307: The Engineer Who Won't Use AI with Andrew Norcross

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[00:01:17] My job disappeared in less than a year. Had I called myself an AI native software engineer a year or 18 months ago, I would have been laughed out of the room and rightfully so. This is where like wagon wheel makers had more lead time than I did in this situation. I look at it in the situation of like, I don't know what's going to happen. Hey, everybody. I'm Lori Rudiman. Welcome to Punk Rock HR.

[00:01:46] My guest this week is Andrew Norcross. He's a friend of mine. I just love this guy and he helps build engines that run the internet. What I mean by that is that he has been involved in software and web development for over 20 years and he's worked on some really important brands and enterprise websites. But with the advent of AI, well, he's made some different choices with his career. And that's what we're talking about today.

[00:02:13] So if you want to know what's going on with someone who works in technology and has principles and is also fucking cool, well, sit back and enjoy this conversation with Andrew Norcross on this week's Punk Rock HR. Hey, Norcross. Welcome to the podcast. Well, thank you for having me.

[00:02:41] Oh my God, dude. Like, it's weird that I've known you for so long and you've not been a podcast guest because I feel like in almost two decades, we're homies and you belong here. So I could go on about how great you are. But before I do that, why don't you tell everybody who you are and what you're all about? All right. Well, my name is Andrew Norcross down in Florida. I've been down here pretty much my whole life.

[00:03:03] I have been a software engineer for about 20 years now and at least until very recently. And before that, I worked in finance for about 10 years. Yeah, I've got a son who's probably 19 in August. And yeah, I've done a whole lot of stuff in the software world, primarily with WordPress. You know, I've founded and ran an agency. I've worked as a product developer.

[00:03:33] I've worked as a I've led teams. I've been an architect. Like I built NASA's website, among others. So it's been, you know, I've touched pretty much every aspect of that part of web development. You know, when I think about your early career, you had some really strong wins. When you think back to when you started getting involved and especially in building websites and building some of the places where we go even today, what are you most proud of?

[00:04:01] I'm proud that I was able to do it on my own terms, honestly, because code, you know, websites, whatever, like those are inner. They're just things. They show up, they go away. Some stick around for a long time. Some are there for a week. A lot of the stuff that I built that I would be the most proud of is because I was able to pull off something clever and weird that wasn't really supposed to happen. And it's all behind the scenes. And you would never know because the thing just does what it's supposed to do. You know, I like to build things. I like to solve puzzles.

[00:04:31] Like I've been playing with Lego since I was a little kid. Still do it now. You know, I build, you know, halfway through building a greenhouse outside. Like I've built quite a few. Yeah, I like, you know, give me something to do with my hands, whether it's a keyboard or a hammer. I don't care. That's just kind of where my brain goes. You know, you're a builder. You said that. And I mean, I've always known you to be a handy guy building something.

[00:04:56] But right now you're physically building more than you're conceptually building websites and things on the Internet. So what's going on with your career, man? What's happening? So to some degree, I don't know. And that's an interesting point to be at. Because, again, you've known me. And for folks that do or, you know, they see some of the pictures and whatnot where it's like, yeah, like I'm covered from neck to, you know, fingers and tattoos.

[00:05:26] Like since quarantine, you know, I've got a nice biker beard. You know, hair's down past my shoulder blades. But I've taken my professional career very seriously. You know, my reputation very seriously. And it was like, yeah, that might be rough around the edges, but like I'm good at what I do. And the job as I performed it, for the most part, doesn't seem to exist right now. Again, I've worked on enterprise level sites.

[00:05:54] I've worked on very large New York Times, GitHub, NASA, Disney, like a whole bunch of, you know, very large media, you know, high traffic, high everything. So that's the tier that I've been working at for quite some time. And they don't want somebody to build that stuff anymore.

[00:06:16] They want AI to generate it for some reason and then have somebody review it and push it out the door because that's allegedly faster. Well, I mean, let's stop right there. Whether it's faster, whether it's better. Well, it's not better. Like that's unequivocally, like that is easily proven. It is not better than a person, than an experienced person.

