ball. Thank you very much for coming on the show. I, um for everybody who is listening, I met Paul on hacker news when he commented on one of the threads saying that he was the second employees at Amazon, and at some point he cashed out, took the money early on and spend the next 10 years with his daughter raising her his dad and, you know, having fun. And I thought it was amazing because most people in tech world seemed Thio be stuck in the grinder, wanting to get mortgage it richer. You know, start something new, and very few people check out and actually enjoy the life. And I wanted to bring pull on the show to talk about that experience what it was like back then. And you know what life can take you to if you make that choice early on. So welcome.

Thank you very much. I think you know, since you were the is. And it is the second employee, right?

Yeah. There's a little bit of off a debate about it because there's a question of what do you consider the Jeff to be the first employee? I don't know if you could hire yourself. Is that possible? I'm not sure. Um

sends an illegal

structure. Yeah, all right. And there's also some questions about whether or not his then wife McCain, his then wife Mackenzie was an employee. I was the second person outside of that couple that was hired to tow work at Amazon and myself and Shell, who was the normally the first employee. He and I were both being hired at about the same time. Um, so I was there, um, from even before the company was called Amazon. You know, it was just basically Jeff Schell and myself getting things started.

I think it's fair to say that second employees a you know, a great description and help me. You know, I think a lot of people listening to this now, of course, people want to know what Amazon was like. But you were here in Bellevue at the time, right? What was Bellevue in Seattle? Like? Backward. Amazon was getting started.

Well, I probably have a slightly plaice take on Bellevue because some years before that, I had immigrated to the U. S. In 1989 and lived very briefly in Philadelphia with my first wife and we were planning to move out to Seattle and had some friends who had spend some time in the area living there. And we went to see them, to ask him for advice about you know, where we should think about living. And we pointed at the mat where Bellevue Waas and they just grove and said like, Oh, my God, do not go to Bellevue. Big X on Bellevue was a particular phrase that they used. Um, I think, you know, I don't actually know what the way it's seeing now,

but at that point, Bellevue, I think, by most people in Seattle proper, was seen us this, you know, deeply suburban place. There was nothing but Asheville parking lots and shopping malls and place you wouldn't really want to go. Um, and indeed, I didn't know anyone who lives over there. And I really had any reason to go there prior to starting to work for Amazon. So it sounds

like a perfect place to do a startup. There are no distractions.

Yeah. I mean, I think I don't You know, the actual place that the house that Jeff rented, you know where the company got started. Um, I don't think it was particularly cheap, but I think, you know, in orderto have a property where you could have basically, that house had already converted, uh, Garrett on the side of it. I don't know exactly what you know. You have probably paid similar prices in Seattle. Um, I don't know why.

I don't know what I know. There was a particular attraction to the sort of suburban context it was in, or it could be that it actually was just a pretty cheap place toe rent. At that point, I don't think housing in general in Bellevue was sort of his cheap, but it's possible that, you know, it was just a good deal.

Yeah, no belly has changed since then. Now it Z now it's a booming city with, you know, tall buildings and lots of people buzzing around so very different now. But did you stay at Amazon long enough for the move to Seattle?

Yes, I did. I actually stayed there for about Yeah. I think there's probably about 15 months in total 14 or 15 months on DWI had we've already done the move to the first officers in Seattle And toward the end of my time there we were looking for the second building. Um, the the that the company might movinto. Just because the first one was was already going to be too small.

What year was that?

Eso I was hired in 1994 in the 4th, 1994. and I guess we stayed in the house in Bellevue until mm, probably the end of the summer of 95. We opened the quote salt to the public in June and July of 95 eso in toward the end of that summer, we moved into what was then the the color tile building, which was down on it was all eyes that still part of Alaskan way. It was somewhere way south of the what was in the kingdom. And it was just a old sort of light industrial building that used tohave Ah, retail store called Color Toll in

the bottom of it. So did you say Amazon actually had a physical store?

No. Well, that's sorry I'm doing I'm forget you can't see my air quotes here. When I say we opened the store, they were air quotes around. So, um Yeah, so? So we moved in. We moved into that building, which we basically had the basement on. Then I don't know, something like maybe three or three offices, three or four office rooms on the upper floor. Um, and it became very clear within a very short period of time that, you know that way would run out of space very quickly.

Um, we used the basement as sort of the initial warehouse of Amazon, but the office is upstairs. Started to fill up with people pretty quickly. Um, and so I think even by probably like, you know, the end of October of that year, I'm going to guess, um, Jeff Schell and myself. There's a lot of people working for the company then. But I guess somehow is the people who were there beginning we've got we were the team to go out and find where the next building was gonna be. Way. I remember driving out all over. I wouldn't say all over Puget Sound,

but certainly all of the greater Seattle, um, trying to find, you know, what the next building would they, um and that that you know.

And at that time, the 95. So Microsoft was booming. Is that right? So, what? You know, what was it like for you? Working for the small, fairly unknown company that wasn't even called Amazon for a while,

right? Well, the very beginning it was called Cadavra Inc. And thankfully, e think just lawyer had convinced him that it was not a good name because it sounded so much like cadaver. Um, the original. The origin of the name Amazon actually came just from Jeff watching a documentary on TV one night that was about the Amazon River. And somewhere in the documentary, they mentioned that, you know, the Amazon is the biggest river on earth. A lot of people know that, but it's not just a little bit bigger than the next biggest river. It's 10 times bigger than the next biggest river. And he heard this. And just so that is exactly the whatever the the metaphor,

the analogy that he wanted for for the company that he was imagining building, like not just a bit bigger than the rest, just like unimaginably bigger than the rest. And so this was the name to Amazon. It was I mean, it was interesting time I mean, you know, the the Web was just beginning to be perhaps a place where people would do things other than academic stuff on it. Um, Microsoft was still definitely, you know, the number one tech company in town. I mean, really, it's almost a number one tech tech company in the country in some respects. Or maybe the world.

Um, I don't think we thought too much about that, because I think, you know, it's interesting as the years have gone by. I mean, we all talk about these, uh, you know, the so called fang companies take companies, and I think, you know, in so many ways is a bit of a misconception. I think, you know, Amazon particular.

That point when it was nothing, it was planning on being nothing but a retail company? No way. We really thought of ourselves in the same space as a company like Microsoft. All right. I mean, we were We were users off technology building on online retail store. We weren't in the same space as them. I think it's only really, you know, as Amazon realize that yeah, they were building. They were Amazon was building his own infrastructure to run large scale Web services and that you know what we could offer that other people. And you saw the did the role of a W s Amazon web services on, um, you know,

slowly the company did actually turn into a tech company. But I think in the early days, you know, we didn't really think of ourselves, Aziz being a part of that space. Um, what was weird was trying to hire people at that time. Um, and Jeff was really insistent. I mean, you know, show and I had a ton of programming work that we weren't being able to get to because it was just too much to do. We wanted to hire other programmers, um, to come in and do stuff. Jeff was absolutely insistent.

