Emma Goto on hiking and cafes in Japan
Moving from Sydney to Tokyo and getting into hiking, coffee, and programming
Emma's blog came up as a great resource for hikes in Japan while I was planning a trip. She was nice enough to meet up at Dandelion Chocolate Kuramae while I was visiting.
She previously worked at Atlassian on JIRA and currently works on the book tracking app Hardcover as a senior frontend developer.
We talk about getting into hiking, coffee, moving to Japan, her path to programming, and how a layoff and the rise of AI tools made her re-evaluate her professional future.
I hope you enjoy this chat with Emma!
Related Links
Mountains mentioned
Transcript
You can help correct transcripts on GitHub.
Intro
[00:00:00] Jeremy: Today I'm here talking to Emma Goto. we had the privilege of, uh, meeting in, in actually in Tokyo, at, what was it? Was it Dandelion Chocolate?
[00:00:09] Emma: Yes, Dandelion, yeah. you found me through my blog, right?
Hiking in Japan
[00:00:14] Jeremy: Yeah. Yeah. So actually, even though I do software development for work, I happened to be going to Japan at the time, and I was looking at like, "Well, what are some, nice places to hike?" And so your blog came up, and even though you have a background in software, that's not, what's front and center at the blog.
[00:00:32] Jeremy: What's really front and center is, all the different hikes you've done, all these different mountains you've summited, and it's actually,really cool. It's very detailed on, like, "Here's how you get there. Here's what you should be aware of. Here's the type of stuff you're gonna see." I actually thought it was, like, really, really nicely structured.
[00:00:50] Emma: Thank you. Yeah, I started it because, hiking's very popular in Japan, and although there's a lot of resources out there in Japanese, there's not as much in English. And so there's like a, a small amount of English-speaking people who live in Japan, plus all the tourists who come in just to visit Japan.
[00:01:07] Emma: And so I wanted to provide a resource where people could, more quickly understand how to hike
[00:01:12] Jeremy: Yeah, because I think usually, when you Google hiking, they really only focus on really maybe the big two, I guess. There's there's Mount Takao, I think, which is probably the most popular, and then sometimes you'll see Mount Mitake, which I- I've been to both and they're both actually pretty, pretty nice.
[00:01:33] Jeremy: I think especially for people who aren't like big hikers or aren't really experienced, when you have hikes like Mount Takao, you're hiking up and you get to see scenery, but they also have like ways to help you get up, right? There's like a, I don't know what you call it, like a ropeway or a, a gondola, and, on the way up you get to see different shrines and, there's like places to eat and get snacks.
[00:01:58] Jeremy: So I think for a lot of people actually, if you are taking, um, you know, a trip to Japan and you have people that, they just wanna go for like something, like a h- a, a hike, but not too strenuous, not too crazy, it's actually not a bad place to check out. Yeah.
[00:02:13] Emma: Yeah, it was actually my very first hike in Japan, Mount Takao.
[00:02:17] Jeremy: Oh, nice.
[00:02:18] Emma: Yeah.
[00:02:19] Emma: but I think for some people who come to Japan where they've had a lot more hiking experience, Mount Takao becomes like, I guess for real hikers it might sound bad, but it's looked down upon a bit as a mountain because the whole thing is like up a paved road and you'd think you'd be surrounded, by the quietness of nature, but, there are so many people around if you go on the weekend.
[00:02:40] Emma: And so some people, I guess they're looking for a tougher mountain than that. And so I have a lot of that on my blog
[00:02:49] Jeremy: Yeah, for sure. I mean, just looking at some of the hikes you've done, I mean, even just getting out to the mountain sometimes is like a five or six-hour ordeal. So, there's definitely, things beyond taking the hour-long or so train ride to get to Takao. But, actually the, the last one you posted about, I forget what it was called.
[00:03:13] Jeremy: Trying to th- actually let me
[00:03:14] Emma: the most recent one was Mount Tate, yes
[00:03:17] Jeremy: Yeah. Yeah. That actually looked really beautiful.
[00:03:20] Emma: Yeah, that is such a pretty mountain. it's also, I think it's sort of at a point where it does have problems in a sense with tourists, I guess. it's another one of those mountains where there are a lot of people around, but if you can- if you don't mind that, then it's like a beautiful mountain to hike for sure
[00:03:40] Jeremy: Yeah, I think definitely after, So I live in the United States, and we have a lot of national parks here, a lot of, great scenery and hikes. And I feel like after COVID, all those places got way more crowded. Like, you have, you have hikes now where there's lotteries and things where basically you'll go and they'll say like, "Oh, you gotta apply to this lottery, and if you don't win, then you can't go on this hike."
[00:04:06] Jeremy: And it's like, wow, things have really, really blown up. Yeah
[00:04:10] Emma: I find that interesting 'cause Japan doesn't have any sort of lottery system yet. It's like if you can get to the mountain, you can climb it. Is it... Have you ever been on one of the, lottery hikes?
[00:04:21] Jeremy: I have, yeah. Yeah. So,
[00:04:24] Emma: Is it quieter? Like there's less people about
[00:04:28] Jeremy: So I would say no, because I think it's if they have a lottery, it's because they wanna limit the people probably for safety reasons and for crowding reasons. but it doesn't mean that it's gonna be like you're out there by yourself or just with a few people. you're out there with a fair amount of people still.
[00:04:50] Jeremy: But if you don't win the lottery, you just don't get an opportunity to do it at all. So, yeah, that's just how things are. I mean, there's always like less well-known or less popular things that, you can go do, especially if you're willing to, hike more or backpack of course.
[00:05:09] Jeremy: but, but yeah, definitely like if, if something is popular, then it's popular. I think that's probably true,everywhere in the world
[00:05:16] Emma: Yeah. I mean, yeah, nature's beautiful, so I can understand why everyone would want to go and visit it
[00:05:23] Jeremy: For sure. Yeah, I think it-- that's interesting though that you mentioned how, there aren't those kinds of things, like there aren't lotteries for hikes and things like that in Japan, because something I did notice is that for concerts actually, like lotteries are really popular, right? Where
[00:05:40] Emma: Yes. Yeah
[00:05:42] Jeremy: just have this chance of you either get it or you don't, and that's it.
[00:05:46] Emma: Yeah, I guess like to me hiking real- really feels really popular in Japan. Maybe because I'm surrounded by people that hike. But I've talked... I met one Japanese lady la- recently, and she was like, "Oh, no one hikes in Japan." So it was, like, interesting to see how she had a completely different opinion on the hiking culture here.
[00:06:03] Emma: But yeah, I think it's luckily not at the point where we need a lottery system. The one exception might be Mount Fuji, which is not a lottery, but you have to pay 4,000 yen to enter, to hike it. I think just because they've had so many... 'Cause everyone knows Mount Fuji, and I think both Japanese and people coming from aboard- abroad really want to hike that one mountain
[00:06:24] Jeremy: So is that one where they never fill up? You just, as long as you pay, you can, you can go and you're good?
[00:06:30] Emma: I think technically they might have a limit, but I assume it, they've never actually reached it
[00:06:36] Jeremy: Okay. Yeah, hopefully things stay that way. I mean, I think it's nice for people to enjoy all the, the natural beauty and go on these, great hikes and... But at the same time, as somebody who hikes, you're probably like, "Well, yes, I hope people enjoy, but not too many."
