#151 – Google Glass, Lean Startup and VotC - Initializing Instructed Interviews

Chris Gammell: This is the Amp Hour Podcast, recorded June 24th, 2013. Episode 151, Initializing Instructed Interviews.

Dave Jones: Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Dave Jones from the EEV Blog.

Chris Gammell: And I'm Chris Gammell of Chris Gammell's Analog Life.

Dave Jones: Hello. And Contextual Electronics. No, it's just us. We were going to have... Oh, yeah. Yeah, sorry. Some guests on today, but... Yeah, guests. Yeah, some things happening.

Chris Gammell: These things happen. Yep.

Dave Jones: These things happen and it didn't happen, so it was just us again. Congratulations, everyone. You're stuck with us. You get to listen to us. Yeah, rant on about.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. Classic. We got a lineup ready to go.

SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah. Start the groan machine. Yeah, you can just hear the collective groan, can't you, across the audience right now. Yeah. Not these two idiots again.

Chris Gammell: Oh, I can start it out. I can start it out strong. Ready? Oh, go. I got my Google Glass pickup notice.

Dave Jones: You got your pickup notice. You haven't actually got Google last yet, so it doesn't mean jack, right? No, no. And you haven't forked over your what? How much is it?

Chris Gammell: $1,500 plus tax.

Dave Jones: $1,500 plus tax.

Chris Gammell: Plus plane ticket, which, yeah.

Dave Jones: How much is tax?

Chris Gammell: Probably another $130, $150. Right. $130.

Dave Jones: Is that a state tax thing?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's like 8%. Or is that a Google tax? 8% probably. Yeah, you only pick up in New York and California, so... Not exactly the lowest income tax, or sales tax. Right.

Dave Jones: Got it. Yeah, I see that all the time. Like, you know, sales tax applicable in California. You know, it's like, California's like the only state that has it or something. Or now you're saying...

Chris Gammell: California is a wide range of odd regulations and taxes and stuff, so... Right. Yeah, it is what it is, you know. Eh. People deal with it. Yep. People keep starting companies out there, so... Yeah, something's going right. Right.

Dave Jones: So you're going to go ahead with it, and you have wife approval to spend $1,500 plus tax plus plane ticket to go on a jaunt to New York without her just to pick up Google us.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: How do you swing that?

Chris Gammell: I did well, man.

Dave Jones: Right. You picked well, huh?

Chris Gammell: I did, yeah. You have chosen correctly. Wisely.

Dave Jones: You were chosen wisely. Oh, that's what it is, right. If you're talking about the Indiana Jones reference. Yeah, the third Indiana Jones. Yep. That's a great scene. You were chosen poorly. He chose poorly. Poorly. Yes. I'm sorry for those who haven't seen the scene in... Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, if you haven't seen the third Indiana Jones, you should definitely watch that. Come on. Oh, yeah. It's great. It's great fun. Classic. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: Yep. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: But yeah, so if I am in New York, I'm looking at the weekend after July 4th. So if I am in New York, I will be doing a meetup probably. So if any New York listeners are out there, you know, probably pick a bar and, you know, go hang out. Wait, your Empire T-shirt. Of course. Yeah. Empire T-shirts all around. And speaking of Empire T-shirts, so in a hustle and bustle to get stories for this week after the guest thing didn't work out a couple hours beforehand. Yeah. I had offered, you know, people post, we've been looking for ways to, you know, give back to the audience and reward people for participating and stuff. And one thing I said that I think we could keep going is, you know, if you have a story that we pick during the week, maybe we'll, you know, people that post stories to the subreddit, because usually it's just me and Dave posting and really just me. Okay, right. Yeah. I just, I have the habit. That's the thing. I'm in the habit of posting stuff as I see it. But if people post stuff during the week and we talk about it on the show, I think we should, we can do a raffle, you know, for, you know, top story of the week kind of thing. And we'll pick a name from people that help contribute because that's really helpful for when people post news stories that you guys want to hear about that, you know, maybe we wouldn't have heard about because we're too busy talking about Kickstarter or whatever else. So we have a couple that we might talk about this week and then we can keep this going for, you know, every other week when we do our Just Me and Dave episodes or sometimes the off weeks when guests don't work out. So yeah, it's a good idea. You know, we got lots of t-shirts to give away.

Speaker ?: Right.

Chris Gammell: Come on, we'll end up going broke.

Dave Jones: That's fine.

Chris Gammell: I don't care.

Dave Jones: We'll keep giving away t-shirts. That's fine with me, man. Yeah, we don't. Yeah, who cares? Because we're not in it for the money anyway. Yeah, we got money for a reason, right? We built the fun of it.

Chris Gammell: It was to, you know, feed back to the community. Yeah, yeah. True. You know, I'm always looking for ways to build up community around here. If there's other ways people think about building up community too, I'd love to hear them. Give me a shout at chris at theempire.com. You know, always looking for that stuff. I asked about that in the survey, which we just had the results come out from. So.

Dave Jones: The problem is, is that we do a radio show. We do a podcast show. People, you know, just suck it from wherever. Exactly.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, it's tough, you know. Excuse the phrase there. Oh, yeah. It's tough in any kind of, you know, like medium. You know, it's just, I was talking to a friend today about, it's hard to get email addresses from people these days. It's just attention is the number one commodity these days, right? Like resources are not a thing anymore. It's not hard to find, you know, information on how to build a switching circuit, right? It's, it's, it's the tough part is, you know, if you're trying to spread a message is to, to get people interested, right? You have to find enough people that are interested in the same thing. And we've got about 6,000 that are interested in electronics, which is awesome. So.

Dave Jones: Yep.

Chris Gammell: So that's why we're giving away t-shirts.

Dave Jones: And the interesting thing is, is I've got like 70,000 subscribers on YouTube now, but like, I don't have 70,000 people watching my videos, you know, it's like 20,000 or something. Right. Or interestingly, here's an interesting thing, which, you know, my Fundamentals Friday series I've been doing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Those are great.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. Yeah. The feedback, you know, I get lots of thumbs up and the feedback's great and everything, but like only like half the number of people watch it who, you know, compared to like a mailbag episode or a, you know, or a good teardown. It's like, yeah, I can, I can understand that. Right. Because like half of my audience are professionals, just like The Amp Hour, right? They are professionals and they don't want to watch a, you know, how does an op amp work video, you know, cause they know it. Like, you know.

Chris Gammell: I was thinking that they just, they don't care. Like I think, I think a lot of time on YouTube and everywhere else, right? It's the, it's the woodshed phenomenon, right? Woodshedding. I think we might've talked about that on here before. Woodshedding? No? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So if you have... Is this a Yankee term? No, it's, I've only learned this a couple weeks to months ago, but woodshedding refers to, okay, so you're building a nuclear reactor, right? And you, you and 10 other scientists, right? You debate, you intensely debate of how you should construct the architecture of this nuclear reactor, whatever, right? And you put it out for public comment and you get nothing, right? Because no one knows, no one's an expert. But when you talk about what color you should build the woodshed out back, everyone has an opinion, right? And this happens all this time. This is the same thing actually when you're doing, you know, when you look at like how you're actually trying to gather feedback from like, say you build a circuit and you put it out there, right? People might, if you put it out for general comment, right? If you're not, if you don't have like a group of users that you're specifically designing for, if you put it out for general comment, then, you know, you might have a hundred people that say it's great, 10 of whom are actually going to use it in the end and 90 of whom say it needs more LEDs, right? There's always that problem in product development of, you know, you might be designing something, you can ask for comment and it could just be totally random feedback, you know, like the...

Dave Jones: I, yep. It's tough. I've experienced that. My more technical videos, right? So, yeah, that might have an obscure topic or a more technical that not many people know about. Yeah. The feedback on that is like, you know, very low. But as you said, you know, like the color of something, you know, my, or how I should design my new power supply, right? Yeah. Or how, what features it should have, oh, boom, here they all come.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Or when you talked about like your computer that you were compiling videos with, right? Or processing videos, right? Oh, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. That's the same kind of thing. I think about it from... Oh, I did not get hammered for that. Yeah. There's something called voice of the customer, right? That's the thing that like is in product development. And that's a big thing too, right? But my complaint about like voice of the customer, so that's like something where like your marketers will go out. Like marketers, like I've talked about in the past where they go out to talk to customers and then they, you know, gather what do they want for the next generation, right? My complaint with voice of the customer is always, you give a hundred customers a thing, right? So you're doing, you want to work on your next generation product. You give a hundred customers a thing and then you say, what should we do next? Right. And I guarantee that 99% of them are going to say, well, I want this, but I want a little faster. I want it cheaper and I want it, you know, in blue, right? Uh-huh. You know, that's the problem with that kind of feedback. Like really, really innovative product design, like you have to tease out what people really, really want. And it's so hard. Like the ones that are really good at it are either A, lucky or B, they're just really skilled at like knowing, like being able to actually hear what people are talking about because that is a really, really tough thing to do.

