Episode Eleven – Testers vs Toxic Culture and Personal Knowledge Management
How are you, Ash?
Ash:Yes. I'm good.
Ian:I'm Should should I say hello, Ash? Because that's what we say, isn't it?
Ash:It is.
Ian:And then say, how are you?
Ash:Yeah. Do that.
Ian:Hello, Ash.
Ash:Hello, Ian.
Ian:How are you?
Ash:Yeah. I'm good. I'm good. My legs are sore. I ran the Manchester marathon on, Sunday.
Ian:Oh, wow.
Ash:So I'm just starting to recover.
Ian:A marathon.
Ash:Yeah. I was really pleased.
Ian:A marathon is hard.
Ash:The marathon is hard. I did it in 3 hours 17 minutes and 46 seconds.
Ian:That is
Ash:It's a new personal best.
Ian:It takes me about that long to do a half marathon, so I'm I'm very impressed.
Ash:Well, the race is only with yourself. And it literally is. There's always someone faster than you. Well, apart from if you're the fastest person on Earth. But eventually, there'll be someone faster than them as well.
Ian:Why are we getting faster and faster? How are we doing that?
Ash:Well, there's this so so Nike came out with a, like, a a brand of shoes which apparently, like, squeeze like an extra second per kilometer out of your time or something like that. Others so I don't know if it's if it's technology based, trading based, probably a combination of things. Plus, those trainers are, like, £250 that I'm not spending that.
Ian:That's far too heavy for a pair of shoes.
Ash:Yeah. Yeah.
Ian:See what I did there.
Ash:Absolutely. I did. I did. Put that canned laughter in.
Ian:Yeah. Yeah. Hang on a second. I can do this. Wait. Wait. I've I've got this. Let me just say that again.
Ian:That's far too heavy for a pair of shoes.
Ash:That laughter goes on for far too long as well, doesn't it? That was immensely awkward.
Ian:Yeah. Yes. Yes. Possibly, while I thought my joke there deserved a small amount of laughter, I don't think it deserved the, like, 3 quarters of an hour of laughter that we just heard.
Ash:And how are you doing, Ian? Are you okay?
Ian:I'm doing fine. I've had some drama, but, I've I've come out the other end of it. I've just recently moved to a new office in Ilkley, and I bought a whiteboard. And in fact, I got very, very excited. Some might say too excited, especially were they to hear how much I spent on it, because I thought a whiteboard, I'm bored of whiteboards, I need a glass board.
Ian:And so I ordered a glassboard. And I looked at the wall in my office. Actually, I didn't. I looked at some measurements because it's before I moved into the office. I looked at the wall and thought, oh, I could have this 2.4 meters times 1.2 meters whiteboard because it can fit on this wall.
Ian:And the sad learning that I've had is that, actually, you need to measure whether your whiteboard can fit in the stairwell.
Ash:Mhmm.
Ian:Because if it can't, it will never get as far as the wall. Yeah. And then you will have to send it back in an embarrassed tone of voice and have to face people ridiculing you because that's really basic, and you didn't think of it, hypothetically.
Ash:Hypothetically speaking. But it's good to be excited though, isn't it, about such purchases?
Ash:That would have been in a pretty exciting whiteboard, to be fair.
Ian:I was very excited briefly.
Ash:Mhmm.
Ian:In the period between ordering it and it arriving, I was very excited. And then I was just horrified.
Ash:Uh-huh. That golden time. I think
Ian:Yeah. Yeah. Look back Yeah. To those halcyon days of when I was excited before I was horrified.
Ash:Yeah. I think I think that period happens often, doesn't it, with an online purchase?
Ian:It does.
Ash:The bit between the order and the arrival, feels feels great. But then, the the terrible reality of, of the size of your staircase kicks in.
Ian:Yeah. I I also had ordered some chairs and a table in case I ever have a meeting in my new office. That excitement period between ordering it and it arriving was greatly marred by the whiteboard incident because it called into question all purchases. Will it be able to come up the stairs? And then the the people with the furniture arrived, and they just carried it up the stairs themselves.
Ian:And I didn't even have to do anything, and I was so pathetically overjoyed. It was wonderful.
Ash:Did you look at them with tears at your eyes? Thank you so much. And they're like, yeah, you're alright.
Ian:Almost. Yes.
Ash:Almost.
Ian:Yes. I was deeply, emotionally moved. And if you want to come visit my office and sit at a table and have a meeting, I could do that. We could even record What A Lot of Things in my office now.
Ash:Yeah.
Ian:Although, I might need to get a giant pile of cushions or something to absorb the echo. I'm hoping you can't hear the echo.
Ash:I know.
Ian:You definitely can't when I'm not talking.
Ash:That's because there are no sounds to hear.
Ian:Yeah. If there's no sound, then there's no sound echo.
Ash:So have we got any news for the last episode?
Ian:Why do I feel like we have, but I've forgotten it?
Ash:We do. I could remember it.
Ian:Why don't you So specify it then. Specify it? So Oh, this isn't working. Oh my goodness.
Ash:I could specify it.
Ian:Why don't you
Ash:Alright. Let's talk about it.
Ian:Why don't you tell us the news, Ash?
Ash:So Ian committed one of...
Ian:Oh.
Ash:...software development's, cardinal sins.
Ian:No wonder I've forgotten this.
Ash:And I think last time we we talked about this, I described the What A Lot of Things podcast as a vehicle for Ian's perfectionism and rightness.
Ian:Unjust mockery.