So, you know, we need somebody who has a PhD for one of the top five CS schools. Um, and you know, preferably they've had some, you know, do multiple experience and show. I will both just looking at Jeff like, are you crazy? Like Jeff were tiny little start up in this rinky ding building in kind of a rundown industrial part of Seattle. Who the hell is going to come and work for us. And, uh, indeed, it was difficult to convince those people we did have have interviews with a few people you know,

who just recently got a PhD from Stanford or M i t. And you know sure enough, they were not interested. And who could really blame them? Uh, in terms of what you could see at that time. So, you know, we ended up we ended up convincing Jeff in the end, Could we please just hire somebody on? We did, and it was somebody who didn't really meet Jeffs. Um, you know, his ideas of who he wanted to be hiring. And it turned out he was completely right.

Um, you know, we hired somebody who was competent and capable of doing stuff, but, you know, actually needed still for a lot of hand holding and guidance, and, um, on also didn't I think really didn't see too much of the vision If you like. It didn't even have their own vision for how things couldn't, uh, could be. And we went back to see Jeff later and said, Yeah, actually, Jeff,

you will completely correct about that. Um, you know we didn't. We should just follow your instincts on hiring people in the future, and I think it was difficult. But I know that the next set of people we were hiring what people to dio editorial work. I don't know if the company even still does it anymore, but, you know, in the early days, there was an attempt actually, like, right articles about interesting new books and stuff like that. And, you know, I think Jeff stipulation for that was five years experience in a major public that a major national publication on shall I Still,

I mean way wanted to just sort of roll our eyes like, how is this gonna work? But we understood that Jess instinct on that were probably correct. And I think he did in fact, allow for that. And I think the first person he hired had a lot experience and maybe more. Um, and I always I thought that was a very interesting, uh, process. I never have started my own riel company with hiring people, but if I did, I would probably try to fall all over the the path that Jeff took their I mean e it can seem very intimidating. Did and hard to hire people with that kind of background. When you've got a tiny little start up, it's not doing anything. But the payoff stuff can be really huge,

I guess. One thing we didn't talk about it, but if the barrier to entry was so high, you know, how did Jeff find you?

Um, so the way he found me was pretty convoluted. Um, I think lots of people. No. From the sort of the public story Amazon, where he had been working at the Shore, which is a Wall Street hedge company. It's quite famous for hiring lots of mathematicians and computer scientists, I think even physicists there, you know, super quantitative in what they were doing. Um, and Jeff had decided he was gonna leave the shore and start this company. Um, and he also chosen to start in Seattle. Um,

and he sent out some email to people that he knew saying, Does anybody have any idea how I could hire people out there? One of the people that he knew was a professor at I think it was a two step thing. There was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University um I think he might even have gotten his own CS degree there. I'm not sure. Anyway, he knew somebody. Carnegie Mellon, three guy Carnegie Mellon, New A. C s Professor Brian Bershad, who had done a post doc at Carnegie Mellon, has gone back to University of Washington where I was working, E I was working in the computer science department there as assistance program, and, you know,

I was department designated Web guy. Um, the story of this is basically, in 1993 the New York Times had an article about all these physics departments that we're using. This new thing called the World Wide Web there have been invented at this nuclear physics place in Europe, um, called CERN and the physics departments were using and they were putting papers online and all this other stuff. And then head of the C s Department of University Washington was furious. Ah, furious is maybe overstating It was like, you know, how come the physicists, uh, using the internet in this way? First we have to fix this. We have toe.

We have to be online on. I don't know exactly what ever I became the designated person. to get the department onto the World Wide Web. Um, and, uh, you know, it was a fun learning experience.

You had a little basic HTML site set up

with. Yeah, you know, we had a list of faculty and started to put a few papers there, and, you know, e think it was a map of the building, you know, stuff like that. Um, what was fun for me is I started experimenting with wet related stuff around that pond. That was a lot of fun. Um, I remember I did something very early on. It was called Fish Net, which was a mailing list of things I found online. These there are a few of these that became pretty famous later on.

There was, I think maybe one of the most well known ones that I know off from sort of my ear in this world was called Red Rock Eater. Um, which I think the guy Caulfield actually put out. But, you know, basically is like, you know, I'm somebody who's super immersed in Web staff. And so I see all kinds of things I'm gonna send out. Uh huh. Uh, email. Once a week that has links

to know. Kind of like Drum Drudge Report.

Conceptual? Yes. Was a lot like drudgery for the content. Once loath content would have probably been a lot like hacker news is right now, to be honest. Um, so I was doing work like that anyway, so you know, 1st, 14 94 and maybe this spring. Very early summer of 94. Jeff is trying to hire people. He sent this email to Brian Bouchard, who is in the department who was a professor. I was, you know, somewhat friendly with we as you used to play squash it sometimes you got this email,

um, forwarded it to me and said, I don't really know why I'm sending this to you, because I want you to carry on working here, but I don't know, maybe you have some interest in it. Um,

that's nice

of him. Yeah, Onda. Truth was, I was getting a little bored of working the department. I've been there about four years, and although in many ways it was a dream job, um you know, I got paid as much as junior faculty, but had no no responsibilities, and I got to sit around coffee shops and talking about consciousness and a I was really smart grad students. Um, it was great, but there was almost no programming. And I guess for the first two years it didn't really bother me too much. There's a lot more system administration coach stuff. I got involved in a couple of things there.

There was a one project I was working on work. Look, we had a paper using it but actually won best paper, which was kind of nice, but it just wasn't enough programming. And so so in this email came in from Jeff. I was like, huh? Wow. I mean, I don't know if it's really gonna work, but there's so there's definitely be a lot more A lot more programming. Um, I didn't really think he would. I didn't think the company was likely to work, to be honest, but it seems like it would be an interesting thing to do for a while

with any other startups around,

I'm sure, but I mean, I wasn't actively looking. E hadn't reached the point in in the department university of like Oh, my God. I have to get out of here. It was more just a case of Yeah, this is not really what I want to be doing. And when just email showed up, it was more like, Well, let's just see you. Let's just see where this goes. Um, I was a at that time. I was a huge book bookstore fanatic, and so it was really exciting.

Toe sit in one of the cords you Darwin during the during the summer with Jeff and just, you know, she blue Sky ideas about what we could do with a bookstore online. Um, that got me fairly excited. Um, you know, even though obviously it was clear that the initial part of it was gonna be set up a Web server, you know, do all that kind of mundane stuff, it felt like it was gonna be the potential to do some really interesting things down the road. Um, on the other dimension to this is that my first wife and I got my first wife was pregnant at that point, and, um, I wasn't really quite sure what we would do about that,

but I knew I'd always had an interest in being an at home parent. And so very early on in my negotiations with Jeff, I I said to him, You know, I'm gonna be having a daughter, Probably January of next year. I want only work three days a week, and he was totally fine with that. Um, and

that's fascinating, right? On one hand, he he wants a t least PhD with five years of experience on the Yeah,

sure. Three days. Sounds great. I don't remember exactly what it was. I haven't met Jeff much. Yeah, but it was one time I've dropped in on the Amazon building. It was called there is up on the top of a hill. I think it might still be the headquarters honor. It's, of course not the headquarters because they moved anyway, I dropped in on him, and I think that was the visit where he told me that the reason he was fine with that is because from having met me just once, he knew he knew I'd be I'd be thinking about what, 24 7 eso? I'm not sure whether that's a compliment or or a negative personality trait, but,

I mean, he was correct, Even though I did only going towards three days a week. Um, I would still sit at home, um, with a young kid and be thinking about, you know, how are we gonna do this

Oracle stuff? So you were trail braising work from home 20 years ago?

