Vic Bondi, Articles of Faith

[00:00:18] Speaker A: Hey, everyone. Welcome back. Today's guest is someone that I grew up listening to their records. Huge inspiration. In fact, when I was recording a betrayed record, I actually was talking to the guitar player, Todd, and we were talking about, how can we rip off articles of faith without sounding like we're ripping off articles of faith? And we totally missed the mark. But that was, like, at the heart of what we were trying to do. So with that vic, welcome to the show. [00:00:44] Speaker B: Thank you very much. You should have asked Virus X to come play your drums. Then you might have gotten close. [00:00:50] Speaker A: Hey, Mandev, how sick is it that you had someone in your band whose stage name was Virus X? [00:00:58] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Well, it was. It was the only one. He was the only one that took a stage name. But I. I've been asked more than once whether Vic Bondi is my punk rock name. And it's. It's actually the name I was given at birth. [00:01:12] Speaker A: So it does sound like a punk rock name, though. [00:01:15] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I don't know. I mean, Bondi is sicilian. My grandfather was from a town outside of Palermo, and we went to that town, Termini and Marese once, and everybody is a Bondi there. It's like Smith for Sicily. So. [00:01:30] Speaker A: Okay, so for the uninitiated, for people who don't know, because you've got a pretty storied, like life, both in music, but also from your career. So for those of you who don't know, who are you and what do you do? [00:01:44] Speaker B: Yeah, so I'm a business technologist. The way I make my living is the way I have made my living for about 25 years now, almost 30 years now, is in software technology, as somebody who builds things. And I've built a lot of different things in my career at a lot of different stages of a lot of different companies. I worked at startups, I've worked at medium sized companies. I've worked at large companies. I was at Microsoft for 15 years. And then I've also worked in companies that were in advanced maturity, state of decline, and companies that were sold. I've sold myself three companies in my life. And so I pretty much worked every variant of the business lifecycle or the corporate life cycle for software companies. When I started my software career, we were compiling builds under desks overnight, because that's the way you did it then. And we had large floppies. Today there are no floppies. And you do continuous integration, continuous deployment, so there's no compiling builds anymore. So the business itself, the industry, the technology has changed radically in my tenure. And I've had to adjust to it. Additionally, I started my career as a historian, so I have a PhD from Boston University in intellectual history. And I actually wrote four books on us history, which is how I got my job at Microsoft in 1995. They were looking for someone with an encyclopedic knowledge of american history. And I had that since I had just written these four reference series books. They're called American Decades. And so I came out and consulted with Microsoft on a project where they were going to do a history retrospective for 1999, for the end of the century. And they canceled that project, but they hired me. So it was pretty exciting to go from academia to that and then parallel to both of these careers, my academic career, my software career. Since 1981 I've been playing punk rock. And from 1981 to 1985 I was in articles of faith, which was one of the pioneering punk rock bands in Chicago. We were the fastest band in the city for a time and we helped build a local scene. So we were like a lot of other hardcore bands in other cities. We put on our own shows, Diy. We rented a sort of events hall up on Broadway in Chicago called the Central American Social Club. And we would just go. We would rent a PA lights. We put on shows. We put on shows for hardcore bands from all over the country. Minor thread, MDC, big boys, Channel three. Put on some canadian bands. Personality crisis, stretch marks came down, played. So we were very much do it yourself hardcore band as part of that kind of first wave of hardcore. First wave of american hardcore. And then after that I've done multiple bands of various interests and temperament. So. Jones very alloy reports suspicious activity dead ending with Jeff Dean, Derek Grant from Alkaline trio, and Joe Principi from rise against. And then most recently I'm in a van called Redshift. So quite, in fact, Redshift's records coming out in November. So I've kept a music career going this entire time, kind of in parallel to my software. My academic career really doesn't go past 1995. So that was pretty much the end of it. I haven't taught for a long time. Maybe it's something I'd do again at some point. [00:05:45] Speaker A: Well, that's a little bit. Man, you've done a couple things, is what I gotta say with all that. I want to start with a very simple question. If you're thinking about music or academia or in the corporate world, what is leadership not about for you? [00:06:05] Speaker B: So the best advice ever given to me about leadership was from my father. My father was a kind of hardcore military guy. He was a captain in the Navy. He was the executive officer of NAS Pensacola, which is the largest electronic warfare training group in the navy. And my dad was in naval intelligence for about 30 years. And at various times, he would have anywhere from, you know, 700 to 25,000 sailors reporting to him. So the best advice my dad ever gave me about leadership was, it's not about you. And that's really stuck with me. Dad told me a couple of things, said, it's not about you. And he also said, never ask anyone to do something that you wouldn't do yourself. And those are kind of the two best precepts of leadership that I've heard in my entire tenure. I think some of the things that I've learned in the technology business is it's hard to be effective in a job if you don't have a real passion for it, and you won't be a capable leader unless you have a, some real interest in the subject matter. So the first time I met Bill Gates, I thought to myself that he was the most uncharismatic man that I had ever met. I mean, he really wasn't. He wasn't a very charismatic person, you know, for example, and they had to do all this training for Bill back in the nineties. So Bill wears glasses, of course. And Bill used to push his glasses up like this on the bridge of his nose. But he actually had, like, PR consultants tell him to adjust his glasses like this because this looks intelligent and this looks like a nerd. Right? So. [00:08:01] Speaker A: Oh, well, yes, I agree. [00:08:04] Speaker B: And, of course, and so Bill went through this whole. Because Bill was kind of the corporate symbol for Microsoft when I started. But, you know, he had never thought about himself in that regard. And he had thought about himself as he was. He was very passionate about technology. I mean, very passionate. That was his life's blood, honestly. And it's what made him very effective as a leader that the passion for the technology, it was infectious at Microsoft in those days. Microsoft in those days, in the mid nineties, was also an incredible place to work. Really amazing. And they would help hone leadership skills. So they would give you a lot of training. They gave me an enormous amount of training. But I. So from my father, I learned some of those basic precepts about leadership from bill. I think I learned the necessity to be passionate about something. If you're. If, and you can't force passion, if you're not intrinsically passionate, you can't, you can't make yourself passionate. You know, you either are. You aren't you have some intrinsic interest in something or you don't. And if you don't, don't do it. Don't do things that you're not interested in. [00:09:10] Speaker A: Well, that brings me, like, really naturally to my next question is, why do leaders need to be skeptical and not immediately say yes to things? [00:09:20] Speaker B: Well, so in part because being a leader doesn't mean saying yes to things. Right? So, I mean, leadership. Leadership implies followership, too. And everybody's both, right? So leaders lead in particular directions, and followers follow in particular directions. And sometimes leaders are followers, and sometimes followers are leaders. The problem with leadership as a discipline is it's very situational. So it's hard to build some precepts that are going to work for every condition and under every circumstance. There are qualities that people have as part of their intrinsic skill set. It's just like evolution. They're going to find an environment where those skills thrive, or they're going to not be in the right environment. Right. And then they need to move into a different environment where those skills can be used to their best advantage. But so, you know, I mean, Bill, Microsoft used to do these leadership training as part of their leadership training. They would do this kind of, every company has versions of this Myers Briggs. They have all these sorts of. I did Myers Briggs at another couple of companies. They have these sort of psychological profile things where they break up. Are you analytical? Are you emotive? Are you expressive? Are you, you know, they kind of try and create quadrants for your personality and then say, well, you should go in this direction or this direction. A lot of it's just hokum, and it's a great way for people to make money as a consultant. But what is important there is recognizing that you don't have an infinitely malleable and plausible skill set. Some things that you have as an individual you're born with. And if you're lucky, you can use those innate talents and skills to their optimum. Other things you're not going to be particularly good at. When I first started at Microsoft, they placed a lot of value on working on your weaknesses. So part of their leadership training was to identify those weaknesses, and then you really work on it. Sort of like when you're in high school and you're either a math guy or a. An english guy. Well, if you're, if you're an english guy, you need to work really hard at math, because you have to be good at math. And if you're a math guy, you need to work really hard at English because you have to be good at English. And Microsoft was really keen on making you work out, buffer out those weaknesses when I started, but around 99, 2000, they really changed their perspective on this and they had you focus on your strengths rather than your weaknesses. And I actually think that's more effective. It's also more intuitive and natural for people to work from their innate strengths. And that doesn't mean that they're sufficient in and of themselves. You know, Michael Jordan wouldn't have been the greatest basketball player if he hadn't encountered really good coaches like that. Innate talent and skill had to be honed, it had to be tempered, it had to be developed. And in order to do that, you need good coaching, mentoring, the right problem set, the right environment. There are other Michael Jordans in the United States and in the world right now who will never become Michael Jordan. And that's really tragic in a lot of ways, but their circumstances aren't correct or their environment isn't correct or something happens along the way and they don't become Michael Jordan, they become something else, maybe something less. [00:13:08] Speaker A: Do you