WEBVTT

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Hey, what's going on everybody?
I am your host for today of the

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Adventures and DevOps podcast, and today
is super exciting because if you are a

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frequent listener of the show, you
know that Jonathan and Jillian both have moved

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on to higher callings, and you
know, at this point, I've just

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got to say that it can't be
me. I mean, like, I'm

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the only hosts that's here that's stood
the test of time. But surely it's

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not me. It must be them
and not me. But we'll find out,

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because today I have a new co
host. I have Warren Parade.

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You might remember him from episode one
forty seven when we were talking about open

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source software. He's the CTO of
Author and he is now the new co

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host joining me on the podcast.
Warren, welcome, Oh thank you.

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Well. You know, I'm surprised
you remember the number, because I for

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sure did. I'm not gonna lie. I totally looked it up before the

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show started. It was actually interesting
that you that that one was on open

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source because I actually just came back
from foss Dam UH and Brussels, and

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there's a lot of parallels there.
I felt like it's like the largest open

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source conference in the world. Yeah, how was that? That seemed like

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it'd be a cool show to go
to. You know, I think it

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definitely. It definitely cemented a lot
of the stereotypes that you can imagine about

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both like the open source community.
Uh. You know, I go to

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a lot of conferences because I speak
at them, and so like I try

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to pick the ones that I feel
like I can have the most impact on

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either sharing my experiences are whatever.
Have you given my my role? So

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he said, I'm like, I'm
the ct of AUTHORESS Security Application Specialist really,

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so anything that falls in that space. Actually, it was really surprising

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when I was there because there wasn't
a security track and it's the first year

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they even had anything related to APIs. So like my room was like totally

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packed with people. But it really
goes to show you that either it's still

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a relatively new area and sometimes I
forget that for sure. Yeah, I

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think that's pretty much a rule for
our industry as a whole, as it

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is new, you know, if
you consider it too, even like airplanes

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or trains or boats, Like,
we're just getting started here, and I

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when I talk with a lot of
people who are just starting their careers.

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You know, they feel like,
oh, it's too late, you know,

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I've missed the boat, and granted
there is a lot to learn,

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but it's it's it's definitely not too
late. And one of the things I

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try to emphasize with that is like
when I started my career in the nineties,

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you know, we just didn't know
anything, and we've learned a lot

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since then, and a lot of
that is like foundational knowledge for someone entering

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the career. So I kind of
consider at this stage in my life one

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of my roles is to relay that
information, you know, and make sure

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that people just starting their career don't
have to spend thirty years learning the things

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that I've learned over thirty years that
I'm going to distill it, digest it,

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relay it to them, and let
them build on top of what I've

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learned. Yeah. No, I'm
totally with you. I think the numbers

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rolled up for me and I'm like, oh, wait, Like I remember

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when I started applying for our positions
and seeing high numbers of years of expectations

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for experience, like even like five
or seven. I'm like, I got

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to get there at some point,
probably not. And now, like I'm

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way past that number, and I'm
like, oh, like I'm supposed to

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know things. But I mean,
I think it's a good reminder though,

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too, because there's this bias,
even especially in our industry, where we

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think that I think it's experts everywhere
believe that the common person knows way more

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about the subject, and even within
software, there's so many different disciplines that

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I'm often talking to people about things
that I think a majority of people know

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already and they're just like, wait, don't I don't. I have no

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idea what you're talking about, Like, all right, that's I totally can't.

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Maybe it's that surprising. Yeah,
No, I think that's been a

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shift in the decades that I've been
doing this too. Like whenever I first

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started, if you said I don't
know about that technology or I don't know

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how to do that, it was
it was a bad thing to say,

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and it could be detrimental to say
you were expected to know everything. And

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we've kind of broken that down over
the years where it's okay to say I

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don't know, and and it has
to be the vast number of things that

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we covered, like you're not going
to know everything. Yeah, I think

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coming, like actually acknowledging that imposter
syndrome is a thing and that it's okay

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to have has has been a huge
shift that's only just happened recently, like

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even in the history of software engineering. I mean, I think it's permeated

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to other knowledge work related paths that
they're they're really as you point out,

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there's just way too many things that
you could ever know. Right, I've

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too good and stuck because like I
keep want to get it into more into

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AI and I feel like, you
know, that's that's its own can of

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worms. But every time I look, I'm like, Okay, but if

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I learned something there now, it
will just totally be different in five minutes.

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So maybe I should I should hold
off and just not try to get

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down that back, right, let
it simmer down for a few years,

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then check it out. Yeah.
Right. And that's the other thing too,

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Like some of these things like if
you invest time and effort into them

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and then a couple of years from
now, it's not even a thing,

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Like dang, there's three years of
my life I'm never getting back. Well,

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you know, it totally pays off
because I feel like my experience in

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software engineering is filled with the situations
that I definitely regret, but they all

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turn into great stories and experiences.
I feel like whereas and that you can

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pull forward in some way. I
mean I had to be careful about that,

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like not getting not staying somewhere where
I feel like I've learned everything there

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is to learn and there's nowhere for
me to go and it's not necessarily get

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promoted or move up, just like
am I using technology or skills that I'm

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now trying to focus on or grow? For sure? Yeah? So on

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that note, how did you actually
get started in this field? You know,

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I don't know if I should go
forward or backwards here, so maybe

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maybe at least I'll put the goalpost. So I'm the CTO of a company

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that does authentication and authorization as an
API. What does that even mean?

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I feel like those words are complicated
that aren't immediately straightforward, so like user

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identity and access control specifically for businesses
with complicated user roles and resources, multi

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tenantcy anything in that domain. So
it's been a long journey for me to

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get there. I moved a lot
around in a lot of different industries and

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locations, so I actually didn't even
go to school for software engineering. I

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went for my undergraduate degree in engineering
is electrical and computer and that means I

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wanted to build Spice satellites, but
that actually didn't work. Yeah, I

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know, that was my you know, it was that or go work for

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NASA or the equivalent. And interestingly
enough, I you know, sort of

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got an experience of doing that later. But when I graduated, I couldn't

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find a good job. I'm by
good, I mean like the year before

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I graduated there was a huge crunch
sort of similar to what's happening now in

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technology, so I wasn't I didn't
feel very optimistic about my opportunities when leaving,

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and so like I didn't get that
many and I ended up in healthcare.

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It in the middle of nowhere in
the United States. And let's just

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say my hobby programming practices of since
I was like fourteen years old, I

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think that's about when I started.
We're more sophisticated than what this company had

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going as far as like software development
processes and source control, which they didn't

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have at all. So that was, you know, quite an initial shock

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for me, and I really didn't
want to stay there very long. I

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think what was interesting about that job
too, is that I didn't have experience

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in hard software engineering skills, but
I did a lot of classes that I

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think are still valuable for me today. So like, I don't care if

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someone went to a university when I'm
hiring them or not, but there is

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some background that's super useful, like
algorithms and structures and understanding what that is,

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like if I say hash map or
dictionary that sort of comes with some

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expectations. I don't care if you
know how virtual page file system works,

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because I still can't figure that out
for the life of me. Yeah.

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So this again actually wasn't even software. I was doing technical services, which

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was pretty much doing custom software development
for the customers of the company, but

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not building the product up. And
that was actually really working with customers directly,

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our users to help them understand how
the technical product worked. Super complicated,

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lots of configurability, so much so
that customers could put in their own

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code into the system, which is
sort of ridiculous that you would go to

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production and make changes there directly in
the operating system level, and like that

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scared me that anyone would do that, but that that was the thing.

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So that also wasn't wasn't pure software, and that was great because I feel

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like I got experience with Okay,
what we're doing has an impact to a

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user somewhere, like there has to
be a reason for doing this. Yeah.

