Transcript: Hiring in 2026 - Jon Gould

I'm Will Vincent with Carlton Gibson.

Hey Carlton.

Hello, Will.

Welcome, Jon.

Nice to nice to be back on all of you.

Where have you traveled this year?

Because you've been everywhere.

So DjangoCon Europe in Athens, Greece, and then uh in DjangoCon US in Chicago uh earlier in in August.

And then I went to uh PyCon US over Long Beach as well.

Those were my sort of three three big events, and yeah, seen one or either of you at every single one

of them.

That's right.

Yeah, two for me, one for Carlton.

Yeah.

Um well, so maybe, and sorry, for introduction, for those who don't know, you're at Foxy Talent, like the preeminent Django recruiting agency.

Um what should I add?

Um I've yeah, I've recruited Python, Django Space and developers since 2008.

So you know coming up to 20 years doing that.

And um yeah, as a I suppose as a career recruiter, I'm also an individual member of the Django Software Foundation and Foxy Talent is one of the corporate sponsors.

So in the five years I've been going, I've donated over $20,000 to towards that.

Um I'm a regular at the conferences, um, yeah, all are everywhere.

If you go on LinkedIn, you won't be able to spend it, scroll for a couple of minutes without seeing me somewhere on the talk.

People go there to give talks, to network, to maybe look for jobs, to find out what's happening in the industry.

What are you, you know, as a recruiter, what are you looking for?

Is it similar?

Are there differences?

Like what do you pick up when you go to these events?

It's that uh that being in the States is where most of my business now is.

I I probably in the last 12 months I've been 70% of my placements and revenue has come from within the the United States.

So being there, it's being in the room with all the right people.

Um, whether yeah, whether the there's there's talks happening, but yeah, for for me it's it's it always started out being I just want to be around the the people who have given up their own time, the best, you know, who I would see as like the best people in the room.

Now I've changed a little bit with like fake candidates and all of this.

It's I'm now in a room of just real Django people.

Exactly.

There is proof of life.

Um that FC everyone's real and it's not an AI filter.

Um, but no, it's and also like these events are so important for the community.

If you can help out by sponsoring, and you know, for me, having a stand where people come talk to me as well is a byproduct of that.

It it's worth you know, it's worth doing, and yeah, it's uh I I like like to help where I can.

Like Django Day Copenhagen was a week ago, a week ago, ten days ago, and yeah, I couldn't go, but uh somebody I met at DjangoCon Europe really wanted to go.

They had helped me out with some stuff on my website, so I bought them a ticket and did like the supporter bit on top to to help the guys run that conference.

So yeah, just trying to help those little community events happen where they do.

I was just gonna say, um, I remember having this conversation with multiple people at DjangoCon US saying, Oh, do you know Jon?

If you don't, you should go talk to him.

Because no matter how happy you are with your job, like you should know what's out there, right?

Like you need to get information about what the market's saying, how your employer's doing.

And then I know for you, like you have these long-term relationships.

So even if someone's happy now, you build, you know, you get the contacts, you understand their situation, and then two, three, four years, you know, oh, this this position came up, and this person I've met and talked to at conferences would be a good fit.

So people shouldn't be shy about talking to you.

Um, which most people aren't, but a couple of times they need the nudge of like, no, it's like you should talk to Jon.

It's yeah.

Yeah.

I I mostly speak to people in my day job when they need something, when it's a transaction, when it's I'm looking for a role or you've got a job that I want to find out more about.

It's it's a transaction a lot of the time.

But by going to conferences, you meet people when just not it's not organic because you're at a conference, but it's you you meet people and you can have a a conversation and build a relationship and get get to know somebody when there is nothing on the table.

It's just yeah, it's nice.

And then I find when if I f yeah, a job comes in two years later that they said, Oh, I'd love to work in X industry, I will come back to them and go, Hey, look, I know you may not be looking, but we spoke two years ago at this conference, I've got someone that might interest you.

Like it's a lot easier like that.

