sé Reed
Jason Cosper
plan that I’m going to cost? Also, what is my yearly license look like for cadence, because now I’m locked in, or I try to

Sé Reed
Jason Cosper
untie myself from that and go over to some sort of like other theme that’s either cheaper or free or whatever. And you have to like, maybe redesign your site a little bit, because things don’t. I mean, even though the block editor has made

Jason Tucker
And now we’re back to DNS. (laughs)

Jason Cosper
switching themes a lot easier, you’re still running into these

Jason Tucker
And now we’re back to DNS.

Jason Cosper
issues where things don’t look quite right. So you got to tweak something. Yeah, and this, this whole thing locks the users

Sé Reed
[laughter]

Jason Tucker
[LAUGHTER]

Sé Reed
Damn you, Janice.

Jason Cosper
into, you know, locks the users into these companies. And as

Sé Reed
Mm-hmm.

Jason Cosper
Jonathan touched on when he was on here, it makes the market the

Sé Reed
Right, which decreases innovation,

Jason Cosper
WordPress market at large hostile to new entrants in the space.

Jason Tucker
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
which decreases participation, and we already, you know, also has an impact in the make community,

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
because if you have people who are advocating, not necessarily for things they believe in or things that they want,

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
but what they’re being told that is, you know, in alignment with company strategy, whatever company that is, then that really, that puts that, that,

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
that puts all of these unspoken agendas and strategies,

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
because you’re not sitting there going, “Well, you know, you know, I’m like, who can I say,

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
like, you know, Bluehost strategy is to do XYZ and to be there for this, you know, like,

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
that’s not something that you’re saying, right? That’s not happening in make meetings or anything,

Jason Cosper
Right.

Sé Reed
but that, that strategy, that those goals, those are still there. They’re just not being

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
acknowledged. They’re not being dealt with. They’re not, you know, they’re being like,

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
And honestly, this is part of the reason why the WPCC is a great idea, because it could

Jason Tucker
Yeah.

Jason Cosper
Great.

Sé Reed
be a neutral third party as the link between make and the companies.

Jason Cosper
Yep.

Jason Tucker
Yeah.

Sé Reed
Because no matter what, and no matter which company, if someone works directly for a company,

Jason Cosper
Yep.

Sé Reed
and that is their volunteering time, they are going to have to choose their company,

Jason Tucker
Yeah.

Sé Reed
if it comes down to that. just are because that is where their job comes from. And they may want to choose the community,

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
but they can’t. And speaking of all the firings, it’s really disruptive to the make community. I can speak personally to this. If someone is let go from a company that had some sponsored time and was filling a role, and then it’s just basically disappeared. And it’s not…

Jason Tucker
You lose the skill, you use the labor, you lose the, the, you know, the, the information

Sé Reed
Not, why would? What?

Jason Tucker
that they already had gathered.

Jason Cosper
you lose a passionate person who is dedicating time to something.

Jason Tucker
You lose a lot of those pieces.

Sé Reed
And it’s always jarring. Yeah. Right.

Jason Tucker
Uh huh.

Jason Cosper
Dedicating time to, in a lot of cases, hosting companies, whoever is sponsoring people to work on stuff,

Jason Tucker
Uh huh.

Jason Cosper
doesn’t say, “We want you to work on this thing.” They let people feel right.

Jason Tucker
Yeah.

Sé Reed
Well, they don’t now. There is this unspoken kind of word there,

Jason Cosper
Right.

Sé Reed
but this is what I see happening along with that same trend. Like if that trend, you know, at a certain point in time,

Jason Cosper
Right. Mm hmm.

Jason Tucker
Yeah.

Sé Reed
deliverables are important to especially larger companies. Like you just, like, there’s no escaping that. It is capitalism.

Jason Tucker
Now.

Sé Reed
It is the foundation of Western and I guess global society at this point, sadly.

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
But you know, like we can’t, we can’t just be like, “No, no, no, no, we’re all here with no, not trying to get any, you know, I’m just here out of the goodness of my heart.”

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
But there is that unspokenness. And I absolutely believe that the people who are contributing as sponsored contributors are part of the community. I don’t feel like they’re like secret, well, not all of them, are not secret, you know, agents,

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
double agents trying to like accomplish things. There are those people, those people do exist.

Jason Tucker
Oh, sure. Yeah.

