Episode 205 - Overworking, AI, AR, and More!

[00:00:01] IT businesses and Sacramento Projects. From somewhere deep in the cloud and the corners of the earth, this is The Killing IT Podcast with a focus on helping you make sense and dollars of all things IT. With your hosts Dave Sobel, Ryan Morris, and Karl Palachuk. We are back!

[00:00:24] Welcome everybody to Episode 205 of The Killing IT... KILLING IT! KILLING IT! Podcast, you guys were in pretty good coordination. We are like professionals. You can put us back for a reunion show and it all just comes out. I gotta say that was better than the last three shows.

[00:00:43] It was but you know after you fall off the bike a few times you let your knees heal and then you get back on the bike and then it's just like old skills. So we are back for just for fun.

[00:00:55] We thought we'd show up in your feed and drop an episode surprisingly in your feed. So hey, we're here. Believe it or not I think we need to introduce ourselves. So that was Dave Sobel. Say hi Dave.

[00:01:06] Hi, I'm Dave Sobel, host of the Business Tech Podcast and the guy here. You can hear that voice. That's Dave Sobel. Next voice is Ryan Morris. Ryan Morris, Principal Consultant, Morris Management Partners. And I'm Karl Palachuk from Small Biz Thoughts. So we are The Killing IT Podcast.

[00:01:24] So if you have not yet subscribed please subscribe to us on Apple and Spotify and everything else. Everywhere else you can find us. Gentlemen, question of the day. The question of the day. What is your favorite childhood Halloween memory? So I have five brothers.

[00:01:43] We were all paper boys right or they had these monstrous huge bags right to carry papers well that's what we carried at Halloween so no matter what your costume was. A monstrous bag that would hold like a metric ton of candy.

[00:01:58] But my favorite memory was we had a neighborhood, a neighbor who always baked these tiny little loaves of bread and then she put them in you know plastic bags and handed them out which is you would never do that today but it was so good.

[00:02:14] And I will go where you're going Karl because I remember the day that one of the older kids in the neighborhood taught us at school the innovation of don't bring that little branded Halloween bag bring your pillowcase.

[00:02:27] A king sized pillowcase as much as you could possibly carry right now what I will say is I don't know about you guys I'm not a person who dresses up for Halloween these days because I just literally never got into it.

[00:02:39] It's not because I didn't like the holidays not because I don't think that that's a fun thing. It's because I grew up in a world where it snowed on at least half of the Halloween's

[00:02:48] that I was doing so our experience was you know how when you were a child you absolutely hated this but now I look back on it and it is my favorite memory.

[00:02:58] You'd show up at the door and they'd go well what are you for Halloween and you'd unzip your great big winter coat and you'd open it up and go I'm a soccer player but I'm wearing long pants and a coat or insert costume here.

[00:03:11] We were whatever the heck was under the very heavy coat because it was cold out there. See I'm East Coast boy and I grew up abroad right and so like it stopped because Halloween

[00:03:23] is an American thing so stop for me in like fifth grade and your the question is childhood because I'm in the Halloween and I have dressed up a whole bunch of times as an adult.

[00:03:34] There's been some really good Halloween parties as an adult but the question is childhood and I remember my parents built for my best friend and I this full wrap around car that like with working flashlight headlights and I was taken around by my older sister who

[00:03:53] was in her mid-twenties and her husband and they were clearly also having a good time and I'm putting having a good time in question in quotation marks and it was just one of those great like there's still a picture of the four of us like being out there

[00:04:08] with my you know doing that and so it's a so like for me like that's the quintessential like I had the American suburban version of that where everyone's all running around and everyone is all dressed up and that's my favorite.

