Lex Clips - 2023-07-01
Lex Fridman Podcast full episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNrTrx42DGQ Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - Numerai: https://numer.ai/lex - Babbel: https://babbel.com/lexpod and use code Lexpod to get 55% off - NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/lex to get free product tour - InsideTracker: https://insidetracker.com/lex to get 20% off - AG1: https://drinkag1.com/lex to get 1 month supply of fish oil GUEST BIO: George Hotz is a programmer, hacker, and the founder of comma-ai and tiny corp. PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ Full episodes playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4 Clips playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOeciFP3CBCIEElOJeitOr41 SOCIAL: - Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman - Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman - Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/lexfridman - Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman
I have been a software engineer for the past 12 years, I really like both Lex and George, but couple of things bugged me in this clip:
- George did not get hate for "working at twitter", he got hate because he was very cocky about it, being disrespectful of the work of the previous engineers while showing an obvious lack of knowledge on the history and arcanes of that tech debt. He claimed it could fix major stuff (mainly the search feature) in 2 months from his first day in the company, anyone with a bit of experience in that field at that scale would know that it is ridiculous.
- "software engineers have incentive to add lines in the code base just like a lawyer to add laws". Maybe when you are really junior and not confident, you want to show off a bit. But on the opposite, most of the software engineers would love to refactor more often and simplify stuff. No one like to cook in a dirty kitchen. But that is something that usually don't bring money to the company, so it is never prioritized by the people doing the roadmaps and always postpone.
- Not being able to run twitter locally has nothing to do with "modern development", on the opposite, it is another technical debt that they have been carrying over for a long time. And I agree, it really sucks.
I think he acknowledged your last 2 points. He basically said Im not a manager, i dont state things that would maybe make a good business case. Also, companies are filled with junior engineers, so they inevitably come up with a ton of wrappers and new scrupts to make things "easier", but in reality its just for them and is hard for anyone else to use.
For the first point, I assume you've never worked at Twitter, but I dunno how you can explain why someone would rewrite nginx... and then other engineers used it?? if you can make that make sense then sure Hotz is wrong. Otherwise on the face of it, seems like maybe he's right and there is a more systemic issue.
technical debt is just a fancy word for bad code.
They go their whole lives writing garbage, shrugging it off as "technical debt".
So they've never written anything good, yet they think they totally can.
When in reality, given that all they've ever done is write bad code, it's all they can do, it's their only experience.
"If there's two evils in the world, it's centralization and complexity." Words of wisdom right there. As an SDE at a large software company, I appreciate how difficult it is to run a platform team well. There are too many examples of how centralization incentivizes empire building and slows partner teams down, which defeats the purpose of having a centralized team in the first place.
BS
It's a contradiction
First he says "centralization and complexity" is bad, then he says he would prefer dictatorship.
Bruh.
Intelligence should be used to simplify the world. It simplifies physical labor and it should simplify intellectual labor. It did so with computers. Increasing complexity unnecessarily is an abomination.
@@ukaszwolenczak5590 A dictatorship can be less centralized and it's definitely simpler. China and ancient Rome may have had dictators but due to their size they were mostly administered by local governors. He said himself there will always be political wrangling and you will get an oligarchy or a monarchy. Monarchies can distribute power more confidently because there isn't a constant anxiety inducing struggle for influence. But really just accept that George Hotz is far smarter than you and if you think you found a flaw in his thinking you're probably wrong.
4:34 The moment Lex knew I was watching this while eating popcorn in my underwear.
Hahaha the moment he saw my pooping face
When I was a coder it was about simplicity, speed, effectiveness, and reliability, now it mirrors the messiness of the human environment, essentially putting out the latest forest fire. At one time we were trying to make computers better versions of ourselves, within a confined area of expertise, now we are trying to make them replicas - love Lex Friedman:
It's interesting, because I would never class myself as great as a programmer as George in any lifetime. But as a software engineer who has been able to be dropped into any software project in my career (and there's been some damn big ones), I've also held my own and been able to improve things and change the direction of the project from a failure to a success. It's quite interesting because George mentions that he realised over the last couple of years that tests where a good measure of assurance - but to me that's obvious, that's what they're there for. That's why Test Driven Development is such a big thing in our industry. And I've done a couple of talks over the years and the more I realise about writing software, is that the real great coders, all these competitive coders that are within top 10 of all advent of code competitions or HackerRank, or LeetCode, hardly any of them can actually write a piece of code that someone else can understand.
People love adding complexity because it makes them feel smart. I always say, if you think you were smart when you wrote it, you have to be twice as smart when you try to debug it.
