Code with Jason
Code with Jason
290 - Dead Man's Snitch with Chris Gaffney
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In this episode I talk with Chris Gaffney about Dead Man's Snitch, a cron job monitoring service he's run full-time for six years after Collective Idea acquired it at a very early stage. We discuss the five-year path to profitability, SaaS being harder today, and dopaminergic personalities in tech.
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A Newsletter You Can Hold
SPEAKER_01Hey, it's Jason, host of the Code with Jason podcast. You're a developer. You like to listen to podcasts. You're listening to one right now. Maybe you like to read blogs and subscribe to email newsletters and stuff like that. Keep in touch. Um email newsletters are a really nice way to keep on top of what's going on in the programming world. Um, except they're actually not. I don't know about you, but the last thing that I want to do after a long day of staring at the screen is sit there and stare at the screen some more. That's why I started a different kind of newsletter. It's a snail mail programming newsletter. That's right. I send an actual envelope in the mail containing a paper newsletter that you can hold in your hands. You can read it on your living room couch, at your kitchen table, in your bed, or in someone else's bed. And when they say, What are you doing in my bed? You can say, I'm reading Jason's newsletter. What does it look like? You might wonder what you might find in this snail mail programming newsletter. You can read about all kinds of programming topics like object-oriented programming, testing, DevOps, AI. Most of it's pretty technology agnostic. Um you can also read about other non-programming topics like philosophy, evolutionary theory, business, marketing, economics, psychology, music, cooking, history, geology, language, culture, robotics, and farming. The name of the newsletter is Nonsense Monthly. Here's what some of my readers are saying about it. Helmut Kobler from Los Angeles says Thanks much for sending the newsletter. I got it about a week ago and read it on my sofa. It was a totally different experience than reading it on my computer or iPad. It felt more relaxed, more meaningful, something special and out of the ordinary. I'm sure that's what you were going for. So just wanted to let you know that you succeeded. Looking forward to more. Drew Bragg from Philadelphia says Nonsense Monthly is the only newsletter I deliberately set aside time to read. I read a lot of great newsletters, but there's just something about receiving a piece of mail, physically opening it, and sitting down to read it on paper that is just so awesome. Feels like a lost luxury. Chris Sonnier from Dickinson, Texas says I just finished reading my first nonsense monthly snail mail newsletter and truly enjoyed it. Something about holding a physical piece of paper that just feels good. Thank you for this. Can't wait for the next one. Dear listener, if you would like to get letters in the mail from yours truly every month, you can go sign up at nonsensemonthly.com. That's nonsensemonthly.com. I'll say it one more time. Nonsense Monthly dot com. And now without further ado, here is today's episode. Hey, today I'm here with Chris Gaffney. Chris, welcome. Hi, how you doing? Good. Um, so you and I have known each other for a long time, although we we only like uh run into each other once in a while. Uh, but we're both in West Michigan. You're in like uh Holland area, is that right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we're in Holland, which is like right on Lake Michigan, about half hour outside of Grand Rapids.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I'm in uh Sand Lake, which is about 30 minutes north of Grand Rapids. Um anyway, we we first met maybe, I don't know, 10 or 15 years ago or something like that.
SPEAKER_00It's been a minute, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, um, but I know you from well, one of the things I know you for is something called Deadman Snitch. Tell me about that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, uh so Deadman Snitch is we're kind of a niche monitoring service specifically around cron jobs, um, service heartbeats, um alerting pipelines, that kind of thing. The the general gist is like you tell us when things occur, and we tell you when they stop. So um been yeah, Deadmassage has been around since 2012, and I've been full-time on it for man, like six or seven years now. It's it's tough because there's been kids around there, so it's like uh time is both expanded and compressed at the same time.
SPEAKER_01Yep. Um and and do people tend to understand the reference of the name, like the play on words that Dead Man Snitches, or no?
SPEAKER_00Customers, I I think so. I don't really have a lot of those conversations, but um, I will say every now and then we get uh individuals who aren't necessarily reading about what it is, who like contact us thinking that we're uh a service for finding who are snitches. Uh I've had some very interesting conversations with with folks who are very, very confused.
SPEAKER_01Wait, like what do they what do they think it is you do?
SPEAKER_00Uh there was um they think that we help track down who's a snitch. And then um I I had a I had somebody message me one day and they're just like going on this rant about how uh uh they didn't tell anybody about the drugs and and they're and they want to know if this person is snitching like I can't help you. Um I don't know if I should actually like be taking this conversation and you know forwarding off to like authorities of some sort, but I'm just gonna ignore that this this ever happened. Um but yeah, it it doesn't happen often, but maybe about once or twice a year we get somebody who's who's real confused.
