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I've experienced multiple times that sometimes you have to take one step back, refactor, maybe even rewrite a whole solution. But you still have a win. Because now you got from not really knowing what you were doing to a point like, now I know exactly where things should go. Hello, and welcome to the Pibytes podcast, where we talk about Python career and mindset. We're your hosts. I'm Julian Sequeira. And I am Bob Baldebos. If you're looking to improve your python, your career, and learn the mindset for success, this is the podcast for you. Let's get started. Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the Piewites podcast. I'm Bob Eldebos, and I'm here with Julian. How are you doing, man? Good, man. What about you? Awesome. Yeah. That's recording on Friday. Kind of weird right before the weekend. Totally weird. Different energy. Very different energy. To a Monday. Yeah, we pushed hard this week. Yeah, but they choose week. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. As always. No, just heaps of work behind the scenes, the business growth, just. I don't even know. I'm not actually. Some of it is a bit secret, so I can't talk about it. But coming. Coming episodes, I'm sure. But, yeah, it was. It was a taxing week. Lots of learning, a bit of menial work, repetitive work, but overall, pretty good. Pretty good, man. What about you? As usual, busy with the coaching. But yesterday I did a talk with the code inspector folks about code quality python best practices. So we'll. I'm clapping. Don't know if you can hear. We'll post that when it's online. It's pretty dense. Yeah, that's. That was an amazing presentation you put together, man. So very nice. Thank you. Very nice. But anyway, so aside from what we did this week and the fact that we're tired because it's Friday. Hey, at least it's Friday night here. I get to go to sleep after this. What. What did you want to talk about this week? What's on the table? Sunk cost bias. So dramatic. It sounds horrifying for anyone who doesn't know what that is. Bob, do you want to fill them in? Yes. Soundcast bias is continuing to invest in something that is actually not paying dividends just by the fact that you already have invested in it. So you're really attached to it, and in spite of you not getting the results, you keep on investing, be it money, be it time, whatever. But you cannot let it loose, basically. Yeah. It's an emotional thing. Right? You. You're so invested in it. You can't bear to cut your losses and break free and, and try something different. There's. It's a form of denial. You don't want to admit that the path you went down was, it's not coming to fruition. Whatever you're trying to do, you're achieving the goal. You're not getting where you wanted to go. And yeah, of course, as you were saying, doesn't just have to be financial, it's a generally time based thing as well. So this is a big deal in the coding space. So as always, we have a few examples of where we and other people we've come across, where we've experienced it. So, Bob, do you want to kick it off? What's the first blatantly obvious thing that's seems like a trivial one, but I think it really resonates because we've all been there. Like, you're standing in a line for something. It's very big queue. You spend 30 minutes for something trivial. You know better, you know that what's at the end of the line. Maybe a freebie. It's not worth your time. But you have already spent 30 minutes, so you can just not get out of that queue. You cannot just break the cycle and say, okay, I'm done. Like, okay, 30 minutes are wasted of my life. I just cut my losses, go do something else or maybe go to my meeting. I have to go to whatever more important you have. No, I'm going to stick through it just because I'm in that line. And yeah, it's really amazing. And it's kind of fascinating as well how these fallacies or biases work, how the human brain works, that behavioral, psychological aspect of it. Right? Man, you don't want to be disappointed. And it's so easy to get sucked into. So the other day, now that you mention it, I went to go get my driver's license renewed. And, you know, I didn't expect there to be a line because I thought,

I'm just going to get there, you know, 02: 4:53

00 or something before I pick up the kids from school. And when I got there, there was a line at the door and I thought, oh no. And immediately knowing that we were going to record this episode about sunk cost, I thought, oh no, if I stay in line, I'm going to be late to the school. Kids will be angry, I'll probably get a call from the school. All because I can't cut my losses here. So the way I got through it actually was to set myself a limit and go. If I'm not out of this line by 230 or whatever the time was, I will just go and cut my losses. Thankfully, I was actually done in ten minutes. But you. It was such a stressful situation because I drove half an hour and, you know, I just didn't want to give up and feel like I'd wasted all that time. That's definitely something I think we all suffer from and in all areas of life. But let's bring it back to coding a bit, because after