[00:06:53] Emma: So I guess it's conflicting. I mean, I've never thought about it, but I guess now thinking about it, it-- in a way, running a hiking blog where you're trying to showcase hikes to, people, am I contributing to the problem? I think my blog is small enough that I'm not, but yeah, something to think about
[00:07:10] Jeremy: Yeah. Well, I, I, at least for myself, I can say I, I appreciate it exists. But, yeah, there's definitely, the whole thing of where, oh, somebody posted about some cafe or some restaurant, and now it got, super crowded or super popular.
[00:07:26] Emma: Yeah. Yeah, I've seen that with, cafes I've visited sometimes where the lines are just really long and you know it must be on some Instagram account somewhere. Yeah
[00:07:35] Jeremy: yeah. So we're not there yet thankfully I guess with, with peaks
[00:07:39] Emma: Yeah. I mean, I think the other thing is it is hard to hike a mountain. So I guess if you're looking at a, an eight-hour hike, there's probably only gonna be so many people that would want to hike it to begin with
Getting into Coffee / Cafes
[00:07:51] Jeremy: Oh, for sure. Yeah, that's a big difference than, uh, waiting in line for 40 minutes to, to get a coffee. But, so I'm curious, like another thing that you post about on your blog, and one of the places we met was a cafe. how did you get, into cafes or into coffee culture and all that?
[00:08:09] Emma: Yeah. So I started drinking coffee when I was 16, and back then I hated the taste and I would, mix it with hot chocolate powder. And I was, like, in high school, and I had a bad habit of, like, staying up late or, like, not getting enough sleep, so like I would need to wake up in the morning. And then in my 20s in Australia, I grew up in Australia, I drink, drank a lot of cappuccinos was, I guess, my coffee of choice.
[00:08:34] Emma: And then it was once I moved here, and then my... I met and moved in with my now husband, and he was, like, sort of into pour over coffee, and he had, like, his own little hand grinder for the beans and stuff. And so from there, I, really got into it, much more than he has. So now he used to make me pour over coffee, but now I'm the one that makes the pour over coffee for the both of us.
[00:08:55] Emma: And then I think from there, the interesting thing for me with pour over coffee, I think... Well, I think with cappuccinos, the beans, I would say, don't matter as much, but with pour over coffee, since you're just drinking kind of the beans plus water directly, then it becomes more important what beans you use.
[00:09:15] Emma: And then so I f- I really got hooked on trying lots of different beans. And so each time... I'm yet to re- I mean, maybe a couple of times I've repeated a place, but generally, I always buy coffee beans from a new roaster in Tokyo. And there's just so many that I've probably visited 30 or more, but I still haven't run out.
[00:09:34] Emma: And so I've just been able to try, a lot of different beans, and I just find that really fun. And also, I think coffee to me used to be just like a habit of, like, I need the cup in the morning. But now having the opportunity to make it, like, a more intentional part of my morning, I think is the other thing that I really enjoy.
[00:09:56] Emma: And then to answer your question about the cafes, I think from there, at first or up until recently, I was only blogging about hiking, but then I guess the more cafes I visited, I wanted to be able to, similar to how I recommend mountains to people, I wanted to also recommend cafes to people. Because I think for me, when I'm looking for a new coffee spot to visit, really the only resource I have is Google Maps.
[00:10:25] Emma: maybe I might... I've used Reddit a couple times, and you can see people's threads on there. But, and then I think with Google Maps, you don't really know if someone gives it five stars,what their background is. are they, a coffee snob or do they just like the cakes and that's why they gave it a five stars?
[00:10:40] Emma: And so I think I wanted to... I don't really see any other coffee blogs that are running right now in Tokyo at the moment, so I just wanted to provide my own opinion on what I think is good, and then hopefully that can help someone else
[00:10:54] Jeremy: And for you, when you go, is there a specific thing that you're looking for? Is it just the coffee? Is it the ambiance? Is it the, the staff, the music? I'm just curious what makes you feel like, "Oh, this is a good place."
[00:11:10] Emma: Yeah. So I think initially I assumed it would just be based on the taste, but then I read recently that apparently there's been a scientific study done where even if you have the coffee in a white cup or a black mug, that changes the taste. And so I've come to realize that definitely, yeah, the ambiance and how the baristas interact with each other or with me really influences my opinion of the cafe.
[00:11:35] Emma: And so I have that full package, I guess, when I'm like evaluating whether I like a cafe or not.
[00:11:43] Jeremy: And it's interesting too how you say you, you rarely go back to the same place, so it's almost like you're getting to try all these different places and see, okay, what's the vibe, what's the taste, but you don't have that, I don't know if I would say compulsion to say like, "Okay, this is the place I like.
[00:12:00] Jeremy: I'm gonna keep getting coffee from here."
[00:12:02] Emma: Yeah, I used to be a big video game person, so I think maybe I have like kind of a collectivist mentality where it's like, I wanna catch all the Pokemon or like I wanna visit all the cafes in Tokyo. And so it feels like I wanna know what is actually the best coffee out there in Tokyo, and I feel like I can't know that until like I visit as many as I can
[00:12:23] Jeremy: Yeah, and I think Tokyo as a place is just so, so dense. There's so many neighborhoods, so many coffee shops and cafes to visit, so you're in a pretty good spot for that I think.
[00:12:34] Emma: Yeah. I think if I was still living in Sydney, I would've, run out of cafes
Moving from Sydney to Japan
[00:12:38] Jeremy: So, so speaking of, uh, so were you originally born in Sydney?
[00:12:44] Emma: Yeah, born and raised in Sydney, and then I moved to Tokyo in 2022
[00:12:48] Jeremy: And what, what was that like for you? What made you decide to make that move?
[00:12:55] Emma: So, my mom's Japanese and we have family here in Japan, so I would come to Japan, in the summer holidays to see my grandparents and, like, family. And I think from a young age, I always just loved Japan, so much more than I loved Australia, as sa- sad as that is to say. and yeah, I think when I was a kid, I loved Disneyland, so I was like...
[00:13:16] Emma: And Australia doesn't... has some theme parks if you grow up further north than Sydney. But I guess it's just, like, those sort of things where to me Tokyo felt so exciting. Like, I wanted to go to Disneyland every day, so I was like, "Oh, one day I could move there and I could work at Disneyland," which that's not at all...
[00:13:31] Emma: I don't want to. Like, I don't like Disneyland that much anymore. But I think, like, as I grew up, you know, I just really loved Tokyo for its convenience, like the trains that are on time and that get you around everywhere. Sydney, I didn't drive when I lived in Sydney, so you could get around, but it's a lot more convenient if you have a car.
[00:13:49] Emma: And just,the convenience stores and even their rice balls, I love those. And so in my mind, I always wanted to move to Japan at some point. and then COVID hit, and the company I was working for, they changed their... they let everyone go remote. And even after COVID settled down, they let us stay remote.
[00:14:09] Emma: And so they had a policy where you could move... Well, they let me move to Japan, basically, and so that just worked out really well for me, where I could fulfill my dream of moving to Japan but not have to worry about finding a new job
[00:14:21] Jeremy: So after you moved, I know you mentioned on one of your blogs, like, when you've gone back home, you maybe appreciate some of the stuff you didn't appreciate when, uh, you were living there earlier. I guess what are some things, like, after you moved that you're like, "Oh, this, this part of Sydney actually is pretty good"?
