Does A Frog Have Scorpion Nature? – Details, episodes & analysis

Today we've got Felipe Velez on the podcast, a close friend of mine from the improv theatre scene here in Melbourne. I know, I know, weird topic, but I want everyone to know about it. We're catching Felipe as he's on his way back to Columbia for the next big chapter of his life. He's easily amongst the funniest and most wholesome people I've ever met.

If anything we talk about sounds interesting, look up a local improv school, preferably one that uses Keith Johnstone's material quite heavily. I attend a place called Impro Melbourne, which I highly recommend.

And finally, thanks to Dennis Crenshaw for helping with the audio. As always, all good things are Dennis and all bad things were probably me.

Today we've got Simon Swords, the managing director at Fundipedia and all-around extremely cool guy. His first email to me had this at the start, middle, and end:

"DO NOT START A BUSINESS THAT DOES NOT HAVE A LARGE AMOUNT OF ANNUAL RECURRING REVENUE."

And I cannot begin to describe how much suffering he has saved me.

With my newfound internet fame, I am going to upgrade my recording setup substantially after this one - so this is and the next episode (already recorded) are hopefully the last times I apologize for the audio. Sorry Simon!

This episode's guest is Jesse Alford, a former staff engineer at Pivotal Software, and the host of Radio Free XP. I've been corresponding with Jesse daily for a month or two now, and am consistently blown away by his insight into any topic I dredge up. We discuss a whole bunch of things, ranging from seriousness in job, whether entering management to drive organizational change is wise, to what you should learn from crashing prod.

I have also used a compressor for the audio this time, so we move ever closer to respectability. Enjoy!

This episode is one that I've been super excited for - it's with Kijana Woodard, who runs kaizen.io! Kijana reached out to me a few months ago to talk about some writing, and we've been talking ever since. We're spiritually aligned on what fulfilling work looks like, and had a fantastic time talking.

Today's topics range from how it's terrible that I.T has three-year seniors to how most actual decision-making authority looks like it's distributed, but in reality most managers don't have the ability to buy their team a pizza.

Kijana also tells me one of the funniest stories I've ever heard in the tech space in the last three minutes.

As always, feedback at nik.suresh@hermit-tech.com is welcome, especially on audio quality. I think I did a lot better this time, but I have listened so many times that I feel like I've lost the ability to even tell what's good anymore.

This is a re-upload of the first episode with more post-processing done.

In this first episode, we speak to Stephen Deutsch, the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action's Principal Data Scientist. At the time of recording, an article I had written on the grotesque overuse of the word 'leadership' had just hit the #1 spot on Hackernews, where Stephen was named as one of the the best actual leaders I've ever worked with. Spoiler: He hired smart people and let them lead themselves. I was so impressed that we added him as the final member to my consultancy even though we have an equal profit sharing model. We've put our money where our mouths are on this guy.

In this episode we talk about helping your people live their best careers, treating people like people, corporate theater, the difference between management and leadership, how Stephen is a fraud that still doesn't know half of the nonsense phrases that the organization uses, and Saint Hicks.

Audio quality will hopefully become better with each passing episode as I learn what the hell I'm doing, but feedback is welcome at nik.suresh@hermit-tech.com. Anything good in the audio is attributable to Dennis Crenshaw, and everything bad is my fault.

Listen, it's Ed Zitron, he doesn't need an introduction. If you live under a rock (very reasonable mental health decision in the year of our Lord, 2026) you can find his work at Where's Your Ed At? or his own podcast, Better Offline.

This episode is with Efron Licht! I met Efron about a year ago, and I make the time to have a call with him every Thursday morning despite the myriad obligations of running a business because he's so goddamn good at programming (and also funny). His writing removed a lot of wild industry dysfunction from my brain around actually programming, and you can find it all eblog.fly.dev. Pick a random article and have fun, they're all great.

Also many thanks to Sarah for editing this episode! We have a paid editor now, everyone! (But also, many thanks to Lisa Lorenzin for getting us this far on volunteer hours!)

And finally, if you're a podcast description reader, the guest next month is Ed Zitron -- shhhhhhh, calm down, don't tell anyone, okay, this is between us.

Here's the second part of the episode! Why is it in two parts? Someone speculated that this might be a better format for people that don't want to get blasted by two hours of rambling without a natural break.

Many thanks to Lisa Lorenzin for editing this episode!

We have Dan Tentler on the podcast, a guy that I once (this is a true story) referred to outside of a security meetup wherein my interlocutor revealed that he's considered a "rockstar" by lots of security people. So you know, we're going up in the world.

Many thanks to Lisa Lorenzin for editing this episode!

Today I'm chatting with Demetrios Brinkmann, certified Cool Dude (TM) with lots of experience in the machine learning space. I recorded this a million years ago and must thank Demetrios for his patience. Topics we touch on are: machine learning hype in businesses, job searches, and the pros/cons of authenticity in a career.

Also, in a desperate attempt to feel like this is a responsible thing to produce while running a business, you can get advice on all sorts of software problems from my team at hermit-tech.com or email me personally at nik.suresh@hermit-tech.com

Many thanks are also extended to Lisa Lorenzin for taking my garbage audio and turning it into something passable.