all, we're pie bites. So what about a coding example? Well, my coding example was from a previous team a little while ago, actually years ago now. But on this team, there was. Everyone used different languages because there was no unified language across the team. Obviously, I would have liked Python, but they weren't using Python. And there was an engineer in particular who was really invested in this one language and they just would not budge from that language. And, you know, whenever I just politely asked, so what's the go? What's the deal? You know, the answer was always, this is how it's always been. I've always coded in this language. This is what it has to be. And that language was not even like a back end language. To hear that an app, an entire app was built with this language, I was kind of concerned and definitely curious, and it all came down to sunk cost. They just did not want to feel like the years they'd invested in learning this language and implementing in the language was going to be wasted by moving over to something a little more robust like Python. And it was, yeah, it was really tough to watch because no matter what I said or anyone else said, they just could not be convinced otherwise. And, yeah, it's a really, really tough spot. Good. There's thing a lot of emotion on the line when you've been coding, you've invested your time, you've invested potentially money, training, time away from the family, all sorts of stuff to get somewhere. And if you find out that the language you were using for all of that, or even the app itself, if it was not even necessary or wasn't the right product for the job, whatever, there is a huge emotional hit there and very, very difficult to get through. So that was my example. What about you? What do you have? Yeah, I am not very specific, but I've definitely hit a few times where we were coding something. A solution in the design was not optimal and it became very apparent in maybe you could not easily test it or maybe there were obscure bugs and, yeah, than going too long with a design that's not optimal. And the set of python actually helps us here because one of the statements is saying if the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea. So that's as simple as that sound. That's actually a very good benchmark. So, yeah, and I think I did mention on the show one time in a microservices architecture that, yeah, we just implemented the thing in the wrong layer. And, yeah, by cutting the losses and accepting that we would have to rewrite a significant part, we took one step backwards, but then we could go like ten steps forward and go very fast. And that I've experienced multiple times that sometimes you have to take one step back, refactor, maybe even rewrite a whole solution, but you still have a win because now you got from not really knowing what you were doing to a point like, now I know exactly where things should go. And, yeah, then things went very fast. So there's definitely a sunk cost bias going on there by going too long within a non optimal design. Yeah, see, what I like about that example is that you actually realized it and you said, okay, got to cut the losses, and you revised it. You know, but, you know, that was a tough part in my situation, is that they didn't realize it, and obviously I've moved on. It was completely a different company. But, you know, I've. I don't know, maybe they're still doing it the old way. I have no idea. It's. It's kind of sad sometimes to see it happen and people not being able to realize it. So that's why. Well, that's why we're recording this episode. Right. Well, that's the thing, right? If you have spent weeks coding and building, you just don't want to admit that it might not be the ideal solution. You're too heavily invested in it. Yep, exactly. Right. So going from coding to career, then, do you have a career example where some cost fallacy was evident? Yeah. So I've helped, you know, coach, mentor, whatever, quite a few people over the years. So I hear some stories and, you know, keeping it anonymous. One of the stories that I heard was just someone who was essentially getting, you know, used. I'm just going to say they're getting used in the job. They were promised promotion. They were, you know, they were investing all of this time and effort into the job. They were pushing, pushing, pushing. And the company that they were working for, you know, this was years and years ago. It just did not give anything in return. So they were promising things like promotion they were having the conversations. But when push come, when push came to shove, they. No promotion ever came up. There was always excuses. Things got postponed, no pay rises, nothing. And years later, this guy was still in the same spot. A couple of little things had changed here and there, but really nothing had changed. And other people were getting promotions and all that, but not this guy. And he couldn't figure it out. And from, you know, from my perspective, he was doing all the right things. It just so happens he was in a really shoddy situation in the company and just in a weak management chain, whatever you want to call it. And what happened was the