[00:14:40] Emma: I will say that, growing up in Australia, I always felt like a bit conflicted being like a half Japanese, half Australian person and trying to like understand like, "Who am I?" but I think after moving to Japan, I feel happier, prouder to say that I'm Australian. And I think the culture in Australia is more relaxed, so I do like that more than Japan.
Birding
[00:15:04] Emma: Although maybe you could say that, because it's more relaxed, that's why the buses and trains in Australia are slow, like never on time . And Japan does a much better job at that. So there's like pros and cons. Um, and then I've recently gotten a little bit into birding as well, and so going back home to Australia, like I took it for granted, but like we have so many beautiful birds and like you wake up in the morn- morning and, you know, the bird calls used to annoy me when I lived there.
[00:15:31] Emma: But now that I'm... If I'm back for a short time and I can wake up in the morning and hear it, I'm like, "Oh, that's such a pretty sound." and yeah, Tokyo has birds, but they're mo- mostly like white and brown and gray. And then the ones in Australia, like I saw a green and red parrot that showed up on my mom's balcony.
[00:15:49] Emma: there's like the rainbow lorikeet, which is like blue, green, red. And so it's just like, yeah, a lot of pretty birds in Australia. And I guess, yeah, I guess the nature as well in Australia is probably pretty good. And it's ironic that, growing up I was never an outdoor person, and it's only once I moved to Japan that I started enjoying hiking.
[00:16:09] Emma: So I've never gotten to experience the outdoors properly in Australia, I would say. So hopefully one day I can do a proper hike there
[00:16:17] Emma: Yeah, I think it's interesting that you mentioned the, the birds 'cause you were also talking about how, having like the video game brain where I know some people that are into birding and, you know, they'll have the app and they'll keep track of like, "Okay, these are the 60 birds that I've sighted," Oh yeah
[00:16:35] Jeremy: and there's like a, a leaderboard and all that sort of stuff, so yeah.
[00:16:39] Emma: Yeah, I think that's exactly probably why I enjoy birding as well. And I haven't gotten into, like, the apps or the birding community much, but I do have a page on my blog where I've logged all the birds I've seen. So I think I've got 88 or 89 right now
[00:16:53] Jeremy: Yeah, it's, I think a lot of people, we just like collecting things, right? Or we just like knowing like, "Oh, I, I saw a new thing today," and it's just, yeah, it's just, maybe it's just built into our, our brains somehow.
Blogging and who is real online
[00:17:07] Emma: Yeah. So I think for me, my blog is essentially just one huge collection of the many places I've been or the cafes that I've visited
[00:17:16] Jeremy: Yeah. And I think what's nice about that is that, like, I guess for one, you get this record of, hey, these are all the things that I did and I saw, but then also other people get to, to see it and learn from it if, they're going to visit Japan or if they live there. I think that's cool. you are never going to get to talk to thousands of people, but,if you put something online, then, a thousand people or way above that can read it.
[00:17:40] Jeremy: Yeah. It's like I wish more people would do it. Like, I do get that it's a lot of work, but I think it's, when you see the recommendations of one person and, you see, like, you know, what their hobbies are, what they're like, it feels a lot more personalized than just reading that one isolated review on Google Maps
[00:17:56] Jeremy: Yeah, totally. And I think the other thing too that's maybe more new is when you see somebody post a review or you see a post on Reddit, you're like, "Is this person real?"
[00:18:06] Emma: Oh, yeah. That's, yeah, I've had that experience recently where I was on Instagram and yeah, someone had posted, like a carousel, like 10 images, of like their recommended hiking trails in Japan. But I could see that the text was AI generated, and I'm pretty sure that the, whoever generated that probably did not hike those mountains
[00:18:30] Jeremy: Yeah, that's sad that it's... I mean, it, there's always been bots, but I think it's now the problem is so much worse where everything you read or see or watch, you're kinda like,is this really a person?" but at least, like, you, you were there pre, pre all this stuff, so it's like, okay, I think this person's real.
[00:18:49] Emma: Yeah. And I think luckily hiking is a little more bit safe, more safe in that, if I've hiked four hours to the peak and I've taken a photo of it, there's more proof there that like I've actually hiked the mountain than I think just like, like a recommendation of this, this is a hike you should go on
[00:19:07] Jeremy: Yeah. Yeah. Or like a, a restaurant review or something like that, right? It's, you could totally write one and never been there. So you said you moved in, was it 2020?
[00:19:19] Emma: 2022.
[00:19:20] Jeremy: 2022, okay. I guess are there... Y- you mentioned like the, the convenience and of course all the hikes and stuff that you've gone on. are there any other things that you have enjoyed about living there that maybe you didn't, you weren't thinking about when you first moved?
Airsoft
[00:19:37] Emma: Hmm. I did f- when I first moved to Japan, I got into airsoft for a little while. Which I don't know if you've heard of it, but it's sort of like paintball, but there's like BB pellets that you shoot at each other, which hurts if you get cl- a shot from close up. but I think that was a sport that was invented in Japan, and I know that you can play it in America, but it's banned in Australia since there's quite strict gun laws.
[00:20:02] Emma: So I had never really experienced it. So I did get into that for maybe a year or half a year, so that was quite fun. I th- found that in the end I enjoyed hiking more though, so I kind of decided to just stick with hiking rather than continue with airsoft. but yeah, otherwise I think having been to Japan many times before, like finally being able to move there just felt like...
[00:20:25] Emma: I guess I, I already knew what the good things were about it, and I got here and I was like, I agree that yes, these things are good. And yeah, I've been enjoying myself for the past four years
[00:20:35] Jeremy: Cool. Yeah, I think sometimes it's different visiting versus living there, but it sounds like maybe because you were going there for family often enough where it's like you had this feeling, "I, I, I think I know what this is like." Yeah
Shielded from Japanese work culture
[00:20:48] Emma: Yeah, and I think I've been shielded a bit from what is probably the worst part of Japanese culture, which is their working culture. Like, I was working remotely for an Australian company, so I got to enjoy the best of both worlds, like a good work-life balance and plus all the fun things that Japan has.
[00:21:05] Emma: While I know that, for the regular Japanese person, they're probably working really long hours or they have the culture where they can't go home until their boss goes home and stuff like that. So like I have Japanese friends and I see them being like, "Oh yeah, I finish work at 10:00 PM," and that's like normal for them.
[00:21:21] Emma: And so that sucks. So it's nice that I never had to deal with that
[00:21:28] Jeremy: Yeah, that's pretty brutal.
[00:21:29] Emma: Yeah
[00:21:31] Jeremy: I think, what maybe helped too is I'm not sure when you were working, were they paying you in, in Australian money or
[00:21:38] Emma: no. So they were paying me in yen. They had like a tiny office in Japan, so they,did the pay through that, but it was... The pay was higher than like the average pay of a Japanese software developer.
[00:21:50] Jeremy: being from the United States, I know people that are living in Japan and making, American salaries with the US dollar, and they're like, "Oh, this is great," you know, with the exchange rate and
[00:22:03] Emma: That would be amazing
[00:22:04] Jeremy: So, but, uh, but yeah, it's, it's always good to, yeah, to remember that, like, for most people, it's not like that.
[00:22:13] Jeremy: you're getting, paid in yen, and you're getting paid whatever the market rate is. And so, and like you said, maybe you're there till 10:00 at night which, yeah, that's pretty, pretty rough.
Getting into programming
[00:22:26] Jeremy: so you've mentioned that you'd been working for an Australian company. This is tangentially a, a software development related podcast.