Yeah. In fact, the other thing there was that I had already been a programmer for, uh mm. How you count that? I've probably been a programmer for nearly 10 years. By the time I was working for Jeff, but I had refused to have a computer or home precisely because I knew this about myself that if I had a computer home, I just be on the computer all the time, Um, and actually working Amazon. One of the things that sort of broke that barrier a little bit was that I agreed to not only have a computer at home, but I don't know if you know what an ex term is. Our next terminal, uh, on that if you look like a generation raised, basically,

the idea was it's literally a graphical terminal or home, and so it wouldn't really be a computer would be essentially logging into the machines of war. But I could still run the window system because you're just x window and you could hot windows up there. And so I actually broke through this barrier a little bit of having a computer at home. So, in fact, occasionally I would even go down on days off quickly have to log in and fix something or whatever. Um, but it waas I mean, it was actually

three days a week. Wait, What did you get paid for three days or the full week?

I got paid. I got paid an annual salary. Oh, that's fantastic, right? So yeah. Yeah, it worked. Well, um, so you know, I started doing that. I think I think my first wife was home for maybe a month. You know, something between a month, a month and two month or two months, right after her daughter was born.

And then she went back to her PhD studies University of Washington, and we went to this three day a week schedule. Um, and it was challenging. Um, it was really challenging. Uh, you've only got one day a week when both of you are around. And so if there's anything you want to do that you can't do all holding, you know, a very young child. Then you have to wait for that one day. And everything has to happen on that day. Um and so, you know, as that year progressed on,

you know, the Amazon start, you know, went open to the public in the middle of the year. Um, I think both of us were feeling the stress of it building a lot. Um, work itself wasn't too stressful, I think. You know, sometimes, you know, I read about startup cultures today, and I think, Wow, thank God.

Thank God Amazon wasn't like that right from the beginning. Um, I did really feel like I could go home. You know, at the end of the day, Um, do

you think that's because off the time that Amazon was built Is that because the way Jeff was running it or the people, you hire it? Like what

made I think some of it I think some of it was for most of that year. They were just There were too few people around to really create a culture that didn't work well for the people who work there. Um, I think, you know, basically, I got to go home because I wanted to go home, and there wasn't too much of a corporate culture because it wasn't much of a corporation. You know, um, I know that Jeff and I did have a conflict that that first Christmas, my first wife's family came from South Central Pennsylvania, and we decided we were gonna go back there for Christmas with almost one year old daughter. I remember telling Jeff this and he I wouldn't say he was apoplectic, but he was furious. And he said, Well,

you know who's gonna run the who's gonna run the computers? I said, I don't know, Jeff. I'm I'm taking a vacation. Well, you can't take a vacation. This is a retail store. This Christmas. I was like, Well, I don't know. I'm taking time off. And that's that, Um, you know,

I think a year later, if you have tried that Amazon, you have just lost your job, right? But at that point, that wasn't really viable for Jeff to turn around and say, Well, you know, you either work through Christmas or you lose your job. I don't think that was an option for him. Um, did you get

the computers work like

that's because They were fine. They were fine. And shell Shell was around and, you know, maybe he would have preferred it if if I had been there or been available to, but everything was fine. So I think some of it was just, you know, it's a very small company. And, you know, even by the time of that Christmas, we're probably only up to maybe, like, five people. 556 people, perhaps,

Um, I just think, you know, you were more able to just sort of say, I'm doing this I'm doing now. This is my attitude towards this because you were too valuable toe to just say okay, you know, you need to leave. Um, but yeah. So, e think. Yeah. I said sort of working environment itself wasn't super stressful. I think you know, Shell and I,

um sure, I have stayed in touch to the years. Not closely, but, you know, we see each other every once in a while and stay in touch by email. Um, we both both of us had a fairly clear idea of what we wanted out of our company that we were working for, and I think that that helped to push things in the direction where stuff was relatively saying. I think the other thing, though, to give Jeff credit is that although, um, I don't think Jeff, whatever. He called himself a programmer.

He did have he did have a degree in computer science from a a just computer science department. I think he understood a lot about you know, what was possible in what kind of time? Um maybe he just reading off about what creating software is really like. Um, maybe he and he and he understood the 80 20 principal, the 90 10 principal, depending on which version that you want. And I think that that made for a much mawr, um, realistic working environment. Um, I don't think, you know, he wasn't there beating on the door, saying,

Why isn't it ready yet? Or, you know, this feature needs to be ready by Tuesday or something. Um, these are the kind of stories that seem to show up a lot around tech startups these days that you've got this sort of totally unrealistic management layer or marketing layer. And we didn't really have that. Um,

yeah, I'm I'm glad you're highlighting this because I don't think that's mentioned very often in any articles about Amazon that Jeff actually had a computer science degree that, you know, because he's always portrayed as this, like, aggressive. Go get our business person. Right? The finance part is mentioned because, you know, he's he's good about numbers, but not the fact that, well, he also knew what you were working on. Like he he didn't have to keep his kind of handling your polls. But he knew what was happening. And yeah,

because nowadays there are a lot of people, indeed. Who? Just driving. Not the most friendly work environment. Yeah,

um, so, you know, I mean, that was definitely a big plus. Now, I think it also helped that shell and I were both very good. What we did on that meant that things were moving along, you know, a fairly good pace. I mean, we went from nothing to being open to the public in six months. And remember, this is not a word like today where where the big questions are, you know, which framework are we going to use? We were writing everything from scratch in C plus. Plus, um,

that modern computer

absolutely there were no off the shelf components, A what we could use. So we have We have to develop everything from scratch. Um, so I mean, I think it helped that we got stuff done, and we got stuff done quickly. Um, but it also definitely helped that we were that we had a boss who, you know, had a grasp of how the stuff works. And you know what to expect when we explained to him, Well, that's gonna be really hard. If if you really want to do it that way, that's gonna be really tough. Then you know,

he could sit and listen to the explanation. Said All right. Yeah, OK, yeah. I see what it will be hard. Um, so that was a positive aspect to it. On the flip side, Aziz mentioned, you know, the three day week thing was becoming more mawr stressful. A t home. Um, you know, my wife wasn't making a lot of for progress with her PhD thesis.

Um, I was theoretically trying to continue work on renovating the house that we lived in. Um, it, you know, it was difficult. And then I think that that christmas came and when, Maybe partly just because of the disagreement about Jeff and I about me being around that Christmas. But I think also as we started hiring more people and I started, you know, you could pick up more on what the dynamics off the company was starting to become like, um, it became more more clear to me that the type of corporate culture that Jeff on an Amazon tohave just didn't align with anything that I want thio to be associated with.

Um so how come it was fairly laid back when you started? But then it was moving into the direction that

seemed e guess. Appalling. Well, I think it was partly what I was just saying a short time ago. I think that, you know, very early on when you got that few people, those two people effectively have more power to dictate how things gonna be because they're absolutely indispensable. Um, And as you start to hire more people, um, you know the relative importance of each person can go down a little bit. Not linearly, obviously, but it drops appear on. I think the second thing was is that we were now actually open to the public, and we're moving towards a point where what?