sunk cost there is just staying, assuming that they're going to change, hoping that tomorrow is going to be different. And it's a difficult one to realize when you're in, because it's your day job, it's not cash, it's not standing in a line, it's not a coding project. This is your job. This is the place that you're supposed to be able to trust and invest your time in wisely because they're paying you a paycheck at the end of every week, week, month, whatever. And this poor bloke, he just stayed there for so long that he just grew bitter, cranky, and eventually he quit and he had a sour taste in his mouth and, you know, but at the end of the day, his realization was, you know, my self respect is a lot more important than the paycheck. And staying here and feeling second fiddle, feeling abused and used and uh, yeah, it was a really important turning point for him and it made all the difference. He was completely changed after that. He could see that he was like, the sun was shining and he was just happy in his new job. You know, when he joined the new company, he was stoked. He was like, wow, this is what it can be like if I make, I wish I'd made the change years ago. And this story, I, the reason I bring it up is because I reckon there's so many people out there who can really relate. I think many people listening to this would find themselves in this situation or very close to it. And it was important that this guy that I'm talking about realized it and made the change. He realized it, took that step back, said, you know what? This is sunk cost. I've sunk too much time and effort and hope into this place I need to move. And he cut his losses with the company and jumped ship. And it was the best thing he ever did. So that's amazing. That's an amazing story. And it's kind of scary as well, right, that we tend to lower our expectations. Just think that that's all there is and that's the only way. But thinking bigger, there's always a better way. Like the elephant that's trained to be tied to a pole and then, or I'm not sure what story it is, but, you know, you can, you get so used to that idea and then they take the rope away and they still don't run because they think they're still attached to that pole. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. Well, it's like we had the mindset call yesterday and one of the conversation points that came up was just that you can take these chances and these, these fearful jumps to get out, you know, to move careers and stuff. And, yeah, it's scary, but. And it may not always come good. You may go into an even tougher situation. Things might be a slog for a little bit, but having taken that chance has always come good for everyone that shared a story yesterday, and it was just a really insightful call. So, yeah, if there's a slight call to action here, it's if you do find yourself in a situation like this with sunk cost in the career, really take it seriously and that there is an option to leave, absolutely nothing's keeping you there. Well, now, that call will definitely be the reward of today's work. Yeah, let's stop. That's it. Let's stop the podcast. There, that's enough. All right, so I'll move on from that one. What do you have? What's next? Another one thing already resonated with a lot of people is, you know, when you're reading like this book and you're like, at 100 to 100 page 200, and you don't really like it, it's kind of arcane and. But you now have to finish it for some self imposed constraint of, I have to finish the book. Like, if somebody's watching or if it's for score or something, but you just cannot drop it. Like, you cannot accept that. You leave that book half unread and you just plow through it with an angry face, like, I have to finish the book. And, yeah, that's that sun cost right there, you know, and I definitely have. It's also a form of perfectionism. Right. We've spoken about definitely ten years ago, I would be totally in that mindset. But these days I happily unfinished books because, you know, time is scarce and I think at your deathbed, nobody's going to mention the books you have not finished. You know, I always, I always envisioned a sort of scorecard when you do die one day, like a game over screen and says, how many books did you read? How many hours of tv did you watch? And I reckon there's going to be. How many unfinished books do you have? Number. So if that's good. Well, we have pibytesbooks.com, right. So I think that will definitely be there because we made our own tool for that. But, yeah, okay. Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah, I'm with you, man. I mean, I used to be like that and just have to read books cover to cover, but since having kids and the time being limited, I've really just got to this point of, I don't care, I'm just going to read what I want out of the book. Some books. I'll even just skip the first three chapters and dive straight into the meat. You know, I don't read the end of the fiction book first, but, you know, I'm getting there. So, yeah, I complete, I love that one. That's a really good one. I've got the ten books on the bookshelf with bookmarks in them to prove it. So with you. Awesome. And then we have one more example, right? Yeah. Yeah. So this one's, this one's financial and it's about crypto. Crypto. Everyone's talking crypto these days. So, yeah, I've got, got quite a few mates who dabble in the crypto space. And so obviously, I mean, you can guess what this story is going to be, so I won't make it too long, but just a bloke who was investing in one of the coins and you just keep thinking it's going to go up, right. But eventually the majority of them just keep dropping and he just sunk cost, he just kept putting some money in it. Okay, it's going to come up. It's going to go up. I've already put in x many hundreds or whatever. I can't remember how much it was, but, uh, I've already put in so much cash into it, it can't fail. I have to keep going. And, uh, eventually ended up selling at a loss. So, yeah, it did go up from the initial investment. Had he just cut his losses earlier and said, you know, it's, it's done enough. Um, I wouldn't say there's a greed factor, but I'd say there's that, um, um, expectation with crypto that everything's going to be the next bitcoin, that a lot of people have. And, uh, yeah, I think there was a bit of, there was a lot of sunk costs, but there was also a bit of, um, ego in there of, you know, I know it. It's going to be good. I. Yeah, I've read the books and, um. Yeah, it's going to be the next big thing. And then it wasn't. And, uh, yeah, he cut his losses at a loss. Uh, so, yeah, there's, there's a story. I mean, it's a, that one's a very easy trap to fall into, especially when you, when you're talking cash that you've invested. The last thing you want to do is pull it out at a loss. And, uh, yeah, I definitely know that pain. You make a good point, though, as well, with the social pressure. Right? Yeah. That. It's. Especially if you've told people about it, like, I know, maybe for accountability, but also just because you people love to tell people they're investing in things and. Yeah, the last thing you want to do is be embarrassed. Right. And feel like you failed. Have to tell your mates, oh, well, you know that stuff I was boasting about last week? Well, it all went to crap, and I'm out$500. You know, that's the last thing you want to say to people. So there is an ego, embarrassment, all sorts of things in there, emotionally. Awesome. I think that's it. There's one book, if you're interested in this, about cognitive biases, thinking fast and slow by Kahneman. I've not finished it. I did start it, and I will finish that. That's not soundcast. It's really good, actually. Just too many books. But, yeah, that's all about those biases and stuff. It's pretty fascinating, and I think it's. Yeah. Knowing about that will just understand, make you understand people more, life better. So I think it's a useful read and. Nice. That's a pretty well known book. Okay. So if there is a call to action from us on this one, what we just want everyone to do is to take stock of what's going on in your life. Take note of what you're investing your time in, not just your money. Star. Okay. This guy. Don't follow Julian's advice. I'm supposed to be the one with the bad jokes. Jeez. So take note, not stock of. Your humor is infectious. What do you want me to say? Sunk cost. So if. If we want you to do something, trying to recover this, clearly what would want you to do is take note of everything. That's going on around you that you're investing your time, your effort, your money, all of those things that you have to give and that you're putting into something. Just take note and really think about whether it's worth it. Really think about whether you are getting the return you deserve, you expect, and that you want out of those things. So again, the job, are you getting that return out of the time and effort? Remember, you're spending eight to 9 hours a day. If you have a job going there, you want to make sure you're getting something out of that, not just a paycheck, right? Are you getting the dividends from the shares or whatever it is that you're investing in, the relationships you're investing your time in? You know, are they paying dividends? Is it just a one way street? All these sorts of things really take note and make a point to acknowledge the places that you are going through the sunk cost bias. Yep, sometimes it's good to cut losses and focus on the future. Yeah, it's perfect. That friendship one's a good one too, but we won't go into that now. But maybe another day. The friendship one, we won't talk about that now. It's a definitely a bit bit more spicy. Don't go there. All right, well, look, bob, great chat. Thanks everyone for listening as always. You can find us on slack and using all the notes in all the links in the notes below. But thanks as always for tuning in and we'll be back next week. Thanks for listening and see you in a week. We hope you enjoyed this episode. To hear more from us, go to Pibyte friends, that is Pybit es friends, and receive a free gift just for being a friend of the show and to join our thriving slack community of Python programmers, go to Pibytes community, that's pibit es forward slash community. We hope to see you there and catch you in the next episode.