Sé Reed
But it just, you know, also then when someone is let go

Jason Tucker
Yeah.

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
or whatever, like they lose their community and the community loses them because, you know, it becomes, it can become, that was your job

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
that you were like, you know, you laid off from or whatever. And it’s like, do you really wanna hang out there

Jason Tucker
So what’s the balance for that then? Like, so like, so like for instance,

Sé Reed
for free now? Like, that’s like, so it’s built in, like, I don’t know.

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
I mean, I think it’s WBCC, honestly.

Jason Tucker
if you’re somebody like you and I, and we’re just doing this out of the goodness of our heart,

Sé Reed
We’re bored, no.

Jason Tucker
like we do this show literally out of the goodness of our heart. I don’t know if you saw the nine web hosting companies that we, that we did,

Sé Reed
We’re the weirdness out of our heart.

Jason Tucker
you know, the, the intros for before we started this whole, you know,

Sé Reed
That’s sarcasm, by the way.

Jason Tucker
podcast, all the different ads that we had to run and everything for, for all the stuff that that one web host has. But, but yeah, yeah,

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
but it’s like, we, we don’t have that, but we can choose to stop doing this and we can choose to do more of this.

Sé Reed
Right, or keep doing it.

Jason Tucker
But if you’re working for somebody who’s sponsoring you, you don’t get to,

Sé Reed
Yeah, exactly.

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
Yeah.

Jason Tucker
you don’t have a choice in it other than you chose maybe I guess to actually initiate the conversation of wanting to be the person for that organization to,

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
you know, go and, you know, volunteer the, the volunteer the time in which that they’re being paid for, you know,

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
to kind of go and help out.

Sé Reed
Right, because it is, especially when you’re there

Jason Tucker
But yeah, but if you leave that, that stinks. Yeah.

Sé Reed
in the WordPress community, it really is

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
’cause you’re with a bunch of other volunteers. So you’re not wearing your company hat,

Jason Tucker
That are all being paid.

Sé Reed
or at least, you know, yeah.

Jason Tucker
Yeah, I don’t know, it just seems weird.

Sé Reed
Like, or it’s just more like that the idea is, right?

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
That my problem with it is not sponsored contribution in no way. I think that’s vital to this working at all.

Jason Tucker
Yeah.

Sé Reed
And it has been vital to it being getting this far.

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
My problem is the unspokenness of it.

Jason Tucker
Right.

Sé Reed
It is the, we’re not gonna look at that

Jason Cosper
Thank you.

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
because it’s uncomfortable, because some people might have to be more transparent with their business practices, or people might be more transparent about real costs

Jason Tucker
Yeah.

Sé Reed
or what they’re really trying to accomplish,

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
or I don’t even know, because there are, because it’s so unspoken.

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
And that, I think those unspoken areas are what cause friction.

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
Because other than that,

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
I feel like everyone really is trying to like get to the same goal. and support this project.

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
And there is this love for the project in there that bonds people together. And I’ve definitely seen people who are, it seems that they are working sort of against

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
what they’re wanting to do for whatever reason. And again, for any company,

Jason Tucker
– Mm-hmm.

Sé Reed
I’m not singling out any specific company here,

Jason Tucker
Or the people that were being,

Sé Reed
nor am I faulting any company for this. Why would it be different? Yeah.

Jason Tucker
or the people that were being used to, you know,

Sé Reed
Does that come up automatically, that overtime button?

Jason Tucker
volunteer into this, you know, be the ones that are contributing. Nah, Cosper’s just not good.

Jason Cosper
It’s all me, baby.

Sé Reed
Oh, you’re just that good.

Jason Tucker
(laughing)

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
I was like, that was literally like on the second.

Jason Tucker
So it makes me think that, you know,

Sé Reed
I was like, wow, because we’re in overtime. I didn’t even notice, but.

Jason Tucker
I’ve been sitting here while you’re talking trying to come up with like parallels and I don’t know if this one’s right.

Sé Reed
Yeah.

Jason Tucker
So you know, give me a moment here, but it’s almost like if you like,

Sé Reed
Yeah.

Jason Tucker
if you were not a very popular person and then you, um, your family paid to have a bunch of people show up to your, like, um, your funeral or your birthday party.

Sé Reed
Your birthday party? Yeah.

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
And then they all wanted to go to a convention after to talk about like the industry that you were working in. And now they’re all, other people are also showing up that same way.