mind if I speak to that a little bit? [00:13:10] Speaker B: Sure. [00:13:11] Speaker A: I agree with you. The, the assessments, like, I mean, as an assessment, good or bad, who am I to say? So I work as a, I'm a therapist by trade, but my, I've started a coaching firm that works with a lot of different size companies. And my work is typically with the C suite. And one of the things that I find about assessments is assessments are kind of like, oh, we're going to give you this assessment from insert like company name. Could be a big company or a small company. And people go through these interviews or they fill out these surveys and they get this thing and they're like, okay, I've got this. And they land in my world and I'm like, okay, cool. So what do you want to do? They're like, I have no idea. I've got this assessment. It just tells me this thing. Assessments are fine. You can put anyone through any amount of tests and you'll get something which will have some level of truth. And it could be a lot of truth. It could be a little bit of truth. It could be truth that's totally subjective. It could be truth that's actually generalized, whatever it is. But the whole idea is like, get an assessment, but what are you going to do with it? Are you going to focus on your weaknesses? Are you going to focus on your strengths? Are you going to focus on some middle ground? And that's like, I'm way less plussed about people getting these assessments. I kind of. They kind of drive me crazy. And I agree with you. I think it is intense, busy. It's like how people built an industry out of being consultants to pump out these reports. Not, I'm not criticizing that necessarily, but I just think it's like they're fulfilling a need of, like, hey, how do we invest in our employees? Let's invest in our employees for helping them, like, unlock. We'll do the strengths finder or whatever it is. Okay, cool. But you know how you really invest in people? Great leadership, great mentorship, great coaching. Like, actually develop people. I also really like what you said about not focusing on, like, the negatives, but focus on your strengths. For me, a perspective is that, like, we don't want to have these, like, future perfect leaders. Like every. They're going to be so well rounded. No, like, some people are going to be jerks. Some people are going to be shy. Some people are going to be overconfident. That's cool. Like, people are people and they'll develop as people develop and they'll evolve and they'll grow. The best way to do that is not be punitive and be like, you did that thing again, but instead be like, hey, where are you really strong? How do we channel your energy there and give you good support on reducing the frequency, duration and impact of some of those challenging behaviors? I think that shift from focusing on your weaknesses and trying to eradicate them, which I actually firmly do not believe in, I don't think that's a good way of doing things to more of, like, a strength based model is exactly where you should go. And from a therapeutic standpoint, that's where most therapy, proper modern therapy stems. It's like, more of like, a strengths based approach. Where are people strong and how do you build from that rather than where people having challenges and then how do you account for that deficit or address that deficit? Anything you want to say to what I just added in there? [00:15:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I agree with it. The one thing that really strikes me about it is, you know, if your, if your weakness is pathological, you probably should work on it. Right? Like, so definitely there is. There are. There are, there are. I've encountered. I've encountered leaders and bosses, both great and really subpar. I've encountered people that were a mix. So the first time I left Microsoft, so I've done three different shifts at Microsoft, but the first time I left Microsoft was in 2002, and I went to a company in Pittsburgh called Carnegie Learning. And it is an educational software company that was built off of a set of smart algorithms that were developed at Carnegie Mellon University. And the guy that recruited me had been in educational publishing for decades. His name was Jim Nye. He was this incredibly tall texan, really engaging, very charismatic figure, actually. But Jim's strengths, he had led these book sales groups for McMillan and Pearson and all these companies over many years, and he had incredible people skills. So one of the things I learned from Jim, one axiom he taught me, we were walking into a hotel in San Francisco, and he knew the doorman by name. And he's like. He's like, everybody should be treated with decency and respect. Know everyone's name. He was really keen on that. And he. But he was. He was absolutely a nut, too. So Jim's strengths as a person, his weaknesses were just crazy, too. Like, you know, he. And they were tied together. It was really hard to extract the great stuff about Jim, the charisma from him just flying off the handle and just going absolutely apeshit berserk with me in one meeting where he was so angry, his coffee was spilling out of his cup as he's yelling at me. And I'm thinking to myself, oh, dude, you're nuts. You're out of your frickin mind. But it was the flip side of that really charismatic engagement that Jim was capable of doing. So, you know, I would say Jim probably would have done better to have buffed out some of that craziness on his side, but it was part of his. It was really part of his skillset. He's passed away, so, unfortunately. But he was really quite an individual. But there are skill sets that are pathological, and, I mean, I've seen them. So one of the problems with Microsoft, especially when Bill ran the company, was it was a real meritocracy. And so you weren't at that company unless you had talent. And they had a. Had an extremely rigorous hiring process. Like, it took. It was two days and 14 people that I interviewed with, and if anyone had given me a no hire, I wouldn't have been hired. So it was really difficult. But once you. If you traverse that gauntlet, they don't have these policies anymore. But if you traverse that gauntlet, you felt like you were a member of the elect. You felt like you were really important, whether you were or not. And you would get into these when you would get into contentious discussions, as we did, about products and ideas, and people would do things that would be completely unacceptable in today's work environment. And this was so, Bill was famous for this too. That's the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard, were comments that he would make occasionally. And so people would take that same level of aggression. And that's fucking wrong. That's stupid. I don't know how many times people dropped f bombs in meetings with me in Microsoft in 95 to 98 or 99. It was very common. But also in those days, because you were part of that really constrictive hiring process which they had to abandon because they couldn't scale the company up like that, you felt like, yeah, whoever's across the table cussing at me like that, they probably belong there. So I'm good with it. Right. [00:20:16] Speaker A: Well, see, it's an interesting thing, man, because, like we were saying, there's some things that are pathological, of course. Like if you, you know, like if a leadership, if a leader is like, oh yeah. Like, you know, this leader on their feedback is like, oh yeah, they like, get everyone's personal addresses and just show up in the middle of the night. Well, no, you should fire that person. Like, there's a, there's certain behaviors, but what, like, what you just talked about is like, when you purpose build a company. So like, you go through this crazy amount of interviews to get in there. I'm not saying it's good or bad that people are swearing and screaming at each other in a meeting or saying that, but you've built a group of people with the idea like, hey, this person can probably roll with the, with the culture as is. It's not a good or a bad. It's that you've built the team in a way that can function that's representative of the environment and we're trying to do. [00:21:02] Speaker B: And then it would be bad today, though. [00:21:05] Speaker A: It would be dead. But I'm going to give you an example that I think you could roll with. Just let me finish my thought. It would be bad, but let's get out of the Microsofts and go to a tech startup where there's a lot of crazy stuff that happens because they're tech startups and they move fast and there's tons of money and talent flying around. I would say a version of what you're talking about definitely still exists today and definitely in small startup technology space. [00:21:30] Speaker B: Yeah, but small, I mean, small companies are, I mean, I've worked at a couple of startups, so I did a startup called Expedition Travel Advisor. I was brought into. I don't know if you know, the Iken has cheeseburger site. Cheeseburger was one of the first meme comedy sites. [00:21:47] Speaker A: Oh yeah, yeah. [00:21:50] Speaker B: It's got the grumpy cat. [00:21:52] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:21:54] Speaker B: So I was the CTO of Cheeseburger, but I got brought in to probably, I don't know, five or six years after they had started. They'd burn through all their capital and they were about to go out of business. But I knew what that startup environment was like. And when you're in a small company or a startup company where there's a lot of intimacy, I mean, not just intimacy in terms of your mission and focus, but like you're working side by side, you're under common stress. In cheeseburger, for example, we almost missed payroll once. And the only reason we made it was because Scott Moore, our CEO, put everything on a personal credit card, right? So when you're in environments like that, that have that level of stress, it's very bonding. And if you can't adjust effectively to that level of stress, you're bounced out right away. Like, I mean, they're, they're unforgiving environments for the wrong personality type. So, you know, you're, those environments are going to be built around really unique cultures because they're usually tied up with the founder or the chief technologist or whoever the visionary is. In my experience with startups, they're mostly successful. If you have two people leading the company, one is the visionary person. He's the person who can go out and he or she can go out and speak to what you're doing. They can do the pitch deck, they can sell. I used to work with a guy at Microsoft who's now the CMO of Aero Electronics, Victor Gao. And Victor was phenomenal at this. I mean, he and I did a meeting at Publicis in Paris once, and the thing was just going absolutely frickin wrong. The whole meeting was going wrong until Victor stood up and started articulating the vision behind what Microsoft advertising was trying to do with publicis at that time. And it was fantastic. So he has that skill, that ability to articulate and inspire, especially in broad meetings. And then, but you have to pair people like that with an operations guy. So, and this has tended to be my skill set more, more than that, which is I, you go and you get stuff done. You think about the Disneys, there's Walt, and there's his brother. His brother was actually the guy that got that stuff done. So everybody in my experience, it's rare that you'll find that same personality set or that same skill set in a single person. And the startups that I've seen that