[00:22:37] Jeremy: how did you, like, first get into programming or working on software?
[00:22:43] Emma: so my very first introduction was I used to use this, website called Neopets, which was, like, really popular back in the day. I think at some point they had, their toys in McDonald's I remember in Australia. Um, but you would, like... I guess, I don't even know what you'd do. There'd be, like, little mini games you could play.
[00:23:02] Emma: You would feed your pets and give them names. But then one feature that they had was that your user... You could have a user profile, and you could have a pet profile, and, you could use HTML and CSS to, like, make the profile look fancy. And so that's how I got into just HTML and CSS. And so for a while as a kid, I sort of wanted to be a web designer when I grew up.
[00:23:27] Emma: And then I think at some point, maybe I just really got into video games when I stopped thinking about that. But then, uh, since I was really into video games, I decided I wanted to be a software engineer because software is what makes video games, and engineer sounds like someone that makes a lot of money.
[00:23:45] Emma: So I didn't really think about it much more than that. so I went off to university to become a software engineer. and I did find the first couple of years really difficult. I think, now having been doing for 10 years, the idea of,a for loop or a if-else statement is very simple, but, I don't know.
[00:24:05] Emma: for someone that's not in it, it was really hard to wrap my head around even that concept. And then I think you would see some people would come to university having already been programming in their teens, and they would be the person raising their hands during lectures. And then you see that, and you assume everyone is like that.
[00:24:22] Emma: and so it kind of makes you doubt yourself a bit. But I think at some point, And the first couple of courses I did were, like, C and stuff like that, so that was also hard. But then eventually I did a course where I think we got to build, a dating website. And so it was, like, finally a chance to do a bit of front end, and I found I enjoyed that more, and especially since that was kind of what I had interest in when I was younger.
[00:24:47] Emma: so then I started to gain more confidence after that. I got an internship, at a Australian tech company called Atlassian, and I stayed with them. did internship, then I was a grad, and then I was a software engineer, senior software engineer. So I stayed with them for, I think it was eight years in total.
Layoff
[00:25:04] Emma: And unfortunately, I was impacted by a round of layoffs that they did earlier this year. But, like, overall, it was a good experience, and I was glad I got to work for them
[00:25:15] Jeremy: Yeah. Well, that's a long, that's a long run right out of school.
[00:25:19] Emma: Yeah
[00:25:20] Jeremy: it's too bad it ended that way. I feel like that's just the last few years, it feels like every year there's just layoffs and it's, uh, yeah, it's, it's really unfortunate,
[00:25:32] Emma: Yeah, I think... But it's, it might sound weird, but in a sense I'm glad now that it's been, like, it's over six months since the layoff. In a way I'm glad that I got to experience it. Like, it's sort of just as, another life experience that, like, if I never experienced it, I wouldn't know what it's like to be laid off.
[00:25:50] Emma: And I've found that I think for me, I have enough savings thanks to my tech job that, if I didn't work for a year, I would be fine. And so I assumed that if I did get laid off, because there was, like, rumors swirling about it, that like, you know, I had the money, so, like, I would be fine, right? I could just move on with my life.
[00:26:07] Emma: But I was surprised that actually it was a really emotional time to be laid off. And then, you just feel like a sense of denial or like a sense of shock of like, w- why me? And then the following months after that, I've realized how much your identity is tied to your job title. And so it felt really...
[00:26:29] Emma: And I wasn't sure that I wanted to continue. Like, I didn't wanna jump straight into a new software engineering job, so I felt sort of like, if I'm not a software engineer, then what am I?
[00:26:39] Jeremy: Yeah. I mean, I think that's pretty common, I think, for people to have this strong, mm, I don't know if you, you would say self-worth, but you have this tie to like, "This is my profession, so this is, like, a big part of who I am." But, uh, I think even just looking at your blog, you can see that you're much more than somebody who writes software, right?
[00:27:02] Jeremy: You have so many other interests and,and actually, one you didn't put that you mentioned, uh, that airsoft one. That's that's not something I would've expected. like I,when I was a kid, I never did airsoft, but we had, uh, paintball. So it's like a similar concept except you're shooting, uh, paintballs at each other, um, instead of...
[00:27:22] Jeremy: I think air s- airsoft is like plastic pellets, right? Or something like that. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:27:27] Emma: Yeah, so it's interesting. It's like a, it's an honor system. You're supposed to, if you get, if you get hit, you're supposed to just yell out like, "I've been hit," and then walk off the field. And most people honor that, luckily
[00:27:36] Jeremy: Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's, it's not as, obvious as, paintball where it's like you get hit and there's this big splat of paint on you. But, yeah, no,that's good though, like you said, that you had those savings, so you had time to decide okay,what do I wanna do next?
[00:27:54] Jeremy: And, does it-- do I want to do the same thing I was doing before? Yeah, I think, like you said, that's not a bad thing to really take the time to think about that sort of thing 'cause I think when you're in it, you're just kinda "Well, I'm working, so I'm just gonna keep going," right?
[00:28:11] Emma: Yeah, I think, yeah, being unemployed gives you a lot more time to consider all the possible options out there. I don't really know what's next for me. Like, since I love hiking, I would love if I could somehow turn that into a career, but also I know that, if I tried to be an Instagram influencer, that would probably kind of suck the fun out of it if I had to kind of spend my day, like, making photos and, being like, "Oh, this is like..."
[00:28:37] Emma: You know, you have to kind of be a bit clickbaity about it and be like, "Oh, this is the best hike in Japan. You should do it." And I think I wouldn't really enjoy that
[00:28:43] Jeremy: There's a real balance, I think, with people who do that kind of thing where, yeah, like you said, you can really turn it into work where you're doing all these things in service of like, "Okay, I need, I need more views or more subscribers so I can get more money, so I'm gonna do these things that are not fun," but, they move the-- get the numbers up.
[00:29:07] Jeremy: and then I think there's some people who can find a balance there where, they do some of that, but then they also, are still able to do the things they enjoy, and they, you know, balance the two things. But I gotta imagine that's really difficult either way.
[00:29:23] Emma: Yeah
[00:29:24] Jeremy: but, um, yeah, and I also, like, when you were saying in school how there's, such a gap between where people are at, you're going to the same university, but not everybody is at the same starting point. And yeah,I experienced the same thing as you where I would go into, um, classes and there would be students there who were already taking, like, contract work or they had, like, their side business, and I was like, "Whoa."And, you know, here I am, I'm just, like, trying to learn how to do a thing and, you know, you're all already, professional and making money from all this. So yeah, there's all sorts,as you go through school and, and go through, like, life really, right?
AI impacting learning
[00:30:07] Emma: Yeah, I can imagine it must be much harder now as, or I don't know if it's easier or harder with AI impacting how you learn as well
[00:30:15] Jeremy: Yeah, I don't, I don't know. It's very, it's very weird. I, I, I don't know what I would've done as a student knowing that, oh, if I ever wanted to do homework, I can just type it into the chat box and, uh, have it make the, do the assignment for me. I don't know. I mean, I would like to say that I would, uh, do it from scratch and, you know, because the learning is important and all that stuff.
[00:30:42] Jeremy: But when it's there and it's so easy, I don't, I don't know. Yeah, it's really-- I'm not really sure how that is now
[00:30:51] Emma: Yeah, I've-- I also, a bit of a tangent, but work part-time on a book tracking app called Hardcover. And so it's a full stack app, and I joined with... And I, and I've spent my career just doing React frontend work, and I joined with the intention of like, I'll do the React, but I'll also learn Rails, like Ruby on Rails is the backend they use.