It really puts it into perspective for me listening to George, because although he can write an insanely performant code and has technical knowledge like hardly anyone else, I probably wouldn't want him as a technical lead on a large software project, because all of that great technical knowledge is a sacrafice for knowing the ways of working and best practises of how to deliver applications successfully and at scale. Because on large software projects, the simpler the code, the more successful it is.
Being a great programmer, is not the same as being a great software engineer.
I couldn't agree more. I came out of school with the same mentality as people like Hotz. This idea that if you can write code efficiently enough, or know enough sorting algorithms, you can do anything all on your own.
After years in industry, you learn that REAL productivity in software, comes from writing things so that someone else can understand it easily. Even if you're the only one working on it, the you 2 weeks from now isn't going to have the complete understanding of the problem that you do right now.
Understandable, testable, re-usable code is ESSENTIAL to moving quickly and effectively in software engineering. Everything else that the LeetCoders of the world prioritize is just a means to an end. If you write the coolest, fastest, piece of code ever, but only you can understand it or debug it, then be prepared to be forced to do so for the rest of your career, and be permanently slowed by your poor priorities.
You should write such long letters to your mama
What are you talking about? He was highlighting the complete lack of tests at twitter.
He was literally saying though that code should be as simple as possible and that he is against complexity.
@@DarkPhantomSky Sure, but he is still at the technical level. He also said in the video that he's come to realise how important tests are and were shocked at how Twitter had a massive lack of them - I learnt that year 1 of developing real-time production systems. Programmers are great at making programs. Enterprise business software is a whole different ballgame and goes well beyond technical knowledge of how to reverse a list in Java/C++. Like I said, I would trust George to make a service that did something really complex, but I wouldn't put him in a position where he had to technically oversee the refactoring of an entire company software estate. At that level you have to know exactly what level testing is performed at, the different types of testing, the implementation of security practises into the whole SDLC, the enabling of developers by building accelerated platforms, cultural ways of working that best allow for correct ADR's, tracking the 4 types of work... the list is endless
every interview for at least some moments it seems that Lex is interviewing himself asking a question and answering in a very personal level and giving his own opinions lol
Wow.. Had no idea George was so awesome. Off to the full interview.
13:15 "how do you incentivize a good codebase?"
The owners and execs have to care about the codebase. They don't, is the problem. They care about sales, turnover and big deal signings and none of those on their own require a good codebase.
put a bunch of MBA in charge of a highly technical product and you will have metrics like promotion based on the number of line of code you write. This was the problem with Twitter and is still the problem in most large corporations. The leaders do not know how the products work and it translates downward from there.
We programmers love to refactor, is always good to work in an elegant codebase, but the real problem is how to do that while making a profit and that's exactly what they discussed at around 23:00, which I completely agree with, the managers should decide if this is the best approach for the business or not, which is the hardest decision IMO.
“If engaging is what wins, it’s harder to keep more nuanced values…” that’s one of the most insightful things I’ve heard from Hotz.
great conversation
26:00 Fascinating point to make about dictators and how that power is often given.
On the other hand, to give George due credit re: his paygrade- he earned maybe $20 Billion more than Elon while at Twitter 😮💨
The problem with programming is that a good engineer code quality is directly proportional to the level of understanding of the problem the code solves. Understanding takes time. Companies and programmer rely on boiler plate solutions in order to reduce time at the cost of code quality. That is the mistake.
Irony at Twitter being down.. for 6 hours straight
Loved this, especially the last two minutes.
A literal call for dictatorship? Sure buddy.
I'd choose a Musk monarchy over the US oligarchy in a heartbeat
"Technical leadership you trust"
* spits out coffee *
Best 27 minutes I've ever heard on YouTube
Really?
I just love this genius, brilliant, wonderful Hotz man.
Is the desire to find disagreement and try to point it out a simple evolutionary group adaptation to weed out those who differ and to promote conformity for groups to consist of like minded people to operate better and in turn increase survivability? Or is disagreement itself evolutionarily beneficial as a way to discuss all possible options of operation and come up with the best one by arguing?
LOVE YOU LEX
The fastest lap does not measure a 24h race 😉
I feel like George should read up on history regarding dictatorships and monarchies 😅
I think an ad blocker is probably better understood and stated at what it actually, simply is: an ad blocker. Lol. It obscures information, but not in the same spirit as censorship.
Describing an ad blocker as censorship is just brain dead.
The point of censorship is that the reader isn’t in control of what gets filtered.
@@theondono Then you don't understand the word censorship at it's most basic level.
@@spenceflatulence Yeah sure, except the dictionaries agree with me.
Choosing what you don't want to see isn't censorship, it's just free choice.
@@theondono exactly. censorship would be blocking everyone from exposure to an ad. I'm a geohotz fan but this argument is a let down
At 1:58 Lex seemed outraged in his mind.