Dave Jones: Well, often you've got to interpret or infer what these people are thinking, right? Because they won't say it. And that is a clever person who's able to do that, right? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I totally agree.

Dave Jones: Mm. Yep.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah, it's a tough thing to do. But if you, I mean, that is the best case, you know, we slag marketers off right around here. But, you know, best case scenario, that's a good marketing person, the ones who can actually figure that stuff out and, you know, work to get feedback once you actually have something done, right? So once you do have an idea, like how Jerry did, right, where she sent, you know, a half done thing out in the world, but she got tons of good feedback about it, right? Hopefully good and bad. Well, and lots of useless, yeah. Yeah, a lot of useless, yeah, maybe. But, you know, like, yeah, you're right, because if someone just says, ooh, wow, that's not as useful as, well, you know, I see that, you know, you're running this at 100 hertz, why not 120? You know, like whatever she was talking about. I was just in the ooh, wow camp. Right. But, yeah, yeah, you have to find those people that are in the technical realm. And then you have to not only, you have to take those people, right, that say, all right, well, 120 instead of 100. And then you also have to take that group and divide them down and say, all right, well, the ones who say 120, why are they really saying that, right? There's tons of reasons that everybody comes at a problem with different, like, baggage. Totally. Right? Yep. You know, like, you go show it to your business person, right, and they say, well, I like it, but it should be 10% smaller. And why do they want it to be 10% smaller? And it's like, oh, but maybe they want it to be cheaper or something, you know?

Dave Jones: Or it's got to fit in their pox. Exactly. Or it's got to do something. Yeah, that's right. And they often won't tell you that. You've got to, you know, understand that, oh, they're saying different things, but they actually boil down to essentially the same issue.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And that's what you've really got to solve. Well, I think the best way to do that, though, is, you know, like, if you can do fast iteration on an idea, right? So if you have, say you're doing something that is relatively innocuous, right? So you're trying to do how bright should the LEDs be on a product, right? You might go to 100 people and they say, oh, brighter, always brighter, right? But the best way to really do that is you don't ask them, you show them, right? You say, all right, I have three different brightnesses. Which one looks best? That is how you get good feedback. That's how you actually could design a better product. Because, you know, if you go and design brighter, what does brighter really mean anyways? So that's a tough thing, man.

Dave Jones: And then if you're not putting it in the same context, like, it depends on how bright the room is, right? Exactly. If it's on a bit of entertainment gear, right, that's designed to be used in a dark movie theater, right? You don't want this big bright blue LED blaring at you. Blue. It's always blue. Right? Yeah, of course. At least in your wank color. It has been for the last decade. Yeah, right. And, you know, so you show them in the lab, you know, or an office or whatever, you know, or a showroom and, well, there's not a problem.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Right? But you get it into its proper use scenario and there you go. It's crap.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah, man. That is, you know, I think we're in a golden age for that kind of stuff too because, you know, even just 3D models, right? Like, 3D models are awesome for that kind of thing because you're not going to get the whole gist of it. But, man, like, if you can look at something and actually rotate around, you know, like in a 3D environment, that helps so much. And then, you know, you can go and send that off to be 3D printed or CNC'd or something. Man, that is just, that's killer, you know, like, it's really killer.

Dave Jones: It's what you see is what you get. WYSIWYG. It's the old WYSIWYG thing, you know, that started back in the old computer days when you could actually see what the font looked like on the screen. Right. Yeah. Wow, you know, and then like PageMaker, oh, you could actually see what your whole page is going to look like before you print it. Oh, you know, that's revolutionary stuff.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. No, yeah, it totally is.

Dave Jones: You know, you can see what your PCB is going to look like with the solder mask and the silk screen before you get it manufactured. Oh, you know, that's one of the greatest innovations, you know, ever.

Chris Gammell: Yep.

Dave Jones: How much grief has that saved? You know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Every board designer. Oh, look, you know, you can't see it because you're in this two-dimensional world that you can't, you know, and you miss that, oh, the silk screen's over the, you know, over the pad or the solder mask expansion isn't quite right on your board or whatever, but you get that 3D view and, you know, that real WYSIWYG. It doesn't have to be 3D. It can still be 2D. Yeah. Yeah. That real what you see is what you get thing happening.

Speaker ?: Yep.

Dave Jones: Yep. And it's the same with those 3D printed model cases, you know? You can get to hold the case in your hand and see what it's like.

Chris Gammell: Nothing tells you, like, holding it in your hand. Yeah. You will find, I mean, yeah, especially for that, like, feedback mechanism of, like, giving it to a customer, man, like, that is, like, a magical process in my mind. I mean, I know it's not new by any stretch, but, you know, like, even just giving it to, like, someone that's in your group, right? You, it is so, it's so tough. Like, saying something like brightness, right? I said, like, brightness before. What does brightness mean to you, Dave, right? I mean, it could be, you could say 200 lumens, right? And even that doesn't mean anything to me, right? Not. But eventually, it's got to come down to, like, human perception, right? And then kind of, like, it's like, it's like everybody calibrating to the same, the same measurement level of, you know, well, what does it mean to you? What does it mean to you? And then finally, everybody says, okay, this is bright, and then this is brighter, and then this is less bright, right? And that's how you have to do it. You have to get everybody in a room. And that's why plane tickets are so expensive still.

Dave Jones: So, what are we saying here? Product design is a bitch. It's tough.

Chris Gammell: But you know what? That's a good thing. In a little bit of, in certain ways, it's good. Well, it keeps the job, right? Yeah, it does.

Dave Jones: Well, me, I've moved on from that. I'm in the infotainment business, but you know what?

Chris Gammell: That's right, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: I'm still there. Yeah. In spirit.

Chris Gammell: It's exciting. I mean, it's frustrating still, right? I mean, it's frustrating, that kind of stuff. Because, you know, especially, like, it's tough when you get, like, a last-minute suggestion, too, especially when it's really good, you know, and you have to, like, turn it down.

Speaker ?: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Or you've got to turn it down, or you've got to, you know, stretch your schedule or something. Man, that's tough all around. Speaking of trying things out, though. And we have a...

Dave Jones: What? There is... What are you going to segue to? Because that was a natural segue into the 3D thing. That was a total segue. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, there's a new trend in software, at least. And I don't know if this... My question is actually about hardware. But, so, Google recently came out with... They came out and they flat out said, those questions we ask people in interviews, like, the ones everybody hears about and fears.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Those are total crap. Yeah, those puzzle questions. Those, you know. Yeah. You're stranded on a desert island with a duck. Desert island. And a Sharpie marker and, you know, like, rubber band. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. And you've got, you know, you've got a bridge and you've got three people and they all weigh different and you've got to send them across and what's the most efficient algorithm to get them across and all that sort of jazz, you know. Oh, yeah. Oh, man. Oh, yeah. I've been... Have you ever actually had those questions?

Chris Gammell: No, I never have, no. I don't think I get interviewed by interesting enough companies that they felt they... You're right. Yeah. I always try and sneak in where there's, you know, they're like, oh, I think there might be a job here. And I'm like, oh, I'll do it. I try and get in there before they actually think. We should start asking tough questions. Right. Very sneaky. But, yeah, Google, so they're talking about now, like, basically, they say, you know, this article is, you know, it's a good article. They're talking about what they do instead now. And the author suggests to, surprise, surprise, look at a portfolio of past work, you know. And if you don't have past work, then...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I know, right? If you don't have past work, you don't get hired. So... So is this what they're actually doing now? Or is this just what somebody is speculating they're going to do? I think it's more of the speculation. I mean, like, you know, I think that it's tough to move that... When you have big entrenched processes, that's tough to do. But they've come to the point where they say, yeah, it's not really worthwhile. You know, they might use it as a weed-out mechanism. But... Right. But this person... So the author was actually mentioning, too, about doing... As a weed-out mechanism, you just ask general questions, right? Yeah, yeah. So a great general question for circuit-type jobs or electronics-type jobs, what's a voltage divider, right? Or give them a voltage divider question. It's like, man, that'll take out 30%, I'd guess, if not more. Especially for co-ops, you know?

Dave Jones: Yeah, that's what I've always said. Yeah. Ask the simple, embarrassingly simple questions, and you'd be surprised how many it weeds out.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's incredible. And it... Sometimes you get people that you probably shouldn't, but maybe they're a little too jumpy. Right. What are they really asking here? Oh, what are they...

Speaker ?: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Maybe I need to do a Fourier transform in order to...