Ash:Both of which have been proved, to be incorrect about so Ian described the RFC for SMTP as, 822.
Ian:As being from the eighties.
Ash:As being from the eighties. Yes. That's it.
Ian:And that was right. It was right.
Ash:Rightness is there. Now comes perfectionism and rightness.
Ian:Doh.
Ash:Doh.
Ash:So Ian was right about RFC 822 being from the eighties, but he was wrong about the subject of RFC 822.
Ash:It wasn't SMTP.
Ian:It was close.
Ash:It was headers inside email messages. It was close, to be fair.
Ian:It was about email.
Ash:SMTP is RFC 821. So Ian committed cardinal sin of the off by 1 error.
Ian:I did. Sorry
Ash:Which, He's been in technology long enough to know that these things happen.
Ian:Yes. Sorry. Perfectionism.
Ash:And rightness.
Ian:It's when you find these things out after you you publish the episode and then you are filled with an enormous desire to maybe sit down and record yourself saying it slightly differently and then dub it over so that your error can be erased.
Ash:I suppose that is the price of perfectionism, isn't it?
Ian:It's a heavy price.
Ash:Mhmm.
Ash:So despite Ian's transgressions, for reasons to do with my own vanity.
Ian:And not transgressions.
Ash:I've opened up the podcast app.
Ian:On honest mistakes.
Ash:On on my Mac. I'd navigate honest mistakes. Failures.
Ian:Blame free. Blame free podcast. This has to be... this is a blame free podcast. So I made an honest mistake. So I'm gonna gonna stick to that.
Ash:That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
Ian:Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly so.
Ash:So despite Ian's honest mistakes, I opened up the podcast app on my Mac the other day, for reasons of, looking at the things that I have created just to make myself feel better. And one of those things is the What A Lot of Things podcast.
Ian:Who who among us have not done that?
Ash:Exactly. And I saw that on the, Apple Podcasts app, we have five 5-star ratings.
Ian:25 stars.
Ash:25 whole stars given to us by completely impartial listeners to the podcast. Isn't that right, Ian?
Ian:Yes. There's only 2 of us, so it can't it can't be that bad. Are you telling me you've never rated our podcast?
Ash:No.
Ian:You don't think it's good enough?
Ash:I'm far too honest for that. I don't think you should mark your own work. I'm a tester. Right? I can't mark my own work.
Ian:I've marked our work, and I've found it to be very favorable on the Apple Podcast app.
Ash:So we have four 5-star ratings from impartial listeners.
Ian:and one from me.
Ash:And one from Ian. But still, four 5-star ratings is pretty good.
Ian:I would say it's fantastic. It makes me feel very happy.
Ash:Yeah. Yeah. So I was pleased that I went and looked at my own creations, and and then noted that other people had appreciated something that we had created. So thank
Ian:you. Thank you. Yes. For those of you who haven't rated us yet, if you go and do so, I'm sure that we will experience equal levels of joy over whatever writings you give us that are above 3 stars.
Ash:But must be specifically that?
Ian:Although, I'll forgive you if you only give us 4 stars because anyone can commit an off by one error.
Ash:Cue the canned laughter.
Ian:I really can't.
Ash:No. No. Let's not do it again. Let's not do it.
Ian:We haven't got that kind of time, Ash.
Ash:It felt like it would never end.
Ian:Yes. It did. In fact, I'm almost surprised to find it's ended now.
Ash:So so shall we talk about some things?
Ian:After that harrowing conversation, I feel like we should talk about some things. I think it must be your turn to go first
Ash:Yes.
Ian:In our egalitarian system of going firstness.
Ash:Which is absolutely correct, 50% of the time, Every time.
Ian:Exactly. But which 50%? We'll leave that shrouded in mystery.
Ash:Yeah. Let's so my thing.
Ian:What's your thing, Ash?
Ash:My thing is it's about a bunch of testers, who they call themselves QA, taking on toxic culture, at a very large game development company. Activision Blizzard, pretty much one of the biggest that you could even imagine.
Ian:Now it's sold by Microsoft, it's even bigger.
Ash:Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. There's been a lot of articles recently about, the culture within some of these companies. So with sexism, racism, classism, and pretty much every prejudice you could name on show.
Ian:Fantastic. Well done, gaming.
Ash:I was interested to see that there was, like, a group of brave souls who are ready to challenge it. And I was even more interested to see that it's only the testers again, isn't it? Gathering themselves together, working together to solve problems. So I'll just tell I'll just tell a little bit of the story. This company called Raven QA, and they worked on... I think they were working on Call of Duty.
Ash:And they'd engaged a bunch of contractors to help with the with the testing slash quality assurance, let's not go there, for the latest Call of Duty releases. And what happened was so Activision had said, right, we're about to get everybody back into the office to start working together again after COVID. So Raven QA, a bunch of contractors they had then relocated so this is bear in mind, this is temporary workers relocated to near wherever the office was. And then the parent company then said, funny story, we don't need you anymore. So goodbye.
Ian:No. So they moved halfway across the United States or something, and then got laid off straight away.
Ash:Yeah. So some of the permanent workers within Raven QA then walked out in protest at at this treatment of contractors. And then subsequently since then, they've started to, organize themselves into a position where they could, you know, obviously, take on their their parent companies, quite complex entities, some of these game development companies, and, you know, try and get some better conditions for them.