These two, well, one Almost definitely ex hippie in one wannabe hippie programmers. Uh, you know their ideas about how to run companies and what our relationship with bookstores is gonna be like and what the corporate culture will be like. We started to become, you know, less and less significant, Andi. Things like marketing And how do we actually really grow this company? And how do we get more and more business started to become more and more important. Um, and that meant making decisions and hiring people and driving things in ways. It was from motivations on directions that we're not really necessarily true. You know? Certainly.

If you think back to the first 67 months, Um, you know, before we open to the public I mean, what was going on? It was just a couple of guys writing software, right? You know, there were no customers. That was all we were doing was trying to move towards being able to do what we wanted to dio. Now we were doing here and business was taking off. There's suddenly lots of books were selling books all over the world, and all of a sudden it's like there's a real company. And now we have to talk about marketing goals and deadlines and strategies and all that kind of stuff. I mean, it was under those circumstances that Jeffs ideas about corporate culture started to become a lot more visible. Um, so right.

So, in essence, you wanted to be back at U Dub talking about ai and the beautiful mind, right? Uh, less marketing. And

that was a pretty good time. I'm not sure I want to be back there doing that specifically, but I want I was interesting work for a company that put the people that work for it. Um, maybe if not first, or maybe first. If it wasn't first, then it would at least be, um, up there with the needs of customers and so on. Um, and if it felt to me fairly clear that that wasn't just taken at all, that he was building a company, he was hiring people to do the work he needed toe have done to build that company. And if they didn't like the vibe or the culture, then that's their problem. E

think that's very interesting because very often today, you know, when somebody disagrees with the way Amazon those things that's portrayed in the media as well. Jeff Business. Look at this bad guy. You know, Billionaire Ridge. Uh, but look what how mean he is, but really, it sounds like he's just really efficient and, in fact focused on operations of the company. And the the way the culture is built right now is more so product of what the company needs to do in order to be successful rather than you know, somebody's desire for the culture like

E think that's I mean. I think there's a case you could make for that, but I think it za debatable. But it's also something that's probably unknowable. So you know, one way to phrase this question is, you know how successful what Amazon have been if it paid all of its warehouse $21 an hour, right? I don't think we can. It's really hard to answer that question. How successful what Amazon be if it didn't have speed trackers on people in its warehouse have successful would have been if it didn't have ah programming office environment that led loads of people in the first five or six years Thio quit just because they didn't like it. I don't that we can answer those things. I think you can say for sure that I certainly don't think Jeff proceeds himself as a malicious or evil person. I think I think he feels he understands what a company like that needs to do to succeed. And he's gonna push for that. Um, I mean,

the little anecdote e like to tell people here I really wish there was more of an attribution. So there was this displays during around on, uh, using that. But for those people too young to remember using that was sort of like the reddit of the 19 eighties and 19 early 19 nineties. Andi, they got very popular among programs. In particular. I don't know what other communities with him and this raises. You could work long. You could work hard and you could work smart, but you can only do two out of three. And I think that a lot programs that I ever spoke to about this it only takes a little bit of thought. And you immediately recognized the truth of this claim, right? um,

those long nights that you spend, you know, hours into the late night or even the early morning? Um, yes, you're working long, and you might even be working hard. But the chances are you probably weren't working that smart, right? And then those times when you had those brilliant flashes of insight and everything was just totally clear to you, and you were working smaller and hard, but you couldn't do that for very long. And so on, so forth with all the other presentations. And this this phrase got thrown around quite a bit in that converted Bellevue garage in the early days. Well,

when Amazon when public and Jeff had to write his first letter to shareholders Um, the end of that letter Almost almost the last line. I think maybe there was one more line afterwards was you could work long. You could work hard. You could work smart and Amazon two out of 31 do. Uh huh. And to me, I mean, I had already left the company. I've been gone for quite a long time at that point, but that Yeah, I remember reading that thinking. I so made the right choice to get out of there, because to me, the truth of that little aphorism is just so completely self evident. And the idea that somebody would choose to choose to deny that on Glenn.

Oh, yes, you can do all three. It is just ridiculous. And for me, it goes on. It explains an awful lot about everything I've ever read about Amazon culture. You know, whatever it is now, 20 almost 25 years since I left. Um, you know, the idea that that you think that people can actually work in that way is is ridiculous. Um, and it made by pushing people to do that, you may build a very successful company.

Demonstrably. Jeffers built on incredibly successful company, but it doesn't mean it's a good place to work. It doesn't mean it's a good place for the people who work there. And I didn't want to be a part of that type of environment.

Well, it's obviously a good place for people who choose to be there, right, or maybe not, for whatever reasons, they choose to be there for the time they choose to be there. It is a good place. It's, uh, yeah, if you just define the scope never enough. You know, it

works out. But people, I think particularly there was that period between I mean, roughly what you know, End of 95 through till one was the first Congress in 2000 or 2000 won. It doesn't really matter. But you had a period of 4 to 5 years there where I'm speaking metaphorically, but basically, you know, the application line for employment. Amazon was out the door and around the block. I mean, everyone wanted to work there, and a lot of those people came in. Um, I think a lot of them probably convinced that, you know,

they were coming for the start up and get rich, but found out that they just got burned out and spit out Um and yeah, I don't think that was I don't think that was everyone who joined the company during that time, but I think it's a fairly common experience. Um, in those years, that

was also the time where I believe there was a period in time in Seattle where, you know, nearly behalf for a big chunk of Microsoft employees basically became millionaires overnight. Uh, but that you know. So you left early on. Did you cash out all of your stock

or most of your stock? I had thought I had five years of options and I waited until the first year vested, um, and then left right after that. So I walked away with 1 1/5 of the options that would have had if I had stayed the whole time. Um, obviously, at that point, there was no way of knowing what was gonna be worth. I think I paid about, Um I think I might have paid $70 I think for my shares at that point, um, and I left and went off to be a stay at home parent Seattle. And about another year and a half later. No, not a year and a half later. Sorry about a toward the end of 96 my first wife and I left Seattle on,

moved back to the East Coast to Philadelphia. And, you know, Amazon was still present in my life because I was actually still buying books from them. Um, but I just kind of five. It wasn't a thing. I knew I had some shares, but there was no real way of having any sense of that point of how much they were ever gonna be worth. Um, and, you know, we just got on with on with, like, my first wife had gotten a post op position, the University of Pennsylvania.

That was very appropriate for how, based on her PhD thesis and also her parents were only about 2.5 hours drive away. Since my parents were from the UK where I grew up, it meant that daughter would be able to see at least one set of grandparent's fairly frequently. So it seemed like a good plan overall. Um, and, uh, on I went to the par Andi. I took that to the hammer. I stayed away from computers. Um, and life was kind of good. Um, although what also happened during, I guess the next year and a half is that my first my first wife and marriage came to an end, so that wasn't an entirely positive outcome. Um, was that parcel because

she was working and you were spending time

in the hammock, man, we could probably spend another way. Could probably two or three hours talking about the reasons why that happened. I think there are a lot of different reasons. Um, I think both of us had I think I had a dream. So we had had a plan. We moved back to the East Coast, or she would do a post off for a few years, and we would then move back to the Pacific Northwest somewhere, and she will probably get a job. You know, teaching a liberal arts college, maybe doing research as well. I was gonna be to become a small scale organic farmer. Andi,

stay home bad. And we were gonna live that life. Andi think it became very clear even. But we a year into her post off that that probably isn't how it was gonna work out. Um, I think in addition, I I probably had issues I don't wanna make. I don't want to duel to stronger comparison here because I think it could get a bit offensive. But I think that, you know, people talk about postpartum depression in mothers of young Children. And although I think that in the very early stages like you immediately postpartum right after birth, I think there's almost certainly a biological physiological basis for some of that, but I think I was experiencing something, Um, that is somehow related to that.

