Episode 83: Finale

This is the last episode before we retire the podcast. Many people have enjoyed the podcast and we’ve had a lot of great feedback and a lot of fun, so we’ve been asked why we’re retiring. Ultimately, we just needed to make a change and it’s time to move on. Be sure to listen to hear about how things have changed over the past couple of years and why those changes have led to us retiring the show.

For our last episode, we’ve decided to answer some of our listeners’ questions. Some of the highlights of the show include:

Regrets that Brad and Pippin have had regarding not building a plugin they’ve had an idea for.

Why it’s important for companies to start new projects frequently.

Advice Brad and Pippin wish they could give their younger selves when it comes to development, projects, and processes.

Some thoughts on pricing: How data, psychology, and strategy play into it.

Takeaways Brad and Pippin have learned that have come about by sharing business ideas with others.

Thoughts on hiring developers and setting salaries.

Links and Resources:

Pippin’s Blog Post: Get Better at Saying No

Derek Sivers: Hell Yeah or No

Brad’s Blog

Pippin’s Blog

Apply Filters on Twitter

ApplyFilters.fm

Amazon SES service

Blog Post on Why It Took So Long to Release WP Migrate DB Pro 1.8

Transcript

INTRO: Welcome to Apply Filters, the podcast all about WordPress development. Now here’s your hosts, Pippin Williamson and Brad Touesnard.

PIPPIN: Welcome back to Episode 83 of Apply Filters. This is going to be our last episode before we retire the podcast. We announced about two weeks ago that we were going to retire the podcast and stop recording episodes, and so this is the last one. When we announced that, the predominant question we got was, “Why? Why are we retiring?”

There have been a lot of people that have enjoyed the podcast. We’ve received a lot of great feedback over the last two years or so that we’ve been doing it, and it’s been a lot of fun, so let’s start by answering that question. Brad, why are we retiring?

BRAD: Yeah. I think there’s probably a few reasons. It’s funny. I think we should maybe let people know that we knew something had to change, for sure. We’ve been discussing that for quite a while that something had to change.

We discussed getting our teams involved in the podcast and having them run the show, maybe. Then ultimately we came to a point where we were just like, maybe we should just let it go. Maybe we should just retire it, and we could do something else later if it made sense.

That’s kind of where we ended up. We felt that it was time to move on. We’ve been doing this for a couple years now. When we started, it was a lot of fun. It was very exciting and new.

I know I personally was in a very different place than I am now. When we started this, I had just launched Migrate DB Pro, like a few months earlier, and I had one developer. Now we’re up to nine developers, or nine people: one marketer and eight developers. My days are mostly managing that team, whereas back then I was writing code, and I had my hands dirty every day. And so it was really easy to talk about development challenges and things that we were struggling with. It was just easy to jump on a call with you, Pippin, just hit record, and just talk about what’s been going on for the last couple weeks.

PIPPIN: Yeah. We could very easily just chatter on, “What did you work on this last two weeks? What was the code that you were working on?” because you were the developer, and I was the developer. I think we have very similar changes that have happened over time, like my day is not made up of code any more. My day is managing and overseeing the overall projects. Then most of my team members write most of the code now.

When I get to write code, it’s a pleasure, for sure, but it’s not very often. That made it a litt