Tim Uckun (Mar 16 2025 at 20:52): Tim Uckun (Mar 16 2025 at 20:52):I am sure this is a fine line but at what point does an interview become an ad?
I am not talking about open source maintainers or anything like that but when you interview the CEO or CTO of a company and that interview centers around their product or service it starts to smell like product placement or just plain old advertising to me.
Not that these people don't have anything interesting to say but I think you guys should do your best to steer the conversation away from the product. Maybe talk about their personal history or whatever I don't know.
Anyway I ended the recent Beyang Liu episode prematurely because of this even though I am a user of cody and like it.
Maybe it's just me.
Jerod Santo (Mar 16 2025 at 22:33):Our interviews are never ads. In other words, you cannot pay us money to come on our shows. We only talk to/about things we are genuinely curious about.
Tim Uckun (Mar 17 2025 at 04:26):I wasn't saying you got paid for the interview. I am just saying if the interview is almost exclusively about the product it starts sounding like an ad.
Adam Stacoviak (Mar 17 2025 at 04:33):I think the interesting thing to talk to Beyang Liu about is what they're doing at Sourcegraph and why. Not what shoes he's collecting or why he chooses to Uber vs buy a car. Ok those things would be cool topics too, but the point of the call for me was to explore the world of Sourcegraph and how we can reach these economies of scale as an industry.
Adam Stacoviak (Mar 17 2025 at 04:35):We have a history with Beyang that goes back to 2016.
Adam Stacoviak (Mar 17 2025 at 04:36):I'm glad you shared this point for you though, so keep doing it.
Adam Stacoviak (Mar 17 2025 at 04:56):It would have been an ad IF I was trying to have him convince me/you how to get started. I didn't even ask him how to get started or even insinuate that you should. Podcasts are still the MOST AUTHENTIC form of content out there. We MUST explore the platforms out there and WHY they exist. This episode was an example of just that. It was an honest conversation with no agenda.
Ron Waldon-Howe (Mar 17 2025 at 06:14):Different folks have different priorities and values and tastes, so it's probably very normal for someone to not like 100% of points in 100% of episodes
John Johnson (Mar 17 2025 at 06:14):You know an ad interview when you see one. And the Stackoverflow Podcast has a lot of that. But this podcast isn't one.
The Changelog Podcast priorities are different. I believe Jerod and Adam genuinely want to share what's best for developers with the spirit of open source.
Changelog podcast is highly underrated. It is the best tech podcast; "on Joe Rogan's level". Even their weekly news brief is golden. Not everything here is for everybody but there's something here for everyone.
AJ Kerrigan (Mar 17 2025 at 14:53):+1 - some episodes serve as really effective personal bias/preference highlighters
(honestly, sometimes it takes some alone time with coffee to figure out why an episode lost me or never clicked - and so far it's always been a "me problem" :sweat_smile: )
Ron Waldon-Howe (Mar 17 2025 at 21:42):Sometimes it's just the wrong content at the wrong time, maybe if I've been drowning in k8s material that morning, I don't enjoy a podcast about k8s :)
Owen Valentine (Mar 23 2025 at 06:31):Yeah I've skipped a few like this, but not feeling like they're ads. Just a specific enough topic that's outside of my interest is all - can't all be perfect for my needs. :P
Tim Uckun (Mar 23 2025 at 21:29):Yesterday I was walking my dog and listening to the podcast. It was the episode with Ilya. It occurred to me that the ads in the podcast are also structured as interviews. Like the one from retool for example. Just a realization.
Ron Waldon-Howe (Mar 23 2025 at 21:55):I was a plus plus subscriber while I could afford it, but these days I find Change Log adverts to be more interesting than elsewhere
It's still a sales pitch, but there's enough technical details and story to be compelling
Sukhdeep Brar (Mar 24 2025 at 02:09):They _feel_ like ads to me when only 1 product is spoken about. I get that a CxO would see the world through their product's lens, but it feels nice when they also pay respects to others solving the same problems
Ron Waldon-Howe (Mar 24 2025 at 04:04):That would be an amazing level of honesty in an advert:
other options in this space include X, which is a good choice in these cases, but in these other cases you'll find more value in our solution
Daniel Buckmaster (Mar 24 2025 at 06:13):It's been said before, but products (especially open-source) with a "why not X?" section on their website get my respect. Aside from anything else it is just respectful of my time when evaluating X.
Ron Waldon-Howe (Mar 24 2025 at 08:50):I think that was mentioned on the documentation episode, something about one of the categories/tasks being appraisal? Or something?
Very helpful, indeed
Sukhdeep Brar (Mar 24 2025 at 10:31):In the Render episode, the conversation was pretty upfront about comparing Render to other products and how they each have their niches. Still a little "ad-like" because Render "won" it's niche, but still appreciated :smiling_face:
Don MacKinnon (Mar 25 2025 at 19:16):Ron Waldon-Howe said:
I was a plus plus subscriber while I could afford it, but these days I find Change Log adverts to be more interesting than elsewhere
It's still a sales pitch, but there's enough technical details and story to be compelling
Yeah that is one thing I like about Changelog ads, they are conversational and actually go into detail of the problem that they are trying to solve. It refreshingly different from other podcasts
Last updated: Apr 04 2025 at 01:15 UTC