And it's yeah, it it's the the enjoyable part of the job.

I much prefer to speak to people when then they are happy in working, not looking than yeah, I've been laid off and I need to get something before the money runs out.

It's like

So I'm having 15, 20 calls a week with people.

It's such a small proportion I end up actually putting into a job because that's where

the yeah, the the the nature of it.

I yeah.

ver really changed.

So it I had to make difficult difficult decisions to scale back.

And I've for the last well, over 12 months now I've been on my own again, and it's been probably my most fulfilling year.

I've been close to everything.

I've I've been able to lead like lead my own projects as well, and and like I actually quite enjoy travelling on my own to these things as well.

Like going for an airport with no stress, don't have to worry about anyone else like I can get there.

It's yeah, those sort of things were.

So you've started a new podcast, Sean.

new the

new thing.

Yeah, yeah, I have.

Um I've there's now three three episodes, which includes like my sort of story to start it off, which are out, and I've got another three recorded, which are going out over the next couple of Mondays.

Um, and it's it's basically a conversation around the point in a engineer's career where you the decision is sort to to go further in the career into people management or into code.

And I suppose from the five conversations I've had, also now like what impact is AI agents and what what impact is that going to have on the path that people choose.

And so the the sort of the goal behind this is to start that conversation so that people who have stood at the fork in the road, the crossroads, have somewhere to go for a bit of guidance and advice, um, but also to help the people who are building teams in 2026, 27 onwards learn and sort of make those good decisions as well about how they should shape a team.

Okay.

But if I was no, you've got to move into management, you've got to move into management, you've got to move into management.

And I remember seeing some article about how, you know, yeah, uh but get out of coding before you're 40.

And I'd just turned 40, and I was like, well, a bit late now.

Yeah.

I was um yeah, I I was enjoyed doing the job of a recruiter, and I got to a point where I'd had a couple of people around me, and I was then moved in.

I I had the opportunities to move up, and everybody was like, Oh, move up, get off the tools, like get a you know, get a get a job before you're uh you know, your your your hair goes grey and you're knocking on you know you're having to go to conferences and stuff.

And um it was yeah, it it was it was for not forced upon me.

I enjoyed it, I enjoyed every minute of building a team out and like the camaraderie that came with that.

And some of the guys who are in my team are still really good mates.

Like Will, you came over to the UK, we played golf with one of the guys who used to work for me, who's running his own recruitment business as well.

Um it's yeah, it was it was brilliant, but I always missed the the job, the job that I loved, which was recruiting.

And even when I started the business again on my own at Fox League, I went old habits of building a team fell back, and I got further away from doing the job that I love.

So I'm now yeah, facilitating that conversation for engineers and like yeah, because it's there is no right answer, and I think the the the good thing about yeah, the length of a career is you can always go back and unpick it, and you can go back to that um point with experience under your belt and try either route at any time.

Um and some of the guests I've had on have done both and moved um moved done either route and are loving it or have done one route and changed.

So yeah, some great stories that are coming out.

Um so shameless plug if anyone's yeah, if anyone anyone's done that and wants to come on and talk about their story, then yeah, we're pleased to get in touch.

I mean, Carlton, I wonder, not to psychoanalyze you, but you know, you you did your PhD and philosophy.

Like most people most people like if they start coding, you know, in their early mid-20s, they join a reasonably sized company, you get a lot of pressure four or five years in.

Like if you're not managing, like there's not a role for you.

I wonder, like, I mean, you know yourself well, but also you were consulting and stuff, right?

Because it's pretty hard to avoid that in a big company like, you know, after four or five years, because the company wants to scale up, right?

And so you're more you're you're more valuable as a manager.

So I'd seen it, I'd seen it happening.

I was like, oh, that doesn't look good.

And I I always had this idea about um the one the one-man business model, keep it small, keep it just me, keep because as soon as you've got as soon as you've got staff, then you've got a commitment because those people's livelihood depend upon you making um payroll every month.