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I think healthcare is one of those
interesting places to work in technology because

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you have like all of these different
constraints. You know, you have just

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like the whole world of medicine is
huge, but then you have it's implemented

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differently in different regions, and then
you have like the legal aspect of it

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with hipper requirements and stuff. One
of the jobs I had was it was

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an This was before the term SRE
was around, but it was kind of

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an SR type role where we worked
directly with the staff and trauma centers and

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so whenever they would call us and
say, hey, this thing's broken,

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right, they had somebody in the
emergency room on the table that they couldn't

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give medical care to because our stuff
was broken. And so you were talking

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with you know, doctors and nurses, and there were there were many occasions

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where you're just tell them, hey, look, just put me on speakerphone,

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go do what you gotta do,
and I'll shout if I need anything,

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and I wish I wish I sort
of had that experience, because that

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seems like one of those that you
know, falls in the category of I'm

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glad I did it in my past, but it's not my day job anymore,

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right. I Actually I actually worked
in claims and like billing primarily,

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so I got to deal with all
the problems of configuration in this system and

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also how to deal with those contracts
with third party integrations to insurance companies or

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clearinghouses. Yeah, insurance companies are
just a joy to work with at every

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level, right. I mean,
this is like after a standards body came

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together and said we need things like
hl SAT then to perfectly identify programmatically how

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to communicate, and then the hospital
organizations would go out and sign contracts with

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these insurance companies that violate the data
that's allowed to be put in the programmatic

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communication and the interface and their APIs
or EEDI interfaces depending on where you're from,

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and like that was really a struggle
to communicate where like, hey,

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you know, our software doesn't do
this because it's against the spec like this

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field, it takes a Booleian true
or false, and you can't put a

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three in there, and part of
it was to protect the patients, like

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what information should be allowed to be
sent to the insurance company that wasn't relevant

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for paying out whatever diagnostic or surgery
was assigned in that claim. So I

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did remember one time, and this
is where I'm glad, I'm not I

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never was in the sor repath directly
that one of the data centers that one

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of the hospitals that I was supporting
had an incident and their like main systems

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were all offline like totally, which
you know, same to do your case,

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and what they had us do was
remote into the systems, not using

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SSH that would be cool, but
using some other technologies that I don't want

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to name, and like three different
levels, like we had to first we

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got the beeper go off, you
had to get on call giant phone room

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where then you got a sign credentials
in order of access. Then you could

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get in and then SSH to another
system and then to another system to even

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get into production to run a script
basically to verify that the database was integrity

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was still you know, okay.
I didn't like that. I think one

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of the big takeaways for me from
working at that job was just putting things

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into perspective, you know, especially
since I still deal with production systems a

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lot in incident management. You know, after that, my approach is,

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oh, we've got an outage,
Okay, how many people are going to

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die? Zero? Okay, Well, let's just simmer down a notch here

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then, and let's just make conscious
focused decisions here because everyone's going to be

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okay. Yeah, No, I
totally get that. I think this is

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one of the most frequent advice that
I end up giving inexperienced like new engineers

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the field is really just take a
look at that risk profile here of what's

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going on, Like I need help
immediately. I'm like, do you?

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I mean, your production deployment isn't
working, but the site is working at

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this moment, and it also doesn't
serve critical usage, and also you don't

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have an ongoing marketing campaign and maybe
you have five users, right. I

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think I saw an XKCD on this. I don't remember if it's that or

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someone else, and there was like, is this is like posts like my

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SQL or postcress or something. Is
my database configuration will work for having one

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hundred million concurrent users and the responses
how many current users do you have oh

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we have five? Oh yeah then
yes, yeah, right, I mean,

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because there's a lot of truth to
that. It's just like you you

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don't need that scale at all.
I was actually talking to someone today and

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they were doing they were almost exact
same question, but they're like, we

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don't want to use an identity provider
that's proven hardened or whatever. And I'm

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like that's okay. They're like,
oh yeah, it doesn't scale for us.

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And I'm like, how many use
it? Like ten thousand users?

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And I'm like, okay, you
know that's just like such a small number,

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right, not even here. I'll
let you borrow my raspberry pie that

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work, I know. Right.
The thing that scared me is the difference

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between it being like a commercial application
for personal use and when that goes to

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a business. Because as soon as
you bring in business as if people are

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asking these questions, I start to
get concerned, like, Okay, what

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is the data privacy that you're thinking
about? You know, what is your

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data redundancy or disaster recovery situation?
Because if you're worried about spending ten bucks

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a month on running your app,
I feel like there's a promise here to

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your customers. That's more than just
that could go down and having a backup

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strategy just it's like number one for
me. If you're in the business space

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over you know, who cares if
you lose some music files from your Spotify

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account? Right? And I think
that ties into something that is very specific

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to devlops but also applies to other
areas of technology too, is like it's

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not always just about the technology,
Like you have to understand the business as

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well and understand like what your promise
to the customers is and how it impacts

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their life and even like in in
some cases, you know, you have

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to understand the finance aspect of it
too, because we've build all of this

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infrastructure and now the finance team doesn't
really know what to ask. But if

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you go to them and say,
hey, some of this infrastructure is op

219
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X and some of it is CAPEX, and if you work with us categorize

220
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it correctly, it can result in
a huge amount of tax savings for the

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company. And so you get into
all of this non technical aspects of a

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technical business. I love that.
I love that you brought that up because

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I think that understanding even the difference
between those two is such a foreign concept

224
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too. And sure, in general, I think we get lots of customers

225
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that are like, oh, it
costs ten thousand bucks a month for your

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service. That's too much. I'm
like, let me explain to you,

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you know, the savings here.
Also, you probably have capital expenditures that

228
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you're currently paying in and saving those
resources that are depreciating over time, versus

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paying a SaaS provider to you know, deliver some of that. And if

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I look at their use and it's
like peanuts, like a couple bucks a

231
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month, it's like you're literally wasting
more time trying to make a decision on

232
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which statas provider to use for something
than you are to pick a random one

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and paying the cost to transition later. It's really sad, honestly how often

234
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I have that conversation. Yeah,
you have to you have to know.

235
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And I think this just comes from
experience of knowing when to dig into the

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weeds and when to take a step
back and see are we even in the

237
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right part of the forest here.
Yeah, No, it's interesting because actually

238
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you know to Can you continue on
my career past story. I worked at

239
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a large global manufacturing company that wrote
their own software and they actually did chargebacks

240
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really well and expose the cloud costs
eventually to the individual team so that they

241
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could take ownership over how much they
were spending on some things. And you

242
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know, I think that's a great
a great first level, like giving that

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exposure rather than locking it behind another
team or even a different part of the

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organization like one quote unquote finance,
because you know, that was great to

245
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see, Oh yeah, you know, if we' spin up this infrastructure,

246
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it's going to cost us two thousand
dollars more a month. But then it's

247
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great to also hear that other teams
are like, well, well, whoops,

248
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we just spent two hundred thousand on
the others sasas provider. I think

249
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I think I read it it was
like in the ten day of like Coinbase

250
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or something that they had spend sixty
five million dollars last year or two years

251
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ago on data dog or something like
that. That's actually really easy to do

252
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with data Dog. I mean that's
always been my concern. I mean,

253
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they're not the product for us,
given where like the sort of data that

254
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we want to collect and the sensitivity
of that data. But it's also really

255
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amazing that there aren't any product that
really fit the space for us. I

256
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wish someone would come to us and
be like, you know for metric usage,

257
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you know, here's a perfect thing, but you know, we still

258
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haven't found that. Actually, So
we actually because in my full time job,

259
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I'm a staff engineer and the DevOps
team for Polygon, and we actually

260
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just rolled out a product called cloud
zero that has been super cool. It

261
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does, it collects the it connects
to whatever billing APIs for different providers that

262
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you use, pulls that in and
then gives you insights on it, and

263
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it's really really insightful. Like the
very first day, it's like, hey,

264
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here's a bunch of net gateways.
You're using an AWS, I don't

265
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have any traffic. You can save
you know, five thousand dollars a month

266
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just by turning these off or and
it's like daily emails. It's like,

267
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hey, over the last twenty four
hours, the spending on this GCP product

268
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or GCP project went up one hundred
and twenty five percent. You're like,

269
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wow, that's a jump. And
so that's that's been really cool just to

270
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manage those those kinds of things,
and it's been very I'm not trying to

271
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plug Cloud zero or turns into or
anything. We just had good experience with

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it because they've just they've brought up
some stuff that we would have not seen,

273
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you know, very easily, and
the integration was that was super easy.