Dave Jones: Yeah, I've had that. Well, I've had ones that go, that question's insulting, and I go, fine, that's a good answer. You know? And it's like... Yeah. And, well, yes, it is an insulting question, but I've had so many good resumes, like very impressive resumes. I come in, and I'll ask them that simple question anyway. I have a, you know, I used to have a list of, you know, very simple questions, simple op-amp circuit and stuff like that. Yeah. And, you know, or name three different types of analog to digital converters, you know? And really simple, dumbass questions. And, yeah, even the impressive resumes will just choke. I don't know. And it shows that they're just full of shit.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Every time. Catches them out. I've had that once before where it was really, really awkward for me because I was, you know, a young guy, just, you know, they threw me in an interview because someone else cancelled. And I was asking those simple questions because that was, you know, my realm of experience so far. Right. And it was, and I was talking to like a really experienced guy, right? And he just, he just flubbed it. And I was like, oh, shit. Yep. So. Well, you know, the interesting thing about this, about this, this, the author talking about this, though, is talking also about giving an example project, right? For like a week. So pay him as a contractor, which is a little dicey because you think, you know, like, then you have to basically ask them not to be working on another job at the time, but.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. It's.

Chris Gammell: It's, it's an interesting concept though. You know, it'd be interesting to extend that to. It is. Like.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, effectively all jobs have a trial period or every company I've ever worked at has a, you know, a three month, usually a three month trial period. If you don't work out in the three months, out you go. Kind of. I've never had that.

Chris Gammell: I mean, maybe it was there and they just didn't tell me. Maybe it's in the strange. Right. I just happened to squeak through. You know, I bet it's, I think it's like Ohio is, it's called work at will. So like they can get rid of me for any reason. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Okay. Whereas I think. And, and, and that's in the law, is it? And you can't, you can't go and sue them.

Chris Gammell: I could, but like there's, yeah, there's a whole bunch of dicey stuff there, but I know like in Australia, you guys have much stronger labor laws. So. Yeah. Yeah. That's probably why there's always that three month period. So you can, you have that eject button if you need it. You know, like that's, I've, I've heard of that in some industries as well, or some states as well.

Dave Jones: Well, it's actually not a law as well. It's actually, it isn't a law. It's just like a thing companies like, because if companies document that as their process, okay, we will review your performance after three months. And if it's not adequate, well, you know, out you go. And that sort of makes it kind of legal by the fact that you've put those procedures in place and that's the company policy you follow. I get you. So they can't claim that, oh, discrimination, they just didn't like me. Right, right. Yeah. He's an asshole. If you're a performance, you didn't perform, you're, you're out. Right. So, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I was going to say, did they call that the, uh, the Dave Jones rule? Like, ah, well, we need someone right now, but we want to be able to push them out the door. Yeah, right. But no more than that. Oh, goodness. Never again.

SPEAKER_00: Oh, boy.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. Ah, you think you'd never be able to go back? Me?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Would I be ever able to go back? Well, I've answered that before. Yeah. No, I'd, I'd probably have to leave all this shit off my resume.

Chris Gammell: Oh, this stuff. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Because if they take a look at my videos and they're like, who are these guys? Yeah. That's true. Yeah. You know, we're not hiring him. Jeez. Yeah. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it, it depends. Like, you know, there'll be some people, oh, Dave Jones from the EUV blog. Shit. We'll, we'll, we'll hire him. Yeah. Others will, you know, you're more anal, retentive, stuck up big companies. I'll just, you know. Yeah. Look at my, um, things I've done and go, no way.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's the nice thing. Because I tell people, you know, I tell people like, even talking about a portfolio, right? I mean, like some of that is good, but yeah, we should mention too, that, that sometimes maybe you wouldn't want that. If you're, if you're trying to work on like, maybe if you, if you really want to work on like high tech military stuff, sometimes that is dicey. I mean, you could show your past stuff. It was like open source projects and stuff like that, but yeah, you don't necessarily want to show everything or, you know, live your life completely open, you know, or as closed as the NSA will allow you to be. Wah, wah. Wah. Yeah. Anyways, you were going to segway into something.

Dave Jones: Well, I was, but we'll continue. Okay. We'll finish this off. It's always a tough choice what to, I mean, you shouldn't always put everything on your resume.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That's true.

Dave Jones: Like there's, there's, there's people who flat out, you know, if you stayed a job less than 12 months, well, you know, there's a, you know, there's a kind of rule of thumb that says, well, you probably shouldn't put that on your resume because it looks bad. You know, you're better off saying that, oh, I just went on a world trip for, you know, 12 months and, you know, rather than, you know, say that, oh yeah, I didn't like it and I just quit, you know. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Cause that's what it looks like to the company that's hiring you or you only stayed in nine

Chris Gammell: months, six months. Nah, I'd say no. Because if, if people are out there listening and are nodding their head to Dave, what I would say is you go in, maybe it's tough to get through like the early filters, but I'd say if you go into a job interview and they say, well, why are you only here for nine months? You lay out exactly what it is in as positive of terms as you can and what you would do to change it. Right. I didn't like this because of this. And here's what I would do instead. I didn't like this because, you know, like that's, that's a tough thing to do. But like, I don't know. I respect that when I see that.

Dave Jones: But there are, but there are companies who still will not like that because they want grunts, right? They want grunts who stay and follow the rules and live in fear of losing their job. Right.

Chris Gammell: I totally agree.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Some companies are like that. I mean, end of story. And they can be reasonable to work for. Right. It could be a good job, but hey, that's just the attitude of the, you know, of the company. You may not get through the door. Yeah. If that's the case. Yeah. You know, if they sniff that you're, you know, one of these people who just, you know, won't take any crap and will happily leave.

Chris Gammell: Right. If they don't like it. Well, you just got to decide if you want to work there or not, I guess. Yeah. That's usually what it comes down to.

Dave Jones: You know, it's, yeah. Welcome to the real world, you know. There's no hard and fast rules, really. That'll get you through. Yep. So, hmm. Anyway, we should, we've been dicking on for 25 minutes. We should segue back to our 3D printer thing, should we not?

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: I don't know. Because it's huge. Or can I do a side, yeah, we've got to talk about it. Come on, it's huge. I don't want to talk about it. Well, can I have a side segue here?

Chris Gammell: Segway after segway, huh?

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Is there a segue after segway about segways?

Dave Jones: Because that would be interesting.

Speaker ?: It would be.

Dave Jones: Unfortunately, no, it's about 3D printers. Because it was on the news the other night, right? You watched the news? One of those six, well, you know. Yeah. What they call news these days, right?

Speaker ?: Oh.

Dave Jones: Anyway, when I was a boy. I watched the Daily Show, yeah, yeah. Right, yeah, well, anyway. Anyway, it was one of these, you know, if you're in Australia, one of these 6.30 shows, A Current Affair or something like that. I don't know, whatever it was, blah, blah.

Chris Gammell: Nate Lane, kind of, yeah.

Dave Jones: Well, I don't know what's the equivalent in the US, but it's sort of like. Just trash stories, you know. Yeah. You know, like, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Welcome to 2020, I'm Baba Wawa. Like that.

Dave Jones: Kind of, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, anyway, they had a story on 3D printers, right? And how they're the next revolution, blah, blah, blah. And how everyone's going to have one in their home. And, oh, if you need a nut or something, you know, you lost a nut or, you know, something for your product, you can just print another one. Just magic, right? It's just going to happen like magic. And it's like, no, come on. This is ridiculous thinking. Anyone who thinks that they're going to be the next kitchen appliance is an idiot.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I agree.

Dave Jones: 3D printers will always remain a niche, a valuable niche tool.

Chris Gammell: I think for the new future.

Dave Jones: No, they will make it, I think, in a couple of years, they'll make the hottest Christmas present, right? But they'll be toys, right? They won't be in your kitchen and you'll be able to produce everything that you possibly want. Because it's just, you know, hundreds of technical reasons why that's not true. You know? Oh, I need it. Oh, I lost my shoe. I can make a new one on my 3D printer. You know? It's like... No, I get it. I know.

Chris Gammell: I know what you mean.

Dave Jones: I know what you mean. So, okay. Excellent. All right.

Chris Gammell: Anyway, it just bugs me. Those kind of stories. And... I know. It's... It's just looking at that stuff from like the... You know, from a consumer-facing side of things, right? It's every type of commodity. No, not commodity. But just, you know, any kind of technology like that where it gets, you know, commercial recognition. It's... There's bound to be misinformation and just lack of information. But... And just... I'm sure we're part of that.

SPEAKER_00: Let's be honest.

Dave Jones: Flat out flights of fancy, you know? Yeah. It's just... Well, yeah. It's...

Chris Gammell: Yes. Yes. We know we... I happen to have my own flights of... Like the chip printer. Yes. No, you said it. Yes.

Dave Jones: Come on. It's the same thing. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Goodness sake.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway, the reason for this, because, you know, as everyone knows, 3D printers, are the next industrial revolution. And because of that, MakerBot, if you haven't heard, if you've been living in a hole, just got bought out for $405 million.

Chris Gammell: Smackos.