And I remember when I was beginning, I worked, did some freelance work for an agency that um were winning all the prizes.

They were an iOS agency and they they built Facebook's app and whatnot, and they had a big offices in Barcelona, 50 people, they were winning awards left, right, and centre, with and within about three two or three months they just disappeared because for for whatever reason the pipe the sales pipeline dried up, and then they had this massive payroll which they couldn't afford.

So everybody got um laid off, and the the sort of core team got aqua high by Facebook and they went and built the the app in Hamlos.

And it was like, no, that's why you don't build a massive um business with a massive payroll, which you can't, you know, see the pathway clear.

I th there was this Bill Gates line about um he always wanted Microsoft to have enough cash on hand to go a year without making a single sale.

And I kind of took that very much to hand to heart, but like at my scale, it's like you must have enough reserve so that you know, if push comes to shove, there's a window where you can find a job without being in the panic situation that you were talking about before, Jon.

Um But yeah, everything you're talking about here and maintaining the position of an individual contributor, that speaks right to my heart because it's what I've tried to do my entire career.

I'm not interested in being a manager, which will, you know, we'll come to a different topic shortly, I guess.

But I I would say you've got to be pretty good to get away with an IC career.

Um, you know, I mean, if you're I mean, no one self-assesses as a mediocre programmer, but you know, it is true that some people are great managers and maybe mediocre programmers.

I mean, that's right, and not to turn this into one of your episodes, Jon, but like they're they're different skills is sort of the core thing, and yet they're thrust upon you.

Um yeah.

It's it's man it's managing the community.

But yeah, that's that's a separate topic.

I mean, yeah, I would just say my my little plug is is like I I've managed people and I think for most people, I think it's good to do it and try it, but recognize it doesn't have to be forever.

Because so for me now, like I'm managed by 30 somethings, right?

30 somethings run the world in tech, right?

And so when there's things I disagree with, like I have a lot more empathy for the situation they're in because I was in some version of it before, right?

Whereas if I don't if I'd never been in those shoes, I might be a little more like you know, lacking an understanding for the situation.

Um so anyways, yeah, people should listen to the podcast and it's a perennial topic.

I'm still figuring a lot out, but you're

oh no, yeah,

we're 200 episodes in the school though

I think this came up, Jon Jon, in um in the US.

Like, I won't name names, but there's a number of high profile Django people who are now at Frontier Labs or doing, you know, AI stuff.

Do you see how much do you see that happening, right?

Because AI salaries are a bit better than slinging Django code.

Is that is that true?

Or what are you seeing out there in the market?

They might have, yeah, they they they are throwing money at the at their staff because they've got to they want to try and attract the best.

They're in a a bit of an arms race for people and you have to get their product out first, but then you've you've also that there's a lot of fatigue in the job market where people have been hired by a start-up or a scale-up and have been let go a year, 18 months later.

So I think there's although yeah, that you can chase something shiny and take a a role with an AI calculator, I think there's a little bit of trepidation around it because you don't want to be, yeah, what if staying putting your Django slinging Django code role is actually the the safer long-term play.

But it

Yeah, yeah.

Like the there's a whole ecosystem around it and ALE is I don't know, it's it's uh in in the job side job sector at hiring, uh people who use it is changing the way people are writing code and uh are evaluating engineers, it's having a knock on to junior roles, definitely, but I think there's still uh

yeah, still a a good job market for for Python Jambal engineers.

So just

I mean it looks like a serious crisis, sustainability crisis, in that if we're if not if we're not hiring juniors and we're not training them up, we're not gonna have seniors in half a dozen years' time.

Um does how how does that look from your end?

Is that a real concern?

Is it are people still training folks?

I d I

I think grads coming through with from like universities and colleges who've got links into employment, they're still grad paths into bigger organizations.

Um it's it it's more like those yeah, boot camp and reskillers who uh or career switchers who are probably not getting much as as much anywhere near as much opportunity as before.