have been most successful have had this kind of very advantageous pairing of operational skillset and then a kind of articulate skill set or a visionary skill set. When those two pieces work together, it's magic. [00:24:42] Speaker A: It's what I refer to as the visionary pragmatist relationship. And if you think about it along a spectrum with pragmatism being on one end and visionary being on the other, if someone's right down the middle and they're both kind of equally a visionary or pragmatist, I think that's an ideal kind of leader in a bit of a, more of a mature company, let's say a mid level company. But early companies, especially highly creative companies, you usually want that the CEO or whoever to be like really along that visionary perspective spectrum. But they surround themselves with a lot of great pragmatists because I have found that the further, the more visionary someone is, the more detached from human reality they are. And the way that they speak and act other human beings is very poor, and they also can't do the thing that they're envisioning. They can't go out and make them, they're not engineers. They can just think of it. They have to surround themselves with strong pragmatists who are also like have thick skin and they are able to bring the great results of the visionary. And then companies mature and you can switch that up. But I think we're talking about a similar thing. [00:25:52] Speaker B: You absolutely are. I mean, cheeseburger, for example. Cheeseburger had been founded by Ben Hu. Ben is a type of entrepreneur. Every morning he wakes up, he has another idea. Right? When I worked at ETA, Pete Bryant was a lot like this too. He was the CEO of ETA. Every morning they're going to come in, hey, this is what we should try. And like, they want to stop everything and let's just do this new thing today, you know, and that's where, you know, you're the ops guy. So you're just like, that's great, let me write it down. I'm going to take it over here. We're going to work on it a little bit. We'll come back to you next week with that idea more fleshed out and we'll talk about it. And then by the time you get back to next week, either they're onto a different idea and they're not interested, or, you know, you come back with a more realistic assessment of doing what they wanted to do and they're like, oh yeah, maybe it's not such a good idea, dude. [00:26:43] Speaker A: Also, I did not think we'd be talking about cheeseburger today, which, like, Patrick was across the table from me, is dying. He's like laughing his head off because, like, what a cool part of your story. Let's go back into you, though. Like, it makes a lot of sense for me, the transition or not transition because you were doing them parallel, but the connection between playing a punk and hardcore bands into academia, that makes sense. And I think it's a story that a lot of people have said, like, oh, yeah, like, you know, I did that, or I know people have done that. [00:27:09] Speaker B: I did it before Brett. I did it before Brett. So I'm. I'm the first out of the gate from that crew. Thank you. [00:27:18] Speaker A: Well done. Well done. And it was when I was young and as I said earlier, huge articles of faith was and is a very significant band to me. So it was something. I was aware that you were in academia as you would be when you were a kid, and you have whatever fanzine resources you have. But what I found interesting and that I found out way later on, is a transition from academia into the corporate world. And what I'm about to say, and I don't mean this as a, like, justify this, I just, I remember at the time thinking, this is the guy who has, like, you know, a chorus of, like, in your suit, in your suit, and now he's working in that world. How do those things connect? So what was it like from you transitioning from academia into the corporate world? [00:28:06] Speaker B: It was. It was fantastic, because when I joined Microsoft, it was really an extraordinary company. I mean, and so, I mean, I. My first six years of software, the software industry, were exclusively at Microsoft. And it was the last set of years that Bill ran the company. And it was. It was really fantastic. I mean, also, Microsoft was really, really high. I mean, we were, Windows 95 had come out. We had the Internet Explorer, and we were on top of the Internet thing. I mean, I had only worked for a week at Microsoft, and I was doing a meeting with Jeffrey Katzenberg. And, you know, so it was a great time to be at Microsoft compared to what I was slogging through at academia. You know, I wasn't on a tenure track anywhere. When I got my doctorate in 93 was a really bad time to have a history doctorate. I must have applied to over 400 universities for tenure track positions and not get into any of them. I was an associate professor at New Hampshire, University of New Hampshire. But that, that wasn't, wasn't tenure track. And it wasn't. It wasn't a lot of money. That's why I started writing books. So to go to Microsoft and to be part of what really was the world's best software company at the time, and to be part of that culture, it was still not. It still wasn't huge. It was still a medium sized company. And to be part of that was just extraordinary. So, you know, I never look back in terms of how it fit against, you know, what we want is free. And in your suit and all of my. I mean, a lot of articles of faith songs, they were never, you know, just anti Reagan, anti corporate screeds. They had. I mean, in your suit was more like, I worked on the Chicago board of trade when I was working. When I was playing in articles of faith, I worked on the Chicago board of Trade as a runner. That was my day job, one of my day jobs when I was in AOF. And I got a lot of experience with those guys, those commodities traders. So in your suit was more about those guys than anything. But I didn't feel like I was betraying my past because at that point, this is mid nineties punk had already evolved into something that had taken over the music industry anyway, right? So Nirvana had had totally flipped the script at the time. I was actually playing in a side project with Tom Morello from Rage against the Machine. So actually, actually the most hypocritical moment or the moment where I was really wondering about, what the hell are you doing, Vic? In 1999, we had the WTO riots here in Seattle. And as part of that whole event, the anti WTO stuff, Jello Biafra had created a group called the no WTO Combo. And it was him and Chris Novoselic from sound, from. From Nirvana. And Soundgarden, guitar player for Soundgarden. [00:31:22] Speaker A: Kim. [00:31:23] Speaker B: Kim Thale. Yeah, Kim playing guitar. And so Biafra asked me to join that band because we were going to play a show up here. And I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah. So I went to dinner with those guys, but I never made it to the first rehearsal because Microsoft sent me to Mexico City for a project. At the same time, there were these anti world corporate riots going on in Seattle. And then the no WTO combos playing this show, you know, against corporate globalism, right. Or global corporatism, whatever. And so that was probably the most moment where I was sitting in Mexico City looking at the riots in Seattle on tv, and I'm thinking to myself, dude, you're here for Microsoft, you know? And so it did give me a little bit of pause, I don't think. I think. I suppose if I were going to be super militant, I could just say that I'm a fucking sellout. And everything that I said when I was a young man is irrelevant given my subsequent behavior. But I would say that. So my politics really haven't changed very much from what they were then. My living standard has changed, but my politics haven't changed very much. I guess, again, if you're going to be super critical, then you could just say, well, when your liberty standards change, you join the enemy. And therefore. Or you're the enemy. I'm comfortable with that, if that's your takeaway. What I would say is the software industry was an easy industry to transition to from both academia and punk rock because it had the same momentum. So the thing that made punk rock so exciting was you were part of this incredible movement that you felt like you were going to change things and you were going to change them definitively. And in a lot of ways you changed nothing. Like, if you really get right down to it, the entire length and breadth of punk rock in the early eighties changed zero in terms of american culture. It changed some things in terms of music, some genres and some styles. It didn't change the operational structure and the business underpinnings of that business at all. Which is one thing I really thought we should do. I mean, Ian and Biafra actually are two guys that in some ways did, because they've maintained these alternative labels and these alternative ecosystems the entire time. But we didn't really change the music business. We certainly didn't change american culture. It just. It went from our warnings about Reagan to much, much worse things in our time. So we weren't a very effective force in that regard. I. But when you joined the software industry in the nineties, you were part of something just as exciting in terms of its momentum that really was changing everything, right? So the impact of the work that I was doing at Microsoft was so much more substantial in terms of what was happening with people. And, you know, I mean, I worked on all of these things, these features for Encarta encyclopedia that bill would demo at these big meetings. And then people would engage. People loved Encarta. This product that I was really central to and helped did a lot of work on with a lot of extraordinarily talented people. So it was an easy jump from punk rock to software because it had that same emotive kick. It had that same. I'm part of something greater than myself that's doing really wonderful things to the world. So I never felt like I was betraying my punk rock roots in the process. Now, you know, I mean, would I change the tax structure of the United States tomorrow and actually get billionaires and corporations to change to pay their fair share? Yeah, I would if I could, but I couldn't change that. [00:35:36] Speaker A: I think what you just said, man. So first of all, like, thanks for answering that question because not at all was it asked in a confrontational way because, I mean, I work in the corporate world more. So I think, like, the idea of punk and hardcore and all that, like, not think. I mean, punk and hardcore absolutely changed my life. Gave me access to ideas and songs and people that really made me invest back in myself. Like, I mean, before, if I hadn't found punk and hardcore when I was a kid, I don't know where I would have ended up because I was, like, pretty shattered when I was young. But they also hit that point where it's like, well, I don't know, like, do I want to just try and, like, live in this ecosystem and just do this? Do I want. Is my, is my output of being a punk just being a punk or am I going to try and take what I've learned and all these things and do other things with it? And not that I was on this big, like, I will take what I've learned in punk and take it into the world, but I, I knew that I'm not a good musician. I'm not like, I'm not like a person who could do music as a living. It's just not. And also, I don't think I'd want to just from a lifestyle perspective, I wanted to do more with my life. And I did the thing that