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
It’s, it just, it, it seems like, I don’t know, it just seems like there’s so much more of like a desk, a disconnect disconnect, you know, it’s like these,

Sé Reed
Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
you’re, you, you thought you were a part of a thing, but you’re really just paid to be a part of a thing. But then like you actually ended up going to like a word camp and now you are being paid to be part of a thing.

Sé Reed
You are part of the thing. Right.

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
But then there’s other people that are in the same situation that you’re in.

Sé Reed
I mean, well, that was a big complaint at WordCamp US last year, that it was majority,

Jason Tucker
I don’t know. It just, it, it seems rough to me. Like I’m wondering how many people in, in word camps,

Jason Cosper
>> Right.

Jason Tucker
now that we’re in overtime here, it’s a different whole situation, but like how many people that are in word camps actually show up to the word camp that aren’t tied to any of this stuff that are just like,

Jason Cosper
Right.

Jason Tucker
like the who’s, who’s me and who’s the me and says that are showing up.

Jason Cosper
Yeah. I mean, look at… Right. Look at… Right. I mean, look at…

Jason Tucker
I mean, Cosper works for a place, but like say, and I, you know,

Jason Cosper
Right. I mean, look at…

Sé Reed
He doesn’t get paid to show up here, but we don’t either.

Jason Cosper
Right.

Jason Tucker
we just show up like we’re not being paid.

Jason Cosper
I mean, look at… Right. I mean, look at… Right.

Jason Tucker
we’re not paid to show up, we’re not paid to travel there, and we’re not paid to like speak or anything.

Jason Cosper
I mean, look at… Right. I mean, look at… Right. I mean, look at…

Jason Tucker
So like at that point, I am like disincentivized to be there, because other than me shaking hands and kissing babies,

Jason Cosper
Right. I mean, look at… Right. I mean, look at… Right. I mean, look at… Right. I mean, look at…

Jason Tucker
there’s not much else to really do, which is why I just kind of hang out outside or

Jason Cosper
Right. I mean, look at…

Sé Reed
And you know, honestly, it can…

Jason Tucker
pick up some information while going into a couple of the talks that I go into.

Sé Reed
In the community, that same thing plays out

Jason Tucker
too.

Sé Reed
because, you know, there’s like, you know, we’re trying to do work, right? Trying to create, you know, and that’s what I’ve been doing in the marketing committee

Jason Tucker
(laughs)

Sé Reed
is like gathering like, oh, we need to promote this.

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
We need to help people with this. And so, you know, there’s all this work to do. And so, you know, we have these collaboration sessions

Jason Cosper
Yeah. Right.

Sé Reed
and it’s like, at the end of it, it’s like, all right,

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
Well, can you do that? Because you’ll get paid to do it. And I have to go work on client work, like, so I can get paid. Otherwise I am doing it, like,

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
so the, in terms of like the volunteer capability, like, I’m just like, I think you should do this work. And, you know, even if I want to do it, like they should do it, because they’re getting paid to do it.

Jason Tucker
[Pause]

Sé Reed
And if you don’t acknowledge it, like I’m pretty open about that, just because I’m not great at, you know,

Jason Cosper
Yeah.

Sé Reed
hidden things, it’s not my specialty. So, you know, I acknowledge that. Like I’ve said that directly. I’m like, well, you know, can you work on this as part of your actual paid job? Then here’s the work, right? And that offsets the power balance, of course,

Jason Cosper
Okay.

Sé Reed
in inevitably, ’cause I’ve talked about before,

Jason Tucker
Yeah Yeah

Sé Reed
it’s really hard for people who aren’t sponsored in some way to lead a team or to be on a release lead squad

Jason Cosper
No.

Sé Reed
or really contribute on a consistent ongoing basis

Jason Tucker
Mm-hmm Right

Sé Reed
because there’s a lot going on and it’s a lot to stay up with and it’s not directly tied to client work all the time. It’s not actually like I’m not, I learn a lot about all the new stuff in WordPress all the time, but I don’t necessarily always turn around and use that for my clients. So it’s not like it’s like professional development.

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
So the interesting thing though is that We got onto this topic a lot, coming back to like just the bigger thing of like

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
the corporations who are all laying people off and trying to use AI to solve problems and doing consolidation,

Jason Tucker
[ Pause ]

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
but also actively utilizing open source in those communities. Like Facebook open sourced their learning language model,

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
not their model, but their, I don’t know,

Jason Cosper
Yep.