[00:06:38] I want to talk about like why we're at this moment because I can look back to, well, capitalism, right? But I can look back to the early days of like when I knew you in the late 2000s, right? In the first decade of the century. And we had all, I had stupidly, all these high hopes about the potential and the promise of technology. And through every goddamn step of the way, I have been disappointed.

[00:07:05] So like we're at this moment and it's shocking so many that humans are being pulled out of the workforce. And yet I saw it coming and I was complicit. Were you complicit too? I mean, yes and no, because honestly, what could I have done? And I was not in a position to do things. Now, funny enough, like I'm a history buff. Like that was my favorite subject in school. I barely passed math. My mom was an English teacher. So like grammar was fine, you know, English, but like history. I love history. Like what is happening in technology is not new.

[00:07:34] Anything that we've gotten has usually been used for negative reasons most of the time. Like we built boats first to figure out how to get someplace and then pretty soon how to blow something up somewhere else. You know, gun manufacturers, they make weapons, you know, that's what they do. That is the purpose of a gun is to kill something. You know, like that's technology and it's getting better allegedly. Absolutely. So I don't think it's unique to see what's been going on on the internet compared to how technology has been.

[00:08:04] Because we're human beings, like we're feral. Like we're just, we're not nearly as advanced as we think we are. No, for sure. And yet there's still a kernel of hope. I think that so many of us have that this time will be different. This time will build on the small 1% winds of humanity. And I'm not talking about nirvana. I'm not talking about like recreating some heavenly like state.

[00:08:28] But I actually thought like we could make gains and actually make a difference with some of the ways that we can communicate at scale. The ways that we can see one another's lives regularly. And I saw your life regularly. You see mine. Like there was just all this promise. And to wind up at a place where, again, you have the oligarchs of America running and ruining things and sucking the human capital out of the workforce. It's just sad. I mean, we did that with factory.

[00:08:57] We did that with the Industrial Revolution. Like that, you know, we took people off farms and we put them in factories. And then, you know, the people that built stuff by hand all of a sudden were pulled levers. You know, and we've done that. You know, like there's a level of optimization and automation that's good. You're talking about, you know, like we can now communicate at scale. I'm not sure that's a good idea. Like the history, you know, like the results of doing that have not been positive. What it's done is allowed people to feel as though they have a thousand friends. And I'm like, you don't.

[00:09:27] That's not possible as a human being. People that feel that things are not safe in a lot of places. Like, no, you're just aware of every little thing that happens now. You know, it used to be if you didn't live there, like remember the Elian Gonzalez stuff? Like I was in Florida. I knew all about that because that was happening right down the street. It then became national news like a week and a half later. So nobody else knew that was happening until it became national news. Now you'd know about it before they got on the coast.

[00:09:56] So, you know, there's just, you know, the speed and velocity in which information moves. Like we can't think that fast. Yeah, we can't. And yet, you know, there is still this hope that the technology would enable us to, you know, go deeper with empathy and go deeper with connection. And that I think proves true, like locally in a community at times. You know, like I'm connected to some really great people who believe in what I believe in. And we come together and we celebrate those things. Come together. Yes, yes, yes. See, there you go.

[00:10:25] The technology has, you know, the technology may have made it easier for y'all to get connected initially because you wouldn't have had those interactions otherwise. But that's the only positive that technology brought to that situation. It was y'all being human beings in the same place, which the Internet discourages, you know, actively discourages. You know, like people talk a lot about third spaces and those are harder and harder to come by.

[00:10:54] And the Internet is part of the reason why. And, you know, we say, oh, shoved in our phones. Like every person who has a phone has their face shoved in their phone. Generation doesn't matter. Class doesn't matter. None of that matters. Like if you got a phone, your face is probably shoved in it. If you've ever listened to a business podcast and thought, this sounds good, but no one actually talks like this behind closed doors. You're not wrong.

[00:11:20] On the Leaderbook AI podcast, we talk about the conversations leaders actually have. After the board meeting, after the AI rollout, that doesn't quite land. I'm Felicia Shakuba. And I interview CEOs, investors and operators about what really drives performance. If you want that level of honesty, subscribe to the Leaderbook AI podcast. You know, it's not only generation and class. It's also an international phenomenon.