Dave Jones: American dollars. What's that? Like $200 Australian dollars or something? No, sorry. Our currency's going pretty poor at the moment. Yeah. Compared to the greenback. It's okay. Anyway, yes, a company you probably haven't heard of, Stratasys. Apparently, they're big in 3D printers. Who knew? I did. There you go. Yeah. If you're into industrial 3D printers, you will have heard of them, of course. Yeah. But if you're into the hobbyist side of 3D printers, eh, you've probably never heard of them. Anyway, they're worth a couple of billion dollars on paper. And they bought in a stock swap, by the way. There was no cash, exchanged hands. Yeah. So it was merely just all paper and $405 million bucks, plus a couple of hundred million bucks in bonuses, I believe, if they stick around.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I think another $200 million.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Another $200 million.

Chris Gammell: It's, uh... I don't know, man.

Dave Jones: Come on, we need to talk about this. This is our... Do we? This is what we do on this program. Yes, this is what we do on this program. All right. Here's the things that... Okay, I'll start. Okay. You start. You start. No, no, no. No, you start. No. All right.

Chris Gammell: I think it's interesting, because we have a former founder on the show in the past. Zach Hokensmith was a former... We have. Was a founder of MakerBot and was no longer part of MakerBot. We didn't talk about it on the show as much, because... But yeah, he was part of it, and they separated ways. But... So that's interesting for me, because, you know, we know Zach, and, you know, we've talked about Bree and Adam, and the whole... And obviously, Jeremy Blum's been on the show. Jeremy designed the... Yeah, he works there. You reviewed the board. Actually, he just contracted there. You know, you reviewed the board, and he worked on the... Yep. That's right. The scanner that they're working on. So that stuff's interesting, because we know people, right? It's personal at that point. Yeah, yeah. It's interesting. It's hobbyist. It's close by, but... Honestly, you know what my number one thought about all this was? Please tell us. I can't wait for them to stop saying that MakerBot is the Apple computers of 3D printing. Like, I know that's super snarky, but... Like, that was the number one thought that came to my head. Like, I like MakerBot. I like what they're doing. I like that they're, you know, opening up technology, but I couldn't stand that comparison for some reason. Right. Right. It just didn't feel right. And now, it's like, nah, well, they sold. They're no longer the same. So, all right. Next. You know, like, that's just... It's just, okay, yeah. It is... It isn't good. It isn't bad. It just is to me. And it's just... I don't know. It's just...

Dave Jones: It is true, though. They are kind of the Apple of the low-cost 3D printer market.

Chris Gammell: No, they're not, though. That's the thing. They sold. They're gone. They are. They are effectively... Yeah, but no, they were. They have evaporated into the ether of larger corporate structure to me. I mean, like, yes, they're going to keep their brand. Yes, Brie will still be in charge. Like, that's good. I like that. I like Brie. I like everybody there. You know, like, it's interesting from a technology's perspective, right, of accessibility, but everything else, you know, like, eh. Right.

SPEAKER_00: Oh, goodness. What did you think?

Chris Gammell: Go ahead.

Dave Jones: Well, first of all, yes, congratulations to Brie and everyone else, because a lot of people have been dissing them, right? And it seems to be that there's, you know, a split in the community here. Those who sort of are trying to make money from the three, you know, from the open source hardware industry, you know, or they're trying to make a business, trying to make a name for themselves, they're all applauding, going, you know, yeah, congratulations, you know, because, hey, it could be them one day, right? Right, exactly. Hey, sure, right? But those who aren't trying to do that and are down in the bowels of the open source hardware movement, they're so passionate that everyone, everything in the world should be free and blah, blah, blah. Idealist, right? I mean, that's what it is. It's idealism. Idealist. That's kind of like the term I was after. And, yeah, they're all like, oh, this, you know, you know, maker bot's evil and, you know, and they've sold out and blah, blah, blah, whatever. It's like, well, you know, no, good luck. Congratulations to Brie and everyone involved. They made, they built this business. It was clear from when they started this maker bot startup that that's what they wanted to do. You know, they had the vision of maker bot being the next industrial, 3D printers being the next industrial revolution and all that sort of stuff, even though I don't really like that term so much. But they had the vision of it and they treated it as a serious business and they got venture capital funding and they took it right through to the end game of, you know, of almost cashing out. They haven't done it yet. But my advice to Brie, if he can sell his shares, do it at the end. Because this company is so overvalued that boredom. Anyway, we'll get into that. Oh, Stratasys, yeah. Stratasys is way over. Their price earnings ratio is off the scale. Full disclosure, I am a stockholder. Right. Well, there you go. Sell. Because they're only going to go down. Anyway. But yeah, good luck to them. They, you know, they did exactly what they set out to do. And well, fantastic.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, you're right. If you decouple the emotion about the open source hardware and closing it off to, you know, just from running a business. Yeah. They've done good stuff, right? Their marketing is great. Their, you know, their community outreach is great. All that stuff is really great. I mean, that's, you're right. And they deserve to get it. That is what they are rewarded for. In much the same way that, you know, community building is a lucrative business these days, right? Look at Instagram, Snapchat, all these. That's more software side. But on the same token, you know, like, community building is a big, big thing, right? And we should state, you know, Dave has a big community. I'm trying to build a community. Like, these are not small things. So, yeah, they're a big deal. That should be applauded.

Dave Jones: And that's one of the reasons why Stratasys bought MakerBot. Oh, yeah, totally. It's because of the brand and the community. In fact, that's probably the only reason, you know. No, I wouldn't say the only reason. Well, there's a couple of reasons. Let's go through them, right? MakerBot are, I think, currently the leaders in the low-cost 3D printer space, right? Yeah, depending where you define low-cost, but yeah, I agree. It depends on where you define it, right? But the fact is, in their whole four-year history, right, they've only sold 22,000 printers, right? It's chicken feed, right? And they don't make, I don't think they make big margins on these things. So, Stratasys buying them as a commercial, a viable commercial entity is just insane, right? They did not buy them because they're making money or will make, you know, or potentially make a huge amount of money, right? They didn't buy them for the financials. That's what I'm saying. No, I agree. A, right, and B, they didn't buy them for the technology, right? Because most of it is open, you know? I mean, sure, they've got the new, what's the new engine, the software? Oh, the slicer? The slicer engine, or whatever it's called. Sorry, I forget the term. Maker or something, yeah. Yeah, they've got some technology there. But really, they did nothing that, you know, it makes it worth $400 million in script, right? That's insane, you know? For one hundredth of that, they could have put some R&D and did the same thing, you know? It's just, so they didn't buy them for the technology.

Chris Gammell: Right, but the brand and everything. So, they didn't buy them for the software. All the softer stuff is very worth it to them, right? Like the brand.

Dave Jones: So, yeah, what did they buy them for? They bought them for the brand because they're the, you know, the Apple brand of the, you know, of the low cost. Stop it, man. Stop it. Sorry, sorry. But anyway, they have a very strong brand, right? They do. So, they bought it for that. They have a very strong community in the Thingiverse thing. That's another thing that they bought. Yeah, they have. And also, they have the, yeah?

Chris Gammell: Go on. I was going to say just strong penetration into, like, the artistic market. Just everywhere they want to go. Everywhere Stratus just wants to go. Yeah, totally. I mean, that is, you're right. Everything you said, I agree with. So.

Dave Jones: And they have the poster boy of the 3D printer market, Brie. Make no mistake, they were buying Brie as well. Yes. That's why I'm sure, I don't know the details, but I'm sure they've locked him up good and tight.

Chris Gammell: Oh, right.

Dave Jones: So that he's not selling his shares and just bailing to the Cayman Islands, right?

Chris Gammell: No.

Dave Jones: And I'm sure he wants to stay, too, right?

Chris Gammell: I mean, like, I'm sure that's. Of course he does. Of course he does.

Dave Jones: He's a passionate guy. Yeah, no, he's a passionate guy. And, yeah, he does see this as the next industrial revolution. And fantastic. Good on him. And he's probably kind of right. Depends on how you define the term. Anyway, so Stratasys are buying, essentially buying ownership of the low-cost 3D printer market. But they're paying a buttload of money for it. They are paying a buttload. Unbelievable. Yeah, you ran the numbers on this, right? Oh, it's, yeah, it's incredible.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And good luck. I mean, Brie sold out at the perfect time for, you know, assuming he can convert that into cash and everything else.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, right, right.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I mean, Stratasys, they'll never get money back on that, right? It's just foolish. That's why I think anyone who owns Stratasys shares will probably bail because they're oversubscribed. Now they've paid a buttload of money.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, there's a lot of goodwill packaged into that if you're into stocks, right? Goodwill being the value, the intangible value. But, yeah. Yeah. You know, I was talking to, I went to a dinner with a friend tonight, and we were talking about just hardware startups and just hardware in general, right? And what would it take to start, like, an industrial hardware company these days, right? Because even, you know, like I've talked about before, you know, I work with Nick Pinkston on the hardware startups Reddit. You know, we look out for stories, right? We try and foster community around it. And it's very interesting to me, but even still, like in California, it's a lot of more gadgety or consumer level, you know, like software wrapped in plastic type of stuff. And, you know, there's other stuff around, you know, like there's, you know, like that, what was that mill that just came out? I forget the name of it already. But, you know, it was like this little CNC mill. You know, there's tools and stuff like that that's out there. And obviously a lot of circuit boards, you see a lot of Arduino type stuff as well, you know, but an actual, like heavy machinery. How would you start a tractor company today? You know, just like.