[00:04:19] I do have to say it is spreading to some countries so last year I happened to be I go often in October to the SMBIT professionals conference in Australia right which is always end of October and then I wander somewhere else so in Australia there's like three feet

[00:04:37] of shelf space dedicated to Halloween and it's literally like stuff from the 1980s like who would put on that mask right with the rubber band and but then you go to Singapore

[00:04:47] and it's huge there and you know so there's some other places where you know it's catching on so anyway let us do a show. We always do three topics and today the first topic is

[00:05:02] on a topic called over employment or over working and this is sort of one of the things that is made possible by technology where people because everybody's working remote they say hey

[00:05:16] guess what I don't have to be limited to one job and we're gonna actually put some links in the show notes. People are applying for multiple full-time jobs now I will say my bias is

[00:05:28] if you're a contractor and you overextend yourself and you make commitments to 80, 90, 150 hours a week and you don't fulfill that the market will take care of itself you will lose those jobs and you

[00:05:41] won't fulfill your promises and everything will fall on its face and if you manage to use tools to make yourself appear productive enough and your contractor renews the contract it's all good

[00:05:53] the thing that I don't like is the people who pretend that they are doing a salaried job that they are putting in the 40 hours and yet they're dividing it up between three or four

[00:06:04] employers and I find that to be fundamentally unethical and I know there are people say well you know I need the money well shit I need money too so what do you guys think about this

[00:06:18] so I'm gonna go on the other side of this so I'm gonna draw a line at the violation of contract terms as my line if you're hired and you have an agreement that says you are the exclusive

[00:06:32] you are the only person that I'm working with that's my line right that you've made and it you've broken an agreement and I think that's that is unethical and you cannot do that because you have an arrangement with your employer for a for a set agreement that you

[00:06:46] both sign and there should be things in there that protect both sides but I'm gonna sort of say like if you don't have that I don't care like I don't add you know I have not right or E like no and

[00:07:01] you can't work for anybody well and and this is sort of the and so this is actually my point is is the like if employers have to be a contributing portion of the relationship and you exchange

[00:07:14] and you negotiate what those terms are and I don't buy into this idea anymore of this like there's this implied agreement stuff because that's not true on the other side they will happily they will happily get rid of you because nothing is signed they will happily

[00:07:32] you know they will make changes to agreements they've been they're moving people around they'll they'll tell people oh you can work from home oh now you gotta be in like because nothing's written down and so they'll all just jerk everyone around every every big company CEO

[00:07:46] is is a master of the universe and genius on the way up and blames the market on when they make mistakes and comes down and let everybody lets people go and so I don't loyalty is two ways

[00:07:59] and if you're if you're not putting your the other side in which employers have very clearly not been interested in doing this is ultimately just the logical conclusion of that and I'm going to

[00:08:09] say this is why we have agreements is to sit down and agree what the terms of the arrangement are and if it's not written down it's free for all knock yourself out see and and I will go to the

[00:08:20] level of uh Carl when you opened and gave us the description of a contractor who works multiple fractional engagements does not uh does not require 40 hours a week in order to get one

[00:08:32] thing done but adds enough value in the limited engagement that they have with a particular focus with a particular project and a measurable outcome um I think you just described my business model for

[00:08:48] the last 13 years literally right like I said I'm not going to be full-time employed by any one organization because A it doesn't take me 40 hours to deliver very meaningful outcomes but B there are many people and to be employed by one organization we all know there's filler

[00:09:08] there's water cooler time there's things that are you know meetings that could have been an email and and so forth uh we we all know and and I've been amazed over the last couple of years as we try

[00:09:21] to normalize coming back out of the pandemic um where remote work was quote unquote required by the universe right um as we've been trying to normalize all the articles that we've been reading that say stuff like well all that inefficiency is good that's culture and that's teamwork and

[00:09:38] that's how we build relationships and you can't do that if you're remote and my answer is so for the last 27 years I would beg to differ it is possible to work remote to work fractional

[00:09:53] and actually add value here's the kicker though in any of these agreements because Dave I agree with you on on the agreement terms the agreement terms should be built on the output not the input

[00:10:06] the outcome not the not the effort that it takes in a perfect world that's true and and you know back the last time we were doing a show we may actually have covered this topic on our last

[00:10:17] episode but you know I've always taken the argument that I measure output but I measure output with contractors if I hire somebody and the expectation is they will work 40 hours a week for me if they've

[00:10:30] got six jobs right because they have tools uh and I want that I want that productivity but I don't want my job to be measuring every minute of their day and if I know for a fact