SPEAKER_01Really confused. That's funny. Um, but the plan words is dead man switch, right? Which is like a a mechanism for if you die, then it like I I I don't even know. Do you know?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's it's kind of like the dead man switch, it's like the uh you know your action movie where the bad guy's holding the grenade, right? He's pulled the pin, and if you if you shoot the bad guy, he's gonna like release the grenade and then it's going to explode, is kind of the idea.
SPEAKER_01Interesting.
Meet Chris Gaffney And Dead Man’s Snitch
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So it's like um, you know, kind of tied to your heartbeat. It's also um not neuromancer, one of the um uh where there's this guy in it who drives around in this motorcycle and there's a nuclear weapon in the in the sidecar of the motorcycle. Um and you know, if his heartbeat stops, this nuclear weapon will will explode. So it's that same kind of thing.
SPEAKER_01Okay, yeah, so that is the metaphor with Deadman's snitch. If your thing that you're monitoring dies, then you will be notified. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay. And if I remember correctly, you were not the one who started Deadman's snitch. It was purchased, is that right?
SPEAKER_00Yep. Yeah, so the history is a little not complicated, but um Deadman's snitch was started by a man named Randy Schmidt, um, who around that time was doing a bunch of different projects. I I know he he was known for Nerd Merit Badge, um, as well as like lose it to lose it, which was this like you pay in money to guarantee uh to say, like, hey, I'm gonna lose a bunch of weight. And if you don't lose the weight, they keep the money. Um but yeah, Deadman Snitch, he started it around that time and was in our Slack or campfire back then. Um tough to remember, and was asking us questions about this, and we started using it. And then at one point, I think he was looking to move on to different stuff. He contacted Daniel Morrison, the um president at Collective Idea, and said, Hey, would you guys be interested in buying this?
What A Dead Man Switch Really Means
SPEAKER_01Um by the way, Collective Idea is was a Rails um agency in in West Michigan. I know there was like there is a change at some point. It's kind of irrelevant, but that's the reason why I said was, because I didn't know if if if it still existed in its same form, but that's kind of a different story.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, collective idea uh is still around. Um I'm still officially with them, uh still doing Rails and mobile software development. So yeah, there's been there's been a path, but we're still still kicking around, still doing good work. So probably know them from like delayed job and interactor and um audited.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, people might know of collective idea from from those projects. Um okay. So so this guy, Randy, asked if Collective Idea might be interested in buying Dead Man's Snitch.
SPEAKER_02Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and it was kind of um around that like two to three hundred MRR range when he he approached us and um was like, yeah, let we love it, it's been great. Uh we think that there's potential in it. Um decided to purchase it. And um we'd also bought a content management system around that same time called Harmony, um, which came out of like John Nunamaker and Steve Smith and that team when they like moved over to GitHub.
SPEAKER_01I remember Harmony Harmony. I didn't realize it was John Nunamaker and Steve Smith. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. Okay. And and and to be clear, Deadman's stench, when you say two or three hundred a month, that's two or three hundred dollars, not two or three hundred thousand dollars or something like that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yes, that's that's two or three hundred dollars. So very very early stage. It did take us uh like five, six years to get to profitability, um, whereas like paying a full-time engineer to to work on it. And so um yeah, we we took it in, made some pricing changes, uh, because it was like a a$20 unlimited a month situation at the time. Um and uh also did not a rebranding because it was Bedman snitch before, but gave it a logo, um, gave it a little bit more of a personality, more updated marketing pages, that kind of thing. And then um as a consultancy, we often have you know, consultancies have that like the the cobbler's children's shoe problem, where it's like the the cobbler's children never have the shoes, even though he's busy making them for other people. So there's always this like tension between doing billable work, which pays well at the time, and product work, which is a you know, this could turn into something in the future. We're we're constantly making investments into that, um, especially when it's like early stage, like Deadman snitch was.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's it's kind of a um it's kind of a um uh tension between spending your time like hunting and farming. You could yeah, and not even hunting, that's that's maybe the wrong metaphor, but like you can you can eat today or you can plant some seeds and maybe eat i in the future uh and that could be way better, but uh it doesn't have any return on investment today. Yeah, okay. And and how did you guys deal with that? Because I've encountered so many agencies that try to do that, um, that say we're gonna build a product and transform ourselves from a service company to a product company, but very few agencies actually succeed in that. So how did you guys handle that?
Acquisition Story And Early MRR
SPEAKER_00Uh well, I mean, there's still the agency there, um, and uh Harmony is in a state where it's just it's paying for itself, but otherwise is is not really growing. Um the the reality is we I got into a into a position where I was able to spend time on Deadman Snitch rather than doing consulting. And it was my my time that you know was showing that it it was growing and would eventually become profitable to you know not just to replace my like consulting um but it it it took a lot of work. Like I think we we would do like fits and starts of work, or it would become this like when people have downtime between projects. Um that's very much how we have like an Android app and an iOS app where like the mobile teams were between things and like oh let's try out the new, let's try out Swift at the time, let's try out the new architectures for Android.