Refactoring a code base with its history can often become a political process, akin to telling someone their creation is flawed, which can be sensitive and challenging. :)
WoW a lot to think about 🥇
Twitter needs Domain Driven Design. All the simplity get's pulled out of those event storming workshops
twitter gave us bootstrap lol
Man John carmack I respect way more because of his Twitter .
If George is Junior Software Engineer, what does this leave us?
Noobs 😂
Good luck with a social network that filters out ad hominem. If it happens, it will be subscription only. The other problem with that is that the reason we like lots of great comedy is that it combines ad hominem with logic. So basically you’d have to sort out what is “comedy” and what is not. We are nowhere near AGI like that.
I long for a job in which my managers are better, more intuitively correct programmers than the people they manage (and me).
Harsh truths at the end of this conversation
I like George but his naivety towards dictatorship and the slippery slope that comes with it is saddening. Once a dictatorship is established it becomes uncontrollable. It’s the opposite of decentralization. I can’t believe Lex let’s him get away with it.
Does Hotz have experience running a social network at the scale of twitter? He seems very arrogant thinking he could just step in and have better ideas than the people who actually built it
I have experience running a pretty big ad network for retailers (15Bn ads a month). I could probably write one myself that uses less compute
Replace Hotz in your comment with Musk.
Nice one. When I see famous people doing YouTube, I feel like they are just like us.
Couldn't we just make government more efficient rather than having a Caesar? What come after the benevolent leader? My mind goes to
the extreme such as North Korea. I feel the two party system is extremely important. Like two side of the brain, to keep each other in check. To bring balance.
The only one party system in the future will be AI.
The are the same, they are bought by corporations
@@frankjamesbonarrigo7162 Okay, thank you
Fuck dictatorships in all their forms. Democratize all the things.
Just wondering if Twitter Ai is going on Demon Mode.
pretty sure getting interviewed by lex is good blind run at being a perp in a police investigation
99% of all the negativity in the world is driven by envy, resentment and bitterness at the success of others. A lack of appreciation and gratitude is at the core. To be in the highest 1% of earners globally, you need to earn $30,000 per year. And yet, most people in the G7 feel they are suffering from inequality.
And then some corrupt politicians own whole buildings/BLOCKS IN CITIES...
Well they are, because 30k in Nigeria is not the same as 30k in America. With that said, I don’t think ppl give a shit about inequality. I think they care only about their standard of living. Ppl don’t rebel because there’s super rich ppl. They rebel because there’s super rich ppl *while they’re starving*.
70% of people on food stamps in America work full time.
The relative poverty of other nations does not negate that fact.
You can throw out numbers all you want, but most people are one paycheck away from being homeless.
I'm willing to bet you're one of those that had the $100,000 head start from your parents (college + car)
The average house in America cost 7x the average salary.
50 years ago it was only 2x
That means housing relative to wages has quadrupled. But yeah we are doing so well....
You can tell that Hotz is deeply empathetic. Everything he is saying is what I am doing philosophically with my solar company. I left SolarCity before the Tesla acquisition to solve the problems that make energy expensive and difficult to scale
Not sure if George is an imposter or not...I mean for sure he's smart but sometimes I have the impression he does not deliver.
"100,000 followers when that mattered" this dude loves the smell of his own farts
They’re actually not bad
@@DelgaDude We know why he said it the point is that it is sad that his insecurity makes him need to say his 100k "matters more". It doesn't change the point of the story at all, it is just showboating and immature. IMO it speaks to his personality.
Complexity isn’t evil it’s just the inherent nature of reality. Self interested folks always love making things work best for them regardless of the cost, but true lovers of law and justice or science or philosophy love complexity because it feels closer to reality or “the truth”.
That’s only when it’s necessary; to allow some edge cases as not everything is absolute or at most a close approximate at different levels of reality
"If there's two evils in the world, it's centralization and complexity." 10 minutes later: "I prefer dictatorship over the oligarchy." Nice
I couldn't figure out why I hate this guy and it was just based on his face but now I know he worked at Twitter so I guess it makes sense
He worked there for like two weeks though
Lex is not a developer. OOPS is in place because its centered around building for scale, to avoid redundancy and protect against breaking stuff with changes.
Maybe 20 years ago that was true
@LexClips - 2023-06-30
Full podcast episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNrTrx42DGQ
Lex Fridman podcast channel: https://www.youtube.com/lexfridman
Guest bio: George Hotz is a programmer, hacker, and the founder of comma-ai and tiny corp.
@John-tx5or - 2023-07-01
MORE I.T. ppl Clownz. 8500.