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I mean, I think I think
that's the truth is like those sort

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of tools have like significantly evolved recently. I think at the time, which

276
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was almost eight years ago now,
we were using like I think it's called

277
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cloud and area or something like that, and it was it was not it

278
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was not particularly good at the time, but yeah, being able to see

279
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those trends in not an amateurized cost
way was was helpful and actually driving alerts

280
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and whatnot, which at the time
AWS didn't really support. AWS doesn't really

281
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have motivation to support it. Well, you know, I think that's sort

282
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of the sad story of SaaS products
is I mean really everything in general,

283
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that once you find your core customer, if they're not going to pay marginally

284
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more money for your same product,
even if you make it better in some

285
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way, and that's just like the
law, like I pretend that doesn't exist,

286
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Like I want to happily live the
rest of my life believing that if

287
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you make it better, people will
appreciate that there's a brand impact for us.

288
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Like a very common conversation I have
with my CEO is about how well

289
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the quality of whatever we're doing before
we start going down another path, because

290
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I think it does really reflect well
users bringing in more customers, et cetera,

291
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rather than secretly complaining about it behind
closed doors. Yeah, I would

292
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agree with that because I you know, you obviously, with a good internet

293
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based marketing campaig, you can reach
a huge audience. But there's something to

294
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be said for just delivering a great
product and having satisfied customers, and then

295
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when they go to their next job, they're like, Hey, I used

296
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this before and really liked it,
And I think there's it may not have

297
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as big of an impact as a
funny marketing campaign or whatever, but I

298
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just think there's something professional about that. Well, it's interesting you say that,

299
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because I'm not convinced that in the
business space that even viral marketing campaigns

300
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have any real value there for sure, if we're talking about personal products,

301
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like right, yeah, definitely,
But there's a whole There was a whole

302
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initiative by the search providers AD marketplaces
quite a few years ago that tried to

303
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actually figure out whether or not the
traffic that was being sent to your website

304
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or app actually converted for you.
Right, obviously that's a big importance.

305
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But if it didn't convert, you
almost got dinged because you basically lied about

306
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your advertisement, right, you know, traffic when to you user didn't get

307
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what they wanted. So I think
it's I think, you know, originally

308
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the original version of this is like
sex cells, and I think the truth

309
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is, well, no, sex
just makes people click the link. But

310
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after that then they then they drop
off because you know, it's not actually

311
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what they wanted. And so at
least for our content that we put in,

312
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like our knowledge base or our blog, it's like it's got to be

313
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super relevant because while there's lots of
things that we can say that are really

314
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interesting from a technology engineering blog sort
of way, those don't really help get

315
00:24:41.519 --> 00:24:45.079
customers in the door brand. I
mean, Brandon Winness is one thing,

316
00:24:45.160 --> 00:24:47.920
right, you know, you must
your brand all you want, but that's

317
00:24:48.000 --> 00:24:52.640
not going to really result in direct
sales, but it will result in this

318
00:24:52.880 --> 00:24:59.119
concept known as oh did I forget
the name. It's like positive reinforcement.

319
00:24:59.599 --> 00:25:03.400
Yeah, yeah, sort of along
the lines of like someone has to hear

320
00:25:03.480 --> 00:25:08.839
your name five times before they ever
recognize your company name. Oh, that's

321
00:25:10.079 --> 00:25:14.039
a high number. I didn't want
to hear that. Don't don't quote me

322
00:25:14.079 --> 00:25:18.119
on that number. There's a rule
that marketing teams use that people have to

323
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see your ad or whatever a certain
number of times before they start to recognize

324
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your company name. But I don't
remember if the number is actually five or

325
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what the value is. I mean, I'm sure the unfortunate truth is it's

326
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more than you'd like it to pay, right, right, that's the takeaway

327
00:25:37.359 --> 00:25:45.519
there for sure. So looking back
over your career, what are some of

328
00:25:45.599 --> 00:25:52.480
the things that you some of the
career development decisions you made that when you

329
00:25:52.559 --> 00:25:57.839
look back, you're like, ah, that was just pure brilliance. Well,

330
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I don't know I have an answer
to that's question, or like,

331
00:26:03.519 --> 00:26:08.880
Okay, that wasn't completely dumb.
Okay, let's set the bar a little

332
00:26:08.920 --> 00:26:15.359
bit lower there. Yeah. I
think I made a couple of realizations while

333
00:26:15.400 --> 00:26:18.240
I was working on different things.
So one of them was like, the

334
00:26:18.319 --> 00:26:22.720
first DevOps related thing I had ever
done, which was not called DevOps at

335
00:26:22.759 --> 00:26:29.559
the time, was helping the organization
I was in to replace the need of

336
00:26:29.599 --> 00:26:37.759
a different organization, which was called
Release Engineering, and the third organization that

337
00:26:37.839 --> 00:26:44.680
wanted to help us do that told
us the solution was Puppet. And if

338
00:26:44.720 --> 00:26:49.720
you don't know what Puppet is,
it's a convention based Ruby set proprietary packages

339
00:26:51.400 --> 00:26:55.079
really, which is just the most
ridiculous thing that you install agents on all

340
00:26:55.119 --> 00:26:59.279
of your machines to deploy and upgrade
the software. The thing is is that

341
00:26:59.359 --> 00:27:03.079
you pretty much to do the equivalent
of writing your own terrorform provider for your

342
00:27:03.160 --> 00:27:07.519
own software in order to deploy it. There wasn't anything common, really,

343
00:27:07.599 --> 00:27:11.839
and what was common didn't really work
out of the box. And like you

344
00:27:11.920 --> 00:27:17.319
will, I was the only one
left on this project by the end,

345
00:27:17.880 --> 00:27:22.240
from three teams that hadn't been swapped
out in some way, like twelve people

346
00:27:22.599 --> 00:27:26.279
left it over the time I was
trying to get this done. But the

347
00:27:26.319 --> 00:27:33.160
point that I bring this up is
that repeatedly it was said, usually by

348
00:27:33.279 --> 00:27:36.359
me, oh, if we wanted
to do it that way, maybe we

349
00:27:36.400 --> 00:27:42.759
shouldn't be using Puppet. And at
the time I was literally I was so

350
00:27:44.039 --> 00:27:48.279
under leveled. I was literally the
lowest level that an engineer could have at

351
00:27:48.319 --> 00:27:51.640
this company at the time, which
its own sort of travesty, which should

352
00:27:51.640 --> 00:27:53.920
teach you something that your ability doesn't
really mean anything when it comes to the

353
00:27:55.000 --> 00:27:57.920
level that you put decide if I
had been a higher level, I would

354
00:27:57.920 --> 00:28:03.960
have really after the fact that saying
those words to myself or even out loud,

355
00:28:04.880 --> 00:28:10.000
is an indication that you should do
something about it. And I mean,

356
00:28:10.039 --> 00:28:15.000
in this case, if I left
the company, But that's something I

357
00:28:15.920 --> 00:28:17.839
created. This rule. I mean, I call it the rule of three

358
00:28:17.880 --> 00:28:22.079
really, but like if I hear
the same problem in my vicinity three times,

359
00:28:22.480 --> 00:28:23.920
then I know that it's on me
to solve it. That no one

360
00:28:23.960 --> 00:28:29.680
else is going to come up and
just magically resolve this issue. And I

361
00:28:29.759 --> 00:28:33.400
mean it's not like a hard and
fast rule or anything like that, but