[00:31:08] Emma: But I've found that since AI's been present since the time that I've joined, actually, I've not learned any Rails. Like I've just... It's, it's really sad. and I sometimes wonder like, oh, should I take the time to learn Rails? But I'm also unsure if I want to continue to be a software engineer, so then it's like I'm not sure it's worth the time.
[00:31:28] Emma: But yeah, so I would think that if AI had been around when I was a university student, I'm not sure that I would've learned how to properly program. I think for me it's really like being forced to sit down and like grapple with a bug for a couple of hours or like Google something multiple times till you finally find something that explains a specific concept to you.
[00:31:46] Emma: That's really how I learned programming
[00:31:49] Jeremy: Yeah, and so the example you gave when you said you haven't really learned Rails, I guess, are you prompting, something to make you a Rails app and
[00:31:58] Jeremy: then just kind of like
[00:31:59] Emma: a yeah
[00:32:00] Emma: I would do-- And so I see the front end code and sometimes I will, might disagree with the code or lately I've-- it's either gotten smarter or we've just gotten used to letting the AI do it, but I look at it less. But I do still have issues with the way it designs its UI. So I do go in there and like either fix it up myself or be like, "You did this wrong.
[00:32:21] Emma: Please fix the padding on this button." Um, but yeah, when I look at the backend code that it generates, it's a little scary because I don't actually know if it's good or not. And so we do have other devs on our team who do know backend. So if it's... That's-- I guess our policy is sort of like we let things through if they're simple bug fixes, but if it looks like a complex backend thing, I will just pass it off to someone else to review it before we merge it
[00:32:46] Jeremy: Yeah, and I think that's good in that you still have people who are looking at it and can understand it, even if they didn't necessarily write it themselves. yeah, I do wonder,if you're, yeah, if you're a student or something, or even you're, you're in your professional career and you're not looking anymore, um, I'm, I'm not really sure what that means for our, profession.
[00:33:14] Emma: Yeah, I would, yeah, I think it would depend on the culture of the team that you work in, whether if everyone's in the same boat where maybe they're being pushed by management to just code, that everyone would grow disillusioned with the work and just be like, "Yeah, I'll let the AI write it."
[00:33:28] Emma: But I guess if you had the other people on your team who are, like, w- willing to call you out and be like, "This looks pretty bad. Did you just let the AI vibe code? Like, please redo it." I think, yeah, you would need those sorts of people to maintain quality code. But then also depends, I guess, if you care about that or not, or if you're ultimately, you just need the money.
[00:33:49] Emma: You're just gonna work and do it whatever way gets the job done.
[00:33:53] Jeremy: Yeah, I think it also, it's like, mm, if things are not working or you have an incident or something, or you get paged, if you don't know what's going on, then I feel like that's probably a pretty strong motivator
[00:34:11] Emma: That's true. Yeah
[00:34:13] Jeremy: But, yeah, that was actually, on the, the last interview I did, it was with, Theo Steiner from Line. And yeah, he was talking about how people who work on the back end there, yeah, they all have, like, the on-call and all that stuff. So if something breaks, it's like, you better know what's going on, otherwise it's gonna be not good for you.
[00:34:37] Emma: Yeah, no, actually with my team, when I was working at Atlassian, I was also on call and so you just, we just had to have really good runbooks. So it'd sort of be like, you know, this is, if you see a series of alerts that look similar to this, then you need to look at this Splunk dashboard that kind of shows where it might be going wrong.
[00:34:57] Emma: And then usually it would've been like a code change or a feature flag that got turned on, so you could sort of narrow it down from there. But yeah, it was, for me as a front-end engineer, it was usually quite stressful. So I'm glad I don't have to deal with that anymore.
[00:35:11] Jeremy: For sure, yeah. That's one of the, one of the pros of, uh, not working there anymore.
[00:35:17] Emma: Yeah. (laughs)
School vs work
[00:35:19] Jeremy: Yeah. yeah, I think So I'm curious, so you started right out of school. What was that like for you? Was what you learned in school, do you feel like it really prepared you for working there, or did it feel really different?
[00:35:34] Emma: Ah, no, yeah, it was quite different. I think maybe what the university was teaching. I mean, they taught you all the fundamentals, but, I think maybe especially 'cause, like, front end moves really quickly, so they didn't really teach us much front end in university and the stuff they did was quite old.
[00:35:54] Emma: I remember learning a language called Perl, which I think is, similar to Python. But yeah, it was not necessarily directly helpful with what I learned on the job. But I think, ultimately it's like having ... Like, and Atlassian had a lot of really great engineers. just being able to learn so much from the people around me and, like, you know, the people that took the time to
[00:36:16] Emma: you would write as a new engineer, you'd probably write a really shitty pull request and h- them being able to kind of help teach you, "This is the best way to write that sort of code." And over time you'd, like, pick up on that and then be able to teach that onto the other junior people below you.
[00:36:31] Emma: And so yeah, I learned a lot on the job I think for me.
[00:36:34] Jeremy: Yeah, I think that's pretty typical. I think like, um, well, like any of the, the different hobbies you have, right? Whether it's hiking or, or knitting, like it's-- You can read a book and you can have people talk to you about how to do a thing, but until you're actually doing it and messing up and getting things right, getting things wrong, I think that's when you actually are learning.
[00:37:02] Jeremy: Yeah. So kinda hard to do that outside of, uh, actually being at a job, I think.
[00:37:08] Emma: Yeah
[00:37:09] Jeremy: I guess there's also the people who are like really self-motivated, right? And then they work on projects and stuff and are able to get through that cycle themselves
[00:37:17] Emma: Yeah. I wish I could be more like those people. I've been telling myself that I want to learn Mandarin for the past few years, and it just wasn't going anywhere. So I, like, recently signed up for beginner lessons 'cause I figured I just need that external motivation to actually get me started
[00:37:33] Jeremy: For sure, yeah. that reminds me of I don't remember where it came from, but they were saying when there's a free event or whatever, like a lot of people will say they'll go and then they won't go 'cause there's no, there's no financial pressure or, it becomes that day and you're like, "Eh, maybe I just won't go."
[00:37:49] Jeremy: But if you have like this, this stake in it or, or this pain, I guess, then you'll, um, kind of force yourself to do it, yeah
[00:37:58] Emma: Yeah
Working at Atlassian
[00:38:00] Jeremy: So you said you were doing front end work, at Atlassian. how did you see things change or how did your role change over those, those eight years?
[00:38:11] Emma: Ooh. I think it was pretty stable. I think I was laid off... We were starting to use AI towards the end, but maybe I was laid off before we really got into the AI use. so yeah, I think for me, I... What I enjoyed was, the pro- like we called it feature leading internally, where, the designer or the PM might have, the project manager might have an idea of a feature they wanted to build, and then the designer would have, a rough draft of the UI they intended for it.
[00:38:44] Emma: And then being able to, as a front-end engineer, figure out or ask the designer, how about this edge case where the updating this, clicking this button might fail? what sort of error do we show to the user then?" And just thinking through all those user flows, was what I really enjoyed while I was working there.
[00:39:01] Emma: I think towards the end, there was some mention that designers should learn how to use AI to code as well. And so I think the direction it seemed to be going was you were were broadening your skill set. So rather than like a engineer being like really focused on the code, everyone was becoming more, I think you call it T-shaped, right?