Ash:So I think testers in the in the game development industry, I've always felt like a pang of pity sometimes towards them. I know that sounds I don't like to feel pity, but working, like, 18 hour days during crunch times and very poorly paid and considered a very basic entry level job, where everybody wants to get out and become a game developer, you you know, themselves or a producer or whatever it is that they want, and everybody just starts in testing to move on.
Ash:So I'm not saying it's the same everywhere, but they always seem to be at the sharp end of game development. And it was just great to see a bunch of testers taking on a toxic culture and making a difference.
Ash:So that's my thing.
Ian:I really love that. I mean, one thing I've always admired about the community of testers is the way in which it is such a great community. You see that a lot. You and I first met at a testers community meetup, didn't we?
Ian:Yeah. In Liverpool, the, infamous well, no, the famous Liverpool Tester Gathering
Ash:Yeah.
Ian:Which we both spoken at different times. But I was always very impressed with the community that testers build around themselves. And that's always has a different feel to it than maybe other parts of the tech industry.
Ash:Mhmm.
Ian:So in some way, it doesn't surprise me to hear this story.
Ian:Mhmm. Also, it doesn't surprise me to hear that it was necessary. It seems tremendously unfair to get people to move tremendous distances and uproot their lives and then suddenly make them redundant or get rid of them.
Ash:Yeah.
Ian:But that sense of community that I've always noted around testing and testers, that doesn't... in that way, it doesn't surprise me, that they're the ones who are standing up.
Ash:Yeah. Yeah. There's very it's very few places that I've I've worked as a test of whether there hasn't been some kind of desire to organize together into a community and share, like, what you've been working on.
Ash:Mhmm.
Ash:It's it's really common. And often, I've spoken to colleagues as as who are developers or operations people, and they often say, wow, that's really cool that you kinda get together every now and then and show each other, like, what you're working on or actively work together. And, also, I think sometimes you go to development and ops type conferences, the really big ones, And they're so vast and personal. Lots of tool vendors, lots of money involved. Whereas testing conferences, for example, by their nature, are a lot smaller, and I find them a lot more community focused because, you know, there's not, like, say, vast amounts of tool vendors or money at stake. So they tend to be more about their craft itself.
Ash:So I think it just kind of leans towards that. Obviously, that's in my experience, if you like. Mhmm. I'm sure there'll be conferences that I don't go to, which which may focus more on that. But it just doesn't surprise me to see them whenever I go into a company, that they're already sharing their work together.
Ash:So I guess it's when a number of them are affected in such a such an unjust way. Because that's the thing. It's like a... it's about... contractually, it was probably within the letter of the contract, what they did, the parent company to these contractors at Raven QA. Yeah. Because they they know that they're contractors.
Ash:But there's something beyond that as well, isn't there? It's like, well, is that a a right thing to do? Is that a just thing to do? These are the things I think that when you see people start to organize themselves together into into a collective where it's like, well, actually, yes, it was contractually fine. It's like the old... the classic being technically right, isn't it?
Ash:So, yeah, you could be technically right, but, you know, it's the worst kind of right, isn't it? You know?
Ian:Yeah.
Ash:So so, yeah, I I think it's it's it's times like that where... which does trigger people to to get together and think, well, together we can do something about this rather than it just being, you know, individuals all within the current system trying to solve that problem because, you know, that the system of contractors and disposable workers are disposability of skilled professionals. That is part of the problem, isn't it? When it's used to such a vast degree.
Ian:But ultimately, it's about the balance of power between workers and employers. Mhmm. And it's one of those sort of things where, you know, trade unions and certainly in the UK sort of came about from Victorian capitalism where children were cleaning chimneys and workers had no rights and, you know, were regularly killed in very unsafe environments and things like that. Yeah. And that led to sort of trade unions coming along.
Ian:And then there was a lot of improvements to employment conditions and things that happened as a result of that.
Ash:Yeah.
Ian:But equally, sometimes it goes the other way, and suddenly you've got, you know, trade unions deciding they get to bring down the government or something like that. And you sort of think, well, okay then. So that seems a bit outside the scope of, whatever it was that that, you know, in terms of that balance of power with employers.
Ian:But so... but there is a kind of right level of that, I feel, and it's not right for employees or contractors to be powerless, nor is it it seems right for it to be the other way around. It there's a there's a right balance, isn't there? And I don't know what that is necessarily, but, certainly, if we leave capitalism to itself I also remember a funny story that wasn't a real story. It was just I don't know. Maybe it's meant to be an allegory or something, but the story of somebody gardening in their front garden on a Sunday morning, and the vicar walks past on his way to church to do the service, and he's a bit disapproving.
Ian:So he thought he thinks he's going to sort of have a few words with this chap. So he says, isn't it wonderful what God has done in your garden, you know? And he said, you should see what God did when I left him to his own devices. And I feel that that that I I'm not sure about that story, but I kind of feel it's like capitalism. In that capitalism can be a good thing that drives innovation and all of that kind of thing.
Ian:But you should see... what happens when you leave it untrammeled is that people get crushed in it. And so there needs to be...
Ash:Yeah.
Ian:...this right balance of power. I think I probably belaboured that point. But
Ash:No. No. No. No. Because it is about the ability to behave as you like towards your employees, leads to these sort of companies being complete jerks.
Ash:And, funnily enough, it's only the companies that are complete jerks that where you see these stories coming out. Whereas companies who, evidently, like, try and look after their staff and make the employment experience at least tolerable. You see see very little desire to organize in this way, I think. It's not something that I've ever talked about at work, really.
Ian:No.