Sé Reed
the thing after the model. I’m still trying to get my head around LLMs. It’s a big topic. But like, you know, Facebook open sourced some of its AI stuff, like what it did with React. Because then it still has its hooks in everybody. It doesn’t want people to be using just JavaScript

Jason Cosper
Meta came very close to controlling PHP and WordPress, too, when they released their hip-hop

Sé Reed
or just PHP because you can’t control it.

Jason Tucker
Right.

Sé Reed
But it does control React, like meta controls React. And so it gives it a way to keep everybody here. And like, so open source and… End.

Jason Tucker
[ Pause ]

Sé Reed
Jason Cosper
virtual machine, HHVM. for a while was like a PHP based but like also using their PHP based language hack. But it made

Sé Reed
Hmm. Oh, I didn’t know that.

Jason Cosper
things that ran on it under just raw PHP and they focus specifically on making WordPress performance good too. It made things so much faster. That’s why we skipped from PHP 5.6 to 7 because they

Jason Tucker
Uh-huh.

Jason Cosper
were making such a big jump in development because HHVM was like pushing them forward.

Sé Reed
Interesting.

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
Now Facebook has abandoned that because PHP basically got better. They might still be using

Sé Reed
Of course. Ooh, that is a great, I haven’t heard that before.

Jason Cosper
HHVM like internally or at least hack. I know that they’re using hack internally still, but they saw that chance to do the Embrace Extend Extinguish plan, and it just didn’t work out for them there.

Jason Tucker
[laughs] Oh yeah.

Jason Cosper
Oh yeah.

Sé Reed
Embrace, extend, extinguish. ‘Cause embrace, they preach the embrace extend,

Jason Cosper
Yep.

Jason Tucker
Uh-huh.

Sé Reed
but no one talks about the extinguished part,

Jason Tucker
Which is like a Google, you know, yeah, specialty at this point.

Sé Reed
but that’s what everyone does with like, you know, end of life things that they buy up. Like that’s a Google specialty, right?

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
Exactly, exactly, Otto.

Jason Tucker
(laughs) So I wanted to go back real quick

Sé Reed
Facebook eventually abandons everything like Google, great.

Jason Tucker
regarding a thing that we were talking about

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
with just the, like, I have a feeling that we, somebody in this industry who is passionate about this type of information,

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
I would love to see a family tree of family trees of, you know, like you see those places where it’s like,

Sé Reed
Language libraries?

Jason Tucker
here’s Nestle and here’s the 900 products that Nestle has.

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
[laughter]

Jason Tucker
I would love to see one of those, but, but for the, no,

Sé Reed
for the tech industry?

Jason Tucker
for the WordPress industry, like just WordPress, just WordPress. Yeah.

Sé Reed
Oh, well, I mean, let alone, let alone the tech industry.

Jason Tucker
Yeah. Like what? Yeah. Like, yeah.

Sé Reed
Jeez, you’re right. Even the WordPress industry. That’s like a fractal. Like you keep zooming in and it just keeps getting more

Jason Tucker
And then what I would love to see is, is the inverse of it,

Sé Reed
and more fractured. Who are really independent?

Jason Tucker
which is all the products that are still sitting there that haven’t been acquired yet. Like how many of the, How many of the form plugins just haven’t been acquired yet?

Jason Cosper
Don’t give anybody a to-do list, please.

Jason Tucker
Or how many of the,

Sé Reed
Interestingly, okay, hold on, but I’m not going to give anyone a to-do list, but I did

Jason Tucker
yeah.

Jason Cosper
Right.

Sé Reed
notice for the first time I noticed yesterday, I’m using Ninja Forms on a site for a client and I went to do an update and I was reading the notes because I always read the update

Jason Tucker
Oh yeah.

Sé Reed
notes and I was like, “Who’s Saturday Drive?” Because that’s who develops Ninja Forms now.

Jason Tucker
Well, these are, these are, these are itches.

Sé Reed
Do you know who Saturday Drive is?

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
I don’t. I don’t have time to click on this right now, but like, first of all, that’s a weird name. I kind of like it, but it’s not ninja form related at all.

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
Like I wrote, you know, the ninja people have, WP Ninja has been around for a long time. So, but now they’re not, I didn’t even know that it happened.