[00:11:48] You know, I just came back from running a marathon abroad and then we took a few days and we traveled and it was like, you're right. Everybody is an influencer. Everybody has a story to tell. Like this idea that humans are storytellers is true, but you don't, you're not a storyteller to the masses. You know, like you're an anecdote relayer to your families. Yeah. The way it should work is the bottom level has a whole lot and everything as it moves up now requires skill and talent or experience or whatever the case may be. And then that gets smaller and smaller.

[00:12:17] So like, yeah, again, like there's a reason why I'm not, you know, in Hollywood movies is because I am not a trained actor in any way, shape or form. Well, the Internet will convince you otherwise. That's for sure. Well, I mean, that's the thing is like I can get the equipment. I can film something. I can distribute it. I can self-publish. You know, like I can do everything that would qualify me as that. But it used to be that you, again, you had to have skill and talent to do those things. And now you just have to have money.

[00:12:46] Well, you have skill and talent for building websites and really thinking in a strategic way about what resonates, what works, what's right, what's true, what's rooted in good taste. And yet you're not really working. So let's get back to that because like, what are you going to do? So I don't know because here's the thing. Like I avoided AI. I put it to the side. Wait, wait. Did you avoid AI? Why? Because isn't everything AI? Oh, no.

[00:13:16] I turn it off at any given chance. If I have to use it, I find a different product. I have used ChatGPT once. Without even being logged in. I have no accounts with any of these people. I have none of their apps. I have none of their anything. I did it in the browser in a private window because I did not want any, you know. And I just needed to do it real quick to prove something that I was working. Obviously, the browser itself, like when I do a search, will spit out stuff certain times.

[00:13:44] Usually, yeah, I did it the other day. It gave me two functions that didn't exist in the code base that I was working with. I'm like, and I didn't even ask for it. You know, it was just a regular Google and it's going to be real helpful. So it's like, here, do this. And I was like, well, this is very well formatted, commented, the whole nine yards. But it included two functions as part of an API that did not exist. And I'm like, I'm looking at it. And I didn't know that because I didn't know that code base super well. So I pulled it in and I'm looking at it. I'm getting a bunch of errors. And I'm like, oh, wait a minute.

[00:14:15] This is not because I've done something wrong. It's because it's asking for something that isn't there. Yeah, yeah. So you're not using AI at all. Okay. Can you work when you don't use AI? Done it for 20 years. Yeah. But can you work in today's economy? Based on who's, you know, again, here's the criteria. I'm not even, I don't even have the opportunity right now. So, you know, I don't miss deadlines. I didn't miss, I never missed deadlines.

[00:14:41] I was able to do all of the entire underlying architecture for NASA.gov without any AI. It was just showing up and it was garbage at that point. A junior person on the team used it and you don't need to know anything about code to know that it put a different language. It put language A into a file for language B and they are in no way compatible. Yeah. And it said it worked just fine because that's the thing is it always thinks it did it right. And it can't really learn.

[00:15:08] And I know that, you know, a lot of cheerleaders are like, oh, well, if I'm spending two hours trying to craft a prompt to a black box to get an answer and thus I'm not learning anything, I still don't know how that works. Like, I could not wrap my head around the idea of shipping software that I didn't have a hand in writing and actually writing because how am I going to answer questions to it? How am I going to fix it when something inevitably goes wrong?

[00:15:35] Because as we know, software always works in production, never a problem. Yeah. So it's like why, you know, again, it's just everything about AI, you know, and that's just as a functional tool. Like, I think it has good uses at some point. It's way too early for it to be a commercial product. We got another chat bot. We don't need more chat bots. Like, and frankly, the thing that bums me out the most is that it's like eight technologies in a trench coat.

[00:16:03] And like machine learning, that stuff is really cool right now. There's not a lot of consumer level need for machine learning. Probably never will be, which means they can't sell it to anybody. So we got a chat bot. Language processing. You and I don't need that stuff for the most part. You know, the problem is a lot of the use cases for the technology we're seeing does not have a sexy or sellable, easily sellable avenue to it. So we got a chat bot.

[00:16:33] We have two problems with the economy. Well, we have so many problems with the economy right now. But one is this desire to reduce cost and improve productivity, right? This is the push. And the second is this degradation in the belief of human talent. And AI is taking advantage. The AI, I'm using air quotes here. This AI movement is taking advantage of both. These pressures to say we've got to get costs down and we've got to produce more. And also humans can't compete.

