Hey everyone and welcome to Developer Tea. My name is Jonathan Cottrell and today I'm going to be talking to you about the fallacy of exhaustive hypotheses and why you should avoid false dilemmas. Thanks so much to today's sponsor, Hired.com. If you or someone you know is a designer or a developer and you're looking for a job, check out Hired.com. Later on in the show, we'll talk about Hired a little bit more and we'll give you a code that you can use to get a bigger bonus if you decide to accept a job from Hired. Thanks again to Hired.com. I listen to a lot of audiobooks and I recently came across a book called Decisive. Now Decisive is written by the Heath Brothers who also wrote Made to Stick and Switch. I have not read either one of these books. Made to Stick was a number one bestseller in epistemology philosophy. I don't even know what that is exactly, but it was a number one bestseller. It was really good. It was a number one bestseller. It was really good. It was really good. It was released back in 2007, but I'm listening to this book called Decisive and one of the ideas that the Heath Brothers kind of turned me on to was this idea of the false dichotomy. We're probably all aware of this, but I wanted to talk about it on this show because I think we don't keep it at the forefront of our minds as much as we should. Now you know that I like to talk about making decisions and making good decisions more appropriately and I think that this is one of the most overlooked parts of making decisions, and that is avoiding false dichotomies. So in simple terms, a false dichotomy is when you act as though there are only two or a limited number of choices. It's usually a dichotomy, but it could be three or four things. Either way, you limit the number of choices that you actually have, but the reality is different than that. The reality is that there are many choices, perhaps an infinite number of choices. And we see these kinds of questions come up from people all the time. I've even gotten these on the Developer T email. For example, should I go to school or not? Well, the reality of that question is that it's ignoring multiple options. For example, should you go to school now or later? Or should you go to school on campus? Or should you explore alternative school types, alternative universities, maybe online courses, for example. Sometimes there are a limited number of options available, but most of the time we are either placing these restrictions on ourselves or we are creating a dichotomy. We are creating these options that are binary or perhaps there are a discrete number of options when the reality is different, and this leads us to ignore alternative solutions. So for example, I've gotten questions like, should I learn Ruby or Python? This is a very common question for web developers. Should I learn Ruby or Python? And the answer may be neither, or the answer may be both, or it could be one or the other, but what you're really asking is, what should I learn? Perhaps you've taken the time to narrow down from all of the available maybe dynamic languages to Ruby and Python, and you're trying to change the way you're using Ruby and Python. So what you're doing is you're trying to change the way you're using Ruby and Python. So what you're doing is you're trying to change the way you're between the two, but perhaps you are simply thinking, well, Ruby and Python seem like good options. Now I'm going to create a dichotomy between the two and try to choose one to learn. It's important that we're aware of situations where we do this so that we can avoid creating false dichotomies that are actually not beneficial to us or that may actually hurt our efforts. So I'm going to give you guys a few tips as to how to avoid false dichotomies that could hurt you. Number one, remember that technology, is constantly advancing. It's constantly growing. Very seldomly are you going to experience that a tool set or language has only one or two options that will work. There are usually substitutions, especially for larger framework or tool set language, those level of things. If there is a particular category of tool that isn't too narrow, usually there are going to be many different substituting technologies that you could use. If you wanted to. So don't create, for example, a false dichotomy between ExpressJS and Rails. These are not the only options in their space. In fact, within each language for JavaScript or for Ruby, there are many other frameworks that you could choose from that accomplish similar goals as Express and Rails accomplish. And even then, you could look beyond JavaScript and Ruby to many, many other frameworks that accomplish similar goals. That may suit your needs even better than Rails or Express ever could. So when you're choosing technology tools, remember that technology is always advancing and there are usually substitute tools that you could choose from. So be certain that you have good reasoning behind choosing what you do choose. Now, with that said, since I'm on the subject, I do think it's incredibly important that we do not switch tools too often. It's very easy, especially in this industry, to be tool-heavy. And I think that's a very important thing to remember. So I would say be careful in trying to acquire too many tools and trying to master too many tools. You should be aware of a large number of these or at least understand what they would be used for. And if you have to choose something for a project, then you should assess those different tools. But don't try to acquire every new tool that comes out because, you quite simply cannot do it. It's going to continue being faster and faster, and you won't be able to keep up. It will be too difficult to be able to master anything, and you'll simply just be going through a new tutorial, the Hello World tutorial, every single day because there's a new tool coming out all the time. Now, before I talk about the second point, which has to do with income and employment, I want to talk about our sponsor, Hired.com. On Hired, software engineers and designers get five or more job offers in a given week. All of these jobs have salary and equity up front. They have full-time and contract opportunities available at over 2,500 pre-screened companies in 12 major tech hubs around the world. So