362
00:28:33.640 --> 00:28:37.319
realistically, no one else may be
privy to it as much. Right,

363
00:28:37.480 --> 00:28:41.039
Like I may have three different sources
that are all coming to me or talking

364
00:28:41.079 --> 00:28:45.640
about it in my vicinity. So
I usually watch out for those things because

365
00:28:45.799 --> 00:28:48.519
they help a lot. So like
this was one I should have realized,

366
00:28:49.119 --> 00:28:52.319
you know, after the tenth time
I said, maybe we shouldn't be us

367
00:28:52.359 --> 00:28:55.559
puppet like, we should have picked
a different one. The sad truth is

368
00:28:55.920 --> 00:29:00.920
I think that company still has my
like the system now I had helped build

369
00:29:02.000 --> 00:29:07.359
there to integrate with Puppet being run
by like out of the three organizations that

370
00:29:07.440 --> 00:29:11.920
were set up to manage this infrastructure. Basically there's like a team of two

371
00:29:12.079 --> 00:29:17.440
or three people now that are handling
like all three components, which is just

372
00:29:17.559 --> 00:29:21.799
ridiculous really when you think about it, because this is the wrong technology no

373
00:29:21.880 --> 00:29:26.240
matter how you look at it.
And they don't have the skills to build

374
00:29:26.359 --> 00:29:30.880
to even manage the rappers or abstractions
that were built to manage this, and

375
00:29:30.960 --> 00:29:33.799
they don't have the experience or understanding
or knowledge to do it either, So

376
00:29:34.160 --> 00:29:41.160
it's really really unfair. But the
biggest lesson there, I think is don't

377
00:29:41.240 --> 00:29:47.599
use Windows. Yeah, I mean, so this is a manufacturing company.

378
00:29:47.759 --> 00:29:52.440
At the time, there was four
manufacturing plants all over the world, and

379
00:29:52.839 --> 00:29:57.279
they had a monolith. There was
something like one hundred and twenty Windows Services,

380
00:29:57.559 --> 00:30:03.680
which amounts to like it was like
eleven hundred c sharp projects that were

381
00:30:03.759 --> 00:30:07.119
being built and managed and deployed in
a monolithic fashion. So like they had

382
00:30:07.160 --> 00:30:11.920
a real need for strategy strategic change
of how they were doing deployments, which

383
00:30:14.079 --> 00:30:15.400
and I think this is a good
story if you wanted to make a new

384
00:30:15.640 --> 00:30:18.960
service, which like this is still
in the days of say, like the

385
00:30:19.079 --> 00:30:23.759
term micro service didn't even exist yet. You had to contact this second organization

386
00:30:23.839 --> 00:30:27.640
and say, I want a new
micro service. Except you could only do

387
00:30:27.799 --> 00:30:36.039
that. You needed a three week
lead time for them to create the infrastructure

388
00:30:36.079 --> 00:30:41.480
for your service. And given when
you had to do that and the lead

389
00:30:41.480 --> 00:30:44.319
time it would take for you to
actually release your new thing, you could

390
00:30:44.359 --> 00:30:47.000
only do it once every five weeks, and it was one day of the

391
00:30:47.039 --> 00:30:48.440
week that you could do this,
so literally every once every five weeks.

392
00:30:48.720 --> 00:30:52.160
I'm like, oh, there's that. Like I couldn't believe this when I

393
00:30:52.200 --> 00:30:53.960
figured it out. It was like
they have a process, and we have

394
00:30:55.079 --> 00:31:00.359
a process and together that eliminates every
possible day with it a one plus period

395
00:31:00.359 --> 00:31:06.319
except for this one specific day because
we had code freeze and you had and

396
00:31:06.440 --> 00:31:08.799
you had to introduce the service and
then have a handoff and then other nonsense.

397
00:31:11.440 --> 00:31:12.279
I mean, that's why we were
going to puppet in the first place,

398
00:31:12.319 --> 00:31:18.200
which was supposed to be the revolution
never really made it to be right,

399
00:31:18.319 --> 00:31:21.480
it was going to automate everything for
you. Oh yeah, for sure.

400
00:31:23.440 --> 00:31:26.400
The claim to fame there, like
the interface I provided for other engineers,

401
00:31:26.400 --> 00:31:33.039
which I thought was absolutely fantastic.
Was a single file that could merge

402
00:31:33.079 --> 00:31:37.599
in lots of different version changes from
individual parts of the monoliths changing at any

403
00:31:37.640 --> 00:31:42.960
time, And so each line of
the file was a because the new organization

404
00:31:44.119 --> 00:31:48.519
said that ivy was the way to
go, which is a Java resolution sort

405
00:31:48.519 --> 00:31:51.839
of package. I mean, it's
not even a package manager. It's a

406
00:31:52.039 --> 00:31:57.839
JAR dependency manager, which is a
sort of own atrocious thing. This was

407
00:31:57.880 --> 00:32:04.200
a HTML file well that had service
and version as h al attributes. And

408
00:32:04.279 --> 00:32:07.440
to make it worse, we get
every other line was a comment that said,

409
00:32:07.519 --> 00:32:14.960
do not remove this comment because because
if you're not aware of this when

410
00:32:14.960 --> 00:32:17.160
you make a change and get,
if there is no change on the line

411
00:32:17.160 --> 00:32:21.440
above or below, then you can
merge very easily. But if there is

412
00:32:21.480 --> 00:32:23.640
a change on the preceding or following
line, then there's going to be a

413
00:32:23.720 --> 00:32:28.440
merged complex so unnecessary line. So
yeah, I mean there was a comment

414
00:32:28.480 --> 00:32:30.319
between each one of these that said, you know, do not remove this.

415
00:32:31.839 --> 00:32:35.920
But I thought this was a great
interface, and for sure, you

416
00:32:35.960 --> 00:32:39.519
know, I would never never do
it that way ever again, but it

417
00:32:39.599 --> 00:32:43.799
was the right thing at the time, for sure. Yeah, And that's

418
00:32:43.799 --> 00:32:47.799
one of those things where, like
you you know, it's not the permanent

419
00:32:47.920 --> 00:32:55.119
solution, but it's a foundational step
in building a permanent solution. I mean,

420
00:32:55.160 --> 00:32:59.319
I wish someone had said those wise
words to me at that moment,

421
00:32:59.440 --> 00:33:01.839
because it is certainly the belief that
I had that this would be the only

422
00:33:01.960 --> 00:33:06.039
thing that was ever necessary for the
rest of the life of this company.

423
00:33:06.279 --> 00:33:07.720
I mean, I guess the fact
is still running is some truth in there,

424
00:33:12.240 --> 00:33:15.359
no, But I think that is
a good point worth elaborating. Is

425
00:33:15.480 --> 00:33:22.440
like everything we do is, you
know, without trying to sound like philosophical,

426
00:33:22.480 --> 00:33:30.519
everything we do is temporary, but
just meaning that technology continues to grow

427
00:33:30.880 --> 00:33:37.599
every day, and so whatever we
do today is really just a stepping stone

428
00:33:37.680 --> 00:33:40.480
to whatever is beyond that. And
if we just like do like a really

429
00:33:40.680 --> 00:33:46.440
high level history lesson you know,
we had servers in closets at the office,

430
00:33:46.480 --> 00:33:50.680
and then we had data centers or
we would go wrap our servers,

431
00:33:50.759 --> 00:33:52.640
and then we figured out how to
run virtual machines on the servers, and

432
00:33:52.759 --> 00:33:59.440
then we got you know, cloud
providers like AWS where you could run virtual

433
00:33:59.480 --> 00:34:04.480
machines, and then containers and and
so like all of those were just building

434
00:34:04.559 --> 00:34:09.119
on top of the lessons learned from
the previous decisions. I mean, I

435
00:34:09.159 --> 00:34:14.639
think that's an interesting point. I
think it was like, not too long

436
00:34:14.679 --> 00:34:20.320
ago, I was reading a paper
that suggested the persistent media storage that we