Ash:But I've tried to work at places where, you know, the working conditions are are good, and I've actively campaigned, when I've been in senior positions, to make them better. And to make sure people are paid the right amount and they have engaging work that they can... that they like, and they're not just, you know, being told what to do and micromanaged and moved around without any any input. So those those types of places, they seem to be doing okay. Whereas all the other types of places, which, like I say, have taken that untrammelled capitalism to heart, and they're just like, well, let's dispose of these workers. They are merely cogs in the machine.
Ian:Mhmm.
Ash:And that machine is turned off at the moment, so we can just get rid of them. I guess, in this regard, so the revenue a contractors were dis were disposed of that they just asked all the perm people just to do more work.
Ian:Oh, well, yeah.
Ash:It's like, right. Okay. You know? Yeah.
Ian:It's like an equation there, isn't there? There's a amount of work divided by number of people.
Ash:Yeah.
Ian:You might be looking at a spreadsheet where you say, if we reduce number of people, then it'll be cheaper. But, of course, the other equation of how much work per person is to do is also seriously impacted, isn't it?
Ash:So, yeah, I'm just like, maybe if you put together a decent set of working conditions and a little bit of respect for those who work for you, who are in skilled positions.
Ian:Mhmm.
Ash:Games testers, they might not be treated as skilled sometimes, but it's still a set of skills that needs to be respected. I mean, we met some from Sony, I think, wasn't it, in Liverpool Yeah. Testing VR games. And they had the most interesting set of tools and techniques, which were different to the classic ecommerce or back end sort of testing, if you like, or mobile testing or or whatever it is. A very different mindset, set of tools, and techniques, but, also, obviously, some shared ground as well.
Ash:I don't know. They need... they were doing a a great job in a challenging environment, with new technologies and trying to figuring out ways to test it effectively. And I was like, wow, this is amazing.
Ian:I mean, it was a couple of years ago, wasn't it? But I remember it was... we were talking about how they test VR games and how and how you stop VR rigs from near to each other from not not interfering with each other. You don't want people crashing into each other while while they're working. But you've also all this kind of stuff. And back then, it was how do you stop people feeling sick from the, effects of the VR headsets?
Ian:How do you protect people from some of the games are quite scary. Yeah. With VR, it's quite visceral, isn't it? It feels like you are the one being threatened, not some representation of you on the screen. It feels like it's you.
Ash:Yeah.
Ian:And, you know, all of those kinds of feelings, I mean, you know, that that have to be managed. I was astonished by the complexity of the the work Yeah. The work they were doing. I thought it was very, very interesting hearing what they had to say.
Ian:And then I tried the scary VR game and lasted about 2 seconds.
Ash:Oh, yeah.
Ian:I seem to remember cringing back in my seat in terror as the scary zombie person with the big knife came for me.
Ash:You're like, no no more.
Ian:In fact, still mild PTSD from that. But yeah. So
Ash:So you've got all the all those skills and all that... all those examples of of great work, and testers still being treated at certain companies as totally disposable, and anybody can switch into that role. I mean, to me, some of it comes from the obsession with crunching.
Ian:There's a whole topic.
Ash:So as in you get to the end of the end of the game development process, and you just have to work, like, ridiculous hours to, you know, fix at least some of the problems and then get it out for some arbitrary date, which, you know, the marketing has said that you will be... you will be out for. And then after you've finally said it's a pressed disk, then you have to create some vast day 1 patch to fix all the things that need to be fixed for the 1st day. I mean, I'd be amazed now if the if the game that came on the disc actually works without the day 1 patch, I would be utterly amazed. So a little story about the crunch. So a company called Bioware who do Dragon Age and Mass Effect, those types of games, So big sprawling narrative based games.
Ash:They used to call the crunch "magic time". So they'd so basically, they'd mess around for a few years with these games. And then they would just rely on this last few months and call it magic time to try and bring it together. Well, so people who've worked there, it's like it goes from, like, interlude chaos to absolute mania in the last few months trying to bring it together. But they use this as like a as like a selling point. This is magic time. So, I suppose there are many different forms of magic. Some are more terrifying than the last.
Ian:Well, who who does a project plan where at the beginning, you're saying, right, in this last 2 months, everyone's gonna work 80 hour weeks. You're just like... who plans that? I mean, that's just
Ash:Yeah.
Ian:It's it's bad enough that that happens in many project plans. But but to plan it and give it a name, that seems a bit of a step too far, doesn't it?
Ash:Yeah. Yeah.
Ian:Magic time.
Ash:You'll be amazed to know that the last two major games that Bioware created, Anthem and Mass Effect Andromeda, widely held as not very good.
Ian:After magic time as well.
Ash:Yeah. Even with the power of magic time. It may may actually be the power of magic time, which has created these terrible experiences.
Ian:Yeah.
Ash:So based on all these sort of, you know, multifaceted dysfunctions that appear in the game development industry, It was just really great to see Raven QA gathering together to try and take on the various forces kind of aligned against them, campaign for a bit of justice and some decent working conditions.
Ash:And I don't think they were asking for too much just to be treated in a respectful way and, you know, show a sense of solidarity with their colleagues.
Ian:Yes. Well done, Raven QA. I think that's an excellent way to deal with that kind of corporate behavior. So well well done to you.
Ash:Yeah.
Ian:A bit worried that sounded sarcastic. It wasn't supposed to.
Ash:It's very difficult for British people not to sound sarcastic. Would say well done. See, I did it then. Oh, well done. Yeah.
Ash:See, I can't say it. It's impossible isn't it
Ian:I tried, I tried.