I think makes sense to a lot of people in punk. I went into social services just like you went into academia, like, things that are kind of, I think, like, more community investment kind of things. And I learned that I had other things to give and I went out and I do what I do, do what I do now, which has been like, life changing and really cool. But I didn't do that without punk. Like, punk is the thing that set me up to do it or at least gave me those tools that I could then build the house that I'm in right now. It's an interesting idea about being a sellout or not a sellout because I kind of feel like if you have skills that are going to benefit other things and I don't even just mean in an altruistic way. But if, like, if you have something to give, even if that thing's like just like the most totally capitalistic thing, but if you have a role that you can play and add value and create things that, like, other people get value out of, is it like, is it like, cool? Like, isn't it? Is just hiding in, like a scene, like the best thing you could do, or should you go out and explore what you could do? I just. I'm not interested in hiding in a scene. I'm not interested in. I don't spend a lot of time with people that I view as like, hiding in the scene. I don't think that's like a healthy, a healthy approach for most people, unless they're truly such good musicians or such creative outputs that they err, or entities, that they can do something fulfilling for the rest of their lives. Does that resonate with you at all? [00:37:56] Speaker B: Yeah, it does. I mean, I feel like also there are aspects of punk and rock and roll that made their way seamlessly from the scene into the corporations that I've worked at and the startups that I've worked at. And so some of them are, for example, like punk, hardcore american punk was really Diye. Like, we weren't waiting. Nobody was going to give us anything. We had to go out there and make it ourselves. We put on our own shows, we put out our own records, we got in the van and we went on tour. I mean, Jesus Christ, the van would break down any. We had no money, but we went out and did it anyway. And so that kind of get it done ethos, you're going to be rewarded for that in most business scenarios, because people want to get stuff done right. And that's, again, you know, my particular skill set is pretty good at that, right? So I brought that along. The other thing was about punk and playing in a band in particular. And this is why I've been in all these bands for all the years since, you know, pretty much seamlessly continuing to play in bands. What I like about bands is the same thing I like about business. When business is running well, which is the leadership component of it, is almost opaque because everyone's role is so well understood and intuitive. Right? So what you have when you're in a band, if you're in a band with bass, drums and two guitars, you know, you all have a different role to play as a group. And the sum is greater than its parts and it works really well if everybody is super comfortable that part and willing to give to the song and, you know, I don't think in any of the bands that I've been in, we spent a lot of time debating or arguing about song structure. I mean, we. We're open to experiment with all sorts of things, right? I mean, even if I would write a song on a guitar and bring it into the room and this, I'm a lot different than other musicians. Like, Morello doesn't work like this, man. Morello, Morello, every. He's going to tell you everything. Do this, this and this. It's a little bit in the studio, him telling me how to sing. I'm like, really, dude? Like, whatever. So, you know, but. And Jay Robbins is the same way. Jay, he writes a song. He, like, he has some very specific things he wants you to do. I've never been like that. I've always been like, here's a song. It's more like the skeleton of a song. We'll figure out how it changes as you guys pick it up and put your own flavor on it. Right? Like, to me, that collaborative piece is really, really great in redshift, the band that I'm in right now, which is just a three piece, bass, drums, and I'm the only guitarist, what's really great is, I would say we do a lot of instrumentals. About half of the new album are instrumentals. A lot of that stuff just come from us just jamming around until stuff starts to gel. So there's an improvisational piece of this that's very effective. If you're at a startup, in a business startup, everything's improvisation. So if you have that same type of interaction that you would have in a band with your other compatriots in a startup, you're playing punk rock, man. Absolutely. You're just doing it for probably higher stakes, right? [00:41:24] Speaker A: Yeah, man. Dude, exactly. Exactly. What you just said resonates with me so, so much because, like, what I learned from playing in punk bands and touring and, like, having to get shirt designs and, like, breaking down in the middle of nowhere, all of that, literally every single day plays out in my business. Like, there's some element of it. So I learned how to be a business person by playing in punk bands and how to sell a t shirt, how to, like, put your record out, how to tour, all those things. I learned how to be a leader by being in business, though, and I transitioned a lot of, like, I'd say I learned a lot of, like, shitty, shitty lessons about leadership from being in bands, and I had to, like, unlearn those things. So a question I have for you is like, what did working in the corporate setting teach you about yourself and about leadership and just how to like anything you want to speak to here that you didn't learn from punk, like what was something that you learned uniquely from your corporate experience about you and your process? [00:42:29] Speaker B: So most of them have been very hard lessons to learn. So I've had a lot of success in my business career, but had a couple of failures as well. And I think I learned more from the failures than the successes. So one thing I learned about the failure is it's better to be effective than to be right. So when I started in the business, there was the right way of doing things and there was a wrong way of doing things. This is something my dad would have said too. Right way of doing things, the wrong way of doing things. And so I was pretty keen on that. And I had to win. Every fight I'm up, every fight I'm throwing down, I'm going to be right. That's a really ineffective way of being a leader. It's also a really ineffective way of being a partner. You can't be right all the time and you aren't right all the time. Just straight up, you're not going to be right all the time. So you kind of need to temper that. Even if, even if part of your success in business is going to be your drive, you need to temper that drive with some humility and some understanding that a lot of times you're not going to be right. And a lot of times other people have better answers than you. And if you're not willing to embrace those better answers, you'll fail. Right. So that's one lesson I learned really from business and it was a hard lesson to learn in articles of faith. I was very ego driven. I'm not super ego, well, I'm probably ego driven and redshift, but I'm probably not as, not to the extent that I was then. And certainly I like to think that currently I'm a lot less ego driven than I was when I started in software. In fact, I mean, I don't know whether I really embrace the notion of servant leadership, but I'm trying to practice it to a great extent. Right. Like especially at my age, I'm not going to be driving solutions. The younger people in my organization, they're going to be driving solutions. So I need to be, I need to be kind of open to what they've got going and I need to embrace what's great, whether it comes from me or not so. I did learn that in business, but I learned that as a consequence of failing with the other approach. Frankly, the other thing I learned in business that I knew a little bit in rock and roll, but I mean, it's really true of business. And the older I get, the more it seems really true to me. Everything is contingent and situational, right? Like, there is no one solution to anything, period. I mean, software developers know this intrinsically because like part of the problems with infrastructure architecture, for example, is there's dozens of different ways of addressing a single problem and you kind of need to figure out what's the best fit for that. But, you know, it, every, every company that I've worked at has been situationally different in terms of what it's required of people within that company. And it's, every situation has been unique in the extent that it requires something from me too. That's, I, maybe I usually I bring some of it to the table, but I'm gonna have to learn something new in the process. And to be honest with you, if there isn't something new to be learned, I don't know if I'm that interested in taking that job honestly. Like, why just do the same shit over and over? There is some joy in novelty. There also is a lot of joy in taking things that you've done in the past and stretching a little bit beyond your comfort zone and trying something new. It keeps you human, it keeps you fresh. The worst thing that can happen is you fail at it, then do something else. But like, you know, you can't stay in one place even if you want to. So you might as well step forward in a direction that you think is right at the moment you take that step. [00:46:34] Speaker A: I love, love what you just shared. Speaking of learning new things. So it seems to be like a pretty big leap from being a history professor to being like right at the front line of technology. So when you were brought into Microsoft, like a, did they headhunt you or were you like, oh, I just want to try something different and go into that. How did you land with even getting interviewed by Microsoft? [00:46:57] Speaker B: Well, so they had no, so this is 1995. They're trying to scale the company. Windows 95 was launching that year. And Bill had just sent his Internet tsunami email out. And so this is pre GUI, but it's coming, right? So in another year everybody's going to be on this thing called the Internet and they're going to start to be doing stuff. So the company is trying to scale to that. There were not enough schools teaching computer programming in the world for Microsoft to grab computer engineers. So, I mean, they, they would, they would grab people from all over the place. And in my case, I was brought on as a subject matter expert in history for this history project. And I guess it just sort of clicked, right? Like what they did in those days, I think, is they were looking for folks who had a general skill set and were open to learning and were relatively intelligent, right? And, you know, at Encarta, Encarta was a little bit different than a lot of other Microsoft products because it was a consumer based product. It was built around education. It had a lot of content issues. So, you know, the earliest versions of Encarta was just, it's a, you know, encyclopedia online, right, with encyclopedia entries. This is way before Wikipedia. And, you know, so it was a little bit of an outlier. And it was a good opening for me at the company because when it came to content, I was already there. I was master of content. So my job initially on Encarta was developing what we called interactivities and features that we use 3D. We used computer based technology to radically change what