[00:10:44] that the people who are going to take advantage of this you know the era we live in I know that there are thieves out there and then and to me they are thieves if you put in 14 hours a week

[00:10:55] and you bill me for 40 you are stealing my money and the problem is that that you know if you look at like the fraud with unemployment because of the all the money the government was spending

[00:11:08] California has 32 billion dollars worth of fraud because people could log on file all this stuff get a bunch of money and they don't care about you and they don't care about the taxpayers and

[00:11:20] right they just want their money those people are now pretending to be working jobs and they will just do it until the money stops then they'll go steal it from somebody else uh and I

[00:11:30] think employers need to be aware of it and today's point maybe we are in an era where you have to have a contract that says and you can't work for other people or if you do work

[00:11:40] for other people I don't care but make sure you put it right this and that is literally my point is write it all down that's what contracts are for that's what agreements are for but

[00:11:50] don't I think the expectation of implied loyalty and such and the the what I'm pushing back on also is this like shocked faces of these horrified CEOs of oh some people are stealing

[00:12:02] from you know come on if it was turned around the other way I don't know last I checked you were all happily bragging about laying people off and and and just the ability you had to leverage based

[00:12:13] on that flexibility you enjoyed it when it was your side but you don't like it when it's the other side you don't get both you have I would encourage people to go to the overworking.com

[00:12:25] website and look at it because I have to say Dave you make it sound like all of these people are honest hardworking professionals who are just trying to earn a living

[00:12:36] and a huge percentage of them are just thieves who literally do zero work sign up for jobs take the money disappear go to the next one but we can both be right at the same this is where we can both

[00:12:49] be right at the same time right I can I can push to defend hardworking people so that they get the privileges and rights and benefits of the relationship and I can push back against those

[00:13:02] that are doing what I'm saying is this is the logical conclusion of employers thinking the best way to leverage their power is not write these things down and not create those relationships and you know what

[00:13:15] that's this is what's going to happen is that bad people are going to take advantage of that and that's my point is is the look they can't have it both ways you cannot have a world where

[00:13:24] you can do whatever you want but then expect employees on the other side to net to always be completely ethical and not be taken advantage of and this is where I will suggest it boils down

[00:13:35] to an evolution of basic metrics and terminology because remember early days of the cell phone industry how did you pay for cell phones by the minute right and it rounded up to the next

[00:13:46] minute whether you ended at five seconds or 59 seconds right that was the way that it was done then and we were charging and getting our business models built around individual units of

[00:13:58] communication how do you pay for your cell phone now by a unlimited contract on the ability to be connected and in touch how about we do that for employees how about we just redefine things

[00:14:11] like Carl don't buy my hours buy my outcomes and then if it takes me longer to do it that's on me not on you all right guys let's move to our second topic because very big things are happening

[00:14:25] out there in the world when last we convened we made the observation that that we were entering a brave new world specifically in the context of artificial intelligence chat gpt lit the world

[00:14:38] on fire back in the winter of 22 and into 23 and now we are eight 10 months past when we last made our personal observations and we are keen to come back together and say well what are we using it for

[00:14:54] what are you guys using it for what is good what is not good about all of this stuff I'll put this to the context so you guys can kind of dive in here number one does this feel like to you the

[00:15:09] way that the internet felt back in the late 1990s phenomenal cosmic capabilities in use cases we didn't know what the heck we were using it for but we knew that it would be something does it

[00:15:22] feel like that or does it feel different to you guys let's get practical talk about AI use cases in your real world I've been it's the most excited I've been about a technology in a

[00:15:32] long time I agree and what's interesting is is I keep being able to find things that it does for me I'll raise my hand and say like I'm using that hell out of AI these days if you told me back

[00:15:44] at the so almost the last show like how much you'd be using it I would be I would have it's been stunned but but I will say like it's it is it is touching almost every portion of my

[00:15:54] production I do I do podcast I do new news summarization I do a bunch of a bunch of research stuff wow it's making a difference like wow it from inputs to outputs it touches everything

[00:16:06] so far like that I had to go forth and actually put together amendments to my ethics policy to add AI information to it because I'm now using it enough that I wanted a state that look everything