Um I don't I don't know of uh anywhere near as many companies who are high actively hiring genius.

There's a there's a handful that you you sort of see every now and then, but they'll have their a work cut out identifying which person's gonna be the right one or two to bring in, but also you know they're they they probably got their their formula, like they might have a link to a a college university locally who are doing it.

And I think partly this is because of the the AI tools being the junior developer, but also um remote work.

I think remote work is possibly detrimental to juniors uh integrating and learning, like the nuance of sitting in a row of desks where somebody's working on on something that they can just lean over and ask, Hey, can you look at this?

Can you explain how this works a bit yeah if you look at the the sprints and things at Django cons or yeah there are people of every level learning from each other just by osmosis of being in the same room and I think for remote working that has had a a real impact on the and juniors will can learn and can progress by doing it that way but I think it's just a um yeah a a negative aspect of remote working with the yeah th

ings of people haven't hired juniors because of the the speed to get up up and running and they may as well wait six months and hire somebody with more experience or they know wait and increase budget and hire a mid or a senior um

Will go on yeah

everything you said just resonated.

Like the big companies are still I mean people don't understand that like Google, Facebook like the average age is young like it's like 27, 26, 27 like and you know they're hiring less but they're still like my brother works at Columbia University in um recruit um career services right like they're they're their grads get jobs right it's no problem right because they have the pipeline so like the you know and these big companies are investing more than ever in um offices right like Manhattan is like a lot of software

now.

So you still they still want smart young people the problem is as you said like maybe a bootcamp person or someone who hasn't gotten that on the ground training it is much harder like I mean consultancies I've spoken to and you've probably spoken to Jon it's harder for them to hire a you know a grad from a from a bootcamp right whereas before they could have now they can kind of swap that out for an agent.

So um anyway so two things are true.

I'm just agreeing with you the big companies still need people a lot of those people are more junior but I think that mid-level or mid-career is really getting nailed because yeah like why train a person when you can train an agent and do a harness unfortunately a lot of people have that mindset.

So almost like reverse engineering.

So if you're if you're based in Chicago and you're a junior engineer you're looking for remote jobs against junior engineers everywhere in the country like your USP you know your unique selling point um is is your experience you haven't really got any so actually if you narrow down your search and using tools like LinkedIn you can do like a uh search for people by typing in you know python Django uh

junior developer into the search that term and you can search for people who have got the job that you want so you can look for people who are a junior developer and you can look by location in Chicago and in theory you should be able to find the companies that have already got junior developers working for them knowing that people don't update their LinkedIn as often as they want they've probably been promoted and haven't been back in to change the job title but that company specifically has hired a juni

or in the last few years so that's a company to approach and say I'm a junior I'm looking for work um by doing it that way round rather than searching for jobs and it's it's a yeah it works it doesn't work every time but you you've got yeah it's by being in your USP is now that you can give to the office or you're in the same location um as opposed to you've got yeah you've you've written a bunch of code

urn to offices was like the revenge of the companies but it might actually be revenge of the junior developer.

Yeah.

I'm just shooting my mouth off but I've I've read that okay okay I

did very diplomatic

But now that's gone because everything is AI, right?

Even if you could do it manually, basically everyone's doing something AI and if they're not like there's no way to check that they are that they didn't.

So I wonder what you're if you're what are you hearing on that, Jon?

Because I I find that's a real loss.

I used to, you know, I guess you can quickly find out if you talk to someone you can say walk me through this and they're like oh here's the prompts I used.

But it used to be that as a screen if someone had a number of projects that were open source, you know I could evaluate them whereas now I kind of have to talk to them to see if they know what they're talking about.

I don't know what do you find?

I think it's the it's the the um

right but you it's how you get too too right

It should you know the the way that even from a point of when you're writing your your C V your resume like of avoid the instinct the going in or optimizing it for every role because it would you'll just come out sounding the same as everybody else.