437
00:34:20.480 --> 00:34:27.239
had over time was becoming more ephemeral, and like the replacement speed of things

438
00:34:27.320 --> 00:34:32.239
like the time between SETE cassettes and
I don't know what else CDs and then

439
00:34:32.519 --> 00:34:37.920
VHS tapes and DVDs to Blu ray
to you know, USB sticks slash drive

440
00:34:39.079 --> 00:34:45.719
was getting shorter over time. Ah, And it's interesting like our is our

441
00:34:45.800 --> 00:34:51.239
technology that we're building now more ephemeral, transient than what we had in the

442
00:34:51.280 --> 00:34:54.199
past. And I think what really
missed out in this article was thinking about

443
00:34:54.400 --> 00:35:01.519
the lack of stability of volatility of
the previous generation. I mean, the

444
00:35:02.360 --> 00:35:09.719
I'm gonna get this wrong. The
US launched deep space probe that contains the

445
00:35:09.920 --> 00:35:17.280
gold DVDs with is this Voyager?
I know, I don't want to I

446
00:35:17.320 --> 00:35:21.440
could believe it's called Voyager, you
know, I am not. I am

447
00:35:21.480 --> 00:35:24.400
not the exit export name recognition here. But yeah, right, like we

448
00:35:24.719 --> 00:35:28.480
put it on gold discs, right, would we still like, I mean,

449
00:35:29.039 --> 00:35:32.440
I have no idea is that better? Than you know, some other

450
00:35:32.800 --> 00:35:36.920
less ephemeral flash system that we have
now, Like, would we still use

451
00:35:36.960 --> 00:35:39.039
that same strategy? I mean probably
not. I'm sure someone dream up it's

452
00:35:39.119 --> 00:35:44.800
like some sort of antimony composite or
otherwise, but it's still like is it

453
00:35:44.920 --> 00:35:49.199
metal with like physical embeddings in it? I don't know, So I thought

454
00:35:49.239 --> 00:35:52.079
this was interesting. I would just
product tape a USB stick onto the satellite.

455
00:35:52.920 --> 00:35:57.800
I mean, I think the realistic
is like you just put fifty USB

456
00:35:57.920 --> 00:36:00.199
sticks in the satellite, like its
all as like one of them needs to

457
00:36:00.239 --> 00:36:04.599
survive. But then you like you
figure out like Hoffman coding and error correction

458
00:36:04.760 --> 00:36:07.280
and so like it's okay if like
half of each one of them survives because

459
00:36:07.280 --> 00:36:13.880
you can put the data back together. Just load them all with a multi

460
00:36:13.960 --> 00:36:19.559
petabyte ZIP file bomb just for laughs. Some aliens find it and it just

461
00:36:19.639 --> 00:36:22.320
blows up their computers. Yeah.
Well, I mean it's like running commands

462
00:36:22.400 --> 00:36:25.360
is always weird, I guess,
right, because you have to know what

463
00:36:25.440 --> 00:36:29.599
the language is in order to even
execute that thing. Otherwise it's just you

464
00:36:29.679 --> 00:36:34.199
know, nonsensical. But I think
that that's really that's really the rick roll,

465
00:36:34.320 --> 00:36:39.400
right, like just just put literal
nonsense on the disc and set that

466
00:36:39.639 --> 00:36:50.679
up, you know, a society. Yeah, I remember this an outage

467
00:36:50.719 --> 00:36:57.480
I was on many years ago,
and it was storage related where a vast

468
00:36:57.559 --> 00:37:02.360
majority of our production systems just had
no data. And so we're on this

469
00:37:02.519 --> 00:37:07.920
call troubleshooting it for hours, and
I get the storage team on the call,

470
00:37:07.079 --> 00:37:12.679
you know, and they're like,
yeah, well we had some disc

471
00:37:12.760 --> 00:37:15.800
failures and so we swapped out the
disc and like, okay, well that

472
00:37:16.119 --> 00:37:21.880
seems reasonable, and how's the rebuilding
going. Yeah, the rebuilding seems to

473
00:37:21.960 --> 00:37:25.719
be stuck. Okay, And we
talked this out over a course of a

474
00:37:25.800 --> 00:37:32.400
couple of hours and found out that
nearly every day they would come in and

475
00:37:32.679 --> 00:37:37.800
a disc would fail, and so
they would swap out the disc. But

476
00:37:37.960 --> 00:37:45.000
then after a week or so,
in the twenty four hours between the failures,

477
00:37:45.079 --> 00:37:49.880
that wasn't enough time to rebuild the
disc. But then they would come

478
00:37:49.920 --> 00:37:53.079
in and swap out another disc.
So after a week or so they'd swapped

479
00:37:53.079 --> 00:38:00.360
out enough discs, we're in this
storage array where none of the dis had

480
00:38:00.480 --> 00:38:06.480
enough information to do it, so
they lost everything. Wow. I mean

481
00:38:06.599 --> 00:38:14.320
I wow, that's you know,
and then you go back to okay,

482
00:38:14.400 --> 00:38:17.079
well, let's let's restore from tape. When's the last time you've verified your

483
00:38:17.800 --> 00:38:23.960
tape backups? Yeah, and you
get crickets like all right, well we're

484
00:38:23.960 --> 00:38:30.000
going. I mean it's like this
is like one on one running fire drills

485
00:38:30.039 --> 00:38:34.360
on your that's the recovery process.
Like, yeah, forget verification, Like

486
00:38:34.400 --> 00:38:37.280
did you even like you literally need
to load the date in bload the data

487
00:38:37.400 --> 00:38:42.599
and be like yeah, we're switching
over to it for real. Otherwise you

488
00:38:42.920 --> 00:38:45.599
might as well not happen. Yeah, And I think that's in my experience,

489
00:38:45.719 --> 00:38:51.880
that's been a hard thing to prioritize. You know, you just essentially

490
00:38:52.000 --> 00:38:54.199
have to say, look, this
is what we're doing. You may not

491
00:38:54.519 --> 00:38:59.239
like it, but there will be
a day in our future where you are

492
00:38:59.400 --> 00:39:01.800
happy that we spent this time because
you learned so much in trying to do

493
00:39:01.960 --> 00:39:07.400
that and you recognize all of the
things that you thought you had covered that

494
00:39:07.599 --> 00:39:10.840
you don't have covered. Yeah,
no, for sure. I mean I

495
00:39:10.880 --> 00:39:16.280
think that's one of the areas that's
really undersold by the cloud. Like so

496
00:39:16.519 --> 00:39:20.679
often I used to do before my
current thing, I was doing some fractional

497
00:39:21.199 --> 00:39:27.960
engineering CTO advising consulting, and it's
too expensive for us to move to the

498
00:39:28.039 --> 00:39:31.880
cloud because we looked at our current
infrastructure that was on some on prem data

499
00:39:31.920 --> 00:39:37.760
center or delegated and we just calculated
the exact number that it would be if

500
00:39:37.800 --> 00:39:44.360
we tried to run those exact things
in AWS. And the ridiculous part is

501
00:39:44.440 --> 00:39:50.880
like they're not accounting for the actual
value add of not having your tape backups,

502
00:39:51.800 --> 00:39:57.039
you know, right array failure issues, because that is like if you

503
00:39:57.159 --> 00:40:01.280
care about that, and you probably
should actually care about that, it's non

504
00:40:01.440 --> 00:40:08.840
trivial to have that working correctly for
sure. Yeah, that was whenever I

505
00:40:08.920 --> 00:40:13.800
got out of high school, I
joined the Navy and became a nuclear engineer.