Dave Jones: I don't know. Well, even if, well, it all comes down to production. Yeah. Right. Totally. Yeah. Just take a look at MakerBot, right? They just opened a 50,000 square foot facility, right? They went from 5,000 square feet to 50,000 square feet, right? How did they do, how did they afford to do that? Well, it was their venture capital investment, right? They really couldn't have, you know, gone on that sort of scale just by, you know, the small profit margin they're making. Oh, yeah. I'm not sure how big they are, but, you know, just that continual bootstrapping thing doesn't get you, you know, that order of magnitude gain in the production scale that you're after.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah. If you're trying for growth and VC money is the steroids, right? That is what allows you to grow faster and stronger in a shorter amount of time. Like, and yeah, you know, the example I pointed out was like Tesla, right? But even Tesla Motors, right? They had a confluence of factors that was totally crazy too, right? Like, Tesla is like this poster boy of success, but like Elon Musk poured his life savings into that from his PayPal and everything. And then they built on top of the skeleton of a failed, you know, auto industry in California, right? They built inside the GM factory. They, I mean, they refabbed and everything, but like, you know, just the infrastructure there is just insane. And so I think about like, God, building like industrial level hardware these days as a startup, like, you know, like we've obviously had Touchstone on the show, right? They're starting Fabless, but man, how do you even start these days? If you want to build tractors, right? If you want to take on John Deere, where the hell do you start?

Dave Jones: Well, didn't, um, uh, who did we have on? Um, was it, uh, one of the, uh, semiconductor, um...

Chris Gammell: Touchstone?

Dave Jones: No, no. Who else have we had on?

Chris Gammell: Um, we've had Cree. Gecko, the tiny gecko. Oh, yeah, that was another story we were supposed to talk about last week. We can talk about that this week too.

Dave Jones: Oh, can we? Oh, okay. They got bought.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, they got bought by, uh, uh... Yes. Of?

Dave Jones: Bought out or merged or something. Oh, I don't know. Yeah, I think they're merged.

Speaker ?: I don't know the details.

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Anyway, didn't they say at the time that, you know, it's impossible for anyone to get venture capital to start up a, you know, a fab-based semiconductor these days? It's literally impossible.

Chris Gammell: See, no, I think that was Touchstone talking about that, but Oivin also... Oh, well, so back up. Yeah, Touchstone guys were, um, yeah, they were talking about that, but Oivin also... I mean, it's all the same story, right? When you're starting, they all start fabless because, you know, that's effectively, even in the silicon level, right, you still have to, you know, even with venture capital, that only pays for your really expensive analog circuit designers, right? Or, you know, just your circuit designers and software and all the licenses and stuff, right? And then you have to bootstrap from that revenue to then go try and take it up a level. And then maybe after 20 years, you can go buy someone's, you know, dilapidated fab and redo it, right? And, you know, work in a six-inch fab, which in, you know, 20 years will probably be an eight or 12-inch fab, right? Right. Yeah, it's tough, man. Like, that kind of stuff, like, it's just, it's such slow growth. It's not what VCs want, you know? Like, even with the resurgence of, like, hardware startups, they don't want tractors. They want gadgets. They want, you know, they want little plastic, you know, very well-designed, right? You know, perfect brightness LED, like, gadgets, right? I get that.

Dave Jones: Yet there's probably a perfectly fantastic billion-dollar market for tractors. Of course, yeah. You know, but it's not sexy, right?

Chris Gammell: No, it's not sexy. And you know what? I can answer my own question. You know, where do you even start with that? And the answer is China. That is where you start. Because I actually have a friend that he started out working just straight up. He's American, but he moved over to China. He's fluent in Mandarin. And he just, he's a mechanical engineer. He just started going over there, and he was helping people just copy designs. And then they just moved up the value chain. And then they started designing their own, you know? And it's just like, they just got the cash flow going in this low-cost region. And then, you know, it's all that stuff that, like, Clay Christensen talks about with, like, you always start in the low end, and then you work your way up. And it's, but man, it's just, oh, it's frigging crazy. You know, like, all this startup stuff is just, because we're going to see more of this. This is not stopping people. I mean, like, this is only going to get worse. You know, like, this is, hardware is just getting its footing. It's just getting its footing. Like, we're going to see, like, so speaking of Zach, right? So Zach obviously was the one that worked with MakerBot, and now he does Hackcelerator. He posted today on Twitter, he said, you know, we got 15 applications for a light bulb you can turn off with your smartphone. I think we got enough, right? Yeah, exactly. And it's like, but, like, but the fact that they're getting 15 applications at Hackcelerator for turning off a light bulb with your smartphone, like, that's just a sign of things to come, right? I mean, like, hardware is just getting started in terms of, you know, software wrapped in plastic kind of hardware.

Dave Jones: And everyone sees everyone else succeeding, and they want to jump on the bandwagon.

Chris Gammell: Yep, and that is how a bubble starts.

Dave Jones: Yeah, right. And that's how it leads to Kickstarter, failed Kickstarter projects, because it's so easy to try and raise capital these days that, you know, for any idea, when you don't have a clue how to execute the idea.

Chris Gammell: Right, yeah. And, you know, and that comes back to community, too, right? Like, we've talked about, like, the success factors in Kickstarter before, right? There was an actual study on that. But one of the main factors is how many followers do you have on Facebook? That is, like, one of the most, like, tracking factors on Kickstarter is how big your audience is, right? It sounds shitty, right? Because, you know, as electronics designers, you know, you want to know that you're – it's the same thing as, like, oh, I don't like marketing, right? I just want to work on circuits. It's like, yeah, of course, I do, too. But there is always that reality fact that comes in. It's like, it's not what you design. You can't just put it out in the world. You also have to, you know, usher it out with floofy marketing speak and everything, you know? Like, there is something to that science, even if you don't want to touch it, right? Right. So, it's –

Dave Jones: And, of course, then you try and – if you don't have the reach yourself, you try and reach out to others who have the reach. Of course, right. I get it all the time. Can you review my Kickstarter? Can you mention – you know, can you do a video blog about my Kickstarter project? Yeah. That's tough. Right. And you want to help, right? I mean, it's not like bad people asking this. I mean, once in a while it's bad people. No, no, no, of course. But most of the time it's not.

Chris Gammell: But, yeah.

Dave Jones: Unfortunately – and we get the same thing on the amp hour. Oh, can you mention our, you know, our product, our project, our whatever? Yeah. Whatever. Yeah, well, you know. Yeah, we'll try because this is more of a format that's, you know, that allows that sort of thing. But my video blog, for example, is not sort of the format that allows. That does that sort of thing. So, yeah, you know, I just have to turn them down and I feel sad, you know, and I feel bad about it because I want to help people that are enthusiastic and are starting, you know, a company or starting. Or they've got their idea and they want to get off the ground and, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Right. And it's like you don't want to tell someone to, like, spend all their time on Twitter or, you know, like, you know, just fritter it away. Like, honestly, like, honestly, I don't wish what I do on anyone. No, because we just fritter our way out loud. Yeah, we do, right? I mean, like, you know, I talk about that. Like, I wouldn't say we fritter it away, but, you know, it just is a time sink, you know, like that you have to be disciplined and neither of us are, right? No, no, no. That's why. Yeah. And so you have to strike that perfect balance of, you know, doing interesting things and then also trying to show it to the world, right? And that's just a reality these days and you can't have too much of one or the other. So it's a tough road to hoe, you know?

Dave Jones: Hmm. Maybe we can invent something that helps us become more disciplined. Crack. But then we won't be able to finish that idea because we're not disciplined enough.

Chris Gammell: Ah. Recursive. Recursive terribleness.

Dave Jones: I'm amazed. Speaking of crack. Ugh.

SPEAKER_00: I got a story family.

Dave Jones: Segway of the year.

SPEAKER_00: T-shirt time, folks.

Dave Jones: I have lost count of the number of comments I get, usually on YouTube. Not saying anything there, but usually on YouTube about how I'm on crack. I must be on crack or meth. It's crack or meth. Okay. Or is that the same thing? I don't know my drugs. I don't know. No, they're not the same thing. Right, no. Right. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Anyway. Watch Breaking Bad. Come on, man. What? Breaking Bad is this awesome show, but never mind. No. Right. I'll tell you about it after the show.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Anyway, I lost track of the number of people that leave that comment. Are you a meth, dude? You want crack? You must be. Because you're high energy. You're high on life, man. Yeah, I'm high energy. I'm enthusiastic. You know? And also your voice. I mean, we know this. We know this about your voice. Yeah, of course.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Yeah. Yeah. You know, coffee is effectively legalized crack, right? I mean, like, it's actually the same plant family as the coca leaf. Oh, is it?