Ash:Well done, Ian.
Ian:I was absolutely sincere in my congratulation of them for supporting their colleagues.
Ash:Yeah. I think British people have to say, whatever you say, well done, you then have to say that I'm actually being
Ian:You have to explain with added sincerity.
Ash:To explain.
Ian:So so so should we boycott games then? Should we just not play games from big gaming companies? That's a bit of a mischievous question, isn't it?
Ash:Well, yeah. Because I do play games. No. I do. I do.
Ash:I play games made by Ubisoft. I don't play Call of Duty. I think it's a bit rubbish, to be brutally honest. I don't really play multiplayer games, so because I'm just not that sociable. So I think you could probably choose.
Ash:Right?
Ian:Yeah.
Ash:You could choose to play more independent games and support them that way. So there are choices you can make. So, yes, it is a slightly mischievous question because we all like a nice triple-A game every now and then, but I think there are alternatives. Although you look at, like, the production values on indie games now, and you're like, wow. This is like, a very high high quality production.
Ian:I spent a lot of time playing Stardew Valley, which was written by 1 person on his own. And he did all the graphics, all the music, all the plots and dialogues, and all the characters and everything just end to end on his own. This guy oh, and he's he goes by the moniker of ConcernedApe
Ash:Oh, right. Okay.
Ian:Which I always feel is more appropriate now we've got Bored Ape NFTs flying around the world. I I feel like Yeah. Concerned is a much better state for an ape than than bored.
Ash:On a final note, you mentioned NFTs.
Ian:Oh, I'm afraid I did... so Sorry.
Ash:As a a final addendum, if you like, to to my thing this, this time, of course, NFTs, they're in the middle of all this.
Ian:Must they be?
Ash:There's a bit of a pattern. So companies announce that they go to start, you know, start using it, start doing NFTs and selling them. Then it turns out they have crappy cultures and that they're attracted to grift. So there was a company called, Team 17. You may remember them from a game called Worms.
Ian:Oh my goodness.
Ash:This has been around for a long time.
Ian:That was many years ago.
Ash:Yeah. So, I mean, I always thought it was a bit crap when compared to Lemmings. I was always a Lemmings person myself. So I thought they were jumping on the bandwagon a little bit. So at Team 17, they announced a bunch of NFTs, so they jumped on that bandwagon and then everybody complained about it, including people who worked for them and then they had to walk it back.
Ash:And then after that, details of their awful culture appeared
Ian:Ohhh...
Ash:With testers struggling to buy food and working back to back overtime. Oh. So wherever there is unjust behavior and grift, NFTs appear to appear.
Ian:That's shocking. I find that an incredible correlation which I find impossible to believe. That time, I was being sarcastic.
Ash:Yeah.
Ian:That was actual sarcasm.
Ash:Good Britishness there. I'm not going to imply causation between NFTs and terrible behavior, but the correlation is becoming harder and harder to ignore.
Ian:Yes.
Ash:And that is my thing. Well done to Raven QA.
Ian:Do you need to qualify that before we go on?
Ash:Nope. That ... I absolutely meant that 100%. I thought for a British person that was quite a good well done.
Ian:It was actually. It was. Well done. But I felt, you know, we we had just agreed that every time a British person says well done, they they have to explain that that was... they really meant it. But, you know, we should we should should stand by our by our belief.
Ash:That's true.
Ian:But, you know, well done for that. Oh, and and I really meant that as well. Or or did I?
Ash:It's impossible to stop. or did I?
Ian:Oh, dear. And that was when the whole podcast went off the rails. No, that's a fantastic Thing, Ash. It's really interesting.
Ian:You know? I I just think it reflects well on testers, so I'm not saying it.
Ash:Don't say it. Let's just move on.
Ian:But but but well done, testers. Right. Sincerely well done. Oh, dear. It's a trap.
Ash:It's a trap.
Ian:I've got a Thing.
Ash:Excellent. Let's hear about your Thing.
Ian:My Thing is about what I think we're now calling I say we, people in the world are now calling personal knowledge management, which I attempted to say in a heroic voice because it's one of those things that sounds a bit heroic to me. I am very, very interested in productivity tools. It's a sort of substitute for productivity. But
Ash:that could be another thing in itself.
Ian:But, there's one particular area of productivity which I've always found interesting in the sense of seeing the different tools that people build in order to deal with it, And that's note taking. Everyone's phone has got a note taking app on it. Apple's one is notes. I'm sure there's a Google equivalent. And there's a marketplace full of products to do with note taking.
Ian:So I use something called Bear, for example, which synchronizes between all my Apple devices and lets me write in Markdown all this kind of stuff. So there's a lot of these kind of things. Yeah. But I've come across something over the last 6 months or so, which I think is really interesting. And it started off in the 1950s or something in Germany.
Ian:Oh, no. I've set a time frame, and now I'm gonna have to check. But it started off a long time ago. The thing that I want to talk about in note taking is something that's become referred to as Zettelkasten, which is a a German word meaning slip box, which obviously completely, completely explains it.
Ian:I'm glad you pointed that out.
Ian:Would have been... would have been very confusing if I hadn't hadn't explained that. But what what it's basically talking about is that for years years, I've taken notes in a kind of linear way. So you have a notebook or you have an app with a notebook in it. You go, for example, to a meeting or you attend a course or something, and you make notes. And as the meetings and courses typically occur in a linear fashion, although some of them feel like it, and it might be on an infinite loop when you attend the same meeting 2 days in a row.
