Apr 13, 2026 Dave and Gunnar Show - Transcript 00:00:00 Gunnar Hellekson: In the grim darkness of the far future, Dave, there is only war. David Egts: So, did you get like a fortune cookie or where'd you get that Gunnar Hellekson: No, my uh my son, David Egts: from? Gunnar Hellekson: with a little bit of nudging from me, uh my son has now reached the age where he is able to consume and enjoy the lore of Warhammer 40,000. David Egts: Ah, Gunnar Hellekson: I don't I don't know if you've ever played this game. David Egts: okay. Gunnar Hellekson: Uh or David Egts: I I've seen it. it. You could you could get into it. It could it could be expensive. It looks It looks like you could spend a lot of money on that. Gunnar Hellekson: That's correct. Uh, so it's it's a it's a tabletop role playing or war game. David Egts: Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: So you have a bunch of figures on the table and then they fight the other figures on the table and you got dice and a ruler and stuff like David Egts: Mhm. Gunnar Hellekson: that. And there's two sides to the h to the hobby. 00:00:50 Gunnar Hellekson: The first h the first side is the uh playing the game itself and the second is painting the figures, David Egts: The Right. Gunnar Hellekson: painting the mitts. David Egts: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: Um and uh like a fish to water Saurin has taken to painting the minis. Uh he's really he really enjoyed his first uh space marine kit and uh then we worked on some Tyrannids uh and then some goblins and now he's got another kit of chaos space marines. Anyway, this is I think we've played the game once. David Egts: Right. And you probably probably spent more time shopping than than uh playing the game. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. Yeah. David Egts: Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: And we got a bewildering number of paints. Not just the number of colors, but also the number of purposes for paints and also the paint brushes. And so anyway, it's uh it's it's just this is like a this is this is the new hobby. David Egts: Yeah, Gunnar Hellekson: This is the new hobby. David Egts: I'm sure it's it's part of his DNA. 00:01:44 David Egts: Uh from father to son of Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: That's right. That's right. David Egts: Yeah. raising him right. Nice. Gunnar Hellekson: Um, I actually pulled up my own copy of the Warhammer rule book, David Egts: Mhm. Gunnar Hellekson: which uh I was like, "Man, how old is this thing?" I bought it in 1993 and um in 1993. And then I asked the guy at the store, David Egts: Mhm. Gunnar Hellekson: I said, "What edition are you on now?" And he said, "Uh, well 10 and 11 is coming out in June." And I said, "What edition do I have?" And he's like, "Four." like, David Egts: Wow. Gunnar Hellekson: "All right, I guess I got some I gotta do some catching up here." But, David Egts: Wow. Gunnar Hellekson: uh, yeah, David Egts: Nice. Gunnar Hellekson: it's a good time. Um, but maybe maybe more appropriate for the show. Uh, I did run across this uh this article on uh well, Dave, as you we've discussed this before, birds are not real. David Egts: Right. We all know that, right? 00:02:36 David Egts: So, Gunnar Hellekson: It is known that Yeah, David Egts: it's a scam. Yeah. It's a government. Gunnar Hellekson: that's right. David Egts: Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: It's the government. That's right. Um, we didn't know how correct we are. David Egts: Right. Gunnar Hellekson: Um because uh I ran across this article describing uh uh a crew of high school students who were recruited to create fake birds David Egts: Mhm. Gunnar Hellekson: to populate a park. David Egts: Mhm. Gunnar Hellekson: Uh these fake birds will then emit mating calls and and actually call in the David Egts: Mhm. Gunnar Hellekson: actual birds that they want to attract to the park. David Egts: Yes. Gunnar Hellekson: So bait basically. David Egts: Right. Gunnar Hellekson: Um, and uh, David Egts: Right. Gunnar Hellekson: I apparently successful. Apparently successful. Um, and so now we can look forward to a future where the government is putting fake birds in parks in order to attract real birds to those same parks. David Egts: real fake birds. Gunnar Hellekson: A bit of but who knows? Who knows? Who knows? 00:03:26 David Egts: Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah, this is my point. David Egts: Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: And now they got the high school students are now uh, accompllices. David Egts: Yeah. Well, it's bringing the youth into it. Um Yeah. And the the thing I'm like when you shared that link with me, the first thought I thought was like, okay, here's Gunnar doing his birding and it's like, oh, this is some super rare bird and you're you're, you know, you're you're capturing all your evidence and everything and then you find out that it's it's a robot bird and then now you're doing Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. David Egts: like VOC comp tests with with the birds and, you know, to see if they're real or not and Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. David Egts: But they're all fake Gunnar Hellekson: I see I see a I see a golden cheek warbler out there and my and my first thought is I need to ask it a David Egts: and Gunnar Hellekson: question. The question is tell me only the good things you remember about your mother. David Egts: yes. Gunnar Hellekson: See how it reacts, 00:04:16 David Egts: Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: right? David Egts: And if if it acts the wrong wrong way, you know. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah, David Egts: Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: that's right. And we know that's right. David Egts: Yeah. All right. Gunnar Hellekson: Well, all right. So, what do we what do we got on the show, Dave? David Egts: Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: What's what's up here? David Egts: know this is near and dear to your heart. We're going to talk about Markdown uh and and we're going to get into that. Yeah. Uh and then we're going to talk about Caveman, which will be new to a lot of people. And then Dark Software Factories. Gunnar Hellekson: Yes, these are great. These are great. David Egts: Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: These are aligned with my David Egts: Yeah. So, Gunnar Hellekson: interest. David Egts: for people to uh look at a fake fake bird, uh where should we send them? Gunnar Hellekson: They can go to djshow.org. Uh that's D's and Dave choosing David Egts: Yep. Gunnar Hellekson: gunnershow.org David Egts: Yep. 00:05:04 David Egts: And then uh cutting room floor uh there's the XKCD dependency comic, but it's interactive. Gunnar Hellekson: which is really a treat. It's a time. David Egts: Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. David Egts: Yeah. So you you get to just just swipe it, Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. David Egts: knock everything down. You're having a bad day. It's just it's therapeutic. Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: That's right. David Egts: And then uh real estate news uh that it's it's a dealer's choice or whichever you like. Uh so we got two properties for people to check out. Number one is a uh an underground bunker in Milmont Pencennsylvania. Uh 5800 square ft, four bedrooms, uh four bathrooms, uh 9 acres of land. Um, you can't see most of it because it's it's mostly underground and uh cool 1.75 million. And then there's a the second one. It's a decommissioned grain elevator, four bedrooms, three bathrooms, twisty slide for uh uh to facilitate rapid movement between the second and first floor. Only $325,000. Gunnar Hellekson: I tell I'm going for the I'm going for the grain elevator. 00:06:15 Gunnar Hellekson: I'm going for the grain elevator. David Egts: Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: Uh much better bang for the buck for 325 is a steal. I've never been to Sabin, Minnesota, but I presume that that's nice out David Egts: Yeah. Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: there. David Egts: Well, and that but to me I'm like you got but if it's doomsday you want to be underground and the you Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. David Egts: know it's like to me you had me a bunker right where it's like hey we got a bunker here. It's like we need our bunkers but it's but it's like wow four bedrooms four Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. David Egts: bathrooms you know the nine acres of land. It's It's got to be a nice uh palatial sort of thing, Gunnar Hellekson: Mhm. David Egts: but it just looked more industrial than uh a home. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. You're definitely living in a company facility. David Egts: Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. David Egts: Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. David Egts: Not a green elevator. Um Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: Not a great That's right. David Egts: Whereas a green elevator was it it the decorator for the green elevator needs to do the bunker and then you'd have a winner there. 00:07:10 Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. David Egts: It would be the best of both worlds. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. It's kind of like the I would describe the style of the grain elevator as like a a hippie long stocking meets uh lake cabin, David Egts: Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: right? David Egts: Yeah. Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. David Egts: Imagine you got Saurin zipping down the slide and and uh getting between his Warhammers Gunnar Hellekson: Super fun. David Egts: and and all that and it's it's it's a good time. Gunnar Hellekson: That's right. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Well, I mean, as you know, David Egts: Right. Gunnar Hellekson: real estate agents always, you know, the old saw is a it's a location location threat model is the is the David Egts: Right. Gunnar Hellekson: rubric. So, David Egts: Right. Gunnar Hellekson: if you're if you're if you wake up in the morning and you're worried about, you know, EMP uh pulses, uh if you're worried about um thermonuclear uh Armageddon, um I would say go for the Pennsylvania property. Um yeah, that's right. David Egts: Yeah. 00:08:00 Gunnar Hellekson: And if you're worried about, I don't know, meeting people, uh, I would go and choose the the Minnesota property, the the silo or the green. David Egts: Right. Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. David Egts: But if they could put the slide in the bunker to go from the from the the ground floor down Gunnar Hellekson: Yes. David Egts: inside your bunker, Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. David Egts: it's like you've won. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. David Egts: That's it. Gunnar Hellekson: Seems obvious. David Egts: That's Yeah. The obvious choice. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. David Egts: Yeah. All right. So, let's talk about markdown. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. David Egts: So uh Cloudflare is they're talking about markdown for agents which you know the the problem is that uh you know you you have these agents you have the AI slurping down all these big HTML files and Cloudflare's premise is that they are they're high fat like signal to noise ratio in terms of all the formatting and all this you know it's just and you're going risk overflowing your context window by, you know, just having formatting stuff that is just painful. 00:08:58 Gunnar Hellekson: Mhm. David Egts: It's like, wouldn't it be great instead of having an agent pull down an HTML file to analyze, especially when you're paying by the token, Gunnar Hellekson: Mhm. David Egts: instead set up the request to say, "Hey, give me the markdown version of this HTML file." lot more sleek uh and easier to digest by an LLM and and uh it sounds pretty good. Gunnar Hellekson: Y David Egts: They said that they could get an over 80% reduction in token Gunnar Hellekson: yeah. Well, I believe it. I mean, David Egts: usage. Gunnar Hellekson: because we spent decades stuffing HTML files with a whole bunch of like extraneous presentation information that is kind of irrelevant for the AI's purpose, right? David Egts: Yeah. It doesn't care, right? Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: That's right. Yeah. David Egts: Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: Now, if we had all paid attention during the days of XHTML and confined the HTML tagging to just semantic tagging and let CSS take care of all the presentation, we would be living in a different world now. But of course, none of us could control ourselves. 00:09:59 Gunnar Hellekson: We had to put the presentation information directly in the file. David Egts: Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: And here we Yeah. David Egts: So we So I guess the premise is that we should use markdown and markdown is perfect and and there's nothing wrong with markdown and it's it's way better than HTML all the time as as we I use absolutes, right? Gunnar Hellekson: No, Markdown is a monster. Markdown is it's rough. It's uh one could accuse it of being underspecified. Uh and uh it does lack some certain information. David Egts: Yes. Gunnar Hellekson: Um, I double dog dare you to actually put a footnote in a markdown file and have it uh and have it present consistently. Like that's not going to happen, David Egts: Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: right? David Egts: Well, you gota have a concept of a page to put for a footnote, Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. To start with. David Egts: right? Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. David Egts: Yeah. And and but but you're a huge markdown fan. Like you you like you do everything in markdown. 00:10:55 Gunnar Hellekson: Huge part. I do. Yeah. David Egts: Like even like everything's text files, Gunnar Hellekson: Still Yeah. David Egts: everything's markdown. I'm sure now with with all your agent AI, it's like you're you're like doubling tripling down on it, Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. You know, David Egts: right? Gunnar Hellekson: the the greatest gift God ever gave us was Markdown support in Google Docs. Um, David Egts: Yes. Gunnar Hellekson: and so being able to copy and markdown and then paste in Markdown, David Egts: Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: magical, right? David Egts: Yeah, but I I shared with you a uh blog post from a uh as you said a a Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. David Egts: chromogen that is like no HTML is the way to go and everything. So what what was your take on Gunnar Hellekson: Okay. Okay, so first I want to I want to acknowledge that this was an A+ rant just like top David Egts: that? Gunnar Hellekson: tier uh kermogenly rant about all the things that are wrong with markdown that among these are uh the fact that uh you have several ways of achieving the same goal in markdown. 00:11:51 Gunnar Hellekson: So for example to marking headers you can do uh pound sign pound sign something and then you get a which translates into a a header two right h2 or you can do uh underline underline the text in markdown and then uh like on in other words on David Egts: Mhm. Gunnar Hellekson: the next line put a bunch of equal signs and then it has the same effect as doing doing the pound sign. um which is extremely confusing. Uh and by the way, David Egts: Mhm. Gunnar Hellekson: nobody should do uh he does address the fact that like you can't do uh footnotes. Uh you can barely do endotes. Um and if you want to do tuy style side notes, that isn't possible. You can just throw that right out. That's never happening. Um it is uh extremely difficult to embed images in it if you choose to uh if you choose to do that. Um there's a lot wrong with markdown and it is also true that it is extremely easy to use and extremely easy to understand and even when you parse it wrong it still ends up mostly right and so I think that's I think that's one of the things that make it more durable. 00:12:53 Gunnar Hellekson: I don't know but what about you like if you have to go manipulate markdown like what's a do you have any kind of recurring frustrations? David Egts: and well to me it's remembering like if I don't use it enough I I forget the formatting and all that and it's it's okay And then uh the other part is like the the consistency of like the many ways to do the same thing. Um the other thing I saw in that post that he talked about was that there's uh there are ways that you could actually put vulnerabilities inside of the markdown. You could put HTML inside the markdown and and so it's like that Gunnar Hellekson: Yes. Yeah. David Egts: I think it's a standard that kept expanding and it's also everybody implements it differently. So there isn't is it is it really a standard? I don't know. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. David Egts: Um yeah, Gunnar Hellekson: Well, there are lots of markdown standards as it turns out and the and I have to agree that the idea that David Egts: right. Gunnar Hellekson: you can embed HTML in markdown was that is an original sin of the spec. 00:13:51 Gunnar Hellekson: Like that should not have ever happened. David Egts: Right. Gunnar Hellekson: Like that's a mess, David Egts: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and it's Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: right? David Egts: Then when you talk about like original sin and it's it's almost like Protestantism of like there's like all the you know it it's like you could sort of get it like you could look at each one of them and then Gunnar Hellekson: That's Yeah. Yeah. David Egts: there's slight differences and I'm sure there are people that are very fundamentalist in terms of their particular Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. Yeah. David Egts: flavor of of uh markdown and and they you know in Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. David Egts: terms of salvation and all that but yeah yeah but um but you know what's better than than markdown for uh shrinking your context Gunnar Hellekson: What's that? David Egts: window caveman Gunnar Hellekson: Oh, yeah. Yes. David Egts: caveman Gunnar Hellekson: This has been big news this week. Yes, we we cracked the code. David Egts: yeah 75 Gunnar Hellekson: We reduced context windows by whatever it was 20% 30 whatever the number was 00:14:44 David Egts: 5%. Why not? Gunnar Hellekson: 75%. David Egts: Yeah. Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. David Egts: Yeah. So, uh Caveman who was a 16-year-old, I think, Gunnar Hellekson: Mhm. David Egts: uh person, Gunnar Hellekson: Sounds right. David Egts: uh did this cloud code skill plugin and codeex plugin that makes an agent talk like a caveman. And by doing that, it allows you to be a lot more succinct and shrink your your uh output tokens by 75% um and then cut your input tokens by 46%. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. David Egts: So just by being tur. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. David Egts: Yeah. And and the other one that it's like if you really want to dial it up um it to go even Gunnar Hellekson: Really? David Egts: further and I had to study this a little bit is uh wan which Gunnar Hellekson: Yes. David Egts: is classic Chinese. So, if you write everything in classic Chinese, which I guess people don't use anymore, uh it's it was uh like in 1919 they decided to get away with it or get away from it. 00:15:49 David Egts: And I think Taiwan will still do formal declarations in Wyen, which is the classic Chinese. Uh, but it's it's like they're able to pack so much detail in one or two characters that would take an entire phrase of English plus letters for each word. Gunnar Hellekson: right? David Egts: Um, Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. David Egts: so the compression is like like crazy uh for Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. Yeah. David Egts: that, Gunnar Hellekson: Um, the only bummer is you have to know ch classic David Egts: right? Which is basically like the Latin of Chinese. Gunnar Hellekson: Chinese. David Egts: Yeah. Yeah. Details. But um to me that just that sort of like wow that was a really creative idea that that uh that they came up with that well caveman for one thing but uh you know uh but it was just Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Well, David Egts: wow. Gunnar Hellekson: and how many tokens or how much time is spent, how many calories and tokens are burnt on the human computer interface as opposed David Egts: Yes. 00:16:49 Gunnar Hellekson: to actually doing the computations in question, right? David Egts: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, um and then the other thing uh I I sent you this was uh to to wrap up here was the uh was it Nate B. Jones. I've been I've been watching his YouTube channel for a while now and he he has a couple bangers uh Gunnar Hellekson: He's great. David Egts: uh quite often and he was talking about uh the concept of dark software Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. David Egts: factories and uh five levels of AI coding and um and it's it started off he he was talking about uh there's a company called strong DM and then they came out with a software factory that is a dark factory that it's you know they just go and and So uh the so the five levels there's level zero. So think about the levels of of uh autonomous driving and you know of as as you go up the different levels. So level zero is spicy autocomplete. Uh so it's like GitHub copilot. 00:17:52 David Egts: Level one is like a coding intern. Gunnar Hellekson: which is a phrase I've been using that that phrase spicy autocomplete I'm using once a day like I find David Egts: Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: it super helpful. David Egts: Nice. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. David Egts: All right. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. Like David Egts: Yeah. And then level one you got it's more like a a coding intern. And then level two is like a junior developer. Level three is more like a regular developer. Level four is like a whole engineering team. And then level five is Nirvana, which is like your your dark software factory where it's a factory. It's run by robots where the lights are out because they don't need to see and they they just do everything. Um, Gunnar Hellekson: Yes. David Egts: but what what what was your take on that uh that the blog post and then the video and all Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. David Egts: that? Gunnar Hellekson: Well, I think it's helpful to have a rubric to understand kind of where you are in the in the spectrum. 