[00:39:20] Emma: Like learning how to do many things rather than just focusing on one thing. yeah
[00:39:26] Jeremy: Yeah. And I think so, so it sounds like a lot of the times, I guess, whatever you're working on was pretty narrowly scoped, like somebody had come up with the, I suppose, the design or how something should work, and you were more like, "This is how we're gonna implement it," or...
[00:39:43] Emma: Yeah, I think that was the gist of it. And I think maybe one of the downsides of working for a big company is that in general, the work you do does become quite limited. I've never properly worked for a startup, but I guess even working for Hardcover part-time, you have to be able to do a lot of things because there's not many people around.
[00:40:01] Emma: And so, like at Hardcover I really enjoy, like we have a Discord server and people just raise bugs in there, and I'll just message them and be like, "Oh," like, "Have you tried this?" Or like, I will log this bug in our issue tracker and then fix it. While like Atlassian, you would have like a whole team of support engineers who handle that sort of thing.
[00:40:20] Emma: and yeah, and even like Atlassian, had a big design system team, so there was a team that was like dedicated to coming up with the general UI components and we use and stuff like that. So there... But I guess there's pros and cons to that. I'm sure working at a startup, it's a lot more stressful.
[00:40:39] Emma: maybe you don't get the chance to go as deep on a certain thing. But yeah, I think the time I had at Atlassian
[00:40:47] Emma: Yeah, I guess it was good while it lasted. I think towards the end, the culture was going downhill a little bit. I think it was struggling a bit to deal with the huge increase, in employees over time. But it was fun while it lasted.
[00:41:02] Jeremy: Is there, um, I guess anything specific that you're like, I guess that you really enjoyed about working there or a time
[00:41:11] Emma: I think the engineers were just really great, and so I loved the people that I worked with. And yeah, it was a fun team of people yeah.
Remote vs in-person
[00:41:20] Jeremy: And was everyone mostly remote at the time, or you started working in the same office?
[00:41:27] Emma: so we all initially started in office, but once we went remote, I had a team change. So most of the people I've worked with, I only ever worked with remotely, but we would get to see each other, once or twice a year in person. So it was nice to catch up then
[00:41:42] Jeremy: And how did you like working or, or feel that it was different being in person all together with the team versus everybody being, um, remote?
[00:41:54] Emma: Yeah, I think as much as I am pro-remote because it's helped me, like, live in Japan, live where I want to live, I think kind of nothing really beats the experience of We had a habit in Sydney of at 10:00 AM be like, "Oh, let's all grab a coffee." And just like that 10-minute walk and chat that you would have to grab the coffee and then head back to your desks was always nice just to either get to know your teammates better or just like gossip or talk about something you're working on at work.
[00:42:21] Emma: Um, and then if you had a problem, you could just like... It's much easier to just swivel, sit on your chair and go over to their desk and be like, "Oh, hey, can you quickly help me with this?" it's just a lot smoother than having to do like the Slack DM and then wait for them to reply. So yeah, I wanna say that I think being remote is the best, but there are a lot of pros to being together in person and like I know some people who just hated being remote and that, Atlassian was like a remote-first company and they just wanted to work for a non-remote team, and so some people did leave for that reason.
[00:42:57] Emma: So yeah, I think there's pros and cons to both.
[00:43:00] Jeremy: Yeah, I think a big thing too is your commute. How long does it take you to get to work? what's your family situation at home? Do you have kids? There's, like, all sorts of factors, but largely I do agree that I think, I think being in the office, if you have people that you like, is more fun and, some of the barriers to communication are lower.
[00:43:25] Jeremy: But like you said, it's definitely a trade-off. like you said, getting to live in a, another country is a huge thing. for people who don't live close,having to commute an hour or longer, each way, that's like a huge thing. and like being able to be home so you can pick up your kids.
[00:43:42] Jeremy: Like there's definitely pros and cons, yeah
Hardcover
[00:43:45] Emma: Yeah. See, I think with Hardcover, we are also full remote and we are very async. there's... In Atlassian at least everyone is in a similar time zone, but with Hardcover, everyone's everywhere. So it does feel even more isolating. And I guess for me, to be honest, I've always been more of a let's do this over chat than let's video call each other.
[00:44:06] Emma: I'm more of, a text-based person. But I have, I guess, missed that and so I have made... I have, reached out to one of my teammates and be like, "Oh, we should set up, a fortnightly, Zoom call." And I think for him, it's the opposite problem where, he is much better at communicating himself over voice than through chat, like typing.
[00:44:25] Emma: And so it's been actually really productive to just, let him talk and, 'cause he's a senior librarian on our team, so he's not a dev, but he instead deals with, the data and, 'cause Hardcover has,millions of books and there's a lot of data issues, 'cause we let people import their own libraries and stuff like that.
[00:44:40] Emma: So he has a lot of... Has some frustrations with the UI on that end of things. But since I never need to use that UI, like, I don't really know about it. And so having those meetings has been really helpful for him to just, like, uh, share his screen and then, like, walk through, like, how he tries to use the UI
[00:44:56] Jeremy: Yeah, I think it's always very illuminating, whether it's a user or just someone internal on your team, when you see somebody actually using software you worked on. A lot of times you get very surprised. but I think we haven't really talked about what Hardcover specifically is. Maybe you could talk a little bit about what it is and how you got involved
[00:45:19] Emma: Oh, yes. so I guess there's, quite a few book tracking apps out there. So basically, like people might read books and then they want to track how many they've read in a year or which ones they gave four-star or five-star rating t- ratings to, or whether they wanna write a review for it. And so, the one app that probably everyone's heard of if you read books is a one called Goodreads.
[00:45:42] Emma: and that's owned by Amazon. It has millions of users. but I think there is the general sense that it's not always... I think the design can sometimes be a little outdated or, they don't really add too many new features and some people don't like the fact that it's owned by Amazon. And so there's been a lot of other little, apps that have sprung up out of people trying to build like something that they think is better than Goodreads.
[00:46:07] Emma: And so Hardcover is one of those apps. it was started I think five or six years ago, by a guy named Adam. I think for him, Goodreads used to have an API, but they shut it down. And so for him, he wanted to build a book tracking app with an API. And so that's probably the most unique part about Hardcover is that we do provide an AI where you can, um I guess if you wanted to render all the reviews you've written on your own website, you can just, pull that from Hardcover's API.
[00:46:35] Emma: or if you run some sort of other app where you want to display book data, you can use our API for that. and so that's how he started it. I think over the years he's... It's not quite profitable yet, so I mean, right now it's covering our operating costs, but not enough to, like, pay people proper wages.
[00:46:53] Emma: So over the years, he's hired people to come on part-time just kind of out of love for it rather than necessarily for money. And so, I was one of those people that joined, a little over a year ago now, as a developer. And so yeah, for me, it's very, um... Oh, and I guess in terms of Hardcover itself, we're still quite small.
[00:47:14] Emma: We have about 100,000 users. Goodreads has millions. So there's, a long road ahead of us, but I think we have a lot of cool features and, I'm optimistic for our future. so yeah, if you're looking for a new book tracker app, pl- please feel free to check us out. and for me, it's been a really interesting experience,going from a big corporation like Atlassian where you have a, a product manager and a designer who will essentially tell you what to do.