an encyclopedia was. So first version of Encarta was just, you would read an article because that's what you would do if you were in a book. It just happened to be on a disk at the time. But in the versions that I created, we created all sorts of things. We created what we called interactivities, where you would click and drag and you would learn the anatomy of an insect, or you would learn, we had so many different. How you put together a boat, we'd have all these instructives there that would help you learn this. And out of that, I went to a company called Explore Learning. I became an investor in a company called Explore learning that did the same thing. And then we also had things like collages, which were these beautiful multimedia, interactive experiences where you would learn about the history of China or the Watergate break in, or we did all this sort of thing. And then I also developed with a guy named Mark Truluk, terrific engineer, this thing called virtual Tours, which took advantage of what was then brand new 3d photographic technology. And what we did with those 3d photographs is we embedded hotspots. And when you clicked on the hotspot, you'd zoom to another part of, you know, the temple at mended Habu or Tikal, or actually here in Seattle at the museum of Flight, they have the one that we did for the space shuttle. So when you go to, it's so exciting to me, still when I go to this museum, that's the thing that Mark and I did is right there. It's the same because they licensed it from Microsoft. So it's our version of the space shuttle. So, you know, we developed, we developed, I developed things like that with Mark, Bill, Flora, a bunch of people at Microsoft who we were doing something different and new. And so my entry point was great for a guy who had no previous experience writing code. Now, Microsoft invested heavily in its employees in those days, and so I took classes in all sorts of things. I mean, not just software development, but business management. I mean, really, I got my mba from Microsoft because they put a lot of training and value into you. So it was a very, I'm deeply appreciative of it, really. Microsoft changed my life for the better. It was, it was a great experience. And, I mean, when Steve ran the company wasn't quite the same, company wasn't quite as great. I still had some wonderful experiences there. And, you know, Satya is doing a pretty good job at the company today, but I was very, I feel very grateful for my tenure at Microsoft. [00:51:42] Speaker A: So you took a leap. It's funny when you say, like, 94, and this might blow your mind. I didn't get my first email address until 96. Like maybe even 97. And like, when you're like, oh, yeah, I finished, you know, I finished school in 93. That's like, when I was graduating high school. So I'm like, I'm laughing at the timelines because you basically were in a, like, quote unquote industry, like academia, where you didn't have, like, technology wasn't your focus, and you took this huge leap to work in technology and, like, the front lines of that. What is it about you that made you willing to do that? Because, like, hey, a lot of people, to be frank, wouldn't make a leap that radical. [00:52:19] Speaker B: Well, if I had had tenure, I'm not sure I would have made it right. I mean, part of it was, you know, I got my doctorate at this exact moment that the country was flush with his story. And so I was competing for jobs. Like I said, I got rejected by hundreds of universities around the country. And if I had a, if I had been less desperate, I don't know that I would have taken the job with Microsoft. What was pretty exciting, though, when I came out here as a consultant, it did kind of blow my mind. I mean, it was so exciting to be. I thought to myself, well, this is how they're going to teach in the future. Like, it's not going to be, it's not going to be reading books and listening to lectures. You're going to be interacting with software. You're going to learn from machines. You're going to have these interactive experiences. You know, at Encarta, we really quickly got to the 250 words and click rule, which was we noticed that reading online was a lot different behavior than reading a book. And if you didn't have something for someone to interact with in that computer, because the computer is intrinsically interactive, if somebody didn't take action after like 200, 5500 words, they would be bored and they drop off. So you had to give them something to do, if nothing else, than a click to continue into the next article. Right? So we were learning how to address the next generation of people who would not learn the way that we had learned. [00:54:00] Speaker A: So at what point? Because when you came in, your expertise was history, american history specifically, at what point did your expertise become something else? [00:54:11] Speaker B: Probably 99. I mean, 98 or 99. I mean, I did very well at Microsoft and I moved fast. I was at Microsoft for many years. I was in the program management track. So typically at Microsoft you would be in one of three disciplines. You'd be a developer writing code, a tester who was testing the code, or a program manager who was managing the projects to some conclusion. There were other roles too. There were designers, there were product managers, there were producers. But the classic triad in Bill's days at Microsoft and early in Steve's days was those disciplines. And what would happen is as a, as a program manager or as a developer, you'd be assigned to a project, but you weren't owned by that project, you were owned by your discipline. And so a lot of my management training was around being a program manager. How do you do that effectively? Right. And it was in some ways thought of as a leadership role at Microsoft because you were responsible for getting projects to completion. Whatever the dev and testers wanted to do, you kind of in the driver's seat. So especially my first stint at Microsoft, that was my role. My second student at Microsoft, I was either a principal program manager, group program manager, or I was a multidisciplinary manager. So they did shake up that organizational structure so that at other times I would own specific projects and everybody associated with that project would, would report to me. And then that's also been the way that I've been at some businesses and some businesses that I was part of. I either owned the whole business, pretty much, for example, at Carnegie learning, or I owned a specialized group within a business like I did at Haibu, which was yellow book, which is another kind of amazing business story. But, you know, so it probably took me about two years to learn the ropes of good program management. And then after that, I learned a lot about code, I would say it was after I left Microsoft that I started really learning about technical architectures and systems, which is what I know best today. And it's a very hard learning curve, and it's a continuous one for me, because those systems are very dynamic, and they. They don't stay the same. So they've made numerous structural changes in the last, even 15 years. So the discipline itself is radically different today. The underlying architectures behind technical systems, software technology systems today is so much different than even ten years ago. And staying on top of it is, frankly, a challenge. It's difficult. [00:57:12] Speaker A: Yeah. All right, let's pop back into. Into playing in bands. So if I think back to articles of faith, and I do want to talk about the other bands you've played in, but I do want to. I want to start with the articles of faith just in. It never seemed like you got a record deal or had, like, a label represent you that stuck around. So, like, you got. I think the two eps were self released. Is that right? [00:57:35] Speaker B: Well, the first one was on Bob Mold's record label reflex, which didn't last very long. And the second one was kind of a one off. I think Jill Heath, who owned Lone Wolf Records, she had some intention of creating a record label out of it, but it never really materialized. You know, there weren't a lot of labels back then. I mean, you just. You put out. You put out records yourself. I mean, all of the eps we put out either ourselves, we owned our own label called Wasteland Records, or we did with Paul may hearn from the Zero Boys. We did. We did stuff on his label. So there weren't. There weren't a lot of labels for punk bands in the eighties. And, you know, this is way before Warner brothers and the others started signing bands. So. [00:58:24] Speaker A: So, like, the two eps were self released. The. The first lp on reflex, the second lp was on a canadian label. [00:58:31] Speaker B: Is that not long wolf Records? [00:58:34] Speaker A: Yeah, which is wild. Like a kid. I remember getting the record as a kid and being like, this seems very random because I'm canadian. I was like, it's random that it would be a canadian label. But you also had some european reissues, right? I think it was like blitzcore. [00:58:48] Speaker B: Yeah. So we did. We did. So there was a guy in Germany named Jurgen Goldschmidt. He ran a label called Bits Core. And we did. We did bits. We did. I mean, we did a. A bunch of articles of faith reissues on that. We did the alloy record. The first alloy record was on bitscore. You know, I mean, you're just going to pick up. You're going to pick up whoever does what. I mean, later on, we did all this work with Biafra and alternative tentacles. Articles of faith did. But actually, I mean, dead endings on at, too. So, you know, we did. At is a little bit more of a real label, but even. Even. Especially today at the. At, like, a lot of independent labels is really struggling because making records is not quite the lucrative endeavor that it used to be. Right. You know? [00:59:43] Speaker A: Well, so you got these records that, like, I arguably, I believe, are classic records, but it's like you got this thing that, like, to one person, it's like, oh, my God, that thing is worth its weight in gold. It's like, well, maybe more than worth its weight in its weight in gold because records don't weigh a lot. But, like, these things that are, like, super important to one person, that to someone else, it'd be like, what is that? Like a dollar bin record? I don't even know what it is. So it's like this critical output that has deep meaning to a small amount of people and then no meaning to it. Like a huge amount of people. So you have experiences like that, and then you go into your other bands and alloy Jones very like all of the other bands you did. And a lot of it seems to be with record labels that, you know, the records either didn't have enough interest or the labels dissolved. Like, there didn't seem to be, like, a lasting. Like, I can't just go out today and go to a store and pick up a new version of one of those records that is being produced today. Is that correct? So you're pouring all of this creative energy, putting out records that I think are just, like, monumental, fundamental, incredible. Like, massive, massive records. But due to the economy of. Of the scene of which it's in and it's built, it's like these kind of. They're kind of temporary endeavors that also require an immense amount of personal and creative investment. You go from that. On the flip side, you're also professionally doing something that is actually world changing and that, like, the whole world economy essentially, like, revolves around the Internet at this point. So