506
00:40:13.880 --> 00:40:16.639
And one of the things that they
did there was they just really drilled

507
00:40:16.719 --> 00:40:22.159
home the whole disaster recovery thing.
You know, you would be operating the

508
00:40:22.199 --> 00:40:28.559
power plant at two am, and
you know, some master chief who was

509
00:40:28.639 --> 00:40:30.320
up and couldn't sleep, he'd go
walk down into the power plant and just

510
00:40:30.400 --> 00:40:35.599
turned something off just to watch everyone
respond, you know, and it really

511
00:40:35.679 --> 00:40:43.239
reinforced the disaster recovery drills so that
whenever something did happen unintentionally, just those

512
00:40:43.280 --> 00:40:46.920
skills we were just muscle memory at
that point. Yeah, that really Also

513
00:40:46.960 --> 00:40:53.519
it seems like an exercise and root
cause analysis, right, because which is

514
00:40:53.679 --> 00:41:01.320
not practiced enough realistically. I mean, there's a lot of I don't know.

515
00:41:01.760 --> 00:41:05.639
I think there's a lot of companies
out there that talk about post mortems

516
00:41:05.679 --> 00:41:07.519
and one on, but having been
in quite a few in my day,

517
00:41:07.719 --> 00:41:14.400
I don't usually see them run in
a way that actually has meaningful outcome there,

518
00:41:14.639 --> 00:41:20.280
like actually resulting in better processes or
practices in general. I think the

519
00:41:20.400 --> 00:41:22.840
number one thing that comes out as
well, we should have better tests,

520
00:41:23.079 --> 00:41:29.079
right, we should have more tests. That's the solution, more tests,

521
00:41:30.519 --> 00:41:34.559
And that's usually what happened, more
tests, usually by adding some sort of

522
00:41:34.639 --> 00:41:40.239
rule to your CICD platform that ensured
that your code coverage was at above eighty

523
00:41:40.280 --> 00:41:45.519
percent, which is always just great
whenever you delete code and it goes down

524
00:41:46.199 --> 00:41:50.880
because of course you deleted code with
tests on it, because that's usually the

525
00:41:50.920 --> 00:41:58.480
code that's tested the most worthless not
necessary. So and I'm just like,

526
00:41:58.679 --> 00:42:02.840
I don't like I have stopped working
contributing to certain open source projects when that

527
00:42:02.920 --> 00:42:05.920
happens. I'm just like, I
don't know what to do here, Like

528
00:42:06.000 --> 00:42:10.880
I don't know enough about this service
or SDK library to add tests somewhere else

529
00:42:12.639 --> 00:42:15.360
because obviously they're not there for a
reason. It was deemed too difficult to

530
00:42:15.400 --> 00:42:19.360
add them. And now you're asking
someone who doesn't know what's going on here

531
00:42:20.559 --> 00:42:23.199
to fix a bug by deleting code
and you can't. You can't do it,

532
00:42:23.960 --> 00:42:29.400
yeah, for sure. And every
test carries an equal amount of technical

533
00:42:29.519 --> 00:42:35.079
debt with it because the test has
to be it has to be actively maintained

534
00:42:35.199 --> 00:42:39.559
and evaluate like is this test still
testing the right thing? And when it

535
00:42:39.719 --> 00:42:44.599
fails, did it fail for the
right reasons? Yeah? Yeah, no,

536
00:42:44.800 --> 00:42:46.519
for sure, for sure. And
I think there's a whole, this

537
00:42:46.760 --> 00:42:52.519
whole h extra hours of uh content
here that may not be directly related to

538
00:42:52.599 --> 00:42:58.360
DevOps that you go on with.
I mean I worked with a lot of

539
00:42:58.840 --> 00:43:04.320
originally QA but eventually QUI and just
selfware engineering teams trying to turn it all

540
00:43:04.360 --> 00:43:07.800
into the DevOps mindset, because that
was a new term, I guess during

541
00:43:08.119 --> 00:43:14.360
my tenure at different companies, and
not one that was always so practiced readily,

542
00:43:15.360 --> 00:43:21.199
for sure. So what were some
of the things in your career If

543
00:43:21.280 --> 00:43:25.199
for someone who's just getting started or
part way through their career, what were

544
00:43:25.280 --> 00:43:30.599
some of the things that you did
that didn't seem to have any value or

545
00:43:30.960 --> 00:43:35.840
were perhaps negative to your career,
Oh for sure. The one, My

546
00:43:36.039 --> 00:43:43.599
favorite one is telling other people how
their solution won't work. Yeah, that's

547
00:43:43.760 --> 00:43:46.360
rare, my favorite. I thought, you know, I was doing the

548
00:43:46.440 --> 00:43:51.000
right thing early on. Hey there's
this thing that doesn't work. I mean

549
00:43:51.480 --> 00:43:55.519
I not so long ago. I
actually did a presentation about how the human

550
00:43:55.599 --> 00:44:04.800
psychology doesn't respond togative to terrence or
even really any sort of constructive feedback very

551
00:44:04.840 --> 00:44:09.079
effectively. I mean, there's a
whole psychological safety aspect and desire to change

552
00:44:10.079 --> 00:44:15.079
of which most people you know don't
fit there. Most people care more about

553
00:44:15.760 --> 00:44:20.039
being told that they're right or they're
doing a good job, which says a

554
00:44:20.119 --> 00:44:24.119
lot for positive reinforcement that you can
get people to do the right thing,

555
00:44:24.400 --> 00:44:29.400
to be motivated even if you congratulate
them, if you tell them how they're

556
00:44:29.440 --> 00:44:32.400
doing good job, give them rewards. Just don't put this the carrot in

557
00:44:32.440 --> 00:44:38.239
front of them too often or explicitly, because it will. It can derail

558
00:44:38.440 --> 00:44:44.239
where people get personal satisfaction and motivation
from. But it helps way more than

559
00:44:44.280 --> 00:44:51.519
anything else. Like, I think
there's this common misconception that's widely acknowledged that

560
00:44:52.440 --> 00:44:57.199
performance improvement plans work in some way. I mean, it's a great example,

561
00:44:57.280 --> 00:44:59.079
right, you know, hey,
we're going to fire you if you

562
00:44:59.159 --> 00:45:04.800
don't get your act to get other
never really fix anyone's career specistically, it

563
00:45:04.840 --> 00:45:06.760
did help, right, you know, those were the words that someone needed

564
00:45:06.800 --> 00:45:09.559
to hear. Yeah, yeah,
but you know that was a big one.

565
00:45:09.800 --> 00:45:14.079
I think another one for me,
and I was lucky that I had

566
00:45:14.119 --> 00:45:17.719
a couple of mentors that really shared
this with me specifically, is that it

567
00:45:17.760 --> 00:45:22.199
doesn't matter how good of a job
you do. Realistically, no one cares.

568
00:45:22.800 --> 00:45:27.880
They care about the outcomes that are
important for them, and so figuring

569
00:45:27.920 --> 00:45:30.480
out what actually is important for them. And it's not like some them,

570
00:45:30.559 --> 00:45:35.920
which is some vacuous, morphous blob
somewhere. It's you know, put points

571
00:45:35.920 --> 00:45:40.559
to your finger at whoever is responsible
for giving you a promotion or who I

572
00:45:40.639 --> 00:45:45.000
mean, realistically, whoever cares about
your future development, which you should know

573
00:45:45.280 --> 00:45:47.840
who that is and how they're going
to help you get to the next level,

574
00:45:49.480 --> 00:45:53.039
and ask what's important for them today, right now in the future.

575
00:45:53.519 --> 00:45:58.519
And that's the answer, Like everything
else, totally irrelevant. I mean,

576
00:45:58.679 --> 00:46:00.920
do it makes you happy? Right? Like you shouldn't go to your job

577
00:46:00.960 --> 00:46:04.320
and be unhappy, so you know, find a way to work that in,

578
00:46:04.880 --> 00:46:07.599
but don't for one moment believe that
doing a good job. And this

579
00:46:07.880 --> 00:46:12.400
was like some lie that I had
told myself, and I remember thinking it

580
00:46:12.519 --> 00:46:15.480
so many times. I know there
are these things called politics. I'm not

581
00:46:15.519 --> 00:46:19.440
going to get involved. All I
care about like I will get promoted by

582
00:46:19.519 --> 00:46:22.679
doing the best work I possibly can. And I just stop using the word

583
00:46:22.719 --> 00:46:24.599
politics because it doesn't like it doesn't
really land. It didn't land for me,

584
00:46:24.679 --> 00:46:28.239
It doesn't I don't think it lands
for other people. Really, just

585
00:46:28.280 --> 00:46:30.719
think about what you want and then
draw the steps to how to make that

586
00:46:30.840 --> 00:46:35.719
happen, which are usually convinced someone
else that you did a good job.

