Will AI Finally Make TDD Practical? | Diffblue’s Animesh Mishra

**Andrew Zigler** (0:07)
So, welcome to Dev Interrupted. I'm your host, Andrew Zigler.

**Ben Lloyd Pearson** (0:12)
And I'm your host, Ben Lloyd Pearson.

**Andrew Zigler** (0:14)
In today's news, we're talking about a few things. The sandwich generation in tech, Google striking back against ad blockers, and an AI-powered deepfake coding interview applicant that almost got hired, and the entire internet is talking about it. Ben, what do you want to talk about first?

**Ben Lloyd Pearson** (0:31)
Yeah, I've seen that last one a ton, but maybe we'll save that for the end. And since I'm feeling like half a sandwich, maybe let's start with the sandwich generation.

**Andrew Zigler** (0:41)
The sandwich generation in tech is something that maybe you're very already familiar with, but you didn't know the term for it. It's the folks that maybe you are one of them, who every day when you go to your job, you have people younger than you that you take care of, and people older than you, than you take care of. Oftentimes, you're in a remote setting. Your time is split between being a caretaker for your kids, but increasingly, people in the workforce are also taking care of their parents. So you end up in a situation where there's a large identity of folks who are dual caretakers. In fact, there's 11 million of them in the US as of last year, makes up millennials, and Gen Z are about a third of them. Most of them work full-time or part-time predominantly, but overwhelmingly, 90% of them or more in this article talked about how they have to make lifestyle or financial sacrifices. They have to compromise on their own financial security and their future. It's not a temporary issue that goes away, and anyone who's a caretaker is very familiar with this. When someone depends on you, it's there, and you have to always keep it front of mind for yourself. And these people don't just work in tech, of course. They work all across different fields, but they also have to wear a bunch of different hats at home when they're solving problems for the older and younger generations. Maybe they're the power of attorney for someone less capable of making decisions for themselves. Maybe they're tech support for their parents and their kids, because it turns out that millennials and Gen Zs are the only generation that really learned how to become really good tech support. Everyone else older than us and younger than us, they just Google it or they don't know how to do it at all. Imagine having to do all of this context switching and wearing all of these different roles while still doing their job.
When I was reading this article about the sandwich generation, I saw a lot of myself in it. I'm not fully in the sandwich, I'm more like a pita. I only have one piece of bread, I guess, but I definitely feel the pressures of having to be responsible for them.

**Ben Lloyd Pearson** (2:42)
Yeah, I've got kids, so I'm definitely feeling one half of the sandwich very strongly. I guess the real question is, what kind of sandwich? Because if it's like a panini that's been pressed, like that's a pretty rough life.

**Andrew Zigler** (2:56)
Yeah, our listeners can probably tell we have not eaten lunch yet when this topic came across. But you know, you too, Ben, you have kids and you work remotely, and I'm sure that that takes a lot of your time.

**Ben Lloyd Pearson** (3:06)
I actually think it points out how much remote work can help mitigate the effects of this, because my mom worked in tech, and for a while she was also getting her master's degree. So I remember her working really late nights and not getting to see her all the time. And I often think about how, as a remote worker, the flexibility that brings me and the fact that I see, I'm way more involved in my kids' everyday life just because I'm around a lot more. I don't have a long commute and I don't have to sit in an office all day. It's definitely an interesting trend, or an interesting phenomenon. And I'm kind of asking myself, is this an HR problem? Is it an engineering leadership problem? Are we simply not hiring enough developers for some companies, or are we pressuring developers, like to do too much? You know, there's always this like endless drive for productivity, but when do we actually start to see a drive for more flexibility? The return to office movement is definitely not a positive trend for this.

**Andrew Zigler** (4:06)
No, not for the sandwich generation. It puts them in that hard position, like what you described. It makes me think of even myself, you know, growing up, I was a last key kid and both my parents worked, and you know, they weren't able to work at home. Remote work wasn't a reality when I was growing up, and that wasn't an accessible life for them. And so it really changes how you become your own independent person, but also just having that person available for you to support you is really, really great and helpful. So the fact that a generation now, like my generation, is able to work remotely and help raise their kids and be there for them when they come home from school, just those small things, I know that can make a lot of difference. But at the same time, it puts a lot of pressure on them. Like what you said at work, they're strained between leadership decisions, between project deadlines, between things that have to get out the door and everything right now, and every industry is crunched and accelerated. There doesn't really seem to be much relief. So that's why it's always important to stop and highlight these human moments and how we're all working together and having to support each other. I think it really calls out that the flexibility of remote work is really key for this generation to not only survive, but thrive and be able to set up a future generation for that same kind of success. Otherwise, you're going to end up in this scenario where it's like kind of like a brain drain situation. If you can't accommodate these very talented, but obviously responsible and in some scenarios, like strapped leaders and professionals that are just in between life's situations. If we can't account for them, then they can't be in our industries. They won't be represented.