SPEAKER_01Um sorry, I I want to ask one other thing. Um I'm curious about the motivation behind this because like in addition to a lot of agencies trying this, you know, there's a agency work, it's like you could make value judgments as to whether it's good or bad, or you like it or don't like it, or whatever. Um, but however you view it, like it's it's definitely a different kind of work from product work. Um, you know, service work kind of scales linearly with your headcount. Um whereas product work, you know, 37 signals, for example, uh small team, enormously profitable, um, much more so than anybody ever could be with service work, I think. Um and so I can understand why that's attractive to agencies. And then obviously there's a bunch of individual programmers doing this too. Maybe you maybe you want to go from freelancing to having product income and kind of decouple your time from your income and that kind of thing and have higher earning potential. Um, or maybe you have a job and you just want to not have a job anymore and you want to have your own business. What was what was collective ideas or your motivation behind that?
SPEAKER_00Um yeah, I mean it's been a while. So I think in this in this time it is very much that like, how do I how do we diversify our income, right? Because when you're consulting, it's very tied to headcount and hours. And you're always hunting for work, you're always making sure that like the sales pipeline is is full so that people will can be pet fed three months from now, six months from now. So when you have a product that you know, especially SaaS products where there's recurring revenue, you don't have to always be hunting for work. Well, you you hunt in a different way, like right, like you're marketing rather than trying to close close deals.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and it's it's not so much of a treadmill necessarily the way it is with service work. My experience and with people with with people I've talked with, um, it's like you just have to constantly be be out there marketing and selling, or else the the work will will tend to dry up. And you know, obviously with a product company, you can't just like let off the gas and and just coast forever. But I I think it's not quite so like hand to mouth with with product sales and marketing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's it's like you you write a marketing page and that thing may show returns for two years. Whereas you make a phone call, you get a deal, you know, it may take six months for that deal to close, they may have a you know, three-month period of actual work or nine-month period of actual work. Um, but even then, like it it doesn't continue to pay dividends after the fact, right? It's very transactional, whereas whereas SAS work is much more investment related. Um I think that was that was the main draw of just like diversifying, making sure that we're not just always having to do sales constantly.
SPEAKER_01Okay. And and can we put a timestamp on like when Deadman Snitch was acquired? Do you remember roughly what year this was?
Agency Tension: Billing vs Building
SPEAKER_00It was like it was either 2012 or 13. I I vaguely remember it got started, I think, like 12, but then I'm not, I don't remember how long Randy kind of operated it. I remember there's a um he had a coupon code related to the end of the Mayan calendar. I don't remember that when that was. And it was like uh either one month off or free for life. If the world ends when the Mayan calendar ends, then it's free for life, but otherwise, it's just one month. I love that. I always thought that personality that was great. That's great.
SPEAKER_01Um yeah, and and so for the first for the first while, let's say like the first couple years or something like that, like did the work mainly consist of of technical work or marketing work, or was it was it a mix? Tell me about that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'd I'd say it's mostly technical work in for a couple reasons. One of those is that we're mostly like I'm most I'm a technical person, um, and I've definitely fallen into the trap of not doing marketing because there's always technical challenges that need to be need to be fixed. Um, our targets are also like operations people, software people who can be very tricky to market to. Um they're you know, I have talked to people that have had developers yell at them because they've gotten the width of this is this is marketing related and not purely technical. Um so like we've grown largely by word of mouth of teams using us and saying, hey, this is great, and telling other people in the industry. Um in a lot of ways fell into this trap of like not having to market because people were doing that marketing for us.
SPEAKER_01Oh nice.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, that's always good when when things can go like that. Um I've never experienced that personally.
SPEAKER_00It's rare. I mean, it's it's it's a lot of luck. I I have to admit that, right? Um, but we're also trying to do one thing and do It very well. And so the problem space that we've been trying to solve is is tricky and it's very technical. And we spent a long time on that. But it's it's also the case where even though it's fairly small in theory, there's always stuff that we're working on, always work to do to like improve it, um, make it a better fit for teens, especially around like cron shops. I think there's always more that we could be doing there.
SPEAKER_01Um from a business perspective, are there any were there any memorable milestones that you crossed? Because like if you if you start at two or three hundred bucks a month, obviously you're gonna cross certain interesting, you know, assuming that the revenue continuously grows, you're gonna be crossing some interesting milestones, like, if nothing else, like hey, we went from triple digit revenue to four-digit revenue or whatever, or we got to the point where this can support a person's salary or something like that. Any of those that come to mind?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, honestly, the the biggest one is just profitability because it meant um that I could go full-time on it. And that that like was a big, big shift where I'm like, all right, I don't have to worry about picking up time on the consulting side of things. I can just focus on this and hopefully we can like start accelerating that.