[00:17:03] And I guess when I hear this from executives, my question is always why? Why do you believe this, right? Because they're beholden to shareholders. One hundred percent. They're increasing profits every year. They don't need to cut costs. They need to make shareholders short term happy. Again, having a 10-year in finance, I was a fiduciary asset manager. I had $2 billion under assets before the 0809 crash.

[00:17:29] And that's when I left that industry because I'm like, this place is not for me anymore. And so I'm like, all of this AI stuff looks, walks, and talks like subprime. And now here's the funny thing. Are these executives willing to pay for what it actually costs to use this AI? Because it's all incredibly subsidized, just like all the other VC stuff. The problem is they're never going to make their money back.

[00:17:55] You know, remember how Uber was $5 for a drive and now it's a price that it honestly should be? Quadruple your AI costs and tell me that it's saving money. Well, this parallel to the subprime industry, the markets, the crash, all of that, and it's just so fascinating to me because you've seen it now from both angles. So you walked away from finance after the 08 crash. Are you walking away from this pyramid scheme at this point in your career?

[00:18:21] Or are you willing to say, I can still carve out meaningful work that's not degraded? Like, can you still do important work that matters, even though you know a lot of this is built on a house of cards? So here's the thing. Like, everyone talks as though AI is inevitable. And it's not. It's absolutely not. A lot of the, again, none of these companies make money. None of these companies are even close to making money. The way the, yeah, the math doesn't math.

[00:18:51] And the amount, it's pockets of money that just keep getting moved in a circle, subprime. You know, it's being financed. It's highly leveraged debt, subprime. And there's no backstop to it. The difference is this isn't human beings living in homes. Like, thankfully, this will only, I mean, there'll be some carryover.

[00:19:13] But when this stuff blows up, because financially it has to, there's just simply not enough money in the financial system to back what they say needs to exist. But wait, Norcross, they keep creating money in the form of different crypto. I mean, money isn't real. Like, we all know that. Money is an agreement. And that's fine. But, like, using basic monetary policy, like, crypto doesn't count. Yeah. Because there's no country with a healthy, you know, like, until Germany takes crypto, it's for laundering money and selling drugs.

[00:19:43] That's all it's ever been for. That's all it ever will be for is laundering money and selling drugs. So, wait. So, can you do work in an industry? Can you make things on the internet if the internet is so... I mean, I still do a little bit of stuff. You know, I have a couple, you know, like, one or two small retainer clients that I've had for a long time. You know, I still get reached out. You know, people have, you know, not recently. Because, again, people are like, a lot of people don't have money. I mean, like, part of this is, like, agencies are hiring. There's just not a lot of work to be done.

[00:20:13] And some of that is absolutely due to AI. Some of that is just due to the larger economic situation that we're in right now where it's like, yeah, I had to fill my truck up yesterday. It was $5.39 a gallon. Like, it was $99 to fill my tank. And, yes, I drive a full-size truck because I'm also a handyman. And I do a lot of truck things. And I want to talk about that because while you're still, you still have a desire to create and to build on the internet.

[00:20:38] And we need you, especially when all of this AI stuff collapses around us or the energy costs become too insane to keep justifying the use of AI. You will be needed. But until then, you're building shit in the real world. So, like, what are you doing? How are you doing that business? What's going on with that? I'm also, again, I'm in Florida. And we have hurricanes here, if you're not familiar.

[00:21:00] And with the insurance market, which is also a complete catastrophe, there's a lot of folks that need house home repair done that is not necessarily contractor level. Like, I'm not running new circuit boxes. I'm not, you know, doing anything like that. Yeah, we know you could, but you're not. I don't have a license for that. Yeah. And that's the thing. Like, certain things like that, like plumbing, I can, for the most part, figure out. It's not that big of a deal. It's a pipe. What direction and what type? All right.

[00:21:28] But, you know, electricity is like, oh, you could die if you do that wrong. So that's kind of my line where it's like, if I make a mistake, do I have to redo it? Or if I make a mistake, do I have to check? You know, like, what is the cost of a mistake? Are you going to the ER? Yeah, I gotcha. I gotcha. Yeah. So you're doing your handyman business. Is it a business? Is it just like referral? How's this all working? I mean, it's all been referral so far. But, you know, again, like between, like, my parents are in their 70s.