00:18:37 Gunnar Hellekson: And the one thing that defines the spectrum from that kind of like level zero up to level five is the the amount of attention or the number of interventions that you need to make in the work right so at level zero it is you are fully intervening right and then at level five dark factory is you are only intervening David Egts: Yep. Gunnar Hellekson: basically by exception like if something's absolutely necessary I was reading about one company um I can't remember who it was but uh they they fixed their process where it is so automated hands off that every time you have to actually enter the data center, you have to log uh an issue like you have to record it as a bug in the software. Um, which is kind of that like that is the level of kind of hands-off automation that they that they're trying to achieve, right? Um, whereas if I have to physically intervene, David Egts: Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: that's a bug, right? David Egts: Yeah. It sounds like like filling out an accident report, Gunnar Hellekson: Um, 00:19:31 David Egts: you know, that and and to discourage like I don't want to fill out an accident report, so I'm going to, you know, Gunnar Hellekson: yeah. David Egts: not you know, create the environment to prevent that from happening. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Um, and the other thing I thought about is like do you remember um I want to say it was James Alspa, let's call it Alspa. I think that's right. Um, the guy over at Etsy who spent as everybody was going into CI/CD and we're talking about DevOps. He spent a lot of time thinking about human factors research and how um we can kind of take the same lessons from the all the human factors research that like NASA does or the National Transportation Safety Board does on the effects of like when you have too much automation, people just become inattentive and are not paying attention to any of the signals, right? Or maybe the signals that it sends you're not going to react to correctly because you don't have the right sense of urgency. 00:20:15 David Egts: Right. Gunnar Hellekson: The system itself is not communicating the right urgency to you and so you don't react in the right way. things like this. David Egts: Oh, Gunnar Hellekson: Um, David Egts: interesting. Gunnar Hellekson: and so as you go to the like this level five like dark factory, David Egts: Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: um, maybe this thing actually does desperately need help or intervention and maybe like how would you know like if it just shows up as like an email saying like hey it's awfully hot in this data center like do I know enough to go down there and put the fire out? Um, I'm kind of making a caricature of the argument, but it it did make me think about um how we have to David Egts: Yeah, Gunnar Hellekson: reconsider what the human interface to something like that looks like. Um, because you say dark factory and it sounds like a really good idea, David Egts: right. Gunnar Hellekson: but having a dark factory suggests that there's a whole bunch of controls and constraints that you need to put around that thing in order for the factory to run in an aligned way, right? 00:21:10 David Egts: Yeah. And it it reminds me of like a lot of the cars that you have nowadays that will do the lane keep assist, right? And and if all of a sudden you let your hands off the wheel for a while, it's going to send you an alert and or vibrate and sort of like, Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. David Egts: no, human, pay attention. Seriously now. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. Yeah. David Egts: And it's it's the exact opposite of like, Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. David Egts: you know, you got to pay attention to stay alive to like you got to pay attention, you know, Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. David Egts: to stay alive and and uh to remind you of that and and so yeah, Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. David Egts: that's that's really Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. Yeah. David Egts: fascinating. Gunnar Hellekson: I think but it's it's it gives those levels I found really useful at work because it gives us a language for talking about kind of okay point to where you think you are on this chart right like are we all are we operating at 00:21:54 David Egts: Yes. Gunnar Hellekson: two three or we up in like three four you know area um and it gives folks a sense of kind of what's possible right um because you have a lot of people who are like well I use whatever I use David Egts: Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: claude and I use it to go write all my tests and but I'm still writing all the code myself and it's still automating all the tests and all the rest of it like Well, that's fine. There's a whole bunch of headroom here. Like, you have a whole bunch of other things that you could be doing in order to um kind of improve the automation in your in your own work, David Egts: Yeah. No, Gunnar Hellekson: right? David Egts: I I love those types of maturity models because it it allows you to self diagnose without judgment and and it's like, Gunnar Hellekson: Mhm. David Egts: yeah, I'm doing spicy autocomplete, right? And it's that's where I'm at, right? And it's like I don't suck, but it's like I have a lot of room, like you said, a lot of headroom uh to go and it's it's going to be great. 