SPEAKER_01And and when you say profitability, what what does that mean? Like what expenses are being taken out of that? Like, is is your is the expense of you being counted uh in in that profitability uh reckoning?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because I mean like as a SaaS, we don't have that much uh overhead. Um so we were covering costs pretty early. But yeah, in my mind, profitability is like not just covering the operational cost, but also covering salary. So because it's not sustainable if we can't pay a person to be working on it.
SPEAKER_01Right. And how long did that take to get to that point?
SPEAKER_00Uh easily five, five or six years. Yeah. So it it took a while. And there were there were moments where it's just like, oh, is this is this thing ever going to get there? Um, and I and I think we were lucky to have the consultancy, the consulting side of it to help cover the difference and be a safety net while it was doing that. Um yeah, that it's it's kind of a low long slog.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it as these things tend to be. Um and then did it did anything feel much different once you got to that point where you could work on it full time, or or was it kind of gradual and it was just more of the same stuff, you just had a bit more time to spend on it?
Profitability Milestone And Full-Time Focus
SPEAKER_00Um I I remember that time as uh it it was like cool, I'm full-time on this, except suddenly I was like, hey, the consultancy really needs somebody on a particular project. So it was one of those like gradual things. It's like, all right, I I'm now full-time in theory, but then I get pulled off for four months onto something else, and then it's like, okay, now I'm now I'm back on this thing. And um yeah, it was it was good because I was like, I know that like now today the work I'm doing is all the only for this, and I can really focus on that.
SPEAKER_01And it's somewhat of a unique arrangement, not and you not unique, but maybe like um not typical, because you're you're the collective idea, like okay, I I I might mischaracterize this because I don't know the whole arrangement and everything, but like collective idea bought dead man's snitch. It's not like you're working on this completely solo and independent, you still work for collective idea. Um, so it's a different kind of thing. Whereas, like, you know, my my hope and expectation with Saturn CI, the thing that I'm working on, is that eventually I don't have to have any other income, and then I just do whatever I want. If I want to work on the business today, then I do. If I want to go to the beach today, then I do that, you know, but not quite the same situation with you.
SPEAKER_00No, right. Um it it is and it isn't, where it's like it's slowly, I've slowly separated from the day-to-day, like we're you know, five, six years in. Like I'm still employed by collective idea, um, but as of actually January of this year, we've spun Deadman Snitch out to into a separate uh entity, and I'm owner of that. So like there is that freedom. I don't really have overhead uh like a boss lording over me, or you know, uh there there is no expectation that I'll I'll be doing any consulting work.
SPEAKER_01Um yeah, so don't share anything you're not comfortable sharing, obviously, but like do you have the freedom to just like make your own schedule in a broad sense? Like not just work whatever hours you want, but if you're like, hey, it's Wednesday, I'm gonna take the whole rest of the week off and go do something completely unrelated to work, do you have the freedom to do that kind of stuff?
SPEAKER_00I yeah, I I do, but I also have the tension of if I'm taking the time off, I I'm my own boss. So the the other side of me is like, well, you can take this time off, you take this day, like um going and chaperoning my uh first grader's uh field trips. Like I was able to do that last year when she was in kindergarten, and that's awesome. But then I also feel like hey, I I have software that needs to be written, I have invoicing that needs to be gotten back to. Um, and so those things still pull me in like at the end of the night because um as a business owner, if I'm not doing that stuff, then it's not getting done in a lot of ways. Um so like yeah, it there's there's a tension there where like I I I have to be working, and uh if I'm not then the business suffers for it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, so okay, shifting topics just a little bit, you know, you and I I think are roughly the same age, and so we have we have the wisdom that comes with with age. I'm 41 approximately.
SPEAKER_00Um I've got a I've got a year on you, so okay. I'm the elder at this point.