[00:21:54] And, like, they need a certain kind of work done that's a little bit more than, hey, come over and pitch in. It's like, they need their house painted. It's like, I'm gonna go paint their house next week. Another friend of mine, their house got flooded in two hurricanes. So they finally, the insurance aspect of it just finished up. They just moved back into their house back in February. So, you know, which is quite a while. That was a year and a half. It was getting permitted. You know, there was all this stuff with permits in the city of St. Pete.

[00:22:24] It was just the whole city flooded and they weren't ready for it. They weren't ready for the administrative aspect of the city flooding. Like, they took care of it from a logistics and, like, people standpoint. But then they're like, oh, wow, we need to write half a million permits for drywall. Wait, if only we had AI for that. Yeah, then you would end up with a bunch of permits for materials that don't exist. Right. So you're dealing with the stuff like post-complex administrative hassles.

[00:22:52] You're, like, dealing with the things that can be fixed within your capability by going to the Home Depot, getting equipment. Yeah, like, I already have a huge set of tools. Like, I've owned a home for 20 years plus. So I've also had to do home. Like, I fixed some siding on somebody's house. I, you know, I hung a new set, you know, a closet in somebody else's house. I just finished building about 80 feet of fencing. Hey, everybody. Tim Sackett, host of HR Famous, a new podcast on the Work to Find Network. Am I famous?

[00:23:21] No, I'm HR famous. My wife says I'm a micro celebrity and 13 HR ladies around the world want their picture with me, which I think is funny. So, hey, what do we talk about on the pod? We talk about all the dumb stuff we do in HR in any given day, week, month, and we have fun with it and we have some great guests. Come check us out. We're not famous. We're HR famous. So you're doing all this. Does it fill your truck? Because this is like the myth that we tell the kids these days. Don't go to college.

[00:23:50] Go to trade school. Like, what do you think about all that? Do what you don't want. Don't chase a paycheck. You're never going to be happy if you're chasing a paycheck. We told people to learn how to code. Bad idea. You know, there's, you know, people say, oh, go to the trades. Like, there's a lot of people who physically cannot do that work. You know, again, like I'm 45 years old starting doing this and I've got a long history of sports and other injuries. So I'm like, it's not the best. You know, like I need to, I have to build in recovery days for myself.

[00:24:20] And again, I got a compression sleeve on right now for my elbow. It's like, it's a real thing. Like, it's hard work. And depending on where, you know, like I live in a place that doesn't really get cold, which is nice. It gets real hot, which is not. You got other places where stuff freezes. It's hard work. You know, yesterday I left the house at 8 o'clock in the morning. I got home at 8 o'clock at night. So it's definitely something where if you have that kind of, you know, if that's the kind of thing that interests you.

[00:24:48] Like, again, my son is, you know, starting junior college and he's looking at the electrician's program. That stuff interests him. He loves art. He's a music kid. Like, but he's got five or six guitars now. And, you know, so he's been like rewiring guitars, rewiring his amp, you know, fixing his amps. He's, you know, building little pedals and stuff like that, you know, sound modifier stuff. So it's like he had, you know, that's something that he would like to do. He already has that proclivity to do that. It's like, all right, cool.

[00:25:17] Figure out a way to be able to support yourself. Don't pick something because it pays well. You know, like that happened with software for a long time. And my thing was, you know, people ask me, how do I get into software? I'm like, if you have to ask, then you're probably not cut out for it. Because you would have already figured that out because you want to do this. You know, I'm listening to you talk and I'm like, heck yeah, I agree.

[00:25:40] And yet for me, college was the single differentiator between a life of poverty, quite honestly, and a life of wealth. Anybody in my family who can pay for health insurance went to college. I don't know how else to say this, right? And not health insurance, but like owns a home, has hobbies, right? All of this is driven around whether or not this person went to college or not.

[00:26:06] And those who didn't go to college still really struggle and really suffer. And so I throw that out there. I think that a lot of that is going to be just bias to the people that you know. And you went to college, you know other people that went to college. It took me 10 years to get a two-year degree and I barely scraped out with that. I backed into white-collar jobs without having, you know, the paperwork. And, you know, so again, I got to kind of be on both sides of that where it's like, no, there's plenty of people that are doing just fine.