[00:16:17] that's that comes out as output is reviewed by a human but wow we're I'm using it I'm definitely using it because it's boosting productivity to such level like from news gathering

[00:16:29] to to you know to and mostly what I mean by that is like it's finding duplicates and making sure that I'm not reading the same thing 50 times it's summarization you know synthesis then retooling content and get helping reshape it you know helping and then also in the

[00:16:47] creative portion I use it as a partner like hey this is what I've done what did I miss here's give me five other ideas that I might have might have not done this and I'm reviewing them

[00:16:56] and using this input it's kind of amazing and I keep circling this as an area where I think this is the massive bit to help organizations do be effective with it and it's more around

[00:17:08] like policy and compliance and the way it impacts with human usage that I think is all the value and I think there's going to be a ton of business there but for me it's well I'm loving

[00:17:18] it because I feel like you know I'm a as we all are a student of technology like I love going back and say oh here was the evolution of the telegram or the car or whatever and I feel like we are in

[00:17:30] the middle of something that instead of taking 30 or 40 or 50 years we've literally seen 10 or 15 years worth of evolution in the last 12 months and you know 12 months ago October of 2022 I couldn't spell AI right so now it's everywhere and the thing is I feel like it's

[00:17:50] just such an exciting time because we're literally in the middle of it as we see it exploding into new opportunities creating new jobs I personally committed to the fact that I believe that the low fruit for IT consultants is training your clients tell them what is it

[00:18:10] and what is it not and you may need to get educated on that and then how do you use it and how do you not right when is it allowed and when is it not allowed helping them develop an ethics policy

[00:18:21] and a you know use case policy for their own employees do some training like this is how you do it because uh some of the most powerful things that I've seen people do is get the prompts

[00:18:35] right and being a prompt coach is literally a job that didn't exist a year ago and now it's it's something that pays six digits for goodness sake right so and you don't have to be

[00:18:49] young and hip in order to to get into this anybody can get into this and because we we have so much online ability to work holy smokes I just think it's a beautiful time to be alive

[00:19:01] see and and I will agree with you there it is I just did a look down at my phone to see what headlines have come in just while we've been recording this and I had I had nine little things

[00:19:12] come in right newsletters news announcements all the things that come into my inbox um of those I said nine of them that came in seven of them included AI as one of the topics it is everything

[00:19:26] and everywhere and while Dave I will agree with you uh so if you guys are listening kind of put this into an architecture Dave outlined level one of the services we need to put guardrails we

[00:19:36] need to establish policies and we need to have ethics and and institutionalization of how you use a new technology and then Carl went to level two of here's how you functionally or as a technician use these tools very effectively and actually create more productivity and more value

[00:19:57] output using them I'm going to recommend that the highest form of value for everybody once you've established your policies once you've given people tactical training on how to use the tool the question is yeah okay so but what would I use it for and this is where

[00:20:16] I'm seeing things that quite honestly to your point Dave they blow me away more than any technology I've seen in the last 20 years because it is surprising it's not just a better way to configure

[00:20:30] a network it's not just no no you could do wireless networking instead of wired networking which by the way that was pretty revolutionary when it happened um this is no no here's a tool

[00:20:41] and it'll do 101 things and you've thought of three and there's somebody else out there who can come in and go well wait what about this or what about that and you know Dave as you're illustrating

[00:20:54] you're using it for news gathering you're using it for review purposes you're using it for productivity applications this is where I see people actually getting value and I I know two people who are currently doing this as a business model contractor not full-time gig fractional

[00:21:11] for many of their customers to be topical on our first conversation um they are getting vertical and they are getting industrial meaning they are going into organizations and saying hey you're a law firm where are the ethical boundaries where where what is okay what is not okay

[00:21:30] and then here are specific ways for business development for client relations for actual discovery within a case for courtroom preparation right like they're getting granular on how you use this stuff and then others are going in and saying oh and by the way these are the things

[00:21:48] that humans are required to do i.e. manufacturing and logistics and distribution humans must do these things but here's all the other things that you could use this technology for we're at

[00:22:00] the point in this evolution of technology where it's not about who can monitor and manage it from a remote location and make sure it doesn't fall down just utility administration this is the creative