587
00:46:36.119 --> 00:46:42.840
And that just involves a conversation for
sure. Yeah. Yeah, there was

588
00:46:43.320 --> 00:46:50.199
a quote and I can't remember it
exactly, but someone said, just because

589
00:46:50.280 --> 00:46:55.400
you choose not to play in politics
doesn't mean it's not a political game.

590
00:46:55.880 --> 00:47:05.280
H Yeah. I mean I think
I think for me, there was the

591
00:47:05.480 --> 00:47:07.840
like this way, you still twist
it for yourself, where like, okay,

592
00:47:07.920 --> 00:47:10.239
there is still a game, but
I'm going to try to get around

593
00:47:10.280 --> 00:47:16.840
it in some way. And I
think I think sometimes assigning those labels really

594
00:47:16.920 --> 00:47:22.039
hurts. Like another one I think
really wasn't great for me in my career.

595
00:47:22.119 --> 00:47:24.000
It was people calling I mean,
I don't know if you can believe

596
00:47:24.039 --> 00:47:30.400
this, but apparently early in my
career I lacked what are called soft skills,

597
00:47:32.320 --> 00:47:35.719
you know. I think that goes
along with telling people that they're wrong,

598
00:47:35.960 --> 00:47:37.800
you know their solution won't work,
and then also be like I'm very

599
00:47:37.840 --> 00:47:39.679
to the point and very blatant about
it. So, you know, a

600
00:47:39.719 --> 00:47:44.440
couple of those things together, and
sometimes people's feelings got hurt, which of

601
00:47:44.480 --> 00:47:46.320
course was never my intention, which
is totally different than all those people that

602
00:47:46.800 --> 00:47:52.800
do it with this sort of negative
or malicious connotation to it, like it

603
00:47:52.880 --> 00:47:54.280
wasn't about you, it was about
like, literally, this solution doesn't work.

604
00:47:55.440 --> 00:47:59.079
I think for me, what really
helped to stop calling them soft skills,

605
00:47:59.159 --> 00:48:01.320
stop calling it Paul politics, and
focus on what it really means,

606
00:48:01.360 --> 00:48:06.880
which is you can work way more
collaboratively with other people if they like working

607
00:48:07.000 --> 00:48:08.920
with you, right, And when
you phrase it like that, I feel

608
00:48:08.960 --> 00:48:14.880
like it much more helps people who
maybe it were in my position or similar

609
00:48:14.920 --> 00:48:20.719
positions who maybe don't go along by
default or different cultures engage with each other

610
00:48:22.400 --> 00:48:25.239
to take a step forward than it
would if your manager just says, hey,

611
00:48:25.280 --> 00:48:31.800
you know you're missing this manager buzzword
that doesn't necessarily connect. Yeah,

612
00:48:31.920 --> 00:48:38.800
for sure. I think you know
you mentioned having mentors. I think that's

613
00:48:38.880 --> 00:48:45.679
been really I've really taken a completely
different view of that over the last few

614
00:48:45.800 --> 00:48:51.320
years, because you know, like
I grew up in the middle of Texas

615
00:48:51.440 --> 00:48:55.719
in the seventies and eighties and can
honestly say, I don't know that I

616
00:48:55.840 --> 00:49:00.320
ever heard the word mentor until I
was in my twenty and probably never used

617
00:49:00.320 --> 00:49:02.960
it in a sentence till I was
in my thirties. But now you know,

618
00:49:04.360 --> 00:49:07.159
it's a very common word. And
I used to think, well,

619
00:49:08.920 --> 00:49:14.039
I guess I didn't have any mentors, But then I the more I thought

620
00:49:14.039 --> 00:49:16.320
about it, the more I realized
that I did. I just didn't know

621
00:49:16.400 --> 00:49:24.960
what the word was for them,
and it wasn't a negotiated arrangement. And

622
00:49:25.079 --> 00:49:30.079
I think that's still true. You
know, like you can have mentors without

623
00:49:30.159 --> 00:49:32.800
having a formal conversation. I have
this contract here, would you like to

624
00:49:32.840 --> 00:49:36.800
be my mentor? It's very low
offer and low commitments, easy out.

625
00:49:37.320 --> 00:49:38.719
You know, it's not that type
of thing. Like a mentor can be

626
00:49:38.880 --> 00:49:46.239
anyone who who says anything to you, whether it's helpful or hurtful, and

627
00:49:47.039 --> 00:49:53.559
it doesn't have to be like on
your terms. And what I mean by

628
00:49:53.639 --> 00:49:59.360
that is like, you know,
people have their way of communicating, you

629
00:49:59.440 --> 00:50:00.400
know, Like I said, grow
up in Texas and then I went to

630
00:50:00.519 --> 00:50:05.039
the Navy. And this was back
in a time whenever being in the Navy,

631
00:50:05.559 --> 00:50:09.960
your performance was judged on how many
bar fights you got into without going

632
00:50:10.039 --> 00:50:14.039
to jail. So it was,
you know, it was a different environment.

633
00:50:14.199 --> 00:50:19.119
So whenever, like your master chief
told you, hey, you ever

634
00:50:19.199 --> 00:50:21.360
pulled that shit again, I'm gonna
kick your ass. You know, that

635
00:50:21.519 --> 00:50:25.719
was a form of mentoring. You
know, it wasn't it wasn't a nurturing

636
00:50:25.800 --> 00:50:29.679
relationship, but it was a mentoring
relationship. And so I think that was

637
00:50:29.800 --> 00:50:32.159
one of the things I've learned over
the years is that mentoring comes in all

638
00:50:32.320 --> 00:50:37.599
forms and it's not a predefined,
negotiated relationship. Yeah, no, that's

639
00:50:38.119 --> 00:50:43.199
I think it's even more effective when
it's not. Like I hear of companies

640
00:50:43.239 --> 00:50:47.400
trying to start some sort of mentorship
program, and it's usually like my company

641
00:50:47.480 --> 00:50:51.239
is starting a mentorship program? How
do I make this be effective? And

642
00:50:51.280 --> 00:50:53.440
I'm like, well, why are
they starting it? Like you're getting in

643
00:50:53.599 --> 00:50:58.079
on the wrong foot almost, And
you say that, and I'm thinking back

644
00:50:58.119 --> 00:51:00.599
to my own career and I feel
like every job I was in, there

645
00:51:00.639 --> 00:51:06.920
was always someone who I gravitated towards
and because maybe they were more experienced,

646
00:51:07.239 --> 00:51:08.599
but it was never like, hey, can you be my mentor? It

647
00:51:08.760 --> 00:51:14.119
was me asking them questions when I
when something came up, trying to get

648
00:51:14.320 --> 00:51:17.599
additional information or understand how they did
things. I think that that definitely helped

649
00:51:17.800 --> 00:51:22.000
makes like going to the right people
potentially that I think I would definitely classify

650
00:51:22.039 --> 00:51:28.360
as as mentorship. So you asked
about things to do early on in your

651
00:51:28.400 --> 00:51:31.840
career, you know, find people
that can teach you something, and they

652
00:51:31.880 --> 00:51:37.599
will absolutely teach you those things.
I hate to quote Steve Jobs, but

653
00:51:37.679 --> 00:51:43.079
he has an example where he called
out and asked an executive for feedback to

654
00:51:43.159 --> 00:51:45.400
help them and they're like, yeah, sure, I how can I do

655
00:51:45.519 --> 00:51:50.400
that? I think it really is
that people will I think Adam Grant says

656
00:51:50.400 --> 00:51:55.440
the majority of people are matters that
most people will reciprocate un asked. Really,

657
00:51:55.480 --> 00:52:00.159
if they think there's a good engagement
for them or could be a good

658
00:52:00.199 --> 00:52:05.239
relationship or whatever. It doesn't have
to be like something static like put a

659
00:52:05.320 --> 00:52:08.880
label on it, like it's not
necessarily required. Yeah for sure, for

660
00:52:08.960 --> 00:52:15.360
sure. All right, so there
you go, Welcome to the podcast.