if that wasn't enough, though, if you sign on with Hired, you will get a $2,000 thank you bonus. But if you use our special link, which will be in the show notes, that bonus doubles to $4,000. Now, if you know of a company that's going to be able to do somebody who is looking for a job and is an engineer or a designer, they can get the $4,000 bonus and you can get a $1,337 bonus just for recommending them and just for sending them over to Hired. So check it out, Hired.com. Of course, the link will be in the show notes to double your bonus if you accept a job through Hired. Thanks again to Hired.com. And this leads me directly into my second point, which is to never dichotomize your income situation. Never dichotomize your income situation. A lot of people assume that they either have to quit their job and go to a new job or they have to stay in their current position. Now, the reality is very different from that. If you are looking at your income and you're saying, I need more money, it's very possible that you aren't asking the right questions or you think you need the wrong things. For example, is it that you actually need more money or is it that you want better overhead? You could create better overhead by having a higher effective amount of money by eliminating cost in your life. For example, you could sell a car or get a more efficient car. You could eliminate cable or something that you pay for on a monthly basis that you don't use very often. There are many ways of increasing your effective income without actually increasing your absolute income. And ideas like this can range from very tame, like stop paying for a cable bill, all the way to, to the very extreme, like sell your car and move out of your house and stop your lease so that you can travel. If you are looking to travel and that is why you want to make more money, well, there's no need for your house to sit without somebody in it. So why not stop your rent if you are in an apartment or perhaps rent out your house, maybe through something like Airbnb. There are so many ways that you can change your income situation. So creating a false dichotomy, it limits your options. And it doesn't take advantage of the creativity that is naturally in your brain. Take stock, for example, of whether or not you have upward mobility from your current position at your current place of employment. You can also consider starting a second job, perhaps freelance on the side, or maybe something entirely different from what you do in your day job. Now, my point in today's podcast is not to solve your money problems, nor is it to teach you how to make money on the side or create your own business. There are plenty of ways to do that. But if you're not sure what you're doing, then you should start with a book. I have other podcasts that talk about that stuff at length, and there are tons of books, etc. But instead, my point is to get you to think about your income situation in a little bit of a different light. When making decisions like this, if you run into what seems like a dichotomy, you should always ask yourself the question of what you want to affect, not what you think you want, but instead what you want to affect. In this particular scenario, you want to affect your current income. So if you're in a position where you're in a position where you're bringing your income from yourijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijij be surprised to find out that quite often the restrictions that you have seen on your options are actually an illusion. They don't actually exist. And sometimes when you determine the points of restrictions on your options, you can actually work at those points of restrictions to release them a little bit. In other words, to give you more options by eliminating those points of restriction. As developers, we often have the unique opportunity to not only remove the restrictions on our options, but to actually create new options where they didn't exist before. If you can't find a framework that you are happy with, which would be a surprise because there are so many frameworks out there, but let's say that you couldn't find a framework that you were happy with, then you have every opportunity to create that framework. Now giving yourself the support monetarily to do so. At the same time, you may find yourself bringing yourijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijij many of you who will experience something very similar to a false dichotomy today. And I would like for you to talk through the options with the people that you're sitting with and with the people that are making the decision with you and try to take the step back and look at what is causing your options to be limited. Determine whether or not you can remove those pressure points, remove those particular points of restriction, and instead begin to view your decisions as a more fluid landscape. This allows you to pull the good parts of particular points in your decisions, pull them together to make a more informed total decision and one that is a consensus of all of the options and all the good parts of the options and is actually more like a hybrid decision or a hybrid option. Thank you so much for listening to Developer Tea today. I hope that this will start a conversation with you. And your friends and your family and your colleagues. If you have any comments for today's show, let me know. You can reach out to me on Twitter at at developer tea, or you can email me at developer tea at gmail.com. I also love receiving questions from you guys. And I would love to answer what you have to ask on the show. Thanks so much for listening. And thank you again to hired.com. If you are an engineer or a designer, or you know someone who is and you're looking for a job, hired.com is a great place to start. Hired is bridging the gap between brand new tech companies and people who are looking to work at those tech companies over 2500 companies in 12 different cities, you can get a $2,000 signing bonus. But if you use the link in the show notes, which you can find at spec.fm, that link will give you the opportunity to make double that bonus. That's $4,000 bonus if you choose to accept a job through hired. Thank you again to hired.com. And thank you for listening. And until next time, enjoy your tea.