00:22:45 David Egts: And here's what my road map is to like instead of like going to going from spicy Gunnar Hellekson: Yep. David Egts: autocomplete to the dark software factory. It's like no, let's let's go to level two. Let's go to three and just sort of like get there instead of like oh there's no I'm not smart enough to do a Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. David Egts: smart fac uh a dark software factory. I give up. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. Yeah. David Egts: I'm not going to bother. Gunnar Hellekson: That's right. Well, and the other thing that it makes me think about too is as you move up in this ladder, the number of complimentary systems increases, right? U because you wouldn't dream of just like running quad with dangerous with David Egts: Okay. Gunnar Hellekson: the dangerously accept permission or dangerously uh disable permissions flag on it and then say like go make me a website because like who knows what it'll do, right? like it could open up a Amazon account for you and change the you know choose you know not be costconcious and like anyway a thousand things go wrong so you're never going to do that which means that you have some kinds of other systems in place that kind of check the system that is being built in a fully or even partially automated way and like this is my experience also with using these tools is like you can ask it to build anything and it'll probably build it like is it secure or maintainable or was it efficient or was it efficient to build or can you ever patch it again? 00:24:05 Gunnar Hellekson: Like these are all kind of open questions and so you need to put constraints in place often in the form of markdown files saying like do this, don't do this, right? Um and as you get further up that ladder, it's very nice to have the idea of a dark factory is very alluring and it's very interesting, but it requires you to have a lot of systems surrounding it to make sure that that dark factory is behaving in the way that you think it's behaving. David Egts: Yes. Yeah. So, what about like as I saw the video and I'm thinking that's great if you're like a oneperson startup or a five person startup, right? But what about like a large company like a Red Hat or a Salesforce and like how can you get to the do do you think it's feasible to be like IBM all of a sudden a dark software factory and and or is it like how do you get there for a large company if you're not a Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. Um, well, David Egts: startup? 00:25:01 Gunnar Hellekson: I think part of the answer is that not everything needs to be in a dark software factory. Um, there's lots of stuff where you need a dark software factory if you have like a steady set of structured highquality inputs that are constantly changing, right? Um, and maybe it's pendo, right? Or maybe it's uh I don't know, maybe it's some kind of telemetry from something else, but like you need a lot of things to be changing in its environment in order for it to respond in order for it to even make sense to have a dark factory, right? David Egts: Mhm. Gunnar Hellekson: Like if I'm only getting new signal once a week, David Egts: Mhm. Gunnar Hellekson: once a month, I don't need a fully automated factory to handle something like that, David Egts: Mhm. Gunnar Hellekson: right? Um because that's working at the inputs are still working at kind of a human scale. Um it's when the entire loop can be automated, not just the creation of requirements and then the delivery on the requirements. It's actually the whole kind of udaloop that goes around that needs to needs to be run by robots in order for it to make sense to even do a dart factory, right? 00:25:58 Gunnar Hellekson: Um, so I think there's a place for everything on this spectrum. Um, and it's just a question of like which parts of the work are most appropriate for like dark factory treatment versus which are just like heavily automated human things or which are mostly human but partially automated things, right? And it kind of depends on the David Egts: Yeah. Well, Gunnar Hellekson: work. David Egts: would like and I think a lot to the like the whole dark factory concept of like imagine how we went from you know pre assembly line with cars and you know the artisan to the the Henry Ford you know you have one Gunnar Hellekson: Mhm. Yeah. David Egts: person who just turns the same wrench all day long to the the welding robots that are doing everything to the Gunnar Hellekson: Mhm. David Egts: dark factory they didn't do it overnight but like how would like a large company would Would you pick like a piece of RA or or would it be a new project or a new product that you would do as a dark factory? Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. 00:26:56 David Egts: And and how would you shift that weight from being like all artisan to Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. David Egts: all assembly line to all dark software Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. David Egts: factory? Gunnar Hellekson: Um well uh I Okay, let me put it like this. Um even at what we learned in assembly lines and all the lessons that we had from Deming what he t what he teaches us is uh if you automate a non-standard process you are going to accelerate the errors right like like in order to automate something like it needs to David Egts: Mhm. Mhm. Gunnar Hellekson: be it actually needs to be a repeatable process um that can be executed David Egts: Yes. Gunnar Hellekson: reliably um and So the first place to go put a dark factory is something where like David Egts: Yes. Gunnar Hellekson: I know exactly what is coming in and I know exactly what needs to come out the