Ian:But aside from those kind of time defying examples, generally speaking, we experience meetings and training courses, all things like that in a linear way. So day 1, you arrive and you make notes about the things they talk about on day 1.
Ash:Mhmm.
Ian:And then on day 2, same thing and so on. And what you get from that is that often, training courses have a a sort of drilling down approach.
Ian:So you learn about something on the 1st day, and then you'll learn other things about that same thing during the 2nd day and then maybe in the 3rd day.
Ash:Sure.
Ian:And what happens is that your notes about that particular concept may be spread throughout your note taking system. So you've you your notebook Mhmm. Would if you want to find all of the times you thought about that, then you might be doing a search in a digital application. And some people write indexes in their notebooks so they can find things in them. But that way of taking notes, which I think, is common to a lot of people, has this big flaw that is quite hard to access, particularly, and when you're looking at it, you know, even if you've got a digital solution and you can search in it, you're still... there's still lots of fragments that you're trying to piece together.
Ian:Yeah. So in this Zettelkasten approach, you basically have one note about one topic, and you can effectively... what you do is that when you learn another thing about that, you go to your note and you update it.
Ash:Mhmm.
Ian:And then you have a cluster of all these notes that are on individual topics. The example app of this that I keep coming back to and people who are interested in this keep coming back to is called Obsidian.
Ash:Okay.
Ian:And so what Obsidian's kind of superpower is, is that when you're writing notes, at any time, you can do a double open square bracket and type in the name of a concept and then close that, and it will create somewhere a note about that thing. So one thing that one thing I did was that I did a training course 9 months ago or something, 6 months ago, on React, which is a software development system for websites. And I used Obsidian to take my notes from this course. And it was very interesting because there were certain concepts in it, like, I don't know, for example, the way that you do forms. You have controlled forms and uncontrolled forms.
Ian:It it doesn't really matter.
Ash:Yeah.
Ian:But I I had a document, a single note about uncontrolled forms, and then everywhere that they were mentioned, I could refer back to that note. And everything I learned about that, I put in this this one note. And what I found is that now I'm trying to I had this idea I'd quickly build a website. I won't go there, but...
Ash:Never happens.
Ian:I tried to quickly build a website (slowly). And I found that the notes I'd taken from that React course, it was really, really easy to use them because I would be able to Yeah. Quite easily from the very top levels of the the the sort of tree, be able to say, oh, okay. If I search for forms, I can find "ah right, controlled forms", and I can go and look in that topic and find everything I know about it all in one place. Yeah.
Ian:And that that was really powerful. And so using Obsidian, I managed to take notes from that course that were actually useful when I'm trying to do the thing that the course was about.
Ash:Mhmm.
Ian:And that's quite unique to me. I've never had that experience before of finding notes that I've taken to be useful. Yeah. A bit harsh, isn't it? Yeah.
Ash:Because like I say, usually, you do it along a particular axis, don't you? Yeah. So usually, it's time, isn't it? So you might use you might do various training courses, build example apps, or or whatever it is using a particular technology, then you've made notes along the way each time, but they're very disparate. Yeah.
Ash:This kinda reminds me of what's my system. So it's not really a system as such. So I also write in markdown. I save it all into one folder indexed by I usually use date.
Ian:Mhmm.
Ash:So date of the event that I'm going to or the training course that I've taken or or whatever it is. And there's maybe 5 years worth of notes in there, but they are all sat in their own sort of...
Ian:Yeah.
Ash:...you know, pristine context free bubbles. So there's no there's very little, like, link between them apart from the date, which... but that again, that relies on my memory to to know. I mean, it might have the name of the course and the and the event or whatever it was next to it. But again, it's not interlinked. So there's a ton of information in there probably about say, I don't know, testability.
Ash:There'll be loads about testability in there. But how how easily sort of search... how easy I can search through that and see the links between things, well, I can't really. So it does make me think when you talk about this, about my own, you know, my own personal knowledge management and all the things that I've created and how not linked they are.
Ian:Yeah. I think this superpower that Obsidian has of being able to just create a link to another I mean, once you type in your double square brackets, it's doing this kind of active search. So as you start to type in the name of the concept, it will tell you the various ways in which that could be completed in terms of what exists already.
Ash:Yeah.
Ian:And so making links is really, really easy. So even when I if I'm maybe having a meeting with somebody and I'm referencing maybe something to do with React, I can have a a link. I can just easily create a link to some concept from there in my meeting note...
Ash:Mmm
Ian:...as a way of creating a sort of documented understanding of something that is accessible later. I think it's absolutely incredibly powerful.
Ash:Yeah.
Ian:And people have elaborate systems that they build on top of this, so you know you have this idea of a daily note, and then you create your daily note which is named after the day in a particular folder and then you write notes in there about what happened in the day, but they link to the things, you know, notes that belong to that topic that you engage with during the day. And then you're getting into, oh, well, now we can display the notes on a calendar.
Ian:Obsidian is a kind of nerd dream in the sense they've made it really, really extendable. And there are plugins to integrate it with, for example, I don't know, to do list managers like Todoist. You can make your to do list appear in line with your daily notes, and there's all these kinds of, kind of things that you can you can do that is, you know, is very, very impressive. I use something called Readwise. It takes the highlights that you do in your Kindle books and puts them into its website so that you can access knowledge that you've gained from books.