Freedom, Tradeoffs, And Owner Reality
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. I was born in 1984, it's 2025. Yeah, I'm I'm 41. Um, but I I've been thinking a lot about time lately and the nature of time. Um and recently I took a two-week vacation from work, and I already have a pretty flexible job, and I can kind of um be flexible with with hours and stuff like that. Nobody ever says like you have to start at a certain time or end at a certain time or anything like that. It's never been an issue. Um and we have unlimited time off, as as many places do. So I decided to take two weeks off not for a vacation to go somewhere, but just staying at the house and like catching up on some stuff that needed doing. And that's the first time in my life I've ever done that exact thing. And it was really interesting because there were some things that weren't exactly news to me, but like it really threw it into sharp relief. Like the big thing that I was intending to spend time on was I'm doing some home improvement projects right now, building some beds for my sons. Um, and it's not just like a bed frame, it's like this whole involved um alcove beds with built-in outlets and lamps and uh curtain rods, like all this stuff. Yeah, it's it's complex, yeah. Yeah, so it's this big project. And then we live on a farm. I've been building this fence for like months now, even though it should only take a few days. Yep. Anyway, taking care of this stuff. Um and I also had aspirations during this two weeks to like uh do some stuff with the family, do some stuff with my kids, all that stuff. And I'm like, all right, this is gonna be so nice just to have all this time. But then during the actual two weeks, it was just like, you know, I I was like working all day. I was I was uh you know cutting pieces of wood and and all that just all day. And I only got a fraction of the home improvement stuff done that I expected to didn't touch the fence at all. Um only got done with one bed, not two, like I expected. Um and and I I thought it might be hard not to think about work. I didn't think about work for a single second during that two weeks, but I was so busy, and it was really interesting because it's like okay, I have like basically no responsibilities, uh, but like my my time is completely filled up. And I wonder, I don't know, just do you have any thoughts on like time and stuff like that?
SPEAKER_00Oh man, I do, because um, I think one of the differences between you and me is like your your kids are older. I have three kids between one and six, and so um my time is often taken up with like picking our picking our kids up, one of our kids up from preschool, have to do that every day, and then there's days where like they don't sleep at all, and so the next day is almost completely shot. Um I I feel like there's always interruptions, and so that there's always I'm personally always playing this project process of like picking back up where I left off and everything taking longer than I expect it to. Um and I mean maybe that's just like getting older and thinking slower and moving slower a little bit, where it's just like you've got this concept of like how long something that should take. There's like, oh, that's a two-day project, and then suddenly it's like a week and a half because there's all these foreseen things that you that you didn't didn't think about. And yeah, I don't know, it's a it's it's it's project management, and then everything takes longer, um, but it's also just this this illusion of of like if I just had the time I could get things done. Um I think my I also think of like my uh my mom who worked for the state of Michigan for a long time and then retired, and she's just like I am just constantly busy because the the work expands to fit the time available in a lot of ways. So like there there's just there's just always something. Always something.
Time, Kids, And Why Projects Stretch
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's interesting because I don't think that's universal at all. Um like like there's some people, you know, you read these blog posts about like I uh sold my company for 50 million dollars and now I'm like super bored and I want to shoot myself in the head, you know? Um and I just like I can't really understand that. Um because there's there's like always so much stuff to do, at least for me. Like, you know, I don't have to do these home improvement projects. Like our house is like fine, we can live in it, it's just that I want to. Um and and there's so much other stuff, I don't know, I play guitar and stuff like that. Like, yeah, I just want to, and so there's always gonna be more stuff that I want to do than I have time to do it. I can't imagine being one of those people who just like can't figure out what to do with myself.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I feel like those uh you know, not having a specific blog post to talk about, but there's some of those like the entrepreneurs who are like, I'm always starting a business. Um, and like that that's kind of their identity of like I'm running the business, I'm starting something new, I'm I'm investigating. And like when they get to that sale point and their whole personality is tied into the business or a business, then it can be really hard to figure out what's next. Um yeah, like I'm I'm I I don't know. There's a ton of stuff to do around our house. Like the there's interests that I'd like to get into that I just don't have time for. And I don't know, this feels like a personality thing, maybe.