[00:22:14] implementation this is the engineer's mindset that says here's 10 tools I don't know what do you guys want to do with it well and that's you've outlined exactly things that are perfect services right like they're perfect consultative go into an organization and help them like when you've

[00:22:31] describe it that way it's like oh yeah circle here everybody this is great services like this is where people should be in terms of investing in services so i'm it's why i'm super excited by this and

[00:22:41] I keep uh I love the analogy that I've sort of latched on to the guys over the tech meme right home have this idea of the varietals of grapes and the various models being like that and it

[00:22:50] extends perfectly and the winemaking the way you use that if you think of those models that way that a winemaker thinks of grapes then it makes solution providers the sommeliers right and

[00:22:59] you're the people that are matching the right wines to the right customers and it's exactly the logical extension of where this all goes because the all the ayes are not the same right different language models different technologies different types I've been interviewing people on the show like the

[00:23:14] different guys and the different types of models they do such different things you gotta one final note and then i'll let Dave take the last topic and that is I'm so grateful that ethics has

[00:23:24] been a part of the discussion of AI since day one it's it's just the first technology where I think ethics was it hasn't always been applied but it's been part of the discussion from day one

[00:23:35] these are talking things so for our third topic today I want to I want to take an idea I've been working on and throw it out to this this group for discussion because uh so I have uh been less

[00:23:47] than kind to the idea of the metaverse over the past few years and in particular I wanted to say like in particular I'm very discounting of the version the legless version with with avatars

[00:23:59] and where you're gonna immerse yourself in this weird online social experience but I'm but I'm starting to see the a new vision of the metaverse that is starting to become interesting

[00:24:13] and partly because of AI and there's two I want to talk a little bit about so we've got apple with it the vision pro which while it's still an awkward glad you know goggles thing

[00:24:25] we it's very clear that that's a v1 that if we we start thinking that it should actually look a little bit more like what meta announced last week uh with their ray ban glasses where it's more

[00:24:37] an idea of some glasses or an object that helps see the world a little better and also can display for you and can also communicate with you via my you know microphones and speakers

[00:24:52] close to you and if you then layer in AI where you can talk to it and interact with it we get this world of ambient computing spatial computing that starts actually making some sense to me

[00:25:06] if we can if we can think out this idea of hey I'm gonna actually put some glasses on and they can see what I'm seeing and I can talk to them and it can interact with me

[00:25:16] or I can have worlds where like I can extend my environment by putting on some goggles and getting larger displays and more work like these are use cases that are starting to make sense to me

[00:25:28] they are not as social as certain versions work but they're starting to make a ton of sense and I'm circling this saying okay if that's my my my definition of it maybe the ability to

[00:25:38] bring my digital twin into the world or interact with the digital twins that feels like a real space am I wrong am I thinking about this right what do you guys react to that

[00:25:50] not not only do I think you're right but I think google the people who invented google glass are like I told you this 10 years ago you know I do think the augmented reality part of it is

[00:26:02] I think we're still outside of the world of gaming I think we're still waiting for a use case other than the military where I can look at a hobby and say I would pay whatever a thousand

[00:26:14] two thousand three thousand dollars for this tool because it will allow me to do something I can't do now like if I look at a circuit board uh it will it will pick out oh it looks like that

[00:26:25] capacitor might be a little bit bloated that might be the issue right or something that will help me be better at my hobby be better at my job um somebody's got to figure out what the

[00:26:36] killer app is and I don't think we have a killer app yet but I do think enough people are trying enough things that the killer app will emerge it isn't it isn't obvious well and I'll take it to

[00:26:49] both of you guys teed me up effectively because a digital twin and b and you guys knew I was going to do this on this topic I did I did know you I didn't know where you're going to bite

[00:26:58] I knew it I knew it I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna be very brief on the second observation the use case that we that we all are working towards is minority report and I'll leave it at

[00:27:10] that the further application of this is all about the professional application right as Carl to your point it's not about what the individual might be able to do for entertainment or life enhancement yet we're not to the Jetsons but we will I think get to something like that