And I think yeah it's if if you've been searching for a while you'll you you'll be tempted I've got to change something I've got to optimize it for this role it it looks yeah that's the any document that is has been pushed through a an agent will look the same and sound the same.

So yeah from that for even from that point um then the people reviewing them like smaller companies don't tend to have uh they tend to have a person reviewing or a an external recruiter reviewing resumes and CVs rather than a uh applicant tracking system where it just searches for keywords.

So again be more human lean into like the the reason why you're looking and your backstory how you your you know how you got into coding in the first place what's still passion what you're still passionate about and then like the interviews I I can't stand things like the leak code processes any interviews where you're being set up a task you know there's just fictional just review some code or like take a pull request and like nothing's too no one's too busy just to like go hey can have a look at

that um solve that for us.

And if you do allow if you work where you're using um you know prompts in in in your coding and generating code that way well then run your interview process like that and say we want you to use whatever tool you're most comfortable with or we use claw code or whatever um if you and then you review it together like you would in the workplace.

That's the biggest thing is that the point of testing somebody if it's miles away from the way that you work what's the point you know if you're gonna send somebody off to do something go hey but please don't use it we want to see actually how you code then you'll you'll filter people out that way because you'll know straight away if they've followed the instruction or not but it is it's real yeah I think just hiring needs to be more human um in general not

just to keep me in a job but in yeah it's

um yeah

it yeah you're hiring a person like keep it keep it on in conversation yeah

It it it you'd get far too many applicants and it was far too difficult to to get through them and be you know and then far too difficult to do the the the the interview process fairly and and and and but at reasonable personal expense like you know reasonable time investment and whatnot it's a hiring is a is just a a massive challenge and I can't believe that AI's made it easier but

red you know if you have a hundred applications but someone on your team has some point of contact with one of them you know maybe they took the time to reach out it's like and they're like well they seem okay or right like that person goes top of the queue because even pre-AI you could never really filter it you know you always want some sort of human validation right because then it's if someone you trust says something then you're sort of evaluating their them on it too right so you always want to find a person at the place ye

're sick and tired of like not knowing if the person we're speaking to is actually real or not could you send us profiles of people who you have met and it's like yeah absolutely like that's that's great and it it validates the whole you know the whole trips every time but it's it is that you that network of uh you know of yeah first connections it is your that's the valuable thing lead if you're job searching lean into that like uh go and speak to the people that you've wor

ked with before like see who you know is is working somewhere who's hiring it's like together you'll you'll you'll find it rather than sort of faceless applications because as soon as you go blind you you're all the credit that you've got somewhere else is gone you've got to start from scratch

ah it it's

conferences going to the um Jango on the med or something like that and sharing the photo that you were there or uh yeah in Chicago the the silver bean thing you were there and yeah and because it it's just leaving a bit of a digital paper trail for people but also others will see it and it's trying to yeah so when you do need to put your hand up and say I'm looking there's people remember you a little bit.

I mean I remember 20 years ago the advice was you know what why bother answering questions on Stack Overflow?

Well because every single time you did it it was like the one more sort of thing that you'd done that was positive.

Why bother on the um on the mailing list?

Why bother on the foot on the um project?

Well because each time you do it it's not a big thing but it just adds to that that that backstory of things that you've done that show that you're you know yeah credible I can't think yeah that you're credible yeah good thank you for the word you still

a blog I want to see them write about you know like you you still some most of the advice I think still holds like write about what you're learning like and it doesn't matter where it is um because uh to me it makes you human um and it also m lets me know how you think versus you know your resume I mean I don't you know after a couple years out of college I don't care where you went um yeah personally um I did have a question I question um so python web development uh I know we all love Django on this show

are you seeing what are you seeing for Flask and fast API?

Does that come up with clients at all or in the marketplace?

Like what are you what are you seeing Jon?

I mean that's my very naive take but I also don't see anyone asking for Flask or fast API roles.

I see you know web programming yeah you can learn Python it's easy kind of stuff.

But I don't see it on CVs and resumes.