it's an interesting dichotomy when I look at your career, because, like, one. One of it is, like, intense investment in these really creative pursuits. That are really, like, limited. They're really finite versus professional investment in something that's infinite. Like, as far as we know it, the Internet and all these has there. What's the balance between the two of you, between those two worlds? Because you're still very involved in music and you've also been involved in this, like, world changing industry. [01:01:42] Speaker B: Well, I mean, so one thing is the music that I do is my music, right? So it's intimately associated with me. And maybe it's because I'm afraid of dying that I put out so many records. I think I'm up to 33 albums now. 33, 35 albums I put out in my life. But my impact in the software industry is much more. My contributions are extremely modest. Right? Like, so, you know, yes, the impact of the industry is infinite, but my own personal contribution is very small. And whereas in this very small creative category, my contribution is crucial. Right. So, you know, I mean, yeah, if you're into hardcore music, sooner or later you're going to run across articles of faith. And for especially young people, this happens all the time. Young men, young women will discover that record. They'll be like, what the hell is this? Where did this come from? This is like the best thing I've ever heard. Why didn't I know about this? And my answer is, yeah, I mean, part of it is articles of faith didn't play out enough. We were in Chicago. We never got a good record deal. You know, part of it was me never really making a enough of a commitment to that band. I mean, if you look at the bands from those days that that really made an impact in music. They were guys that went on the road continuously until they were famous or they were dead, right? So soul asylum is probably the most successful band from that period, oddly enough, because of that huge single that they had with MTV and they toured continuously. I mean, Perner was. He wasn't going to do anything but play rock and roll and he was going to play it until he collapsed. And, you know, Husker do, I mean, 225 days a year on the road, I don't know, maybe more, right? They're just going to keep playing until they drop. So AOf never made that level of commitment. I never made that level of commitment to a single bandaid. And so part of the problem is that band wasn't. The success that I've had has been kind of proportional to the real commitment that I made to it, right? I mean, in some ways, I was always more than willing to bail out. And what that meant is because I bailed out on it as a profession. I never became a professional. [01:04:26] Speaker A: But it's interesting, though, because I like the way that you put it together. It's like in this one world where it's my professional gig. Yeah, I've played a role and I've done cool things, but it's very small to the impact of it globally. In this other world where my commitment maybe wasn't like, I wasn't going to go out and go on tour, but I've been steady in it. I've always kept a foot in it. I've always had output. I've put out 35 or 36 albums. I'm a foundational voice in that. And you might. You might not know the bands that I. Every band that I was in, but the bands that you like, know the bands that I was in, or the bands there are the bands that they were in, know the band. So in one world, you've played a part of, like, architecting of being an architect of the whole thing, and the other, you played a cool. You've played a cool part. Both are interesting parts of my. Of the story, though, so I'm going to bring it back to your career in a second. But articles of faith. Why did articles of Faith break up? Why did you know it was time? [01:05:24] Speaker B: Yeah, actually, we broke up right on the precipice of probably taking that same turn that Husker do took in 85 to signing with a major. In fact, the last articles of Faith tour in 85 was by far our most successful. And it was one of these ones where the power of that band is a live band. You know, articles of faith as a live bandaid was we had three guitars. So when we would hit you with that wall of sound, it was really overwhelming. And most. Most people who saw AOf as a live band back in the day would tell you they were pretty, pretty good band. And so that last tour that we did in the spring and summer of 85 was definitely our best tour. And I'd already decided to go to graduate school at that point. I think one reason I did is because from, you know, I dropped out of college in 81 to play punk rock. I went back to college in 85, maybe, or. No, I'm sorry, 83, because I had an epiphany. I was working on this rehab crew in Chicago, so we would strip down apartments, and I, you know, put up new drywall and reframe doors and paint. And I was hauling a hundred pound sheet of drywall up four flights of stairs at 06:00 a.m. one morning I'm like thinking to myself, man, I don't want to do this the rest of my life. I mean, it was really hard. So I went back to school and then, you know, I finally graduated in 85. So I had to make a decision in 85. What do I do now? And the articles of faith. It wasn't just me that didn't make the commitment. The other members of the band. I remember the other members of the band. One summer, Joe Scuderi, the guitarist, went off to Europe with his girlfriend instead of going on tour. I was just like, well, fuck, right. And we had some Bill Virusex, our drummer, he had political difficulties with the rest of us because he was very, very left wing. So he dropped out of the band at one point. And then we tried to find another guy and there's nobody could play drums like Bill Richmond. Jeez, that guy was so good. He still is really, really great. So the, you know, I think in a lot of ways I had given the band a couple of years shot. Maybe I should have given it longer, maybe I should have given it harder. But after a couple of years, we didn't get it up and off the ground enough for me to feel strong about staying committed to it. [01:08:07] Speaker A: Okay. [01:08:07] Speaker B: Also the other thing was, I suppose, the bill experience. When he dropped out of the band and we tried to find another drummer, I realized how much magic was incumbent in the personalities that we had in the band itself. I mean, I've never done what a lot of guys do, which is I have a band that's called this. And then I cycle through every different player. I still own the band and its name, but it's not even the same guys that started it. Right? I've never done that. Every. I'd rather not play in the band and start over fresh with a different group of guys, which is what I've done every single time. [01:08:47] Speaker A: Yeah. All right, so let's juxtapose that first time you left Microsoft. How did you know it was time? So why and how did you know it was time? [01:08:55] Speaker B: Well, I've been there for six years. I got a really. Carnegie. Carnegie. They had to do a bit of a recruiting pitch. I mean, because they got me to move from Seattle to Pittsburgh, which was. I mean, I had my wife. Thank you, Tanya. My wife was very. She's up for an adventure. My wife's usually up for adventuring. She's really. She's got a great spirit. So we moved to Pittsburgh. I left because I wanted to learn more. It was great. It was great. Inside Microsoft, I was doing pretty well, but I wanted to learn more and I wanted to learn more outside of the company. I didn't have any experience with any Google's technology until I left Microsoft and that was pretty great. It was also, it was the CEO, Jim, and me. I was the VP of pretty much everything except for sales at Carnegie. So it was kind of a great leadership role to be thrust into. I mean, what better way of practicing leadership than to have to do it right, you know? So it was a good. And then I left Carnegie for platform learning, which was a startup in New York City. It was a supplemental education services company. I was teaching. I would develop this thing called Project Elevate, which was a way of bundling together software on computers that we would take into some of the most disadvantaged schools in the country at the end of the day. And we give tutoring through those networked computers. And it was fantastic experience, fantastic product. We were in PS 329 in Coney island in New York City. I was in the worst schools in America trying to do great things with technology to some of the most disadvantaged people in America. And the company was run by a very charismatic dude named Gene Wade. And I love Gene, and I wanted, I still think Gene is an incredible guy and I wanted to be that kind of his operations guy, but I never really was able to put myself quite in that position with him. And the company failed. So it had a really charismatic leader, but it did not have an anchor point to get stuff done. And my project was kind of to the side of the main business of the company, which was supplemental education services and was done with paper and pencil and Los Angeles Unified School District and stuff like this. So I wasn't able to be that partner to Gene that might have made a difference to that company. That would have been great, but it didn't happen. So, I mean, I, when I was out, when I went back to Microsoft, my career really took off. That was really the high point of my Microsoft career, is when I exited in 2012. So, you know, I've had a great career. [01:11:57] Speaker A: So you were really like at the front line of when technology and education started to intersect. And technology really had an ability to not just give like some lucky people here and there a chance to improve their education or be able to type up a report on a computer. You were there when it was like, and you were part of technology actually actively becoming a part of how people learn. So a starter question for there is, like, are there any missed opportunities? Like, are there, are there things that we haven't cracked open yet that could help that learner experience and that kind of like developing mind experience where technology isn't touching yet. [01:12:33] Speaker B: So Bill used to have these. Bill used to have these, what he called think week. And think week was this thing where you would submit documents, like papers to Bill, and then he would read them, and then he'd do some commentary on them, or they would be part of an evaluative process. So I wrote this think week piece called the value of content is zero. And this must have been, I don't know, 29, 200, nine or 2010, something like that for Bill's think week. And at the time, or maybe it was earlier than that, it was probably 2007, because I had just gone back to Microsoft. What I done when I went back to Microsoft the second time is I reread Marshall McLuhan's understanding media, because one of the things that was really notable to me in technology was how it wasn't just reading, it was thinking how the, this medium was creating mechanisms for understanding that were different than books. Right? That were different than books. So, and it was nonlinear, it was interactive, but it was also, you don't read online. You do not read online. You scan online. You're looking just, you're looking for keywords. You do the same thing when you're writing code. You're traversing the code, looking for the bug. So the, I felt like the medium is structuring cognition in ways that we're really not aware of. And McLuhan is a good person to go back to, to understand it, because my daughter, people her age, people I work with, most of the people I work with now are 30 years younger than me, right. The structure of their cognition is different than mine, and it's different because of the technology that I helped put out in the world, actually. And I don't think that we were aware at the time of just how significant that shift was. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I mean, we did know. I just told you the 250 word rule at Encarta. Well, I mean, did that, did that enforce that behavior? Right? When I put that feature in Encarta, where you had to click to go to the next part of the article, did that enforce that scanning behavior as opposed to linear reading? I don't know. Right. I don't know. I mean, if you go back, if you use, like, the Internet time machine and go back to 96 or 97 and look at, you know, blog posts, they're all long pages of text that you're reading, you won't make it through the first third of it before you abandon it. I guarantee it. Right. Maybe intrinsically, that wasn't the right medium for what we're doing. So I don't know whether. I don't know whether maybe what might have been good and might still be good for society is to have some alternative mechanisms to offset the impact of a singular way of understanding the world, which is this kind of hyper, hyper flat, superficial means of accessing information. Because, you know, again, my daughter doesn't. My daughter places absolutely no stock in knowing anything. You know, I can tell you all about Wittgenstein's tractatus logico philosophicus. Because I used to teach it. It's important for me to know it. Right. She doesn't feel that need to know, right. Because she didn't grow up in a world where you had to know anything. But the thing is, maybe we, as a society, we should be setting up some alternative structures where knowledge is a requirement so that that capacity is not lost in our. In our overarching skillset. Right? [01:16:38] Speaker A: Yeah. It's like a real Fahrenheit 451 type scenario where it's like, yeah, like, are we just going to get rid of all the books? Like, this idea of online learning and all these things? So, like, my company plays quite, quite a bit in online learning, and we're getting. We're like, we're honing our ability to do stuff online from an educational space. And I'm not, like someone who says, like, oh, the best learning's done in person or any of that. Like, I think there's all sorts of things. But what I do know and what I agree with you, and, like, not just agree with you, you're the expert here, but people's ability to pay attention to what's on a screen is very limited, especially if they're going to be reading. And it's that idea that this thing that you're. That you're engaged with is intended to be like a tool that you interact with, and you go on the Internet and you do all these things. It's really hard to create that kind of learning environment. And I do have some, like, you know, I have a young daughter. She's four. I've got some concerns about, like, what, how far are we going to be down the rabbit hole of technology when it comes to learning? By the time that she's in, like, proper school or more and more advanced degrees, I do think there is real deal, like, value of cracking a book and, like, engaging with people in, like, debate in person and having these conversations. I worry a little bit about where technology is going to be, but I'm also not, like, one of those, like, crazy anti technology. Like, it's all. It's gone too far. Like, I don't think that. But I. I do think it wouldn't matter. [01:17:58] Speaker B: It wouldn't matter if you were. The technology is going to keep moving. [01:18:02] Speaker A: Right? [01:18:02] Speaker B: You can. You can be. I'm vigorous. You can be a Luddite. I'm. I'm gonna. I'm gonna go live in a. You can be the Unabomber. I'm gonna live in a shed in Montana and read books. Go do it. But, like, well, maybe. [01:18:15] Speaker A: Maybe don't unabomb, though. Don't bomb. [01:18:17] Speaker B: Maybe don't unabomber. [01:18:18] Speaker A: You could go live in a shack. [01:18:20] Speaker B: You can go live in a shed of Montana. But, like, the rest of the world is going to be moving forward. [01:18:23] Speaker A: Right. [01:18:24] Speaker B: So, I mean, the issue. The issue of. I mean, I could be wrong about this because I don't know how important it is for Sophie to know things. She has Google. I use Google all the time. You know? I don't. I mean, every time my wife and I have a dispute about something, we had a dispute. We were in Barcelona a couple of weeks ago, and she said that a cockatoo was a. I said. She said a parakeet was a cockatoo, and I said it was a parakeet. We went to Google to sort it out. Right? [01:19:00] Speaker A: Who won? [01:19:01] Speaker B: I did. [01:19:02] Speaker A: Good. Well done. [01:19:03] Speaker B: Well, no, my wife wouldn't say it's. But we went to Google because we don't have to know. So maybe the question should be framed. What do you have to know in the age of Google? Maybe that's the better way of framing the question. What do you have to know in the age of Google? [01:19:24] Speaker A: Yeah. And something I'd say, like, adjunct to that. Someone recently said to me, it was like, the debate of whether it's gone too far or if it's going too far or not. Doesn't matter. Like, you can do that, like, debate it all you want, the reality that it's going to keep going, and then how do you steer it in the most useful direction? That's the debate. And it wasn't necessarily about education, but it was about, like, online and social media and all those things. And I really liked that way that was framed because, like, I was more in the, like, well, you know, should we blah, blah, blah? And they're like, just. It was a polite. Shut up. It was like, listen, dude, you can debate it all you want. You can, like, you know, you can. He's like, create a protest song if you want. It doesn't matter that that train has already left and you're not stopping that train. How do you instead get into the conversation about how you move things in a direction? How do you understand about where it's going so that you can avert it from going down negative paths? I found that interesting because it does seem, like, retrospectively and not just around technology, but, like, the debate about once things have already launched or the move, it's like, whether or not it should or should not happen. Like, is like a type of music. Good or bad is a type of thing. Good or bad. It's like, well, if it's already going, how do you move things into more productive, smarter places? But that does require, like, getting involved, and that also requires leadership. Like, you got to be willing. You've got to be willing from just having a sideline opinion to actually being in the frayen. [01:20:46] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right. Well, you know, Dewey, John Dewey said, you know, we don't solve problems so much as get around them, so. [01:20:55] Speaker A: All right, so I've got a. I've got a few more questions before we start heading off. This is going to seem like an odd question, but I'm going to give it a business, a business spin in a second. What is the best show that you attended? You did not play, but you attended the best show that you ever went to? In the early days of punk and hardcore, like, life changing show, there were two of them. [01:21:20] Speaker B: So the biggest one was the clash at 1979 in the Aragon ballroom in Chicago. I had just moved up to Chicago from Pensacola, Florida, and I still had my long surfer hair, and I had waited a long. I was right in front of Paul Simone in that stage, and they came out and they opened up with, I'm so bored with the USA. And it was. I shaved my head the next day. I'm like, I'm playing punk rock. This is it. This is it. This is the moment. So that was number one. Number two was the bad brains at the 930 club in maybe late 81, early 82. I don't quite remember exactly. It was when I was home at Christmas break and my sister, who was a DC scenester and gone to all the shows, she's like, you got to go to the 930 cloak. And you see this band, the Bad Brains. And so I went. And it was, I had never seen a more explosive live band in my life, they were just incredible. And so that, that was the really, for me, that was go back to Chicago. And I just told the guys in the band, I'm like, we got to step up our game. We got to get out of our clash cover mode and get into something more adventurous. [01:22:42] Speaker A: Those were the two shows in your business life. What would be the business version of that? Where was one or two moments where you're like, oh, everything is different now? [01:22:58] Speaker B: Well, I mean, when I really thought the tech was different or so when Ajax came in, which is a way of making server side calls from web pages, I was like, oh, boy, something's going on here. We should really look at this. So that was pretty interesting. I think also when Agile methodology came into the business, I was extremely interested into it. Um, I probably, I'm sure I wasn't the first at Microsoft, but I was one of the first pm's at Microsoft to try Agile with my team, with the branded entertainment and experiences team. So I thought Agile, the Agile manifesto. I don't think I read it in 2001, but I probably read it like, 2003 or 2004. And I'm like, hmm, this is pretty interesting. I thought things would change. When I did that think week piece, I was really aware of just how different technology was making people. So that was also pretty, pretty, pretty interesting to me. Everything else in my personal career was tied to, like, personal moments where I'm just floored by what one person said to me. One time I had this marvelous boss, Gail Troberman. She's the chief marketing officer for iHeartmedia now, and I loved working for her. And then she got sacked at one point and replaced with a guy that I didn't care for. And I was just heartbroken. We were in London, and when she told me she was leaving the team and whatnot, and I'm like, I was just heartbroken. She looked at me, she said, don't be a victim. And I was just like, wow, okay. Like, it was just absolutely transformative moment for me. Right. [01:24:50] Speaker A: All right, as we're closing off, I'm going to ask you some questions, and they're going to get a little bit harder. But before we get into them, anything that you want to say, any insights that you want to bring in, anything you want to mention? [01:24:59] Speaker B: No, no, I'm good. I'm really appreciative of the opportunity to chat with you. [01:25:03] Speaker A: Okay, here we go. The first one, we'll just say, we'll make it an easy one. So Mike Gitter was a person. Mike Gitter friend of the show. Wonderful dude. He was like, you gotta talk to Vic. This is, like, purpose built for him. This is a great podcast. What's your favorite Mike Gitter story that you got that you can share with us? [01:25:25] Speaker B: Oh, all right. All right. So, you know, I did Mike Gitter's only album. Only recorded album. The apology record. Right. I produced that record. [01:25:33] Speaker A: That's a good record. [01:25:35] Speaker B: So it's a good record. Well, so it was Mike and a bunch of guys from the Berklee School of Music. So almost all of gitters vocals are comped. That guy cannot sing. He probably is off key in a shower. He's the worst singer ever. So, like, trying to get vocals on that record. I mean, every line was comped because he would sing one line in key, and then the next