[00:26:35] And they got a high school diploma and they're doing just fine. They're not, you know, and I know plenty of people who have college degrees and they're living in poverty. Oh, for sure. Yeah, absolutely. Because again, we did the same thing where you're like, you have to go to college. Do you have any interest in learning? Doesn't matter. Go to college. So what do they do? They jacked tuition 400%. So then you ended up with a whole bunch of people leaving college, not any more, feeling any more confident about what they were doing than when they started. And now they have 50 grand in debt.

[00:27:04] Or with my son's mother, $170,000 for just for law school. Oh my gosh. Yeah. You know, I also think that there's this myth that we have to be happy with what we do for a living. And you kind of talked about this a little bit where you said, you know, if you chase a paycheck or you chase a job, it won't necessarily make you happy, right? You have to figure out what you like. But what if you just don't like to work?

[00:27:27] And I think that's kind of where I've become comfortable in my old age, acknowledging, hey, I have to participate in this labor-driven economy, but I like my hobbies. I like my time off. And that's what it should be. You know, it's one of those things where don't, if at all possible, don't stay in a field or job aware that you hate. That's the thing is like I will, I'm lucky, you know, and I felt this for a long time that I was very lucky that I software was something that I was able to do and it paid well.

[00:27:57] And I liked to do it. I did it for free. I had a whole bunch of open source stuff. I've released free software for the majority of my career. So it was never, you know, like I would have done that anyway. And so it's one of those things where, again, like don't get into a career that you hate. But also remember that there should be a finite amount of work you're willing to do to make somebody else more money. You know, like I'm like, I will give you a solid 40, but that's it.

[00:28:26] Like you're not, unless you're paying for more of my time, you're not getting any more of my time. Yeah, it's the only thing I can't make more of. You know, Norcross, I want to get back to this idea of your career because I think you're like a lot of people out there where you have standards. You have things that you will and you won't do. You still have a lot of years ahead of you to be productive and to contribute and to make the world a better place. Air quotes. What are you going to do? How does this look for you?

[00:28:54] I know you're in the unknown limbo right now, but you have some control. So how are you putting yourself out in the world right now? I mean, I didn't know that I was going to do this. And I didn't definitely didn't know that I was going to do this for 20 years. I think having, you know, I think trying to answer that question and not just letting it organically happen is how a lot of people end up in situations that they really wish they were in. Yeah. So it's one of those things where like, yeah, I got to pay my bills. I got to pay the mortgage. I got to take care of all that.

[00:29:20] So I don't have the luxury, obviously, of just kicking back and being like, I'm semi-retired. It's like, no, I didn't. I never made that kind of tech money. So, you know, what does 10 years look like? I don't know. My job disappeared in less than a year. You know, had I have called myself an AI native software engineer a year or 18 months ago, I would have been laughed out of the room. And rightfully so.

[00:29:48] So this is where like wagon wheel makers had more lead time than I did in this situation. So I look at it in the situation of like, I don't know what's going to happen. And, you know, yeah, software is a much different field than it was even five years ago. Yeah. A lot of these tools can spin out little basic websites and they're fine for most people.

[00:30:12] Like that's part of it is not, you know, like most people don't inherently need the level of stuff that I've been building, especially the last 10 years of my career. Like that's not what most people have any need for whatsoever. Like, you know, I have tools in my garage that a lot of people don't have because they don't need them. And I've only bought tools once I felt comfortable using them and actually having a need for them. But yeah, like I have a whole like I've got table saws that will rip your hands off. Saw singular.

[00:30:42] But I didn't get that until I felt comfortable and confident that I could use that. All right. So I think about, OK, you've got this career. You don't know where it's going to go. Are you on LinkedIn these days? Like what do you? Yeah. For the humor of it. For more than anything else. Regardless of where it goes, it is in no way sustainable.

[00:31:11] So either it totally just falls over itself, is gone, is shows back up in five years the way that it should have initially, which was very specific, very tailored, very most people don't need this kind of stuff. Like I see plenty of uses in like medical research and like it can synthesize data incredibly quickly. It looks for patterns. It's a pattern recognition machine. It doesn't think it's not intelligent.