I don't see it on um in in job job listings and I don't know whether that's because yeah people aren't aren't uh are so happy they're not looking for work because they've got fast API jobs or um it's just it's just there isn't necessarily that whole ecosystem behind it that you know if you get Django's 20 21 years old people have been working with it since I think I I placed the Django developer in like 2008 and like

that was somebody who was a hobbyist who working with Python in their day job and they'd just playing around with Django at home because there wasn't a project to take on like to take on com you know professionally and so you've got all yeah back then that you wouldn't have seen I you I didn't see Django on um CVs and resumes or anything like that at that point.

You had to go out and look past it.

So may maybe maybe in the next sort of four or five years we'll see more fast API jobs specifically but yeah I I I don't you know from a careers perspective I don't see many people switching from Jake to Fast API because they think their work prospects are better.

Well the the community isn't growing at 100% in fifth in two years.

So who's answered it?

And the same with the Django survey it's like we've got maybe 4,000 respondents maybe out of a user base of millions.

It's like well where are the rest of the user base?

They're not answering the survey is the problem.

Yeah.

But it's I'll just say as a quick note um because PyCharm JetBrains sponsors the the PSF uh Python Software Foundation's um survey and the Django survey um responses are just down in general people are just not you know it's not just us even Stack Overflow, even GitHub people are just not responding as much um the PSF is not doing their survey next year for a variety of reasons.

Hopefully it's a pause um the Django survey we're still doing for now um hopefully it's valuable but yeah it's it's completely imperfect measure it's whoever finds out about it.

Um and yet it's as good as we have um one thing we can mention it's it's public is that the Django project site now has very basic anonymous tracking with plausible I believe so some sense of who's actually visiting but you know who's to say what's a human and what's a bot these days, right?

Like that's part of the problem.

Um I mean I went through I was sort of and you know bots, bots are nothing new, but the rate has just increased so much.

I mean so I I've I run this small learnjango.com site, right?

Where people can tutorials and courses and I was sort of smugly like oh I've got a good number of users and oh it's really accelerating you know and then I did some analytics on it, you know, and yeah it's like all bots not all bots it's like the sit the number of people is pretty consistent in terms of growing and that's the rate of bots is just through the roof.

And as soon as I've you know slapped on some ways that bots can't sign up as easily, like it dropped like crazy, you know.

So yeah, it's to your point, Jon, it's you still need humans and it's harder than ever to know who's actually human out there.

Yeah.

I don't know if that's what's

It's not Python Django.

I hear that across all the places.

I mean I think it's I'm curious what you think.

What I've heard is, you know, so there's travel is harder, there's political stuff, budgets are tighter, more money's going to AI, people are working from home.

Um I ha I've heard it's just kind of everything.

And this is from conference organizers too.

I don't know that there's one single thing causing it other than it's all hurting.

Yeah.

No, I I there's

So like it must be even harder now when you don't know how many people are coming and you know if a lot of the signups either are either very early or very late I it must be very difficult.

Yeah.

I mean I I think I met you at a conference Jon I certainly met Carlton at a conference like this podcast came about you know so and there's opportunity grants so you know it bears repeating like challenging as it is to go it is so valuable to go.

And you know I think especially if you're a junior or you're new to the community you get so much out of it because people are friendly and helpful and um you know the people I've I met at DjangoCon US in Chicago last year.

I was re you know referring you to Jon you know you most people are very friendly in the community.

So if you can find a way to go, it's probably the best bang for your buck if you're trying to you know get

I thought the ones in San Diego are quite look very well

attended in even sort of during those COVID years.

Yeah we'll see

attended I went to so it must have been like I'm trying to think what the dates were um April 2022 I went to Django Day Copenhagen which was like the first in-person event for years and I went there and it was only there was only maybe 40 people 50 people but it was great and it was like I'm out and about I'm with the people that I enjoy spending time with in person and I came back and I was like right I've I I want to tr

y getting something going up in London again and it was like yeah just I don't want the hassle of having to find venues and speakers so saying right let's just meet and do something became very easy.