other side and everything in the middle can be all be robots and that's fine. But if it's like, you know, you know the story about the B27, like if I'm building a machine where or if I'm building an airplane and I have to like wheel the whole thing 00:27:57 David Egts: Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: out onto a tarmac and then the thing distorts in the San Diego sun and I have to like hand tool every wing like that is not a good candidate for an automated process, right? David Egts: Right. Gunnar Hellekson: Like I have there's a lot of work I need to do before I can make that a lights out uh a lights out thing, David Egts: Right. Yep. Gunnar Hellekson: right? Um, so it is going to be it's not useful to think about it as like whole products. It's useful to think about it as like specific use cases along the product development pipeline that could probably be uh lights out. David Egts: Yep. Yep. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. David Egts: And then that's Gunnar Hellekson: So, well, I mean, in fact, we already do this in in cases like nothing, David Egts: that's Gunnar Hellekson: right? Um, like just a human going there and like stamping every bit that comes out of the machine, David Egts: right. Right. Gunnar Hellekson: right? Yeah. David Egts: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 00:28:40 Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah, David Egts: And that's that's a a call back to the book Freedoms Forge, which we have loved for well over a decade. Gunnar Hellekson: that's right. David Egts: And that's that's an amazing amazing book that everybody should be reading. Um, Gunnar Hellekson: That's right. David Egts: and what about product management? And and you know, so does this how does does product management live in the dark factory or do you have a product management dark factory? Gunnar Hellekson: It's kind of so here I you know so first of all I don't know and anybody who says that they know is lying because everybody's trying to figure this out. Um but what it seems what seems to be happening is that like every role in the process everyone David Egts: Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: is taking one step to the right. David Egts: Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: So engineers are taking on more of the product management responsibilities. Product managers take on more of the product man product marketing responsibilities. The product marketers are now taking on more of the kind of like sales enablement responsibilities. 00:29:32 David Egts: Yes. Gunnar Hellekson: Um whether that's just like a transitionary thing um and a product of like inertia. I don't know but that seems to be what it is. David Egts: Mhm. Gunnar Hellekson: So to make that concrete, it's like um engineers can now synthesize requirements on their own pretty reliably. As long as they have a good source of signal, as long as they've got like good trip reports and good bug reports from customers and stuff like that, they can actually do a pretty good job on the product management side, right? We we already saw this with the advent of product owners, right? This gets this gets pretty close. David Egts: Mhm. Gunnar Hellekson: Um which means Okay, so great. So do we not need product managers anymore? Well, careful because the product managers now have a lot more capacity to do kind of much more strategic thinking about kind of where the product is going and what the overall product strategy is because they're not sitting here playing bug jockey on Jira all day. Okay. 00:30:25 David Egts: Right. Gunnar Hellekson: Right. Then on the marketing side, oh, David Egts: Right. Gunnar Hellekson: and then uh product managers also now uh I mean we've had conversations internally like maybe we don't even allow for features until the product manager has delivered a prototype demo of what they're talking about. Oh, okay. David Egts: Mhm. Gunnar Hellekson: Totally reasonable question now because the tools make it possible for a product manager to do this relatively cheaply. Okay, so that's cool. Okay, so wait, what is marketing doing now if we're now able to like turn out demos this easily, right? Well, marketing now has to figure out how to operate in a world where it's not just humans making decisions about product choices, it's also robots are now making decisions about product choices, right? So now there's a whole new field of like how do I SEO my product into uh into these David Egts: for agents to pick up. Gunnar Hellekson: code systems, right? David Egts: Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. Just as an example, right? David Egts: Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: So this is what I mean by like everybody's kind of taking one step to the right and uh it I still don't see any evidence that there's a shortage of work to be done, right? 00:31:24 Gunnar Hellekson: I think just the uh the work is the work is now changing and it's changing for everybody David Egts: Right. Gunnar Hellekson: simultaneously. David Egts: Right. Yeah. And this may be, you know, the other thing I was thinking too is that what would a dark sales factory look like as a standalone, you know, between like inbound lead to, Gunnar Hellekson: Mhm. David Egts: you know, selling and and you know, delivery and, you know, here's your license key and, you know, like that whole process and and the nurture and and even the think about the consumption on the back end that you you have this uh virtual customer success manager, agent that is coaching you to take this training, Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. David Egts: try this out and this look at all you know it's like I like that that's another Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. Yeah. David Egts: area for improvement and disruption as as Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. Yeah. Well, David Egts: well. Gunnar Hellekson: this hearken this this reminds me of another thing that Nate posted. In fact, it was his like Sunday sermon. 