SPEAKER_00: Oh, right. No, there you go.

Chris Gammell: See, I don't know because I'm not a coffee drinker, right? Yeah. I was thinking about coffee. So I drink a lot of coffee, right? But, you know, the physiology, as far as I understand it, is that, you know, basically coffee blocks certain receptors and it makes your brain go into overdrive and start secreting adrenaline. But I was on a deadline today and I was just like, I didn't need coffee at all, you know? Like, it's the same thing we've talked about in the past about, like, when you're down to the wire, you know? And at the same time, I've also noticed I'm getting gray hairs. Like, the stress isn't always good, but, like, you know, there's a healthy amount of stress in a project, right? You know, like, I'm nearing a deadline. I'm really not feeling confident. Like, I don't like this feeling, right? I know the feeling. I recognize it, but I don't like it. But at the same time, it's like, oh, this is kind of useful, you know? I'm doing some good work right now, you know?

SPEAKER_00: Right.

Chris Gammell: It's terrible, you know? And I think a good manager kind of toes that line, too, of, like, you know, trying to encourage you, but also strike just this tiny little bit of fear in your heart, right? And maybe you brews the coffee a little stronger in the morning when you need something done, you know? Right. Yeah. Oh, boy. No. Never needed it. I know. It's weird, too. So you don't drink coffee, you don't drink beer, right? There was an article about that where, you know, they were talking about the – that actually might have been where I was reading the physiology of it, but they were saying that, you know, when you're really hyped up on adrenaline or coffee in that case, right, your creativity actually drops, right? Because you're so focused on – I've heard that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So they said drink beer, beer for creativity, and coffee to get stuff done, right?

SPEAKER_00: Right.

Chris Gammell: Your mileage may vary, but it seems to fit my lifestyle, so I'll go with it. Right.

SPEAKER_00: Oh, boy. Yep.

Dave Jones: Yeah. No, sorry. I just do not understand. That's okay. I do not understand at all. That's all right, man. You're doing it right. Excellent.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Sugar, if I can understand.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: Sugar. All right. Delicious. Mmm. Sugar. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Speaking of sugar, there's a pacemaker for your digestive system. The Spectrum just came out with this article recently. But basically, you know, like this is a new trend as well, like putting electronics into the body, right? I mean, we talk about software wrapped in plastic, and that is interesting, but I think software wrapped in – or hardware wrapped in cells is way more interesting because, A, it's way harder to do, right? You think about the – I think about it like in terms of PCBs, right? So, 20 years ago, it was really hard to get a PCB made. These days, there's services like Oshpark and, you know, Seed Studio and everybody else, right? And it's just – it's becoming commoditized, right? But I think these days, the new PCB is one, silicon, right? Or two is cells and just biological agents, right? Because –

Dave Jones: Biological – that is – yeah. That is the next electronics revolution, I think. Yeah. Is bioelectronics, whatever you want to call it.

Chris Gammell: Right. And I'm just – I'm done for, you know? But there's – I have no chance, you know? So, I'll tell people about it on the amp hour, of course. But if you want help on actually getting stuff done, man, it's insane. Like the microfluidics, I think we've talked about in the past. And that's actually on silicon where, you know, it separates – it separates stuff into different channels and everything. And then it does detection. And that – Fantastic. We have a chance with that, right? Because eventually they're going to bring – you know, you'll pay 20 bucks for a biological sensor, but then eventually it'll come out to a spy bus. And I can handle spy, right? Right. But if someone asks me to go make like a, you know, a DNA transistor or something like that, it's like, all right, well, I'll see you later. I'll be over here getting creative with my beer.

Dave Jones: Wonder how much capital it takes to do a medical startup like that.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: No, and work on stuff like that.

Chris Gammell: Well, yeah, you think about the testing cycle. I mean, like, so testing right now – I mean, testing is just expensive on its own because you have to give it to someone and then there's the whole, you know, test, fix, repeat kind of cycle, right? But, you know, in the biological sector, it's like before you even get to the test step, you have to get through like certification and then you test on animals. And then you certify again and then you test on humans, right? It's just like – it's crazy.

Dave Jones: I'm just talking about the pure R&D side, let alone the, you know, the compliance and actually getting it to market. Like I see like at auction, you know, you see all these, you know, the medical companies gone under or something, R&D company and all these whiz-bang, you know, analysis machines, you know, that must cost, you know, $500,000 a pop or something. And they sell them for like $20, you know, because like they're so specialized. Nobody, you know, needs them. And I don't know. Does anyone out there work in the biomedical R&D industry? It would be fascinating. Maybe we should try and get someone on the show. We should. We should. We have biomedical, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. We had people respond to this in the survey when we did that. Oh, okay. We asked about consumer electronics and then we let people see what they worked in, if not that. And we did have some biological responses. So, yeah, it's crazy.

Dave Jones: A bit of that goes on here in Australia and in Sydney, we develop, you know, an artificial heart and, you know, artificial eyes and all sorts of whiz-bang medical stuff here.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Cleveland too. I mean, Cleveland Clinic is actually a worldwide brand. People have Cleveland Clinic in different – there's a Cleveland Clinic in Dubai, actually.

SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, but it just sort of sounds dodgy, Cleveland Clinic. I don't know why. It just sort of –

Chris Gammell: No, they are dodgy. All right. If you've ever gotten a bill from them, you would agree. I've gotten many. Right. They're huge. They're absolutely huge. Right. But, yeah, there's a lot of actually medical researchers there too. And that's the thing. I mean, that's the downside, right? There's less – you know, from a research perspective, right, you're often tied to a hospital or, you know, a college, right? And even colleges are often tied to the hospitals that are, you know, like research hospitals. You know, you just – you need to be part of that mothership in order to get through all the paperwork and having the lawyers around and everything. So, yeah, it's a tough industry. But, yeah, if you do it right, I mean, obviously, biomed's already been through one bubble and I'm sure it'll be through another. But that has that bonus of – it has two sides, right? The upside is that, you know, you get to say at the end of the day, like if you – like this IEEE article is about actually, you know, monitoring people's gastrointestinal system so you can help diagnose Crohn's and, you know, help fix that kind of thing, right? But on the downside, you know, if you're looking for empirical data, right, there's limited amounts and then you say, how do you feel? And you're back to the brightness of the LEDs thing, right? It's like – so one person says they feel terrible and another person says, yeah, that's nothing, you know? Like, you know, you go ask a – Oh, goodness. You go ask a three-time mother, you know, like, you know, how does getting your foot stomped on feel and she starts talking about the pain of childbirth and you're just like, I don't want to know. You know, like I'm sure that – yeah, I'm a wimp. Oh, dear, I do. Another reason I can never work in the biology industry is just I'm such a wimp for that stuff, so.

Dave Jones: If I was looking for somewhere to invest, I'd be investing in the biomedical industry, I think. It's tough, though, you know? Like, there's a lot of – Oh, yeah, no, you can – yeah, you can lose your money just as quickly as you can make it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, there's a lot of speculation, at least in the States, right? Because, like you said, with the commercialization side of things, right? So I had a friend that worked in that around here. So if people don't know how it works around here, it's like even with lines of code, the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, has to approve every revision. And you have to have huge amounts of documentation. And so what you end up getting is, like, this technology that's very, very behind the ties because it's very stringent around here. So people end up going to, you know, develop stuff in China or something, then they try and get in later. Or I'm not sure how it is in Australia, but it's very, very stringent. Oh, yeah, same here. And so the same thing goes with, like, biomedical companies that people speculate on the idea that, oh, well, this company says they're about to get approval from the FDA. And if they do, then it's, you know, MakerBot-style payday. And if not, then it goes to zero, right? That's right. So it's real speculation versus, you know, stock fundamentals and stuff. Yeah, that's the downside.

Dave Jones: But you can invest in the industry. Yes. You know, you can invest in the industry index or something like that, I think. Yeah. No, that's true. That's true. Overall, you can average out the noise there of, you know, noise, you know, when, you know, $100 million companies, you know, fail and succeed. That's just noise in their financial system, you know. Yeah. It just averages out.

SPEAKER_00: Yep. Scary.

Chris Gammell: Oh, man. Very scary. You can't think of noise if you're afraid of it. We've talked about this once before, but Scott Harris posted this and it's too good not to talk about. If you're afraid of noise, especially electromagnetic noise of any type, you can move to a cell-thrown free town. And shonky town of the week, Dave. Where is this?

Dave Jones: This is in our list somewhere?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's at the, you have to hit new, but. All right. You know, people, we've talked about this before, people think that they're electromagnetically sensitive. And, yeah, so West Virginia, the sanest of all the states, of course. Slash circus. So, they have cell-thrown free towns and everything where you can be safe from the dangers of electromagnetic radiation. As someone about to strap a, you know, an electromagnetic device to my face a couple hours a day. Right. I hope they're not right, but. It's tough, right? I mean, like.