But just being a parent of a young child at home, without a lot of externally validated purpose, right? I mean, I really enjoy being a father. It was great. But, you know, you didn't have a lot of other people, uh, telling you what? You know what an important thing you were doing, Waas, um, wondering how to get through the hours of the day. Um,

all the stuff that any parent off a young child will have been through. Um, and I think that that sort of took me into a slightly depressed kind of state, which I think probably probably contributed thio things quite a bit too, e.

I just want to say, this is fantastic to hear, you know, especially from you now that you've kind of lived a good chunk of your life because, um, I think and I've spent a lot of time with my kids when they were born to, so it's kind of relate because its's you know, it's exciting. But at the same time, life goes by in a sense, in the sense is defined by people around you. Uh, but but also for moms, right? This happens all the time and, like, our society just assumes,

like, Okay, you got a baby. Cool. Mom will stay at home and take care of the kid. And so many moms are just miserable because they love the child. But they also don't want to just be

a hold on. I think you know, the other, the other. The weird side of this it was I just It's a sort of a tiny detail, but just sort of encapsulated in a way, somehow that could be when we had, you know, my daughter was a year and a half all when we left Seattle, and, you know, you live in. So how do you know what the climate is like? You know, during the summer time there, you know, you you're outside.

It's like every single day. Even if even if you wake up in this fog, it's going by 10. 30 right? And you're gonna go to the park and you're gonna meet people. And you We'd already joined the baby sitting co op in Seattle. Um, and you know, we had a nice network of people and things I would hang out with but you. But the parks were definitely a really big feature during the summer. That's what you would do on those beautiful days, is you. Go on, be outside Well, so you moved back to Philadelphia and it's hot and humid and you go to the parks in the summer and nobody is there and you're wondering like, Well,

what the hell am I supposed to do? And it takes. It's ridiculous, in retrospect, but you know, it took me more than a year to realize that you joined the pool. That's what happened during the summertime. That's where all of the friends with kids and everything that you saw, let's say in the spring, that's where they all went in the summer time they went to the pool. But you didn't realize that. And so you go to these parks. I mean, it sounds a little pathetic, almost, but you're sort of standing there in this empty park,

and it's 94 degrees and, you know, you know, 98% humidity or something, thinking like, where is everybody? Um, and it's a little detail, but it's sort of encapsulates a bit of, you know, that sort of we have moved whereas in a new place. We didn't that we didn't have the connections. We had a few connections just because we had lived there, you know, seven years previously on a few of the friends that we had from that time was still around. Some of them even have kids,

which is great. But that sense of what do I do? Like, what am I supposed to do? Me and my kid, We've got the whole day Thio to get through, and I'm not really sure why how this works. Um, as I said, it really just involved asking somebody like, Well, what does everybody go? And then they say, Oh, they will go to the pool and you go to the pool and suddenly everything's great again. Um,

but it's definitely something that, you know, the number of people that I got huge praise for for being a stay at home father. And I would keep trying to say to people, Do you say this? The malls thank you. Do they get the same level of practice? Because I'm doing just the same thing and everybody is talking about is I'm some sort of super super here superhero, and there's all these moms are around, um, that they're doing a lot. Same thing. I'm not sure that they get that kind of feedback. Um, the other thing I'd mention about this is it was during that time that I had a very powerful experience that still resonates with me today, which is,

um, you know, there's a lot of talk. There has been a lot of talk in a couple of decades since then about language and how it effects our no perceptions of ourselves. And I think before I became a parent, I was definitely sympathetic to this notion that you know the way they're all in books, all the doctors of guys and all the all the airline pilots of guys and all the nurses of women and so on and so forth. But it wasn't really sure. Couldn't really quite convinced myself that that would have much psychological impact. It seemed clearly the intellectually it was wrong, and probably from a social perspective that it was not really the right way to do things. But I'm not sure I was really convinced that coming across that actually affected you as an individual that much. And then I become a stay at home parent, and everything I read about parenting is about more. Right. Uh,

everything is set up with the assumption that the person doing the stuff I was doing was going to be a mother. And it was like a bullet, you know? Well, it wasn't but because it was much slower than a bullet, But it was just It really made it clear to me what the personal impact of language like that can be That it was okay. I mean, it wasn't like, you know, it broke my heart or, like, you know, crippled me as a human being is nothing like that. But it was just at this awareness of what is it? What is it like when everybody is describing what you do in a way that kind of feels like you're not supposed to be doing it? Um, I've tried to carry that lesson with me ever since then. I feel a lot more sensitive to the way that language is used around gender roles and occupational choices and and stuff like that precisely precisely because of spending that time being surrounded by a culture that was felt like it was telling me that, really Her mom was supposed to be doing this. Not May.

Did you find a valuable? Did you enjoy the time?

Oh, do you mean just being the being that parent? Oh, it was fantastic. I mean, what I say to people is part of a joke and party serious, which is I wouldn't have missed it for the world. And I would never do it again. It was there's just so much value in it. Um, and I got so much enjoyment, really, Of every stage of it. I mean, very young child, someone almost every step along the way. He had his own joys and rewards.

No, of course. You know, every parent knows every step along the way also has its own, you know, stresses and worries and things. But, um, there was a lot of self insight that I think that e think there's a bunch of self insight you get just from being a parent of any child, right? Um but I think that the process of being that day to day person, um, who is just around and is doing the early learning stuff, and later on it becomes, you know, the person who chauffeuring them from here to there and getting them around. All this kind of stuff was I found really valuable and really enjoyable. Um, I think I think it made me a better person.

You said you ended up doing it for about 10 years. Did you find a way to occupy yourself? A kind

of after a couple? Yeah. I mean, I mean, technically speaking. I count on doing it, you know? Right, You're still doing it. My, uh, my mother, who died last year, had had a fantastic line that she told me not long before she died. She said, uh oh, Paul.