[00:27:28] it's more within your function as a professional what could you do more effectively and this is where the concept of digital twin is taking off in very practical ways I'll give you two examples right number one I am modeling a warehouse for efficiency for minimizing the travel time

[00:27:49] for materials for eliminating steps for technicians for maximizing the productivity of an assembly line to get more product out of a manufacturing environment using same floor space same people same equipment how can I do that well imagine if I could actually stand in that virtual

[00:28:07] environment and look around and ask the AI well what would you recommend and do I like this and test this out for me and run these scenarios and tell me what it might look like you you would

[00:28:19] be surprised at how many billions of dollars globally go into that precise service of designing and then implementing manufacturing floors and the flow of factory processes right that's that's a very very sophisticated discipline the second one that I will look to

[00:28:39] is is back more into our world right like chip designers are living in a world now where they can go honey I shrunk the kids right down inside of the motherboard and say where does the information

[00:28:53] come from and how does it flow and how does it interact and they're able to identify potential flaws in physical material that defeat the basic logic of circuit board design the math is all fine right like I can tell you exactly how you ought to be designing circuits

[00:29:12] and chips and whatever but then we have physical materials that are less effective in real application and somebody has to go inside of that thing and figure it out I don't want to get shrunk that

[00:29:24] small and go into it physically but if I can do that in an augmented way now the concept is working very very effectively but it begins and it ends with the concept of the digital twin

[00:29:37] everything that is in the real world replicated into the digital world where we can now interact with it I knew you'd bite but I but I also have to say like so the demos that that I'm starting

[00:29:49] to see are the ones where in particular you know you're wearing these glasses and you interact with the AI and say well what am I looking at and it identifies the building and it provides

[00:29:59] context and information and I can speak to it and you it's this combination of vision with you know audio and AI that brings it all together in a way where it's like oh I can actually start

[00:30:12] being smart enough to relay information understand context get the information from around me and provide it to me in a more discreet kind of way and if you squint and you start thinking

[00:30:22] about this from the perspective of like well you know again I don't throw out the idea of like putting cameras on AirPods right and so that they're having the abilities is if you start

[00:30:30] thinking not with the version that we're seeing but knowing that it will get smaller faster lighter all of the right things and project out it's starting to make a little bit more sense the

[00:30:41] apple the apple vision pro is you know the point where the like the fidelity makes enough sense that it's like okay I'm actually can see some workplace environments for this I could see the I'm traveling and I need larger workspace this is a good way to do this

[00:30:54] and I'm going to throw this in there just as a tease I actually spoke for the first time to a to a provider who is focused entirely on the spatial computing space like positioning themselves as

[00:31:04] the provider of the future for your all your spatial computing needs and by the way it's not a BS business like it's a legit like actually making revenue delivering services in this space

[00:31:16] do I think it's the largest space possible right now no but that doesn't mean it's not something and if it continues to grow and continues to expand it's like okay I am highlighting

[00:31:27] the saying I'm thinks it's I think it's getting interesting I'm still not thinking it's the legless future but I am thinking there's something here well and the thing about augmented reality is

[00:31:38] I don't have to be outside of my environment and I don't have to be blind to my environment right I can literally say I'm going to add something to what I experienced now in my office

[00:31:48] being productive right and so you know in many ways I think there's great opportunities but we once again business also have to find its use case of like okay that I can instantly understand how

[00:32:02] that saves me money boom let's do that and you get your toe in the water and then you know they start to have a budget for augmented reality and that's that will be huge well and

[00:32:14] and to put it in very practical terms are we 12 months away from multi-million unit sales to individuals for consumer purposes we are not are we 12 months away from multi-million unit sales to organizations for professional applications I would argue yes maybe we'll see I mean it's

[00:32:34] but it's at least becoming a thing enough that I wanted to bring it back and go okay I see the vision a little bit more and it's actually happening you see the vision

[00:32:42] I see the vision and it's actually happening sadly we're done with that topic happily we are we have completed yet another episode and this will bring us to the end of episode 205 of The Killing It

[00:32:58] podcast thanks for tuning in to the Killing It podcast please share with your friends and tell everyone to subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher and all the podcast places join us next week and help us keep Killing It in the technology business