[00:31:39] Like this is the pedantic part of my mom being an English teacher. Words have meaning, you know, like it's not intelligent. It has no. It's a pattern recognition machine. I want you to go deeper on that because I think there are a lot of people out there who think that today's AI supersedes human intelligence. They really believe that. No, and it never will because there's no machine that could ever account for the chaos of the human mind. Like we are the most unpredictable species that has ever been documented in history.

[00:32:07] Like nobody can figure us out because we can't figure ourselves out because we do things that are not in our best interest. You know, we will make choices that are inherently wrong and we know that they're wrong when we're making them. Like animals have a fight or flight syndrome, you know, like reaction that is actually tailored to their environment. We just get anxiety because there's actually nothing to fight. Wait, we have a fuck around and find out tendency. At least I do. I'm like, I mean, that's my state motto. So yeah, it for sure is.

[00:32:36] But like it's a bad choice. I'm going to make it anyway just to see what happens. Right. So you're right. I mean, the human brain is endlessly complex and also stupid at the same time. So, all right. So you're not really looking for jobs on LinkedIn. But if people want to work with you, what are you doing to make sure that people know you exist? So the majority of my career, like I've never had to advertise in any of the careers that I've ever had. I mean, when I worked in finance, I was all taken care of.

[00:33:02] But when I started, you know, doing WordPress work way back when, and this is back in the early, early, early days of Twitter, I had a little search column in TweetDeck because that's how old this sentence is for the hashtag WordPress help. That's it. That is the one thing I did. And then it just went from there. And, you know, I just, again, it's all word of mouth because that's always the first thing you do when you need something is you first ask your friends. Then you go looking after that.

[00:33:32] You know, if you need to work down the house, like, are you just going to open up an app or the, you know, Google source? Like, no, you're going to ask someone you know, like, hey, who did your drywall work? Do you have a drywall person? Do you have a, you know, whatever person? You know, that's how that always works. That's how that's always worked. I have, you know, so I'm fine with that. So, like, I don't hide. Like, I'm on the Internet. You know, like, I don't do a lot of social media because most of it, like, again, I won't go anywhere near Twitter. Like, it's just a right wing cesspool.

[00:34:02] Like, I don't honestly respect people that are still on that side at this point. There's no reason to be there. Just leave. And, like, I got rid of Facebook in 2010, I think. So, like, my family still lives near me. They've seen my son grow up because I brought him over there all the time. They don't need the pictures. I didn't go to a college that had it. So, I didn't get on there that early. And I'm just like, find me. Like, my name is a domain name. I'm not hard to find.

[00:34:31] Like, if I wrote keep in touch in your yearbook, that number is my parents' number and it's still good. The area code changed, actually. But other than that, and you would know that knowing the area. So, it's like, you can still get a hold of me. Like, I'm not hard to find. You sure can. You wrote keep in touch on my heart many years ago. And we have, indeed, kept in touch. And I'm so grateful for it. I'm glad to be, like, a witness to your career and your development. Even though it's kind of weird right now.

[00:35:00] Like, I'm rooting for you. I believe in it. A lot of it comes back to, you know, like, I actually enjoy what I do. Like, there's a level of craftsmanship to it. And that's the way I've always felt about it. And if I do it right, you have no idea. You only know if I did it wrong. Because it doesn't work. You know, again, all the stuff in the house. If I do it right, you just see a nice wall or a fence or whatever. You know, if I do it wrong, you're like, look at that wobble.

[00:35:29] You know, see that bubble, that crease over there? Like, you'll see that crease every single time you walk in that room. So, you know, the craft, you know, the level of doing, you know, that craftsmanship to it. And writing code, way more fun than reviewing code. And if nobody wrote it, then I can ask, why did you do this? Nobody can learn. Like, companies are going to be screwed in about two years when they have all of this because it generates more code than people actually would.

[00:35:57] It might work, but it's not necessarily optimized or written well via highly performant. It has no idea what else is running in the environments that you're putting it in. Two years, a lot of this stuff is just going to start falling over. And they're going to need to pull some A-team stuff to fix it. So that's what I mean. Like, did I leave software? No. Like, it kind of pushed me off to the side for right now. Because, yeah, like, I won't use AI to build things, which means enterprise, large companies, they're still like, we need that. That's the only way this works.