Yeah, parenting. I don't know the 1st 40 years of the hardest U S. So it carries on, But no, But I mean, the reason I tend to say the 10 year thing is because, you know, by the time a kid is 10 um, they you know their own social life and things start to become almost as much of a part of how they are cared for what they do. You know the combination of school and friendships and so on. And so by the time they reached 10 or 11 years old, your role as a parent starts to change. And there's a lot. I mean, you're still super involved,

obviously, but it becomes different. Um, I carried on really? As the quote at home parent, Um, I guess tend to heat till my door or the left. I went to college, although it's pretty hard to look at her life is a 16 year old and say that I was an at home parent. I mean, it doesn't make any sense. Um, but I s so for the first couple of year, 2 to 3 years of it, Um, I really just did the parenting thing,

um, and sort of got absorbed in in that, Um, my first wife was a little worried that I was vanishing into parenting. I felt it would be better for me to start to pick up to find something that we my own hobbies or something like that. You know, toe all men, the parenting part. Um and I thought about it quite a bit, and I decided, first of all, to pick up alter this inciting again. It's just something I had done before. My daughter was born. So this is, you know,

200 plus mile rides, things like that. And the other thing I decided to do was to get into electronic music. Good. I say again, I'd never actually really tried to do with electronic music. But I always like a lot of electronic music. And what wanted to try toe, you know, do it myself. And so I started dabbling with that and very quickly realized I needed to be able to record what I was doing and started thinking about how I was going to do that. And, um, I've taken a vow. Don't laugh. People out there,

um, I took a vow in the eighties. I would never use any Microsoft products, so I was gonna be able to use windows to do this. The Matt Max just seem crazily expensive. And we've already been using Linux. Uh, Amazon, right. Sit ups, Olynyk systems there. I thought Well, we'll just do stuff on Lennox and all of a sudden Oh, I need a computer for this. And I remember I haven't I don't have a computer. Right.

So now I have to get a computer home, and I got the next install on it and started seeing what music software that there was for that, Um, and it wasn't very good. Um, and so I thought, Well, I'm a programmer, so I'll just write my own. And that's been the last 20 years of my life.

Hashtag stop me that hard, right?

You can't be that hard. So that that, you know, that started around the time my daughter was maybe around three or so, Um, 3 3.5. and it started as just, you know, a purely hobbyist thing. I would do late at night, occasionally early in the morning when she was taking naps on Guy would just sort of fit in around the parenting schedule, Um, also while trying to cycle for four or five hours at a time. And then, you know, as she got older, I'm spending more time in school.

That just got to be Maura Maura of what I was spending my time doing. Um, it was helpful. I mean, I have been I was in therapy for a while, You know, around the around the time my divorce and I have to credit my therapist with helping me to understand. I mean, I had really been trying to distance myself from programming because I just had so many negative feelings associating with it, and he really helped me to understand that I liked it and I was good at it. In fact, it wasn't just good, and I was actually really good at it. And, you know, why would you?

What's driving your desire to, like, run away from this and hide from it? And that really helped me to get back to a place where I felt, you know, that I could interact with computers again and write software, and it will be okay. I think it also helped a great deal that I've been interested in the open source movement since the mid eighties. It pretty much when it started. Um, thanks to a very early boss of mine who was really taken with the whole philosophy and all the software that I have written since they started again after my daughter was born, has all been part of the open source world and also has all been connected with audio music, which you know, helping people to tap into their own creativity, um is just so different than all the software had ever been before. Um,

and it really made it made a huge difference to make you feel like, Hey, you know, this is a worthwhile thing to do. Um, what does it feel like? What

does it feel like to write open source software for 20 plus years and other? A lot of people like you out there,

I don't think there's a lot. I mean, so we So we sort of skipped over the over the financial part of this. Um, maybe I should back up to that because, you know, about a year also after we removed back Philadelphia, um, Amazon went public, which made it possible for me to sell my shares at that point. And in retrospect, of course, there was a huge mistake. But at the time, it seemed like it seemed like the right thing to do to at least cash out. You know, some significant part of it, Um and

well, can I quickly ask you, you know, was it actually a big mistake or e mean hindsight? Right? From that time on, for the next 20 years, Amazon was not 20 but a good chunk. It was pretty stagnant in terms of growth.

Absolutely. No, it wasn't a mistake. Even for the reasons that you alluded to in your introduction. Really? I mean, yeah, but like, it gave me the freedom to be a stay at home parent for when my daughter was young and that that cannot have been a mistake under any circumstances. Um, you know, I have a couple of friends who sometimes like to bug me and remind me of what my net worth would be if I still had all my Amazon stock on bits. Now, just a gentle joke between us. I don't I really don't have any regrets about it at all. Um, but I think in retrospect,

I think probably even at the time, it could have been wise to have waited a little bit longer. Um, but things will work out fine. Um, I think basically, I ended up making close to a million dollars from off offer the stock that that I got for that 12 to 14 months worth of work. Um, most of it three days a week. Um and then we went through a divorce of course, which changed the landscape quite a bit. Um, my first wife was pretty decent. I mean, you know, we had a very amicable divorce and that century,

intermediation and stuff on, but she didn't even take half of it, but it obviously cut it down by a substantial amount. But it still felt at the time, like I was probably gonna be able to make enough. I mean, keep in mind kids between that era where you could actually reliably on 7% without even thinking about

it. You mean just putting it in the bank?

Just put it Well, not quite the bank, but I put it I e After divorce was finalized, I had a big chunk of money in E. It was a Pennsylvania long, in short, long term municipal stock account. So almost a solid as you can get is basically in Pennsylvania. I wouldn't have to pay state income tax on the income. Um, it was insured as well. And I know Orange County and some other places did default in the last 20 years, but certainly in 1996 was 97 or so. The idea of municipalities defaulting was not and It's still pretty nuts today, right? I mean, I know it. We know it can happen now, but it's not gonna happen. So and I was earning 7%

on that. So you're basically able to earn a year's worth salary by doing nothing but just keeping money

in the bank? Yeah, exactly on, I thought. Okay, well, then I'm good. I could just stay at home being a parent, and I don't really have to think too much about you. I don't have enough in the future toe like I don't have a poor capital to put into anything else, but things are pretty stable for now. I will deal with the future when it comes. Um, that also meant that I could start writing software without having to think about it being income generating. And I think this is one of the most critical elements of what I've done as a program for the last 20 years, because I got to spend something like eight years working on a project without needing to generate any income from, and I think that is incredibly unusual.

Um, yeah, and it gives a what kinds of freedom to the development process that you just normally don't have. You get to decide things based purely on technical stuff, not based on sales or anything else. Um, you you get to focus on trying to develop relationships with you. Actually, users rather than have to think about them as a sort of income there. People who are who are going to tell you what the next thing that your software should do is, um, just a clarification, by the way, just based on another comment on Had the news last week? One. The one thing.

A lot of people who even programmers might not understand about the work I've been doing for the last 20 years. I write a piece of political order, which is what's called a digital audio workstation. So it's basically a replacement for what used to be a recording studio that runs inside of a computer. And this software never ends. Um, something in hacker news has asked. Asked me last week, You know, how could any piece of software have a life span after version two? Right, you sold a big bugs. I mean, it's done, and I don't even really know whether that's true for most software But for digital, there were stations.

It is absolutely not the case. The the development of new work flows theorize all of sudden bits of new technology that change what people think should be the norm. There's no end to the software, so there is no process here, which you're saying, Oh, well, okay, we have 10 more features, and then it's done. This is a never ending software development process, and in that sense, you know interaction with users and understanding what users they're gonna need next month or next year is really critical, because it will not be the same as they did last month or last year. And so doing things in the way I did with that, you know, roughly eight years without needing any income from it was I can't say liberating because I wasn't more liberated prior to that. But it was a totally different way to develop software compared to the to the stuff that I had done as a new employee in the years

before that. Well, it sounds like you found the perfect job for yourself.