Dopamine, Personality, And Tech Culture
SPEAKER_01I definitely think it is a personality thing. I think that's at least a strong component of it. Um I learned something recently. I've talked about this on the show before. Um I uh I have problems. Um I I like I can't fucking live my life like a normal person. Um because I don't know, I've I've mentioned on the show before that I'm uh autism spectrum disorder level one, I think it is. Um what what they used to call Asperger's. Um maybe they stopped calling it that because it's it's called Asperger's. It's like, well, you already got this thing and now it's called Asperger's. Like that's that's horrible. Um I saw a comedy stand-up bit about that from Michael Show Walter. He's like, she has hamburgers on her butt. She has hamburgers on her butt. Um anyway. Um one of the symptoms of Asperger's uh or autism spectrum disorder is executive function. You can't like get yourself to do stuff. Uh like for me, it's like making an appointment for the auto shop or something like that. Just can't get myself to do these things. Anyway, long way to say that I've started like educating myself in certain areas of like psychology and stuff like that to try to overcome these issues or at least mitigate these issues. Um so I got this book about dopamine because I suspected that maybe dopamine was part of my issues. Um, and you know, people can get like caffeine addictions and sugar addictions and stuff like that. And I I was getting into some of that, got some of that going on right now. Um but I read this book um and it described people who have like more of a dopaminergic personality versus less of a dopaminergic personality. And people who have a dopaminergic personality, they're like, well, well, so dopamine is the book is called The Molecule of More. So it's like my understanding of dopamine is like you you encounter this novel thing, um, and you're like, oh, that's new. Uh I like that thing. Like, let's have some more of that stuff. And when you get some more of it, you're like, oh yeah, that that's good. Let's have even more. And so it's this like feedback loop, um, which you know explains a lot of addiction and stuff like that. So that that dopamine triggering substance could be uh could be ice cream or cocaine or or whatever it may be. Um and dopaminergic people are often like what you might call a workaholic, you know, like maybe Elon Musk has a dopaminergic personality. I'm just guessing, you know, he's he's always working and always doing this new stuff, this like craving for novelty. Um, and and he brings up these like famous geniuses and and how they are just always like thinking and and craving new things and things to think about and stuff like that. Um and it even says that like, you know, have you ever wondered why like 90 plus percent of people in academia are politically left wing, and there's hardly anybody uh who's politically right in academia? Um and this author suggests that maybe it's because there's a correlation between people who have dopaminergic personalities and are interested in in academic uh careers, and people who um uh you know, dopamin dopaminergic people tend to be more like id idealistic. Um and so this these ideals like uh Marxism and stuff like that, very idealistic, not necessarily very practical, um, whereas people on the other end of the spectrum they they're more in the here and now, they're less future focused, they're they're more about the here and now, um, which is uh correlates more with the the the political right. Um anyway, what was my broader point with all this? Oh, yeah, yeah. So dopamine and and dopaminergic personalities and always craving more and craving novelty and stuff like that. So I I think there's a high correlation between um engineer, programmer, technical people, and dopaminergic personalities.
SPEAKER_00And and dopaminergic is the like when you you get that dopamine hit, you're always like, I want I want more of that.
SPEAKER_01Because it's yeah, I'm not sure the exact correlation. Like, what does that mean? If I have a dopaminergic personality, do I have like more dopamine? Do do these dopamine events happen more for me? I I don't really understand what that means. Yeah, I'm not sure. Just some kind of some kind of relationship there. Um, yeah, but you know, again, uh I I don't want to go too much into the political parts of it, but like in in the tech industry, overwhelmingly left-wing politics as opposed to to right-wing politics, or at least left of center, I should say. Um to me, that's yet more evidence that uh we tend to have dopaminergic personalities. And you know, programmers tend to have a lot of hobbies in common, like uh woodworking for some reason is is very common among among programmers. You were gonna say something?
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, no. Uh and my understanding with that is like when we're dealing with software, it's all cerebral. Like we're building things in our head, we're we're writing code, but like you walk away and there's nothing. Whereas a lot of these hobbies like woodworking are very much like it's a crap. that you can master, but you have a physical thing that you walk away with at the end of the process. So it it's like the it's it's creative in a sense, but it it like the output is completely up the opposite from the the more abstract of software development. Yeah. That's how that's how I always always thought about it at least.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah same here. And I always told myself I would never get into woodworking because I didn't want to be another programmer who's into woodworking but then here I am doing all kinds of woodworking. And I I I experienced that too. Like it's so satisfying to do a bunch of work and then actually have something physical at the end of the day. And there's something about not staring at the screen that I really enjoy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah yeah I I recently went through a like all my notes and everything were are like in a in obsidian but I've been trying to do that less and more of like I've bought some nice pens uh mechanical pencils some nice paper and I've been trying to like work more with like physical media for my notes and my thinking processes. I even have a remarkable tablet which is like one of the ek paper tablets. Yeah yeah and it's great because it like syncs your notes but then it's still so digital in a way that I was like I I wasn't using it as much as I wanted to. Yeah it's it's been good to just like put the pixels down a little bit and be able to focus just on paper. I've really enjoyed that process.
SPEAKER_01Yeah same here um like I try to like I don't do anything recreational on the computer really except for some recreational programming um but like I play chess I go to chess club and people are like you play online I'm like no and I never will because that's not what I'm trying to do. I I like playing chess with another person in person away from the screen.
SPEAKER_00Yeah I mean my my hobbies are the standard programmer of of video games um so I spend a lot of time doing that outside of work. Oh you make your own video games no play video games oh play video games okay yeah um but yeah like like part of the I playing chess is actually like being face to face with another human being like it's it's not just the game itself like I assume that's you know the draw for you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah exactly yeah and I've met a lot of interesting people through chess which I wouldn't have otherwise interesting there's the there's a lot of programmers there uh at the chess club people from other walks of life too but a lot of like technical nerdy kind of people which I guess shouldn't be very surprising. Not not too surprising yeah yeah um yeah and I've reverted to paper notes as well I I got Evernote some years ago and I used to use it all the time but now I prefer paper um in the car you know I I don't ever want to get a Tesla like I I like Teslas for a lot of reasons but I don't know if I would ever want to own one because it's so like screen oriented. I prefer cars that just like have buttons and I even heard that like BMW they they went from buttons to screen interfaces back to buttons because they realized I think correctly that like buttons are just better.