Jason Tucker
Yeah, these are itches that have been scratched by, uh, typically it’s an

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
Right.

Jason Tucker
agency goes like, man, I really hate all these forum plugins.

Sé Reed
Jason Tucker
I want to make my own. So they make their own and then they offer it up and

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
everybody loves it. And then somebody scoops it up. Or that agency was the one.

Sé Reed
Yeah, or an agency buys it in order to like have a,

Jason Tucker
Right.

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
what, the passive revenue, right? Everyone’s passive revenue. Even though software takes money, it’s not the same thing as like a course. Everyone should just remember that.

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
[laughs]

Jason Tucker
I’m not sure.

Sé Reed
Because of the aforementioned, oh, this is, this will bring us right back. Because of the people. Ah, that’s right, there’s people in these equations.

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
And I think, honestly, if we’re talking about the tech trends

Jason Tucker
for people.

Sé Reed
that are the most concerning, I love AI and I use it all the time. But like I said, I feel like it can augment what we do.

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
And I think very much so that the Silicon Valley Tech Bro is all about just replacing the people and not caring at all about,

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
you know, they can just make whatever they want and they don’t have to worry about paying

Jason Cosper
Right. Yeah, I all all the capitalist wants to do is make a widget quicker, cheaper,

Sé Reed
it health insurance or, you know, time off for their kids, you know, concert at school or whatever.

Jason Tucker
[ Pause ]

Sé Reed
Not even better.

Jason Cosper
maybe even not more of I mean, more effectively, right, not even better. It

Sé Reed
Not even better.

Jason Cosper
can it can, if in fact, if it wears out quicker, great, you got to pay for

Sé Reed
Right, more obsolete, more like the second launch is always like,

Jason Cosper
another one. Right

Sé Reed
well, we’re going to keep these versions, these in the pro

Jason Tucker
Uh huh.

Sé Reed
versions. Oh, and now we’re making three tiers instead of two tiers. So you have your free tier. But you know, we’ve limited that now to like, you know, 10, 10 entries. That’s

Jason Tucker
(laughing) Yeah.

Sé Reed
all you got. You know, like, that’s really the it’s so that

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
[inaudible]

Sé Reed
is happening. So that’s the tech trend, right? Just all that consolidation, all of the AI, the economy, and that is all, we are not immune from

Jason Tucker
yeah.

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
it and we are not in a bubble. Like that is happening. It’s just happening on its you know the WordPress scale. And so I think I’m not like trying to like raise

Jason Tucker
Well, well I think,

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
alarm bells necessarily other than the actual alarm bells that are already going off, right? Because they’re already ringing. I don’t have to ring more.

Jason Tucker
I think one thing that we’re kind of bringing to light here is the fact that if

Sé Reed
Jason Cosper
Okay.

Jason Tucker
you were to leave an organization or that’s a subsidiary of a subsidiary that you leave

Sé Reed
[LAUGH] Six other options.

Jason Tucker
them and you want to go work for somebody else, you may have like six options.

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
There are, yeah, I.

Jason Tucker
And you’ll go deep. You either go deep into the stack or you go very shallow into the stack of who it is that

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
you’re working for and then you can move around within it.

Sé Reed
Yeah, but this is…

Jason Tucker
Now you can be work for a web hosting company,

Sé Reed
But what you’re…

Jason Tucker
but then you can also work for a forms company. And look, by the way, now you’re working for some other thing.

Jason Cosper
Silence.

Sé Reed
What you is…

Jason Tucker
Uh-huh.

Sé Reed
What is missing from that model that you just constructed is the consolidation. So with the consolidation, there’s now one person in marketing for all of those products. So before, there was an individual marketer.

Jason Tucker
And they’re the ones that get fired first.

Sé Reed
Right. Yeah. And then they all get fired.

Jason Tucker
Marketing always gets fired first.

Sé Reed
Anyway. It does. It’s true.

Jason Tucker
Mm-hmm.