Dave Jones: Hang on. Hang on. Hang on. These. It's something. Something I can feel in my ears from these headphones. Shit.

Speaker ?: Whoa. No.

Chris Gammell: You safe? Sorry. Are you okay? I don't know. I don't think I can use headphones anymore. Did you have an incident? Is that.

Dave Jones: The electro, yeah, I think I had a panic attack.

Chris Gammell: Oh, my God. It's an electromagnetic. All these electromagnetic. It's somewhere between 2,000 and 20,000 hertz.

Dave Jones: I better move to this town where I feel better.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. You will experience no.

Dave Jones: You wonder what the thing is. What's that? It's real, right? If you move to this town, you will feel better.

Chris Gammell: That's right.

Dave Jones: It's just like when you pay $20,000 for a speaker cable, you will hear the difference.

Chris Gammell: That's right. Because your brain wants you to.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's real. It's a surreal psychosomatic effect.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, it's the basis of all shonky products of the week, effectively. Right. In towns now, right? Right. Oh, man. It's... I feel bad laughing at people like this, but then, you know, it passes and then I laugh at them. You know, like, it's tough because, like... You know, there's always that nagging feeling like, oh, what if I'm wrong? But whatever. I put my... I've based my entire life around this stuff and it's not like... Not like they're actually getting away from electromagnetic radiation in any...

SPEAKER_00: No, no. It's still there. In any case, right?

Chris Gammell: I mean, like, background radiation is... Yeah, that's right. Oh, God. Tinfoil hats.

Dave Jones: The funny thing is, right? The funny thing is, I see... Like, they put a photo here, right? Of this town. And I see, like, a shed, right? They've got, like, a shack with a huge, big solar array next to it. Yeah. And, well, as someone who's just installed a solar system, those inverters... Yeah, it's kick off. Tons of stuff. They pump out some shit.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

Speaker ?: Right?

Dave Jones: You've got to have an inverter in there to charge the battery system.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly. Which I assume they're using. It's like... Yeah. But, you know, it's solar. It's, you know, it's natural. It's all good, you know? Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, going from DC to AC and AC to DC, man, that... Any kind of switching stuff, it always... You know, it's just not efficient, right? You think about efficiency, right? And when you get an efficient process, an efficient conversion of power, like, you trade off noise, right? You can... You know, if you look at, like, a sinusoidal converter, right, where you're actually, you know, putting transistors in the linear region and actually driving a sinusoid through a transformer, you are burning tons of power. Right? That is just... It's just how it goes, right? So, you trade off... You're either, you know, push-pulling, you know, and slamming your transistors around and getting tons of harmonics... Right. Like your inverter probably is. Or you go nice and smooth and you get about 20% efficiency, right? You know, like, it's just...

Dave Jones: And you use your Class A amplifier instead of your Class... Yeah, right. You know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. So, what we need to do is to try and get a electromagnetic sensitive green, like, super tree hugger, you know, people who don't understand the concepts of efficiency, right? Try and get them in the same community and just watch them implode, right? Not understand engineering trade-offs. Hatfields and McCoy style, right? They'd be, turn down your switch of noise!

SPEAKER_00: Make your stuff more green! Oh, boy.

Dave Jones: And, of course, if you get any of these freaks in a true double-blind A-B experiment, just like the audio fools, you know... Yeah. Yeah, their claims just fall away.

Chris Gammell: Right. Right. Completely. Yeah. Anyway.

Dave Jones: Enough of that rubbish.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's funny, isn't it? What's this crap about unemployment rate for electrical engineers soars?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, this was a... This seems kind of like numbersmithing. So, remember, so early in the show we were talking about, you know, when you go and you talk to someone and they give you good feedback or what seems like worthwhile feedback, you have to ask their motivation as well. I think that might be the case here, too, but it still is an interesting headline. So, basically...

Dave Jones: And how do you define electrical engineering? Well, yeah. I mean, does that include, you know, people who operate, you know, steam trains, you know?

Chris Gammell: Oh, right, yeah. Yeah, yeah. There is that, where, you know, how you bend your data and everything. But I was saying more so, like... So, they go through the whole study and they say, yes, it's down, you know, 8% or 6% or... Sorry. Unemployment for electrical engineers is up to 6%, which is closer to the average nationally, at least in the States, versus...

Dave Jones: So, the headline is...

Chris Gammell: Uh, what it should be or what it actually is?

Dave Jones: Well, like, yeah, like, what's the point of, is that, why is that news?

Chris Gammell: Because if you look at it as a step change, right? If you're going from 3% unemployment to 6% unemployment... Right, to 6%, right. You've doubled it. Right, yeah, yeah. It could be just a normalization. It could be, you know, fewer people are counting themselves as electrical engineers because, you know, a lot of electrical engineers end up in firmware, right? Like, if you go survey firmware engineers, like, it's shocking how many of them were formerly hardware engineers.

Dave Jones: And how do they get this data? Do you... When you fill out your tax return, do you have to choose your specific, you know, I'm an electronics engineer? No, I just... Do you have to actually pick a category?

Chris Gammell: I just pick engineer. That's all the... Oh, right, okay. That's the granulary they have.

Dave Jones: Ours are very specific here. We have, you know, electronics engineer, electronics technician, blah, blah, blah. Oh, okay. There's a whole... There's a whole slew of them. Well, that's interesting.

Chris Gammell: No, I think this is a self-reported kind of thing.

Dave Jones: Right.

Chris Gammell: And maybe there's stuff with, like, unemployment numbers. Like, if you actually do lose your job or you apply for unemployment, you know, there's that kind of stuff. Oh, okay. The important thing to note is the people doing the survey, too, is, you know, they're talking about not allowing H-1B visas, which is a very touchy subject in the States, right? H-1B visas being allowing people with... Skilled workers. Yeah, skilled workers in, right. Yeah, who could be hired at lower wages. And so, like, it's always confounded by that kind of stuff. But I don't know. It seems like anecdotally, I mean, at least from my experience, you know, there's still jobs out there, but they're very specific. You know, that's... Mm. You know, I think this is still happening, but it seems like, you know, as a holdover from the recession, you know, there's just... Employers just sit on these job wrecks where they're like, well, we want 10 years of analog circuit design, and also we want you to be an expert Java programmer. It's like, what? Why? What the hell do those have to do with each other? But, you know, their last guy was like that, and someone wrote a job wreck like that, so... And that's why I don't apply to jobs online, Dave.

SPEAKER_00: Right.

Chris Gammell: And that's why no one should apply.

Dave Jones: Try to see you sneak in the back door, you bastard.

Chris Gammell: Sneak in the back. Dude, it is the way to do it, man. Totally. If you are a young engineer and you're looking for a job, do not apply online. You have to network. It sucks. It sucks, it sucks, it sucks. But, you know, it's going to be the place you least expect it. You have to talk to other humans, and engineers aren't social creatures, you know. Right, but on the plus side, there's usually beer involved. So, like, I got my current job, I got while talking over a beer with a distributor engineer, right? So, he was an FAE for a distributor, and he's like, yeah, I heard about this job. And I'm like, all right, cool, hook me up. And, you know, I went and interviewed. That is how so many jobs get passed around, you know? And you just have to get in that first door, and then you have to, you know, hear about stuff. And then you can go, you know, move around a little bit. But, man, it is tough to get that first one. So, it's tough saying that from the outside, too, right? It's like, because my experience is never the same as anyone else's experience. You know, like, I could tell.

Dave Jones: I hope everyone's is different.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, I could give people advice all day, but it's like, you know, if I say go get a co-op, and there's no co-ops anywhere for, you know, your specialty. Right. Okay, now what? You know, so it's like, you just got to try a lot of things and keep your eyes out, make a portfolio, like all the things you read about, you know?

Dave Jones: And take any job you can get when you're a noob. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Take any job you can get. You know, maybe work for free if you want to. You know, there's always Kickstarter projects. Honestly, there's, you know, you got to balance it, right? You don't want to be taken advantage of, but like, there are Kickstarter projects that are looking for that kind of thing. Or even better, start your own project or work on an open source project. Of course. There are opportunities. But yeah, it's, you know, it's crazy. So my friend, so, you know, the other side of this electrical engineering unemployment being up, software is lower than ever, right? It's less than 2%, which is effectively. Oh, really? Yeah, which means there is no unemployment effectively because they just can't reliably get numbers for that then. So I had a friend.

Dave Jones: Or everyone who counted themselves a software programmer no longer calls themselves a software programmer as long since left the industry and well, you know. Yeah, yeah, something like that. Because there was that glut during the dot-com boom, right? Whereas if you had the, you know, the Cisco networking certification, right, you'd be getting $150,000 a year or something, you know? And now, geez, you know, it's worthless, right? And you can't even, you know, you can't even get a job flipping burgers.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. And so I had a friend, though. So he was a hardware guy. And he went to something called Hacker School, which was in New York. And it's this crazy model. And maybe it'll work for hardware at some point. But I don't know. But actually, so Hacker School, it's like a, how long is it? I think it's a three-month program. You go work there on a project for like three months. And it's really interesting. You know, you work on a project and it can be a lot of anything you want to, really. But they have mentors and office hours and all that other stuff. And basically, the school, the Hacker School makes its money from recruitment fees because those are so exorbitant for software companies.