Yeah, I would. I think that's probably true. I think that's probably true. Um, I seem to be able to manage the working quote remotely way one of my remote fall. There's no central office. No, I seem to be that I seem to have the right kind of mentality for doing that. Um, I really loved the software that I work on, even though Fuck, uh, it mostly just seems like Apollo jump to me personally because I know all the bugs and all of the software. Um, and it's put me into contact with them, Embedded me in,

ah, community of people making music. Um, which is a music is probably one of the most important part of my whole life. Even though I don't I've never succeeded already making it, but it's still a phenomenally important part of my life. And so to be doing things we did within that community, uh, just adds to the whole thing. Enjoyment off it. Um, And according to my daughter, she doesn't really remember. Um, you know, my programming,

e I've always been worried that maybe, you know, by the time she was maybe six or something, I was doing too much of it by then. But she apparently doesn't have any members of it. being that way. So it seems like I managed to keep it recently on recently under control during the time when I was still, you know, very involved as a hands on parent. Um, so it has been very good.

So based on this experience, you know, if you were to advise younger developers, programmers, folks doing startups right now, what do you think they should learn early on that they may not be realizing right now?

Yeah. Wow, that's a big question. Um, I think one of the first things. Well, so I wanna put a caveat in here. An awful lot of what what's worked out in my life came from the lock of joining one of the most successful startups of the last 25 to 30 years. And if I had joined some other random tech company after leaving University of Washington, um, I could potentially have done made a lot of the same choices early on that I did, but the finances wouldn't have worked out, and I would have faced very difficult choices. Perhaps, um, you know, five or 10 years down the road after doing that home.

And that means that in some respects. It's difficult for me Thio to to give advice because my whole experience has been based on the fact that there was this huge lump sum of cash that showed up. Um, at the same time, Um, I think people need to understand. Uh huh. A lot of people need to understand that you can get out. Um, you can get out both of the of the job that you're actually doing right now, And you can also even just get out off the whole industry if if if it's not working for you. Um, if those kinds of questions air coming up around the time that you are starting off all thinking about starting a family or have already started a family, um, you need to understand how much joy and responsibility there is and potential associated with being a really hands on parent. I sometimes try to use hands on in preference to stay at home because,

you know, stay at home sometimes has implications of people. Just say, Well, I can't possibly say a home That's not feasible. Um, and you know, that might be true, but there are still other stages along that path from a very hands off parent to a fully stay at home parent. There's so much richness and joy Onda possibility in in pursuing that path. Um, that I mean, I almost dare I mean, I think I think anybody in my mind anybody who has even had that thought crossed their mind like, could I do this? Should I do this?

Would this be the right thing to do? Three answer is almost certainly gonna be Yes. Okay, if you're somebody that the thought never has crossed your mind, I think there's more of a chance that you might do something like I did and you might live to. You might live to regret it. It might be just endlessly frustrating for you, not really a source of much pleasure or insight or gross or anything. But I think if the question has come to your mind and you felt even slightly open to it, I think the answer is, if you just do it, it's gonna be amazing. Um, that obviously still is winging the whole the whole financial side of it, which I got handed to me on a plate. Basically,

um, but there are plenty of people in the start up tech world right now who find themselves in that kind of situation and still don't take. Don't take the chance. Um, the other part of I would say is that, um, yeah, most people tend to have Children one day younger because this is biology, and that's how it works. Right? Um, for better or for worse, I'm nail viewed is one of the world's experts on audio software. I got invited to be a guest lecturer at Temple University in Berlin. Um, people asked me to speak of conferences,

people email made with questions about staff. Um, you have enough time to get out and be an amazing parent and get back into this industry. If that's what you if that's what you decide, you want todo or any other I mean, actually, I shouldn't say any other industry. I'm talking specifically here about software that because it's possible to actually keep up your interest in your skills and your knowledge, even while being a very involved parent, there is there is the possibility of getting back into things later. Um, so I think you know. But it does take courage. There is this famous quote from Goethe about, um, I can't remember the wording of it,

but essentially that, you know, essentially, that you need to just jump. Sometimes the that the having the having the courage to make the initial change will reveal the whole path that lies ahead that you couldn't see before. And it creates its own kind of dynamic. Um, and it's important to remember that in my case, when I decided to go down the pathway of getting myself out of Amazon, I mean, Amazon wasn't a sure thing, right? This was still relatively new startup. I couldn't even sell the stock. Who knew what the stock was gonna be? Worse.

We out my first wife, and his whole plan was contingent on Well, you know, she's gonna be working. She'll have a postdoc Saturday, which we could probably get by on. Um So when I initially made that leap, it wasn't based on all you know, I'm I'm gonna be a gonna be a millionaire or something. It was based on I don't really want to do this anymore. And I think there's a lot of pathway that will be more meaningful and more enjoyable as it turned out. In my case, that got coupled with this big, uh, injection of money. But it wasn't That wasn't the thing that really drove it.

It did make life later much easier. And I think so. I think that for people who are, you know, contemplating grappling with questions about, you know, why am I still doing this job? You know, what is my relationship to my family? What? I want that relationship to look like. Um, I think you can take the leap. It is a kind of a leap of blind faith, but the pathway will open up to you after you do it. Andi,

even if it turns out, you know, 10 years down the road, when you have a middle school child or even a little bit later with a high school child, the chances are that you're gonna if if the other part of your life the non parenting part is so important to you that you're gonna find ways back, um, find ways, Thio, use your talents and skills and interest. Um, possibly in a whole different way. As I said, I mean, the audio programming I've been doing for the last 20 years, to me feels completely disconnected from everything that I did before. Um,

yeah, it's still software development, but it doesn't really feel like I feel like I feel like the same thing. So I would I would just encourage people. It's hard for me to believe the number of people who are in the tech world particularly have been through successful startups who have, maybe not completely, you know, financial independence for the rest of your life, pools of money floating around, but a significant chunk of money floating around who still find themselves doing exactly the same thing that they were doing before. And if you really love doing that, then that's awesome. You should probably carry on doing it, but there are options to to get out and do something quite different. And for me, parenting was quite different thing. And it was just, you know, more valuable than they can really expressing words.

That's really great. To hear an amazing advice and maybe to reach rate of highlight. I think the really key what you mentioned is that your decision to do what you did was independent of your financial wealth later on, right and so and and that's probably the key to making those decisions. You can't sit around and wait and say, Well, one day when I'm rich, I'm going to do this. It's like if you want to do this, you got to do this regardless and play

along e. I think also. I mean, there's another anecdote that I would share, you know, for months later, um, that I think also, I hope for me is a hopeful anecdote. Um, you know, I've said that I sort of got mawr into the audio software stuff I've been doing and the lifestyle consents to change. I had met my second wife. She had two Children. We decided to move into a house together. Um, my finances started very different,

and I started t really have to think about earning an income again. Um, and it was difficult to see how that was gonna work. Um, you know, because the audio stuff, how am I ever gonna make make money on this? It's so open source software. You know, this is not gonna work. Um, and things were actually really getting quite close to, like, seriously problematic. I mean, it wasn't like we were going to starve,

but it was at a point where Look, there isn't this monthly check arriving anymore? It's gotten so small that it makes really not much difference. Now, Um, I don't know how this plays out, and I called up an old friend of mine who still works in Silicon Valley. He didn't get out, Although he still seems happy that he doesn't actually use to software development even though he's a Bruno E called him and said, Hey, you know, do you have any ideas off what I could do? And he said, Oh, well, you could come and work for my company.