Ian:And there's a plugin for Obsidian that will just pull all those down. So in my Obsidian, I can find things I've highlighted in Kindle books I've been reading. And you can highlight medium articles, all sorts of things in, in Readwise, and that all just gets automatically added to my knowledge in Obsidian. Mhmm. So you can see how it gets more and more powerful because the more stuff it has in it, the more you can find stuff.
Ian:The other nice thing it does sorry. I'm I'm going off on one now. But the other nice thing it does is if you go to a note about a concept, you can see every other note that mentions that, and it divides it into 2. So there's mentions where you've created a link, but there's also mentions where you have not created a link, and it can therefore mine concepts. You you could find out where you've talked about something, but you didn't realize that it was or you didn't create a link for that at the time.
Ian:So it's a great package, and I feel like it's very powerful, but there's a few drawbacks that always come to my mind with these things. One of them is that any complicated system for managing knowledge or work or anything like that breaks down as soon as you are so busy that you can't maintain it anymore. And if these things aren't trusted systems, if you don't know that every time you you always put the the the work in there or if you know that it's there and you can trust it, that's different from where or maybe it wasn't there sometimes. Maybe I just hadn't got time to do it nicely, so I just did it on a bit of paper, and that bit of paper's somewhere on my desk. Yeah.
Ian:And I find, systems like that, that's that's what is always the downfall of them for me as I I run into that problem. And then the other problem that I always run into is, Obsidian is an Electron app. So in my head, I've got 15 years of being a Mac user, which tells me that when I hit command p, I it's because I want to print something. But in Obsidian, that means I want to run a command that I have to type the name of of
Ash:Yeah.
Ian:And electron apps are very resource intent.
Ian:Basically, Electron is a way for developers to write apps that are multiplatform, but only have to write them once.
Ash:Yeah. But
Ian:And you can see the desire of developers to do that because it says I'm duplicating all their efforts across iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS, etcetera, etcetera. But the cost of that is that you're basically shipping a Chrome browser. It's like so, yes, they can be very slow, but the muscle memory that I have for using computers is based on 15 years of using a Mac. Yeah. And, unfortunately, the random key assignments in Obsidian, they're not random. They make a lot of sense to somebody, but they make no sense to me. So I'm constantly fighting against it. And then the iOS versions have other quirks as well. Some of the plugins don't work on you know? So it's a fantastic tool.
Ian:I I wrote on Reddit in response to someone talking about Bear, which I mentioned earlier. It's a beautiful, beautiful Apple platform app. I wrote, I've also started using Obsidian over bare, but it breaks my heart to do so. Obsidian looks horrible, and using it is a constant battle against muscle memory from years of using Mac and iOS apps, but the sheer power of it is undeniable and compelling. And I think that's that's the thing.
Ian:That concept, that way of you of saving information is amazing, but just it's just so difficult.
Ash:Yeah. Now I could see that sometimes again, thinking about my own system, sometimes, yes, it does break down, and I will have some notes or some documents or whatever it was to to be saved along with a particular piece of you know, alongside a a date and a piece of work that I'm doing, and I'll have to go and fill that in afterwards or and then sometimes by its nature, it's incomplete. So I guess Obsidian or whatever the app is, you it still sounds like you you need the the discipline Yeah. In order to to maintain the system. Right?
Ian:Totally.
Ash:So it might make it a little bit easier and smarter, let's say, with the tagging. Because with the original system what was it called in German? Slipknot? No. Not Slipknot.
Ash:That's a band.
Ian:Zettelkasten.
Ash:Slipbox.
Ian:Slipbox.
Ash:Slipbox. With that system, say, if you were, I don't know, trying to if you create, let's say, a folder per concept, so that you were moving notes sort of into there, That's probably more discipline than I have
Ian:Yeah. Certainly.
Ash:To to maintain that sort of system.
Ian:I'm the same.
Ash:So I like the idea of it, but, like I said, that kind of system is more discipline than I have for things like that. So my simpler date and, event / training course, whatever it is, system tends to work with me, but at the cost of I know where everything is, but I don't know what links it has to each other.
Ian:I wonder, actually, if just adding very simple linking into most notes systems might not start to give them this kind of superpower status. Because, actually, it's just using WikiLeaks, which is this idea of the 2 square the double square brackets and some sort of completion. Doesn't seem that hard if you're already working in a folder of files. And Obsidian is exactly that, a folder a folder structure of markdown files.
Ian:In fact, if Obsidian exploded, you would still have all the markdown files all still linked together. Yeah. So in that way, it's it's really good. It's saving it in an accessible way that's probably if you just loaded your folder into Obsidian, you probably find you're quite a lot of the way there.
Ash:Yeah. So what about team knowledge management?
Ian:Oh, well, that's, that's an interesting one. Yeah. I wonder if anyone has that. I mean, Notion kinda does that. Yeah.
Ian:You can create links in Notion in quite a strong way, and Notion has this kind of shared thing. I mean, we use it for this, don't we?
Ash:Yeah. Yeah. Because that's like the perennial problem that popped into my head when I first saw the certainly the phrase knowledge management because, you you know, you've got, like, obviously, it's one thing talking about the systems you have as as an individual. Yeah. But, you know, as a team, it's kind of interesting as well because teams create documentation and runbooks and things like that.
Ash:And I was just wondering if you could have those. I suppose you can have those interlinked as well. But I guess it comes down to the same point, of discipline and making sure you apply the same treatment Yes. And add the same links. Yeah.
Ash:So I suppose it probably comes down to the same thing. And a lot of the tools are kind of variations of a very similar thing They give you the ability to link to anything that you like, and then the ability to add tags, labels, categories, whatever it is.