00:32:21 Gunnar Hellekson: I don't remember what he calls it, but he's got like a Sunday the Sunday essay that he does. David Egts: Yeah. Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: Um and he's talking about the the push lots of companies are now trying to get flatter um and remove layers of management. David Egts: Yes. Gunnar Hellekson: And he gives us another rubric which is um that management is three activities. The first is uh routing. In other words, the routing of information correctly. The second is sensemaking, David Egts: Yep. Gunnar Hellekson: right? Like providing context for what's going on. And then the third is accountability. David Egts: Yep. Gunnar Hellekson: And you mentioned like can we have a dark sales factory? We could, but ultimately someone has to be accountable for the performance of that thing. Um, and accountable for the individual kind of measurements that we're going to make inside it. And we cannot offload a metric that we really deeply care about, David Egts: Yes. Gunnar Hellekson: whether it's like clicks or conversion rates or whatever it is. You can never offload that onto a robot completely. 00:33:16 Gunnar Hellekson: You still need a human ultimately accountable for that measurement. that human may have an army of robots at their disposal, but it's still like there still a human has to be accountable. So the anyway in that rubric of the the three things I think it's interesting he points out that David Egts: Yes. Gunnar Hellekson: like one of the mistakes that companies make when they flatten is they try to flatten and try to apply a automation whether it's AI or otherwise to the accountability part of the problem when that is the one thing that is inescapably human David Egts: Right. Gunnar Hellekson: right the sense making is a kind of a hybrid activity and then the routing David Egts: Right. Gunnar Hellekson: is can be largely done by by AI, right? Um, and so, uh, David Egts: Yes. Gunnar Hellekson: anyway, so you put those two things together and it's like, could you have a dark factory? Sure, as long as you do not care about the outcome, right? David Egts: Yes. Gunnar Hellekson: Um, as long as you don't want to hold anybody accountable for the outcome. 00:34:08 David Egts: Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: If you as a CEO want to be personally responsible for the sales pipeline and the and the conversion rates, cool. Yes, you can have a fully automated pipeline. But I don't think there's any CEO who's willing to take that on personally, David Egts: Right. Gunnar Hellekson: right? David Egts: Yeah. It may be like one CRO and and a fleet of agents and Gunnar Hellekson: Yes. Could be. Yeah, could be. But again, David Egts: Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: only if you understand the process well enough, right? David Egts: Yes. Gunnar Hellekson: Um because like you can't automate a process you don't understand. David Egts: Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: And I am going to go ahead and guess that not a single person in the world completely understands any David Egts: Right. Gunnar Hellekson: given sales process, right? David Egts: No. Gunnar Hellekson: Like I've been in this business a long time. David Egts: No. that for thousands of years nobody has figured that out. Gunnar Hellekson: Yes, that's right. Yeah. David Egts: Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. Yeah. 00:34:50 David Egts: Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: Um that's why we pay people a lot of money to execute an imperfect process, David Egts: Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: right? David Egts: Yes. Yeah. And that's why comp plans change every year. Uh we're going to get it right this year. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah, exactly. David Egts: You know, Gunnar Hellekson: Exactly. David Egts: it's Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: That's right. David Egts: Last year we're That was totally wrong. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah, David Egts: Yeah. Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: that's right. Yeah, that's David Egts: Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: right. David Egts: And I I did see that on Sunday. um that I'll add that link to the uh to the show notes. But speaking of show notes and everything, if if that's what we got, but if if you want to if people need to uh check out a fake fake bird uh brush up on their winen uh and talk a little caveman in your best caveman uh dialect, uh where where should you send people? Gunnar Hellekson: Visit ggshow.org. David Egts: Good. Excellent. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. David Egts: Excellent. Gunnar Hellekson: Right to the point. David Egts: Yeah. Or even god dshow.org because it's fewer tokens. Gunnar Hellekson: Yeah. Go DJ. Yeah. That's right. David Egts: Yeah. Gunnar Hellekson: That's right. David Egts: All right, Gunnar Hellekson: Great. David Egts: Gunner. Well, this is a pleasure. Always a pleasure. Gunnar Hellekson: Always a pleasure. Thanks, Dave. David Egts: All right. Gunnar Hellekson: Thanks, David Egts: Yep. Gunnar Hellekson: everyone. David Egts: See you. Transcription ended after 00:36:10 This editable transcript was computer generated and might contain errors. People can also change the text after it was created.