line, he'd be flat, and the line after that, he'd be sharp. And, like, I could not get Mike to sing in key to save my life. So it was all snip, snip, snip. Man. That record is all comped vocals. [01:26:14] Speaker A: Listen, that is a perfect story, Mike, you know, friend of the show, friend in real life. Love you, dude. That is absolutely hilarious. Okay, good. Great start. Second one. What's next for you professionally? [01:26:31] Speaker B: That's a great question. So I. The company I'm working for right now, I really like quite a bit remit ly. We do digital remittances. I like the mission of the company. So, you know, remittances are trillions of dollars of industry. I don't know, $50 trillion industry around the world of people sending money back to their home countries from whatever country they're working in. Right. So we do this, you know, by phone. You can. You can do digital transfers. We also have in person pickup. We do cash pickups. We have all sorts of mechanisms and vehicles for facilitating remittances. I like working with remittly a lot, you know, I mean, as I get older, I feel like my role more and more becomes consultative and advisory, and I'm actually super comfortable with that. Right. Like, I don't. It's not. It's not like it was in the days of Microsoft, where you drive projects. It's just a different world now. So I really enjoy it. I stick it out with remitly for a few more years, see where it grows. It's a pretty interesting business. I'm not really interested in working for a big company again. If Microsoft made me a job offer, depending on job offer, it would be interesting. I have a lot of affection for the company. So I would be open to something like that, but I'm not. I'm not. It wouldn't be kind of nice to close my career with the company that launched it, but that's. That's abject sentimentalism. I love it. [01:28:10] Speaker A: All right, last question. It's. It's hard. It's hard how. What scale of hard do you want? Do you want, like, and it's easy, or do you want, like, hard hard? [01:28:18] Speaker B: Dude, hit me. [01:28:21] Speaker A: All right, I'm gonna. You're gonna have to do some choices now. Are you ready? Okay. SsD or Dys? Minor threat of the faith. Bad brain. [01:28:35] Speaker B: Why you say faith void? Void. Void. [01:28:39] Speaker A: Yeah, but come on. I hate. I hate the faith void. Okay, first of all, I have a faith tattoo, so, like, I'm not the right guy to have that kind of conversation with. Both bands are amazing. I'd say faith void is about, like, what kind of person are you trying to position yourself as being in a conversation? Are you trying to be a faith person or a void person? I'm always the faith person, but both. Rip, you're a void. [01:28:58] Speaker B: By the way, that bad brains. That bad brain show I was telling you about, faith was the opening band. [01:29:04] Speaker A: All right, bad brains or misfits? [01:29:07] Speaker B: Oh, bad brains. But not even close. Not even close. We played. We played with the misfits. We played with the bad brains. The bad brains, in their heyday, were the greatest live band that have ever walked the earth. They were untouchable. Good untouchable. [01:29:25] Speaker A: We are. We are. We're deeply aligned. Clash of Ramones. [01:29:31] Speaker B: Oh, wow. Now, that's a hard one. So I would say the clash, just because they. They had that kind of singular impact on me. But live, the Ramones, I mean, one of the things. One of the things that hurts me the most as a father is that my daughter never will see the Ramones live, because a Ramon show live was just fantastic. [01:29:55] Speaker A: All right. Oh, DoA or personality crisis? [01:30:01] Speaker B: Ooh, that would be a hard one, except I have never seen DoA live. [01:30:08] Speaker A: Okay, okay, so, personality crisis. [01:30:11] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [01:30:12] Speaker A: Well done. I agree with you. As a Canadian. I love DOA, of course, but, man, I love personality crisis. All right, and at what point did hardcore be? What did modern? Hardcore. The hardcore that was modern at that time, at what point were you like, it's. That's cool, but that's not really me. [01:30:32] Speaker B: Well, I mean, I didn't like a lot of the super bro stuff, and I still though, like, the late eighties New York hardcore guerrilla biscuits. Judge. I'm like, it's too, boy. It's too much boy. Man. I mean, like, you need some girls in there, folks, like, ladies to the front, man. I'm that stuff. And even today, there's still a lot of, what, 5th, 6th generation hardcore that's just like, bro, throw down. And I'm just. Man, I don't know, I'm just not. [01:31:05] Speaker A: So for one person that's part of this conversation, which is a person sitting across from me, he's nodding vigorously, like, yeah, yeah, he's right. And then the other person, the person here is like, yeah, yeah, well, you probably know. [01:31:18] Speaker B: You probably know Greg Bennick, right, from trial. And Greg's a friend of mine. He's a good friend of mine. I. And I mean, I like, I like, I love Greg. And trial's okay, but I mean, like, that trial scene, the, like, bro, I just. [01:31:38] Speaker A: All right, I got, I got a question from the peanut gallery. Can we keep going? [01:31:42] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. [01:31:43] Speaker A: Best black flag singer, Des. I agree. What do you. [01:31:49] Speaker B: Keith. [01:31:50] Speaker A: Keith. Oh, okay. [01:31:52] Speaker B: No, no, I mean, so I saw, I saw. I didn't see black flag with Keith. I saw black flag with Des. I saw black Flag with Henry. I didn't see him with, with Ron. Although I had this great incident in Vancouver with Ron. But, like, does that. That version of Black Flag where Dez was a lead singer. Washington. That band was terrifying. They were. They were frightening, man. I mean, I thought that they were going to jump off the stage and just start beating people up. They were so. They were so ferocious and they were off. Like, they, they made you question your sanity. They were just really, really scary. And the first time I saw a flag with Henry, it was pretty great. But then every subsequent time was like, oh, here's Sergeant Rock here to black flag you. It just got to be kind of cartoonish. [01:32:49] Speaker A: Thank you. Very well done. All right, all right, all right, all right. Tell us about the, the incident in Vancouver. You can't just drop that in there. [01:32:58] Speaker B: Articles of place, articles of faith played Vancouver once at China. [01:33:04] Speaker A: What's the name of that bar smelling boot? [01:33:07] Speaker B: Some bar down in Gastown. [01:33:08] Speaker A: Was it smiling Buddha smile and buddha. [01:33:10] Speaker B: That one? Yeah. So we played there. We played there like, 1983 maybe. And rank and file was playing at some other bar across town, so everybody went to see rank and file. So articles of faith ended up playing for like, three people. But it's probably one of the best shows we ever played anyway. But Ron was kind of our, um, man about town. I don't remember how we got hooked up with him. But. So we stayed in some squad and he was helping us out. He got all of our accommodations with us and, um, so he was hanging out with the band and the squad and we're having a pretty good time and we decide we're going to go out to the bar and get some beer. So you would have to go to the. The bar to get a six pack of beer in those days. I don't know what. Whether that was the rule about Canada or still the rule about Canada. We went to the bar to get a couple of six packs and we're walking back to the place that we're staying, and there's three of us. Me. Well, there's four of us. Me, Pat Gruber, our manager, Ron, and Joe Scuderi, our guitar player. There's four of us. And then out of the corner of my eye I see this guy, he's like hassling Ron and he's a big dude. And then there's a couple other big dudes with him, right? And they're hassling him and they say some shit to Ron or they grab him and, you know, Ron's tiny guy, and he just turns around and just smacks this guy right in the jaw, right? Like, not taking any grief from anybody, no matter how big the guy is, but he puts the beer down and then. And then the rest of us turn around like, okay, here we go. Time to fight. So we start in and these guys take off and they run down the street and we're chasing after them because we're going to beat their ass, right? And Joe Scuderi goes, hey, hey. And we look back and there's this old chrome woman grabbing our beers and walking away with them. Cause the whole thing was designed to hijack our twelve pack, right? The whole fight was about getting those twelve pack, right? [01:35:17] Speaker A: I hope you learned a valuable lesson about Canadians and their beer from that. [01:35:21] Speaker B: The Canadians are always willing to fight for their beer. Absolutely. [01:35:24] Speaker A: Not even just fight. Trick. Trickery is what we deploy. Trickery for the beer. [01:35:28] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:35:29] Speaker A: All right. Would you say that's true, Patrick? All right, listen, man, as we're closing off, I want to add in our drum, or Patrick, who's sitting across to me, who you met earlier, plays in an incredible band called Chain Whip, that I think you would legitimately, really, really dig. So we're. I'm going to make sure that gets sent over to you and Spencer, who plays in an awesome hardcore band called Endgame, who I'm almost positive you would not like, but they're really really good. We will also send that to you, and then you can let us know whether you love Patrick's band. And if you just, like, maybe you'll like Spencer's band better. I don't know. Anyways, we have. I love this time with you, man. That Patrick has been sitting across from me, like, smiling, nodding his head. He shared so much super cool stuff. Anything you want to share about anything, it could be business leadership, technology, punk, hardcore. Whatever you want. Before we close off. [01:36:17] Speaker B: No, no, no. Like I said, I'm appreciative of the opportunity to chat. It's fun. Like I said, I got my test pressings for the new redshift record, which is out this fall, so worst timeline possible is the name of the outridge. [01:36:30] Speaker A: Oh, okay. I thought you meant about that timeline it took for you to get your test prep. [01:36:34] Speaker B: Oh, no, no. I mean, we're doing it with Boss Tunage. And Aston from Boss Tunage has got this. I don't know how he managed to turn it around in the middle of this vinyl crisis, but we. It'll be out in November. It's great. [01:36:46] Speaker A: Hell, yeah. Okay, and what's the label? [01:36:47] Speaker B: It's on boss tunage. [01:36:49] Speaker A: Boss Tunage. Okay, so we'll make sure that we put links to everything that we can. All your stuff, all your music, anything you want to share with us. And with that, Vic, it's been a huge honor for us to have you on the show. I know you're an accessible dude. Like, you know, Greg mentioned. You mentioned he knew you before. I know a lot of people who speak highly of you, but just being such a fan of articles of faith and also just really impressed by your. Your history and business, it's been a huge honor. So thanks. Thank you so much for being on the show. [01:37:18] Speaker B: You bet. Thank you, guys. I really. I've enjoyed the time. I appreciate it very much. [01:37:23] Speaker A: Great, everyone. I'll see you in the outro. [01:37:29] Speaker B: One step. One step beyond.