Ian:Mhmm.
Ash:So you absolutely can do these things, I guess. In my experience, I see that most teams, unfortunately, it's a slightly spotty implementation of such things.
Ian:It's like half of a Spotify implementation.
Ash:Yeah. Yeah.
Ian:Sorry.
Ash:That's alright. So what what else popped into my head? So as soon as... as soon as Ian had put this in Notion, the first thing that popped into my head was the phrase "Psychos and Mind Palaces". And I just imagine Ian in his mind palace
Ian:Yeah.
Ash:Which is also a set of markdown files.
Ian:Yeah. It's more of a mind shack.
Ash:Mind shack. Mind dilapidated shack.
Ian:Yeah.
Ash:So, you know, you see all these stories of very smart people like Sherlock Holmes having this incredible system within his head to, go and access bits of information from the past. But I guess we're not all we're not we're not like that, are we?
Ash:And hopefully, we're not like Hannibal Lecter. I think he had a mind palace as well, but you wanna stay out of Hannibal Lecter's mind palace.
Ian:I'd be more worried if these were non fictional character. If there were real examples of psychos and mind palaces, I'd start to be, a bit worried. Maybe there are psychos with Obsidian databases.
Ash:Yeah. Well, you know, if you're a psycho and you have a mind Palace, please call us
Ian:Not directly, just, you know, via Twitter or something.
Ash:Don't come to the window or anything? No.
Ian:No. That would be upsetting.
Ash:I don't know how to maintain systems like this, you you know, like when you're when you're under pressure.
Ian:Well, yeah.
Ash:I don't know. As a as a team, teams often add "update your run book" or "update the documentation" into their definitions of done when they've finished a feature or or whatever it is. So I guess that's kind of one way. But again, it's like... when under pressure. I guess that might may or may not work.
Ian:I find the link to teams and team knowledge very, very interesting. And I find the boundary between the two as well very interesting where, you know, I find myself writing things in my personal note taking environment, and I suddenly think, well, actually, I should put this in Notion because somebody else actually will need to know this.
Ash:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
Ash:So there's there's there's a few sort of different dynamics there, isn't there? It's like, how do you then get that where the personal knowledge management needs to transform into something a bit more, outward looking, if you like. Yeah. Out of the mind palace, through Ian's dilapidated mind shack...
Ash:Yes.
Ash:...and into the world.
Ash:So how do you, you know again but again, it it comes back to, like, a a discipline question, doesn't it? And it doesn't take away the need to make decisions off your own back, does it, I guess? You know? On the Electron question as well. So I recently worked on an Electron app, which was absolutely awful.
Ash:But, again, it was it was implemented because of a a very sort of tight set of constraints in the environment it was going to be deployed to. And it was like it was I often find it a technology of last resort.
Ian:Yeah. I mean, not all examples of it are that bad. Slack, for example, isn't... seems to be okay. But
Ash:Yeah. But there's definitely I I see more I see more examples of where it's been used as a last resort, that it's that it's a a mostly acceptable way to solve a problem, rather than it's the ideal way we would like to solve this problem
Ian:Yes.
Ash:If you know what I mean. So I'm not saying all examples are terrible. I'm just saying that it's often used in terrible situations.
Ian:There's, quips that people are saying on Twitter, and I wish I could find the original one, but I'm looking at one now that I just found, Dave Roos who I've just found by organic search. But with the new M1 Max, you can now run 2 electron apps at once. Yay. Telling that people are making those jokes. But anyway
Ash:Yeah.
Ian:So that was my thing. Psychos and mind palaces. Thank you so much for that, Ash.
Ash:You know, it's always hard to name things well, isn't it? So you can rely on me to come up with a, a pithy summary.
Ian:When you see the title of this episode, you'll know whether we ended up on, personal knowledge management or psychos and mind palaces.
Ash:I know what gets my vote.
Ash:No. That's the ultimate... the ultimate name of the thing is what's in the episode title. So there you go.
Ash:So that was 2 things.
Ian:That was 2 things.
Ash:So how do we get in touch, Ian?
Ian:As we get in touch. Oh, dear. Well, people can get in touch with us by joining our ever increasingly popular LinkedIn group.
Ash:Slow organic growth, I believe, is the...
Ash:Yes
Ash:...the phrase.
Ian:With the emphasis on slow. Unfortunately, I only have one LinkedIn account, so I've been unable to join it multiple times. So, yeah, join our LinkedIn group, and we will continue to put our episodes on there, and maybe that can be a vehicle for us to have conversations about the episode. So, you know, who knows?
Ash:Sure.
Ian:And we're also on Twitter, aren't we, Ash?
Ash:We are. We are.
Ian:What's what's our Twitter account called?
Ash:It's at whatalotofthing. Just thing. Just one thing. Just one thing. And we have a website, don't we?
Ian:We do. whatalotofthings.com.
Ash:And we're available on all podcasting applications that you can think of.
Ian:I think that's a wise proviso because people seem to be coming out with them or thinking of them at a rate that exceeds reasonable... reasonable apprehension by one person's brain. So we are available on a lot of podcast platforms.
Ash:Yeah.
Ian:And if you go to our website, there's a tab for subscribing, which will show you all of them. If, however, you discover that you are dedicated to a podcast platform that we're not on, then tell us and we can apply to be on it.
Ash:So I guess all that's left to say is thank you very much for listening, and goodbye.
Ian:Yes. Thank you very much, and goodbye. Bye.