SPEAKER_00: Ah. Ah.

Chris Gammell: And then, you know, they are providing the service. And then now they're, and like their placement rates are just ridiculous because it's software. Right. So I could see a future where, you know, if hardware startups continue to grow, that same kind of thing could happen for hardware. You know, like that. And, you know, it's like, I guess Accelerator is similar to that kind of thing. Right. They're, they do the same. They don't, and Bolt is another one. You know, they do it more from the investment side. They get a part of your company. But, you know, as soon as those companies start hiring people. I'm sure that a similar program will start to pop up. So.

SPEAKER_00: Hmm.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Interesting. It's tough because hardware doesn't have as much, I don't know. It seems like, it seems like hardware is more of a one-man gig these days. I mean, it's just fewer and fewer. You know, you can do so much on your own these days versus what you used to be able to do.

SPEAKER_00: Well, ah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I guess. Like, you need different disciplines. You've always been out. Yeah, you've always been able to do it yourself if you really wanted to.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But, I mean, okay.

Chris Gammell: So, here's my perfect team, right? I guess here's the team that I would build today. If I was going to build a new product, I would have, depending on what's on the board, right? I would have a hardware, just a generic hardware engineer who's doing, like, layouts and stuff. I'd have an FPGA engineer or digital who could also, you know, work with micros and then FPGAs and digital logic. And then firmware engineer, right? Just single firmware engineer for constructing architecture. And then, like, four software engineers. That's, like, the disparity, right? And it's, like, maybe it's just because they're lumped into one group. But, like, that's honestly... Come on.

Dave Jones: It depends on the product.

Chris Gammell: Like, that is the dream team I've seen configured over and over and over again, right? I mean, like, that's just... Maybe that's just a bare-bones team, but it seems like... And you can combine one or two here and there. But in terms of, like, number of hardware people in a discipline versus software people, right? It's just a... That just seems like what it is to me. And you're right. Maybe I'm wrong.

Dave Jones: In a lot of stuff, yes, it is.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Totally agree. I've seen that. And it just seems like, whereas, you know, 20 years ago where you had... You know, complex analog control loops and stuff, you'd have five analog engineers, right? And then you'd have, you know, you'd have five digital engineers because you're trying to deal with, you know, actual point-to-point wiring.

Dave Jones: Yeah, because we have the internet these days and user interfaces are totally different. Yeah. And user expectations are totally different. And the whole stupid internet of things thing. And you want to hook the thing up to the internet just because you can. Yeah. You know, I... Yeah. The user expectations are higher.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah, it is. Whereas back in the old day, it was okay to have just a seven-segment LED display showing a number. Right. You know, now it's got to hook up to the internet and show a freaking graph and stream it real time to the bloody web.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: You know?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Grown. So anyways, what I was trying to get to with that is it seems like you can... What the hell was I trying to say with that? I mean, just that hardware teams are smaller, right? I mean, you can do more with fewer people, right? Because higher integration in chips, like from an analog standpoint, you know, there's just... Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah. You can do more with analog because they integrate more into a single on-chip solution. Same thing with, you know, these SOCs.

Dave Jones: And again, you can do more in software these days with all the high-level stuff. That's true. Yeah. You know, everything's done for you. You can, you know, you can straight... Like one person can do everything these days.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

Dave Jones: If they want. Yeah. Just like in old days, you know? Because, yes, you don't have to know all the, you know, nuts and bolts of programming for the web. Well, you can just get some module or system that already does that and plug it in.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah. You know, it's... Yeah. Yeah, whatever.

Dave Jones: Yeah, arms just flapping around, whatever.

Chris Gammell: Okay, one last thing I want to talk about before the end of the show, which was interesting.

Speaker ?: Make it quick.

Chris Gammell: Way over. No, we're not. We're fine. People are getting sick of our voice. Heathkit. Did you see this thing? They're back again.

SPEAKER_00: Oh, not Heathkit again.

Chris Gammell: They're back again, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: For the 10th time?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, they're like Super Squirrel now, too, right? They're like, oh, we're back, but we won't say who we are. Right. And we won't say what we're doing. But if you like stuff, shoot us an email. It's like someone bought everything on the auction block and then said, yeah, we should ask if they like this stuff still. I don't know. I just...

Dave Jones: Wasn't it like one person who actually bought up the dregs or something?

Chris Gammell: At one point, yeah, but I think it's been sold again.

Dave Jones: Ah, right. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, and then they tried to say, oh, well, who owns Heathkit? Well, Heathcompany owns it. And then they stopped saying it. And my question was, well, who the hell owns Heathcompany? You know? It's like, of course someone just bought the Heathcompany and they're just hiding behind that. It's like...

SPEAKER_00: I love their questions and answers. Like, is Heathkit back? Yes. Yes. We're back.

Dave Jones: So, are you really going to make Heathkit kits? Yes. Wow. That simple? Yes. Yes. Will Heathkit products include entirely new designs? Yes. Will you revive my old kit design? Very likely. Tell us what you want. Take our survey. I know.

Chris Gammell: It's like, you know, I always trust people on the internet too. It's like... I don't know. It's like... It's like this is like straight out of GeoCities, you know? It's like...

SPEAKER_00: Next thing we're going to see a Kickstarter. Oh, yeah. It's got... Oh, for sure. It's begging for it.

Chris Gammell: Yes.

SPEAKER_00: It's begging for it.

Chris Gammell: It was just, you know, it's too good to pass up, so... Heathkit is apparently back, but I'm going to call this one a little early, Dave. I'm going to say probably none.

Dave Jones: Well, if they don't hurry up, everyone who remembers them will be dead. I know. I know. It won't matter.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Oh, so this is another thing. So, this is something I talked to Jerry about a long time ago, actually. And actually, so I met up with Todd Bailey last night as well, and we were hanging out and talking. And he always goes at Analog Aficionados dinner, and a couple of our listeners go out there. And so him and I were talking, though, and he said... He is very interested in just talking to old-timers with, you know, like good stories. Not like old, old-timers. It doesn't matter. I don't mean to just use old as a derogatory term, but I just mean like people with a lot of experience in the industry because, you know, if they start retiring and we lose these stories, that sucks, right? And so I made him an offer, and I extend it here as well. I will send someone a H1 recorder, the same one that me and Dave have. I will send you an H1 recorder if you will promise us a couple interviews. If, like, you know a couple old-timers that have some good stories and you want to just go interview them, I will offer that. And then we will air, you know, we can set up a separate stream on the Amp Hour or we can just link people to it. But that is a public service that I am more than willing to fund because I think that is so cool, just like hearing stories. And so if people are interested in that kind of thing, shoot us an email. Shoot theamphour at gmail.com an email or Chris or Dave at theamphour.com an email. And let us know because that's a public service, basically. And so Todd was talking about doing it. We're going to have Todd on the show in the future. But, you know, if you're interested in that kind of thing and you're motivated, let us know. We'll set up a program of that kind of thing because there's something called StoryCorps, which is in the States. I'm not sure. I don't think it's overseas. But basically, it's just a booth in like Grand Central Station in New York.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. And you can, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: You just go in there with like family members. Just rock up and, yep. Yeah, yeah. People go in with family members and then it actually gets archives in the Library of Congress in the States, right? Which is awesome. Like all this oral history, just really cool stuff. And then, you know, the National Public Radio plays it and there's all these tearful stories and I'm driving to work crying my eyes out, you know. Right. It's just like, oh. We don't want the tearful stories, but the awesome stories, you know. Like there's just so much awesome stuff out there. So if people are interested, give me a shout. We'll set something up. So I think that could be really cool. Just as a, you know, oral history of the electronics industry. Yep. So that's all I got. How about you?

Dave Jones: That's all I got. I've got to get out of here.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, you've got to go tear some stuff down, huh?

Dave Jones: Yeah, I do. All right. It's late on a Tuesday. Yeah. And I'll just bum around for the next couple hours before I go, holy shit, it's four.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, we'll see your tweet in about four hours. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's it. It's Tuesday.

Dave Jones: I haven't done that, have I?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, you did that last week. And every week before that, yeah. Yeah, yeah. All right, cool. Well, yeah, have people, if you guys are interested, send us an email. And don't forget to submit stories to Reddit. And give us reviews on iTunes if you like us. Great.

Chris Gammell: See you next week.

Dave Jones: Sounds good. Bye.

Chris Gammell: the amp hour keep current I was thinking we should do that as an outro I was listening to these audio ads and it was weird they were doing the ad so it would be like check out all your favorite electronics podcasts at theamphour.com theamphour, keep current that would be the ad where they repeated at the end I was thinking to myself would we do that?