Um and then classic yeah I set it up on on meetup.com and ran it through there for maybe two years or three years um set up extra you know additional events in uh in and around the conferences and traveling and then people would would take it away and go right I'm gonna go set one up wherever they are in the world and we ended up with a network of maybe about 10 12 events dotted all over the world and then I started getting bills through from Meetup for yeah $3,000 a year.

And it was like this is yeah this is a nice thing to do but it's like it's it's not three thousand dollars a year nice on top of everything else and most of these events uh yeah happen once and then don't happen again um so I took it all off meetup and it sort of not not died but the it doesn't really happen as much anymore regrettably so I've sort of I've most mostly been trying to do it as like a night before the

conference social um event wherever wherever I've been so we did it in in Athens and um and in in Dublin yeah Dublin was good and I intend to do one like a like an outbreak one in in Austria um or maybe on the yeah somewhere night near the near the ski lift um yeah so yeah but it's it's it's a great way to just socialise that conference now um but yeah if somebody wants to run one feel free to use the name and crack on with it but

running meetups is difficult.

So yeah it's too yeah I mean in theory someone can vibe code something up and host it.

That's the thing that it should the whole idea of Django Social is it should just be so low admin that you just pick somewhere to go and especially when a conference is happening in a big city and you can be you can go yeah every yeah you you can go out and not bump into anybody though

it's yeah it's yeah no it's really good that you organise

whoa what

is going on

and run them small and don't there's always you know this I know you just set it up on on meetup and then it grew but quite often we have a tendency to try and grow the thing to the next level.

It's like no keep it small because then it you can keep doing it.

Yeah.

You think

And I think if we were to grow it beyond that we'd have to change the format somehow and it's like okay so I think Jang on the med needs to be you know or a small sprint event because I think the the the hope is that people will pick up and run with them elsewhere.

But 20-25 people that's a good number because you can fit in a room and you can just about get a table at a restaurant if you have to and you you can get to a bar without the you know people panicking.

Whereas if it's 50 or 100 well okay you need a much bigger venue and much bigger organization and you can't do the the group activities in the same way and and whatnot.

So yeah I think there's a natural size to a sprint event like Django on the med.

Yeah.

Well and there's Django

Yeah.

Okay.

understand it in like real context and it's mostly about um going in not going into situations expecting a result and just going into it fully open minded and it's almost like where what has driven the way that I think about going to conferences and involvement in the community.

Nothing has got like a what's in it for me sort of mindset.

It's all if I go here, it's the right thing to do.

And I think yeah, good will come from it, good will have it.

So yeah, it's called go, I think it's called go givers Sell More.

Um and often as a if I recommend it to somebody, I will buy it for them as well.

So I'll send you both a copy.

Um so I've been reading, rereading um Gilbert Riley's uh oh, can you see that?

Hang on.

Oh, it's The Concept of Mind, anyway, by Gilbert Rile, which is uh this is a Penguin Classic edition.

Um it's a um sort of classic of uh 20th century British analytic philosophy.

But uh in this these days and ages, this day and age where we have uh tech billionaires writing manifestos about you know cognizant AI rights and how reinforcement learning is tantamount to torture and these kind of things.

It seemed um important to me to refresh myself on the arguments around you know how we conceptualize mind and intelligence and rationality and um other such concepts.

So I'm I'm rereading that.

I'm not sure I'm gonna have another book for the next episode, Will, because uh, you know, philosophy books are quite slow going.

So I'm I might not have plowed my my way

through it.

So uh Gilbert Rather's concept of mind, which is a as I say, a classic from 20th century.

New to me.

And I've read other books, you know, I I like reading nonfiction books around AI.

I mean, Empire of AI, I think, was the best one I read last year.

Um, but I find this interesting because AI is much bigger than LLMs, and DeepMind has done a lot more than just LLMs, right?