Woodworking, Paper Notes, And Less Screen
SPEAKER_00Well yeah because like when you're driving a car you you need that like tactile feedback of like I'm I'm keeping my eyes on the road but I'm also adjusting the volume or um turning my my heated seat on that kind of thing. I'm DJ dad in the car and so we just bought a new car last year with the third row for for the three kids and it's got like Apple CarPlay which is which is really nice. What kind of car is it but uh Volvo XC90. Oh okay yeah yeah yeah we we got the the hybrid electric which is awesome because you can get about 30 miles which is enough for like day to day on on full electric and then we'll we'll go through a tank of gas once a month every other month. Yeah but I'm like finding myself driving down the road and my uh middle daughter is in the back asking me to play like some song um half the time it's like she's making up song names and so I'm like asking it's got because it's got Google Auto in it plus carPlay but I'll ask Google to like play the song and it'll find it and it'll get it wrong and then she'll like freak out in the Mac because it's not like the right one. This is very three and a half year old behavior. Or like it'll be the right song but it's from the wrong album so the album artwork is different. And and so now I'm like staring at the screen while half keeping an eye on the road and it just it's dangerous.
SPEAKER_01I'm like glad you know knocking glad that we haven't gotten in the accident but yeah and it's almost like uh we have too many things that do too much stuff. Like in the 90s all that was just like not an option.
SPEAKER_00It's just you you put the CD in the slot and that's all there is to it you know yeah but now I'm wrestling the like book of CDs from under my seat and flipping through and you know finding a piece of base that's definitely true.
SPEAKER_01And you know just just fluidly changing topics still um uh something that I don't love about all of our technological abundance is just the like almost overwhelming abundance of choice where it's like what do I want to listen to right now? I can listen to anything and at any moment I can conveniently switch and listen to anything else. Whereas me and my friend were commenting once that like in the 90s if you got a CD you would like listen to it all the way through several times even if it sucked like you would still listen to it a bunch just because it's so like uh there's so much friction to switching to a different CD and you had to buy the thing you know you didn't have all the world's music at your fingertips you just had your CDs.
SPEAKER_00But there's actually kind of something good about that yeah because you were like I have to invest my like 12 to$15 in like this this particular CD. Um yeah uh back in high school my car got broken into and they stole the like custom CD player that I put in there and they also grabbed like my little book of CDs and I remember you know it sucked having your car broken into but then I was disappointed because they like took all of the good CDs and the one that they left was uh the Eiffel 65 where it's like blue's the only song on there you ever want to listen to um and but yeah then it's like okay and well now I've got to like replace all this and I'm not gonna buy a bunch of more CDs. So I guess I'm listening to Eiffel 65 on repeat in the new car for a while. That's fine.
SPEAKER_01We had a similar situation uh you'll appreciate this we had a minivan with a DVD player in the back but the DVD player broke and Stuart Little was in the DVD player at the time and it got stuck and so Stuart Little was the only thing we could be we could watch and we would go on these like long road trips and the kids would just watch Stuart Little over and over so we didn't have a DVD player we just had like a Stuart Little player but if that's what the kids want or if they're okay with it.
SPEAKER_00They were good with it.
Cars, Buttons, And Choice Overload
SPEAKER_01Yeah yeah my younger son the kids can we watch the mouse movie again yeah well our kids want to hear the same songs a hundred times uh I've instituted a uh no repeats rule occasionally where it's like okay we'll listen to the Unicorn Academy song one more time but then after that like you either need to pick music or you need to let me pick some music because every time I do they they enjoy it but I I want to I want to hear this over auto-tuned uh you know pop song again right um okay so we strayed pretty far let me see if I can get us remotely back on track um let's let's maybe come all the way back to dead man's snitch um where and answer this any way you want um yeah where are things at now and where do you want to get to oh man um yeah so one of the big pushes for me personally for the last several years was like it didn't make any sense for it to be connected to the um the consultancy you know it it it had grown up well enough um and so we were able to split it out Dan who's the president at Collective Ideas my business partner now I'm a majority owner which is like a great place to be um but um even though we're like trying to do one thing and do it as well as we can I think there's still a lot in the problem space um of like cronja monitoring that uh I can be exploring um I've got some rough plans for like things to do in the back end to like give you more information around these JOTs because I I think um being in a niche like our competitors are often these like big platforms um that they do a thousand things and maybe they have this like one little feature that's part of this whole other suite of tools um and I want there still to be a reason to come to Deadman's stitch because we're doing this one thing better than anybody else can be um and so that's kind of that's kind of where like like I want to be taking it because I I'm still enjoying this thing um and enjoying the problem space as it were.