Jason Cosper
Yep. Right. And, I’m going to go back to the previous slide. I’m going to go back to the

Sé Reed
the, the, now I’m thinking about people in marketing being fired. But basically, with all of those consolidations, it’s not just marketing, it’s also developer roles, right? It’s like, okay, well, you can work a little bit over here, and a little bit over here. And I don’t have to pay a whole other person to do this

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
role, because we’ve consolidated, especially if it’s remote and distributed, because then you don’t even have to pay any costs to consolidate, you don’t have to move anybody, you

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
just hook them up on the zoom. And now you’re like, great, okay, you know, now you’re fired because…

Jason Cosper
And you don’t even have to look them in the eye when you fire them.

Sé Reed
You don’t even look them, who looks them, the HR looks them in the face and does

Jason Cosper
You look them in the webcam and say, “Hey, it’s been great. Thank you.” And then you still have the awkward conversation. Right.

Jason Tucker
(laughs)

Jason Cosper
Right. Yeah, no, no, no.

Sé Reed
that.

Jason Tucker
– Yeah.

Sé Reed
They get to watch their own face, oh yeah, like the person delivering it

Jason Cosper
Everyone’s staring at their own video instead of looking into the camera.

Jason Tucker
– And it’s just a deep fake the whole way through.

Jason Cosper
But at the end of the day, the guilty feeling

Sé Reed
watching themselves be compassionate and then the person who’s receiving it is just watching their own face like receive bad news.

Jason Tucker
All of them are deep faking each other.

Sé Reed
There’s a filter and there’s a cat on their shoulder also.

Jason Tucker
(laughs) (laughs)

Sé Reed
Right.

Jason Cosper
drifts away the second you close the tab on that meeting that you’re having, letting that

Sé Reed
There’s no, there’s no actual feeling there because you

Jason Cosper
person go.

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
aren’t getting their vibe. You don’t have to be, you don’t have to be part of that. So the ease in which people can be thought of as numbers in a distributed company,

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
is much greater in a distributed company or in a mostly remote company than it is in an in-person company. Because you literally, it’s a different experience.

Jason Cosper
Silence.

Sé Reed
And even, like I said, even the fully distributed companies know that you need some in-person time in order to do that. But if you just take all the good stuff and put that in person and take all the bad stuff

Jason Tucker
Yeah, hang on.

Sé Reed
and put that on Zoom. Like there was a Star Trek episode about that. Like, the people shed their negative feelings

Jason Cosper
Was it was this the original series or?

Sé Reed
and their negative parts and then moved to another planet.

Jason Tucker
No, no, no, no.

Sé Reed
And then they left the black goo of their hatred and all their anger on a planet. And it killed some people, but anyway, Tasha Yar. No, this was the next generation.

Jason Cosper
Okay.

Sé Reed
I’m sorry to everyone who we are tangenting.

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
This is great.

Sé Reed
That’s great podcast material.

Jason Tucker
I mean, there’s, there’s, there’s something there’s, there’s something there though, because

Sé Reed
You should go watch that episode. Right, exactly.

Jason Tucker
you’re essentially leaving this, like this, like evil ghost that is just floating around

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
that is, um, and that could be the whole.

Sé Reed
It’s fake.

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
It starts to feel all of it fake because you’re not just like even in the community,

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
we’re not speaking about this thing that’s just evident. Like it’s evident, like it is clear

Jason Tucker
(laughing)

Sé Reed
And we all know that someone is getting paid to be here.

Jason Tucker
(laughing)

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
See, it killed Tasha Yar.

Jason Tucker
[LAUGHTER]

Sé Reed
Yeah, there you go. We’re all on the same page here, okay?

Jason Tucker
(laughs)

Sé Reed
Thank you. It’s the unspokenness of someone

Jason Tucker
Yeah.

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
who is a sponsored contributor, not necessarily feeling confident saying,

Jason Tucker
Right.

Sé Reed
“Hey, I’m paid to do that, and so I’m gonna do this.” Not try to take it over,

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
but just do some more of that grunt work or take on that thing. And I don’t think that non-sponsored contributors can feel comfortable asking that type of thing

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
because it is so unspoken. And there’s even, there’s so much,

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
let’s say inconsistency to be kind, but there’s a lot of inconsistency

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
in the amount of hours that are said that they are pledged as sponsored hours

Jason Tucker
Hmm.

Sé Reed
and the actual amount of paid hours

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
that are being spent on make projects specifically.

Jason Cosper
Thank you.

Jason Tucker
Yeah. >> Yeah.

Sé Reed
that comes into what people consider, you know,

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
five for the future contributions, like on their different contributions day, it’s like not actually always bigger companies

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
to have these contributions day. It’s not always about really contributing to make it all.