[00:47:40] Emma: you as an engineer can of course provide your suggestions and, like, push back. But there is, this direction coming from above where, Hardcover is a lot more ad hoc since we're all working on it. The intent was we're supposed to work on it, or if we can, five hours a week, because it's kind of assumed that everyone else has a day job where they actually get money so that they can live.
[00:48:04] Emma: And so it's like a work on it when you can. You know, if you have family issues or health issues, you just don't work on it for a couple of weeks or a month and that's fine. So, like, people dip in and out, of working on it. And so it's been really interesting to try and work as an engineer in that environment where there's not really any direction or like deadlines, like we have to do this month or like this is what we're going to ship this year and if we don't, like, our investors will be mad or stuff like that since, um, we have none of that.
[00:48:31] Emma: And so at times it's been a little bit of a struggle kind of essentially, you have to find the direction yourself of what you want to work on. and so the easiest way for me is, like, I just use the app. And if I see a bug or something that bothers me, then I just fix it. and so that's nice 'cause then I can make my own experience of using the app easier.
[00:48:51] Emma: And then I think for me, I really enjoy interacting with our users. it was something I tried to do sometimes at Atlassian, where there were certain feedback channels where you could respond to the user, but it wasn't as frequent. And so with Hardcover, our more dedicated users join our Discord, and so they will just post their bugs in there.
[00:49:11] Emma: And it's really nice to be able to kind of talk to them. Some of them, they give really good UI feedback as well, and so, like, not just bugs. And so I'll be like, "Oh, that's such a great idea. Okay, I'm gonna do that now." And then, they're happy that, they took, I took their feedback on board, and then, I'm happy that I got to implement that feedback.
[00:49:27] Emma: So overall it's, good vibes, and that's why I enjoy working there.
[00:49:30] Jeremy: Yeah, and I'm sure it definitely helps that you read a lot of books and you use the app yourself. So you kinda, you kinda know if something is not right or there's something you would like to be in there,
[00:49:42] Emma: Yeah, exactly. I think at Atlassian, I was working on the team that built Jira, and so I did use Jira every day at work. But I feel ... It does feel a bit different when you're getting to work on something that's, more of a fun product, I think. something that you get to use for fun is then more fun to work on than something necessarily that's, a work product
[00:50:03] Jeremy: Yeah, I don't,I'm sure they're out there, but I've never met somebody who uses Jira for fun.
[00:50:10] Emma: No, I think, I think some- someone's used it to plan their wedding, I think. But I mean, they were probably an Atlassian employee, but
[00:50:17] Jeremy: I'm sure that's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sure they're out there. not my idea of a good time. It's, we do it because it's like this is how we track the stuff we do, but,not a, n- not like a, a source of fun, I guess.
[00:50:32] Emma: Yeah, no, I've had, If I would tell people in Australia I worked on Jira, the general sentiment was like, "Oh," "Can you fix this bug?" Or like, "Can you fix how slow it is?" But it's, it was funny when I moved to Japan and I said the same thing, it was actually Japanese people that really loved Jira. So they're like, "Oh, I love it."
[00:50:47] Emma: And I was like, "Oh, wow. It's my first time I'm hearing that, but thank you."
[00:50:52] Jeremy: Yeah. Yeah. That's funny. I guess, you have to think about the alternative, right? if you had nothing before, then, having something to keep track of your issues and keep track of your tasks, as much as we may complain about it, it's probably still better than, a bunch of random emails back and forth or,they used to be paper documents, right?
[00:51:15] Jeremy: And it's it's progress, so so at, Hardcover was it a React front end and a Rails back
[00:51:24] Emma: Yes
AI code generation
[00:51:25] Jeremy: And you were talking a little bit about how you use, um, AI to generate code as a part of the job. Would you say now that's the majority of how the code gets written or is it a mix?
[00:51:41] Emma: Oh yeah, I would say, when I first joined a year ago, I was still probably hand coding everything. I'm not sure if maybe, the AI wasn't quite good enough or possibly like the cheaper models that were like more affordable weren't quite good enough at the time. and so I remember spending like, 20 hours trying to debug this like search bar problem and like feeling really good once I figured it out and merged that code.
[00:52:07] Emma: but yeah, nowadays it is 90, 90 to 95% is AI generated. our founder, Adam, he's hooked up a whole system where like you raise the GitHub ticket and you assign our bot to it, and then the bot just goes ahead and raises a PR. It like pulls in a separate bot that does the review and they kind of go back and forth a couple rounds to do like the review and the fix up.
[00:52:28] Emma: And then once it's, once they're both happy with it, then you can take a look at the code and if you're happy with it, then you can just hit the merge button. Sometimes I don't... Sometimes I will just merge it, if it looks simple enough, but at some other times I won't quite trust it, and so I will like check out the branch and then like, uh, run through the UI flow before merging it.
[00:52:47] Emma: But yeah, I do find that I'm nowadays more concerned about the user experience and whether the UI is working properly necessarily than like the code itself
[00:52:57] Jeremy: And I guess at, to what level are you describing the thing you want to send off to the bots, I guess?
[00:53:08] Emma: Ooh, uh, so if I was doing a proper, new feature with a lot of UI elements, I get quite detailed. So i- 'cause if you just tell it, "Build this page," it's not gonna be able to do it for you. So I do give it more details. But then sometimes, like when people report a bug to us in the Discord, and like sometimes it's a bit hard to understand the bug they're describing.
[00:53:32] Emma: Like, maybe you need to be really familiar with the specific UI page. but rather than trying to decode it, I would just like copy-paste the, their message. Or we have a little, utility that like from the Discord you can do like a slash issue and it'll like send it off to GitHub, and I'll do that.
[00:53:48] Emma: And the, I guess the AI is better at like parsing what the user was trying to say, and they're usually able to find the root cause of the bug. That's it
[00:53:56] Jeremy: So I guess for bug reports, yeah, sometimes you can just take the chat messages and paste it in. And then for a feature, it sounds like you're actually pretty detailed. Like you'll, you'll decide how, maybe even some of the details of how you think something should work or like how deep are you going when you describe, um, a feature or a task?
[00:54:19] Emma: Hmm. I think, no, yeah, I'm quite detailed. Usually I have an image in my mind of, like, where I would expect the buttons to live on the page. And then the one thing that it's still prone to do is it likes to just hand code all of its UI components, even though we might have, like, a proper button component right there, please use it.
[00:54:40] Emma: That's the one place where it's like tries to do its own thing. and so, and sometimes, other people... I get a bit p- nitpicky with the UI. and so sometimes it'll be a case where, like, I can see other things have been merged in where, they're using,their own button. So I'm, like, telling the AI, "Oh, go fix up that thing that was just merged in, please."
[00:55:00] Emma: and so recently I've started dabbling in trying to, like, actually have a set of markdown, documents in our code base that kind of outline that if there is a button, please use this button. and I'm still in the early stages of that, so I don't know if it'll actually follow these instructions. But I'm hoping that even
[00:55:20] Emma: I think it's, a lot of it, like the nitpickiness, it's been in my head up until this point. So I think either way, having it written down somewhere in the code base, even if it's not for the AI, even if it's for, like, other devs on our team to look at and be like, you know, when you're ... Like, it sounds simple, but,when you're building a page, please use this header component because otherwise we end up with, it looks all right when you look at the page.
[00:55:40] Emma: Well, then when using the entire app and, like, all the different pages have, like, a ti- slightly different design of the header, it does, to me, looks pretty bad and inconsistent. So yeah, hoping we can get a bit better at that.