[00:36:27] And I'm just like, no, you could just make less money as a CEO and tell your shareholders that you're a long-term value stock and don't. Start paying a dividend and don't worry about short-term gains. Unacceptable to the marketplace or across. And you know that. But listen, in two years, your phone's going to blow up. Maybe. And again, by that point, I might be happily not doing this anymore and be like, yeah, good luck with that. I have no idea. Remains to be seen.

[00:36:54] My hope for you is that you keep that really good, loose attitude and that you can still fill up your truck. That's the most important thing. Because, yeah, it's like I wake up and see what happens. There's really no reason to try to set all these hard and fast rules like this is what's going to happen in this number of times. Like that never happens, ever. At no point have I ever made a plan at that length and it ever happened even remotely close to what I thought it would. So I stopped doing it. I love it.

[00:37:23] Why plan to throw the plan away? That's what I hear. And it's one of those like, yeah, like is this financially a great decision for me to do right now? Absolutely not. Like is it difficult? Absolutely 100%. This is hard work. But I know that I'm like, I know I'm on the right side of history. You know, and I get the opportunity, you know, like I was given the opportunity to pick one and I'm like, no, I'm not going to. And I'm like, yeah, it's absolutely privileged that I can pick up a hammer and I can still do other things.

[00:37:53] I'm still absolutely fortunate that there are people that I do smaller jobs for still. And I'm able to do that. But yeah, I feel better. Like, yeah, I might go to sleep sore, but I know that I'm not putting money in Elon Musk's pocket or Sam Alden's pocket. I'm not poisoning places like Memphis, Tennessee. I'm not helping companies lay off my peers so they can juice their stock a little bit. Like I feel better about that.

[00:38:18] Even if it's making my own life a little more difficult, that's not a big cost ultimately. Andrew, it was really great to catch up with you today. Thanks for being a guest on the show. You're very much welcome. Thank you again for having me. Hey, everybody. I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Andrew Norcross. When I think about the discussion we just had, a couple things stick out to me.

[00:38:43] Number one, Andrew reminds me of a younger version I was back when I met him. I was optimistic. I was hopeful. I thought the internet could be used for good. And he tried to disabuse me of that notion in this conversation. But yet, after all these years, he and I are still connected. So there's something really interesting and important and kind of beautiful about the internet that I'm not willing to let go of. And I hope you aren't either.

[00:39:11] The second thing is that the theme of authenticity was so prevalent in this conversation. Andrew mentioned that he's covered head to toe in tattoos and that his hair is long and he has a biker beard. But I don't think that's authenticity. And I don't believe that he believes that either. What he's got are a set of values and principles that drive his decision making. And he doesn't waver from that.

[00:39:37] So even when the economy is tough and decisions are difficult, he knows who he is and who he isn't because he's put some thought into that. And that's a really important lesson for you. I think the third thing that sticks out to me is that Andrew is weird. I'm weird. We're all weird. But he's not weird in one thing. And this is a theme I hit on over and over again in my own career.

[00:40:01] That if you're all in on one thing like your job, that one dimensional aspect of your personality just is gross. Andrew is very good at what he does. He's great at building the engines that run the internet, right? He's great at building websites. But he can also build a home. And he also is really great with dogs. And he's a dad. And he's got all these other aspects to his life that make him a full and complete person.

[00:40:26] And I think, you know, if you want to be happier and you want to be able to weather the storm a little bit better, you need to be more than one thing. And Andrew is definitely that. Punk Rock HR is produced by Repcap. They're a B2B content marketing agency who help organizations tell clear human stories that connect.

[00:40:48] Whether you need strategy, customer interviews, or full production support, Repcap turns complex ideas into compelling content that moves business forward. Learn more at repcap.com. Punk Rock HR can also be found on the WRKdefined podcast network along with hundreds of other work-focused shows. To listen or learn how to advertise, head on over to workdefined.com.

[00:41:15] That's W-R-K defined.com. And finally, if you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a five-star review wherever you stream it. It really helps the show. Now that's all for today. I've got some advice for you. Be safe, be kind, and don't sell out.