So it was an easy choice because, you know, didn't really have to interview or anything. It was completely different kind of software development I've been doing, um, on I was doing it remotely. They were based in San Mateo, and I was on the East Coast. I would fly out, spend like, you know, four days a month with them on. Theoretically, I was only doing 75% time with them because I wanted to have some time to continue doing my own project. Um, and I don't know exactly how long I did that for?

Maybe it's getting maybe 10 months or or something on those lines. It was well paid job. I mean, I got Valley Income health benefits. No, it was a It was a big change in what the revenue full look like. But after 10 months again, it was getting too stressful. I really loved my audio software. And so I actually was almost trying to put to put in 100% time on that while still trying to do work, you know, for for this other company trying to be honest and, you know, rigorous. Um, upfront about that.

It was just getting more and more difficult to figure out how toe fit that in along with sheltering kids, toe theater practice and sports and all this kind of stuff. Um, on I really didn't know how this is going to resolve because I didn't really feel like it could carry on the way it was. I was even have to start working on the audio software or find a different position somehow. And I was sitting a home one day and I get this phone call and then just British guy on the phone. He says, Hey, is this poll I said, Yeah, this is Paul. He said, Hey. Hi, this is Peter Gabriel. Um,

if you are not a big music fan, Peter Gabriel is a, uh, really big part of, uh, popular and rock music of the last 20 years. Um, I had a huge number hit singles in the eighties into the nineties was a founding member of Genesis. I just think, Oh, my God, what the hell is going on? So I just said, hi, Peter. And it turned out the he had just bought a company in England that built big mixing consoles and stuff like that and was really interested in my community owned open source or your software.

And they offered me a job. Not really to do anything for them, But you just keep doing what I was doing. Um, So I went out to meet with Gabriel and, you know, went to see the studio that he built 25 30 years ago called Real World, which is an amazing place. I took the job, started getting paid to do what I was loving to do. Anyway, um, and then so it seems like everything set right? Like, Oh, this is awesome.

And then about probably not less than less than a year after that, uh huh. The head of the company called me and explained that that they just couldn't do anymore. Um, okay. And so now things are looking, really? Do this. Um, yeah. And this time, inspiration came from my steps on who was a big fan of Radiohead. Not a lot of well known English rock group of the last 20 years. They had just released an album called In Rainbows. And I was not a fan of Radiohead, despite the fact that I some like to listen to them,

but they did a release process for in rainbows Where? But I think I don't know if they came up with technology, but they call it a pay tunnel on. Basically, you pay whatever you wanted for the download, and I'm thinking, Wow, what an interesting idea. And it seemed relatively soon afterwards that they had been quite successful with this release, though. I mean, they wouldn't talk exactly about how much they made, but there were rumors going around that they made a lot more than they would have done had it been released a record company. And I thought, Well, maybe I should try this with my software.

It's still GPL is still open source. Anybody can get the source code if they want it for free. But if you wanna, if you don't wanna go through the hassle because lots and lots of people to use my software. I'm not computer people. And you just want to do what you do a Windows or the Mac and download a program to run. Then we could do that. But you have to pay something for it. And you you get to decide the choice. So that was back in 2000 and nine. I think, Um, and there has now grown to the point where my software generates, um, somewhere like $200,000 a year. See that mechanism?

That's pretty

good. Yeah. Now I don't I don't I don't earn all of that. There's other people that work that work on the software and it gets distributed to them.

It only took 10 years to build, all

right. It only took 10 years to build it first, and also it took a very long time to build you know up to that. It has been a very, you know, steady progression during that time. Um, but also coded there was a huge jump when when covert hit as well, which took us up to a new

level because stuck at home,

people are feeling absolutely I know a lot of people in the industry. I mean, I know guys that the other companies that make these little your workstations and everybody saw the same thing. I was like, Oh, my God. You know, I mean, the virus hit, and we're all thinking, Oh, my God, are we gonna get wiped out? Nobody's gonna pay for us Offer anymore. Instead, it was like, I mean,

we almost double their income, I think long. So you know, that was telling that long and convoluted and perhaps interesting story, because again, you don't really know how things are gonna work out. And I don't want to sound too much like some sort of ranting, not ranting, raving, sort of new age philosopher. But sometimes you just have to believe in what you're doing. Um, and if you believe in it, I think it it doesn't guarantee. But it greatly enhances the probability that you will find some way to turn it into a way of making a good part of your living, if not all of your living.

Um, that's a good story. Yeah, you know it zits amazing. T me, Honestly, I mean, you said I found I found the ideal job for myself. I mean, I just I feel like an extraordinarily blessed person. Um, you know, to have gotten to this point in my life to be doing work that I really love, um, to have the experience of being a parent in the way that I had always dreamed of doing and to now be making a living from doing something that you can get for free, but people choose to support anyway,

Um, it's it's just it's a huge gift, but it does require some level of belief. And don't get me wrong. I am not. I am the worst sales person for what I dio. Um, so I'm not the kind of person you would ever meet at a party. And I would try to tell you all about my amazing software. And how did you tell your friends about it? In fact, if you had a friend who did music and I just mentioned you. I wrote wrote the software. I probably tell you to not mention it to your friend Eso. I'm not that kind of guy who's going around being a huge booster off what he's doing. What I have had is the privilege of allowing things Thio grow in a much more organic way. Um,

right, because if you shut down your software any point in 10 years, you wouldn't have the opportunity to do any of the things that happened to it later,

right? That's right. That's right on. It's just been a slow, steady process. We don't do any marketing. We don't do any advertising. Um, actually, if I could tell, I don't know head within on time. But if I could tell one of a anecdote about this, Yeah, good. Um, well, my daughter turned 16.

Her mother was doing quite a lot of research work with a group in Paris, and so she would go to Paris quite a lot Thio to go to the lab, and she managed to arrange one trip for my daughter's 16th birthday, Um, which feels incredibly privileged and all the rest of it. But, hey, that's where we are. They go over there for the weekend.

Hey there, everyone who's listening? Thank you for getting so far into this episode. And I hope you're enjoying the story. Polls got to share about his life and how he turned Ah, lifelong passion into business and, you know, has been doing this for a couple of decades. Now a zit often happens in the podcasting journey. At this point of his story, our software crashed and killed the rest of the recording. But I'll just tell you how it ends. Uh, so we don't leave the story hanging. Uh, and this is probably the best way that a dead confined that hiss Softwares is really working around the world. Basically,

his daughter went on a trip in Europe and at some point in the hostel, one of the guys there it told her that he is using this software that's really cool software music every day. And lo and behold, it turns out that it's the same software that her dad is producing. And so, you know, halfway around the world, some kids using the software that poll is is manufacturing in his office and that that's pretty cool. It's, uh, you know, life could have turned out in many different ways for him, and this is just one. But it seems like it's worked out really well and unlike many people, is living the life that he chose to live. And,

uh, you know, maybe it's not the most richest in terms of money, but it's been great in terms of experiences. And it's definitely something to think about and consider doing. If you were in his position, you know, 20 years ago. Well, uh, with that thank you for listening. And I hope you come back for the next episode till then.