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
It’s about contributing to the different, like maybe a plugin that the company has that leads to a freemium or it leads to a premium plugin,

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
or, you know, some other thing that isn’t necessarily actually contributing to make. So, you know, because we don’t talk about it,

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
because we haven’t defined this, because we don’t even say what our expectations are, it’s all over the map.

Jason Cosper
Okay.

Jason Tucker
Yeah.

Sé Reed
And everyone feels uncomfortable about it

Jason Tucker
Mm hmm.

Sé Reed
because it’s tied up with money and jobs. And that’s difficult for everybody.

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
It’s tied up in, you know, no one knows, we’re talking about across companies even. So it’s even a more difficult conversation than if you were talking to someone in your own company

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
where you could expect some salary parity or some management parity. But when we’re talking about all these different people from all these different companies,

Jason Tucker
Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
you know, trying to have these, not having these conversations for a million reasons, cultural reasons, appropriate reasons, there’s no space in make to have these conversations.

Jason Tucker
Yep.

Sé Reed
So we just have all of this stuff that is built up

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
that is happening around us. It’s like, there’s not just one elephant in the room. There’s like 10. I should write a blog post called the 10 Elephants in the

Jason Tucker
And they all work for three web hosts.

Sé Reed
Woods.

Jason Tucker
[LAUGHTER]

Sé Reed
Yeah.

Jason Cosper
(mouse clicking) Cue outro.

Sé Reed
Now, there’s three web hosts and just one volunteer.

Jason Cosper
Yeah.

Jason Tucker
Q outro.

Sé Reed
That’s what it is. Yeah. Three– okay.

Jason Tucker
Hey, I do want to put a–

Sé Reed
I’m gonna write that blog post someday.

Jason Tucker
put a exclamation mark, a period, or something at the end of the sentence. And that is that we respect all of you that do the work that we’ve been talking about here. And I know we’ve been joking a lot about it.

Sé Reed
Yes, we do, greatly.

Jason Tucker
And I know that–

Sé Reed
Yeah.

Jason Tucker
and I didn’t– I don’t want to–

Jason Cosper
Yep.

Jason Tucker
I don’t want to make it sound like we’ve been belittling or any of those sorts of things regarding the type of work that you do. I think it needs to exist,

Jason Cosper
Yep.

Sé Reed
We just, we just need to admit it’s there.

Jason Tucker
but I think that the infrastructure that’s in place may need to have some rethinking or some retooling to kind of get it to a place where it will… Yeah, I mean, we’re great at bringing out our soapbox

Sé Reed
That was, it’s like, it’s like in therapy. It’s, no, this is like in therapy.

Jason Tucker
and we stand on it. Yeah.

Sé Reed
The first thing you have to do to deal with an issue is acknowledge it exists.

Jason Cosper
Yep.

Sé Reed
That’s the first step to healing everybody.

Jason Tucker
>> Yeah.

Sé Reed
I don’t know if you know this, but it is. And that’s what we’re doing. We’re repressing things. We’re repressing things in the tech industry for sure,

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
but we are also repressing things in WordPress. We’re repressing conversations,

Jason Cosper
Yep.

Sé Reed
we’re repressing innovation, we’re repressing relationships. There’s a lot of repression happening. I won’t say anything about it being, you know, tech industry and all the all the uh cis white men that all

Jason Tucker
So if this content was interesting to you,

Sé Reed
need to go to therapy.

Jason Cosper
Sure, sure.

Sé Reed
Oh yeah, tell us about it.

Jason Tucker
if you feel this content was interesting, it should be interesting for somebody else, please click the little share button, click the like button, share it out to the various social networks

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
that still exist that aren’t owned by host companies yet,

Sé Reed
Or Elon. Elon. Yeah.

Jason Tucker
and we should be good to go. Or do you want, yeah. Here’s our outro, thanks. (drowned out by inaudible chatter)

Jason Cosper
Sé Reed
[inaudible]

Jason Tucker
We’d appreciate it.

Sé Reed
Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, YouTube, hey!

Jason Tucker
Subscribe.

Jason Cosper
Jason Tucker
(laughing)

Sé Reed
And on the Federation, speaking of the Federation,

Jason Tucker
Sé Reed
the Federated Timeline, TILvids, TILvids.

Jason Cosper