[00:55:51] Jeremy: Yeah, I wonder too if how you were saying how there was that review process, maybe some of that could be done there as well.
[00:55:59] Emma: Yeah. So like I've added it as an instruction in there to like please double check our, design documents before you merge. But I'm not 100% confident that it will actually do it. So we'll see.
[00:56:11] Jeremy: Yeah. It's, yeah, it's funny how, like, it, it used to be sometimes that would be with people, right? You would have instructions. They're like, "Oh, this is how we should use these components. We should follow this design system," and then sometimes we don't do it. So it's, we're kind of, kind of back there again, I guess.
[00:56:29] Emma: I think for AI though, like for a human, at least for me, it would be easier to reuse a component, right? So like I would go searching for something I could reuse, but for an AI it's probably very easy to just generate the code fresh. So that's probably why it's prone to making it all up itself.
[00:56:46] Jeremy: Yeah, that makes sense actually. Just with code in general, things that are painful for us to write. Like for example, if you have a, you have a switch or a case statement with tons of, uh, options, right? For us to write them out hand by, you know, one by one, we're like, "Uh, we don't... I don't really wanna do that."
[00:57:04] Jeremy: But if it's a computer doing it, then they'll just like, "Oh, you know, here you go.
[00:57:07] Jeremy: Here's, here's 100 lines switch, uh, statement." Yeah. So that, that is interesting to think about of where they don't really feel that pain. Yeah So I guess yeah, so that's interesting that like you were saying 95% is pretty much, prompting and seeing if you like the results.
[00:57:27] Jeremy: I wonder if, if you personally, how you feel about that process. do you like it? Do you not like it?
[00:57:37] Emma: Yeah, I think I was, Adam was, is really quite on board with AI. And so I think when I first saw how much he was getting into it, I was a little bit scared. Maybe I'm a, was a little... I wasn't, an AI... Like, there's like, you know, two camps of, like, some people who hate AI and never use it, and some people who have always loved it and are gonna use it as much as they can.
[00:57:59] Emma: And so I was more in, the kind of skeptical side of things. Not quite never, I never want to use it. And, like, over time, I have come to see how useful it is. and so I do use it a lot now. I think that's kind of led to another crisis in me where, it's like if I'm not needed to write the code, then what am I needed for?
[00:58:22] Emma: Or even, whether if I'm, and if I, and then if I'm not writing code and I'm doing something else, do I want to do that? Like, is that what I want for my future career? and so I think for me, the one thing that I still really love about Hardcover is that ultimately, even if you could argue that, like, you don't need software engineers to write the app and the whole thing can be AI generated, like Hardcover is a community of readers and so there does need to be humans to help build that community of other humans to use the app ultimately.
[00:58:56] Emma: And so I still quite enjoy, I guess, the interaction, community interaction aspect of it, where I can talk with our users and, like, understand, the bits of the app that they have feedback on that they might not necessarily like and, talk with them and together we figure out a solution that, 'Cause I think sometimes they might suggest something, but you might be like, "Well, we can't satisfy every single person's request for a feature," right? 'Cause then you end up with this, like, messy app with buttons everywhere. So it's kind of like the balance of understanding, not necessarily always fulfilling exactly what they want, but figuring out a way to at least partially fulfill it or, like, make people happy, but in a way that overall is a good direction for the app.
[00:59:40] Jeremy: Yeah, I think something that's come out of all these AI coding tools is there's a lot of projects people will make and they'll release, but the majority of them are basically just abandoned, right? They make it, they try it, and they're like, "Oh, this was neat," and then they don't use it. Nobody else uses it, which has created this, like, I don't know how to describe it.
[01:00:05] Jeremy: It's, it's these things that used to be-- that used to take a lot of effort or a lot of thought, people were just making. But the one thing that you can't really, replace is people caring about the thing and spending time using it and spending time making sure that it actually works well. I think when you make something, that first version is often not...
[01:00:35] Jeremy: Like, there's all sorts of issues, right? And that you aren't going to find the bugs or the usability problems or make something that people are g- going to want to stick with unless you or other people are actively using it. So I think that, that point you made about having a community of people who, who care enough to use it and having this team behind it that, that cares enough to, like, see, "Oh, okay, this is not working, so we're gonna keep iterating on this and fixing it."
[01:01:06] Jeremy: I think even though these tools still exist, that part, I don't think that's changed.
[01:01:11] Emma: Yeah
[01:01:12] Emma: Yeah, I'm really grateful for our users, I think, because, like, that they're willing to give us this feedback. I think, you know, if you had to, like, pay people or, like, set up interviews to do, user testing sort of things, it would be a bit of a hassle. But it's just nice that they, they're happy to, like, give us all this unprompted, unsolicited feedback into our Discord server
[01:01:32] Jeremy: Yeah. I guess one, one other thing on that, that note is have you personally noticed that you writing the code versus having the computer write it, has that significantly changed how fast things get released or how fast things get made, or not as much as you might have thought?
[01:01:56] Emma: I think we are releasing a lot more features, thanks to AI. I think it is moving a lot quicker, and I think finding a bug is also a lot quicker now, 'cause AI can just find it straight away, while as a developer I might have to spend a bit of time digging around for it. I think it doesn't necessarily make our jobs easier though, because then I feel like there's kind of the mental load of juggling multiple AI generated PRs at once and trying to keep that all in your head.
[01:02:24] Emma: And I think sometimes I might bite off more than I can chew where, like when you're waiting for that first PR to be finished, you're like working on getting it set up with a second issue. And then y- and then once it's all done, you realize you have like 10 open PRs and then you have to try and like slowly get through them all.
[01:02:40] Emma: So yeah, I think it's, it's helped a lot, but it's not ... It's still in a sense, I guess tough in a different way
[01:02:48] Jeremy: Yeah, and I know at least for a lot of people, reviewing code is harder than actually writing it yourself because you have to really think through this thing that, you didn't make. And, uh, so there's this mental load of "Okay, is this-- does this do what it says it does?" And you're trying to...
[01:03:09] Jeremy: Normally, you would be trying to think in the other person's shoes or in their mind like, "Okay, what were they thinking when they designed it this way?" And then now there's kind of like, I don't know. It's a little, little different, right? But cool. yeah, is there anything else you think, you wanted to mention or thought we should have talked about?
[01:03:30] Emma: No, I think, yeah, you did a pretty good job of covering a lot of things
[01:03:34] Jeremy: Cool. Well, if people want to check out your blog, check out the hikes, all the cafes you visited, where should they head?
[01:03:42] Emma: So my blog is emgoto.com, so that's E-M G-O-T-O.com. so I write about hiking, coffee, and just, like, random things that I'm interested in. So I have, a birding page. Um, I got into knitting recently, so I wrote a post about that. Um, I also read a lot, so I do post a lot of book reviews on there.
[01:04:01] Emma: And then I work part-time at Hardcover, so that can be found at hardcover.app. and my username on there is Emma, so it's hardcover.app/the at symbol and then Emma
[01:04:15] Jeremy: Nice. Got the first name username.
[01:04:16] Emma: Yeah, I did.
[01:04:19] Jeremy: Cool. Well, Emma, thank you so much for taking the time. This was fun
[01:04:22] Emma: Yeah. Thank you for having me on. You asked a lot of great questions.
[01:04:27] Jeremy: Thank you.