SPEAKER_00But yeah I think I think that's a big thing like just keep keep moving forward it's always interesting how many how much work there is to do on any SaaS that isn't necessarily related to like the core of it. Like this last week we were doing a I was doing a bunch of work with like integrations and ensuring that those were like going up in the correct order. Where there's like one case where every now and then things would flip-flop um which is causing other things to get out of sync. And it was like important work but it wasn't around some of the more core pieces of the application um yeah I just in a lot of ways I want to see it continuing to grow. I want to I want to be able to help more people and more like operations teams to like sleep at night or like be able to solve problems faster. Yeah I mean that's that's really it like we're not we're not in this like grind it out get to some valuation sell it off and go on to the other the next thing like I I'm not a an entrepreneur in the sense of I've got a thousand ideas for problems to solve and I can't wait to build the next business I'm a lot more of the like gardener or the editor where um I want to get deep into a problem and I want to grow this thing and make it awesome and run a business and um be here for the long term. That'll make sense.
SPEAKER_01Yeah yeah um you know I mentioned 37 signals earlier that that seems kind of similar with their attitude toward uh toward their products and stuff like that. They're not trying to grow something as fast as possible and then exit and do that repeatedly they want to stick with one thing and make it better over time.
SPEAKER_00Sounds like sounds like you maybe look at it somewhat similarly yeah yeah exactly it's like the I think we're I'm I'm lucky in that Deadmessage has grown and covers my time and takes care of my family. I think there's a lot of people who would be envious of this and like frankly it's it's a lot of luck it's a lot of timing like SaaS is harder today than it ever has been what do you say to developers um I I feel like there's just a lot more competition in kind of the SaaS space in general um when we got started was kind of the the start of SaaS um and so that I don't think there was also that fatigue that a lot of people and companies feel around like yet one more subscription. In some ways I think there's sort of this death or contraction of social media in a way where it fueled a lot of that um SaaS today especially for like small single two developer companies really grows based on the personality and the following of the the creators um so you have to have the personality to build that following in a way um at least I mean these are these are kind of my takes I I I know that like you know go to microconf and follow that crowd if like you're if this is the kind of thing you're interested in um yeah yeah I'm I'm inclined to agree that things are harder now than than they were in the past.
Where Dead Man’s Snitch Is Going
SPEAKER_01I'm hesitant to like make a super firm uh conclusion about that and and the reasons why and all that that's just kind of my um anecdotal observation as to what is probably the case so that's that's interesting to hear you say that because I've heard other people say the same thing. Yeah and I'm trying to I'm trying to get something off the ground and I don't know anything about like whether it would have been easier or harder 10-15 years ago. 10-15 years ago I don't think the same product would have even um well it wouldn't have occurred to me it it maybe it wouldn't have made sense to people but I think now the idea of a CI product like people there's github actions there's there's other similar products people like are familiar with that category whereas 15 years ago they they might not have been um yeah like 15 years ago was like Travis CI it was before GitHub Actions came out um and it was like Travis CI or Jenkins which you had to host yourself um but yeah there there is a lot more competition in the space right now like I mean Travis is still here but it's a it's a shadow of what it was at its at its height um or seems to be. Yeah and I heard that like uh circle CI's valuation was really high like over a billion dollars and then when GitHub actions came out it really contracted um and it seems like probably there is more comp just in general more competition for everything and the bar for creating software is maybe getting lower maybe I don't know yeah yeah that's that's complicated it's all complicated yeah it's it's hard to know it is just hard to know like what is going on out there and and what the true uh reality of everything is and there's these proclamations that people give with absolute certainty they're like you have to build an audience that's what you have to do um but then it's like is that really the case um I'm I'm not sure like I genuinely don't know the answers to a lot of these questions um anyway um uh we're we're getting close to time but I really appreciate you sharing your your story about dead man snitch and all that is there anything that we haven't covered yet that you that you want to mention man um no not really I think it's been a it's been really good chatting with you um obviously like deadmansnitch.com check us out uh if you have any questions about cron monitoring or surface monitoring reach out um I'm here I'm I'm a bit of a social media hermit so like I don't have uh Twitter or uh blue sky any of that stuff um but you know Chris at deadmansitch.com is where I'm at or Daphne C on GitHub. Okay we'll put that stuff in the show notes and Chris thanks so much for coming on the show.
SPEAKER_00Yeah thank you Jason