They're Alpha Go, they're chess, you know, and chess engines and reinforcement learning.

And so I find it interesting looking at things beyond LLMs, because AI is much bigger than that.

So I'll let you know how it goes.

I've read other stuff by the author, so hopefully it's interesting.

Well, I must say, I'll congratulate you.

And, you know, I'm I am a history major, right?

So I like to know the context and the emotions, you know.

And I would I would repay you the same.

I think it's a compliment that your stamina for philosophy books is amazing.

So I I love them.

I've I feel like I can like digest, I'm like two, three sentences, I'm like, yep, that's two, three hundred pages, but I know it's about the process of uh internalizing the the debate.

Um projects, I'll go.

Um I'm gonna mention Justin Mayer's Django Benchmark, which was started at Django on the Med, is now public.

Um Carlton, you were there with Justin when he announced it or made it public, right?

What you can you add?

They so what it is is a harness for testing um different uh Django, different kinds of Django application under different deployment scenarios.

So that at the moment it's very much um a path in the snow, you know, it's beginning.

But we the the the the the harness is there, the ability to add new scenarios is there.

And for instance, you know, you your blog application.

Well, you know, how did how does it go running under GunnarCorn with you know a prefault worker versus a threaded worker versus well what about if you run it as as a as an ASGI application, then how does that perform at this at the scales that you're interested in?

So we also bit you know, also load test the application, and you're like, well, you know, it it might fall over at 500 requests per second, but yeah, I'm not getting 500 requests per second to my blog.

So do you know what?

Um the the the idea is to be able to um talk a little bit more sensibly about um how you should deploy your Django application than just like, oh look, it does so many requests per second, which is a little bit, you know, vacuous, basically.

It's like when that, you know, I'm going to deploy a Wagtaile app, I'm expecting this kind of traffic.

Okay, here's a here's a suggested deployment that comes out from running it in all these different ways.

So hopefully it grows.

I I think it's been it's been something that's been on the the sort of you know idea pot for a long time.

And to see it coming together, I th I'm very excited by Django Benchmark.

I think it's going to be a very good community resource, you know, as it as it enriches.

So, you know, I think if people have got people want to sort of add their application to it, that would be a useful thing so we can build up the the the different scenarios or the different, you know, the different kinds of application that are being tested.

That's good.

Well, he's also, which is the super fast Rust, you know, um application server for Django.

Um he's um come up with a great package now called Pongs, which a prongs, sorry, which runs just the tests that you edited.

So um, you know, your full test suite might take two, three minutes to run or whatever, and you're only working on two or three files.

Well, it it'll watch the files that you're editing and it will just run the tests that are relevant to those.

And that's that's just so useful.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, I I of I had a like half idea to do similar with coverage data, but he's gone and actually built it, and the course is much better than anything I would have come up with.

So good do go and check that one out.

That's um Farhan's uh prongs project, which will hit link in the show notes.

to this.

We will expect

about that.

And then is that just on YouTube or is it are there also audio links?

Okay, yeah.

Okay, great.

Was there anything you wanted to get off your chest?

I I would say my my wife told me, she's like, I got a great joke for you, and I was like, okay.

And she's like, that you know, the deepest, darkest secret in the world you put at the end of a podcast.

And she thought that was hilarious.

And I was like, I heard that when we started doing this podcast, but it's still funny.

But you know, so you can get anything off your chest now.

If anyone's still listening, you know, it's any hot taste.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

Just come and say hello.

Like just to yeah, meet people and integrate and be around.

So yeah, no, no, yeah.

Like uh coffee hours or all those sort of things.

Um yeah, just grab us.

I'm I'm easy, easy going.

All right.

Nice to formally do this.

Yeah.

We're we're back on the usual schedule for anyone worried.

So we're gonna go every two weeks, I think, through the end of the year, Carlton, right?

We got a whole bunch of guests lined up.

That's the plan.

All right, we'll see everyone next time, DjangoChat.com.

Bye bye.

Bye bye.