661
00:52:16.679 --> 00:52:20.639
Yeah, I mean, you know, even here I I I before this,

662
00:52:21.039 --> 00:52:23.519
I was asking you, you know, personal questions about how you how

663
00:52:23.599 --> 00:52:25.719
you run this, you know,
as a good as a good example,

664
00:52:27.000 --> 00:52:30.480
you know, come ready, how
do I do this effectively? Just because

665
00:52:30.480 --> 00:52:32.079
you know, I want to do
the best job I can and I'm not

666
00:52:32.480 --> 00:52:37.400
the super expert in the area.
Obviously I pull skills from what I have

667
00:52:37.519 --> 00:52:40.480
in the past, but looking for
people that have even just slightly more experience

668
00:52:40.559 --> 00:52:46.119
than I do. Yeah for sure. So what do you think should we

669
00:52:46.159 --> 00:52:49.199
move on the picks? Yeah,
I'm trying to. I'm trying to think

670
00:52:49.199 --> 00:52:52.639
if I have any you know,
most most important thing that I you know,

671
00:52:52.840 --> 00:52:55.719
ever ever wanted to share here.
And I feel like I have so

672
00:52:55.840 --> 00:53:00.599
many things, but probably not super
relevant at this point. So yeah,

673
00:53:00.639 --> 00:53:04.480
let's let's do the That's the great
thing about picks is it doesn't have to

674
00:53:04.559 --> 00:53:07.760
be relevant at all. Just be
like, oh man, this is so

675
00:53:07.920 --> 00:53:15.679
cool, you know. And so
we were talking about movies before we started

676
00:53:15.719 --> 00:53:21.920
recording, and during that conversation I
learned that, Okay, you obviously are

677
00:53:21.960 --> 00:53:27.119
a movie guy. You have your
own IMDb account where you save and rank

678
00:53:27.199 --> 00:53:31.280
your movie, so I know you've
got something there. He wants he wants

679
00:53:31.320 --> 00:53:36.719
to hear my favorite movie of all
times, all time favorites, you know.

680
00:53:36.840 --> 00:53:38.239
And that's the thing where I'm looking
at this list, and I have

681
00:53:38.639 --> 00:53:46.119
twenty two movies rated at ten stars, which is the maximum, and so

682
00:53:46.880 --> 00:53:53.039
I feel like even picking one of
these is just such such a challenge.

683
00:53:53.280 --> 00:53:58.400
Realistically, It's like picking a favorite
kid. You can do it as long

684
00:53:58.440 --> 00:54:04.360
as the other kids as you have, don't hear you. I mean,

685
00:54:04.519 --> 00:54:06.480
you know, and I like them. I think they liked them all for

686
00:54:06.599 --> 00:54:08.960
different reasons. That's the interesting thing. Like I have ones that are film

687
00:54:09.079 --> 00:54:13.480
noir, which I as a genre
I really like, But then I have

688
00:54:13.639 --> 00:54:17.400
ones that just for whatever reason I
liked and had some emotional component to it.

689
00:54:19.320 --> 00:54:22.920
For instance, you know what this
one I think I saw recently,

690
00:54:22.039 --> 00:54:24.800
So I'll say this. I think
you know, it's not my top one,

691
00:54:24.840 --> 00:54:28.440
but you know, this is the
one I'm going to pull out this

692
00:54:28.559 --> 00:54:35.440
contact. It's if you haven't seen
it, it's with Jodie Foster and I

693
00:54:35.559 --> 00:54:39.079
think they're the sad part. It's
about about making contact with aliens. Maybe

694
00:54:39.880 --> 00:54:44.199
she has sort of a moment in
building a machine. It's about the SETI

695
00:54:44.280 --> 00:54:51.719
project where they discover, of course, signal from outer space and t USB

696
00:54:51.880 --> 00:54:57.599
drives to the satellite to contact.
No, actually they the communication around our

697
00:54:57.639 --> 00:55:00.679
space was a machine in ructions for
building a machine which they could build.

698
00:55:01.239 --> 00:55:05.639
And of course, like you know, she spent her whole life doing this,

699
00:55:06.480 --> 00:55:09.000
you know, through adversity, and
she doesn't get to be the one

700
00:55:09.079 --> 00:55:14.719
to sit in the chair to go
contact the aliens. Initially, I feel

701
00:55:14.760 --> 00:55:16.920
like the thing that really hit me
is there is it's such sort of like

702
00:55:16.960 --> 00:55:21.679
a I don't even know it was
intentional, but such a parallel to some

703
00:55:21.840 --> 00:55:24.760
of the struggles of diversity in the
tech industry, because I feel like she

704
00:55:24.960 --> 00:55:30.519
was the perfect pick in every single
one of these situations and kept getting gone

705
00:55:30.599 --> 00:55:34.079
over for whatever reason. And like
the Catharsis, at the end of the

706
00:55:34.119 --> 00:55:37.119
movie, she actually does get to
meet the aliens and then no one believes

707
00:55:37.159 --> 00:55:43.599
her, which is just like,
I mean, I like space movies,

708
00:55:43.599 --> 00:55:47.639
and I like that one had me
just I felt so bad, like hearing

709
00:55:47.760 --> 00:55:52.880
that, like just seeing that story, which of course is not real as

710
00:55:52.920 --> 00:55:55.800
far as I know that, Like, I'm sure there are people out there

711
00:55:55.840 --> 00:56:00.280
who said that, you know,
they've they've met aliens, right, Yeah,

712
00:56:00.599 --> 00:56:06.920
there's been a few, but none
of the interviews I've seen have the

713
00:56:07.039 --> 00:56:15.280
credibility of Jodie Foster just say yeah, what's your what's what's your peck?

714
00:56:15.880 --> 00:56:21.760
So my pick for the week is
going to be for the platform Con conference.

715
00:56:21.960 --> 00:56:25.199
And we had the guy who created
it, Luca. He was on

716
00:56:25.320 --> 00:56:30.400
this show. I don't remember that
episode number, but he was on last

717
00:56:30.480 --> 00:56:36.000
year talking about platform engineering. But
platform Con is a virtual conference that's five

718
00:56:36.199 --> 00:56:39.199
days long, coming up here in
a few months. But it's it's really

719
00:56:39.280 --> 00:56:44.159
well done. And the reason I'm
picking it is because at the end of

720
00:56:44.239 --> 00:56:50.760
the conference there's going to be a
live Q and a session where I'm going

721
00:56:50.840 --> 00:56:54.559
to interview some of the keynote speakers
at the end of the conference. So

722
00:56:55.000 --> 00:56:59.159
I'm looking forward to that, looking
forward to to talk with those people and

723
00:57:00.760 --> 00:57:04.800
seeing if I can uncover some things
that didn't get brought up in the conference,

724
00:57:05.320 --> 00:57:08.880
and that seems pretty awesome. Yeah, Yeah, it's a cool it's

725
00:57:08.880 --> 00:57:13.559
a cool conference, and the best
part is it's virtual, so you can

726
00:57:13.639 --> 00:57:16.400
just throw it on the background while
you're doing whatever it is you're doing and

727
00:57:16.480 --> 00:57:20.960
you don't have to try to argue
with your boss to get you know,

728
00:57:22.039 --> 00:57:25.360
to get approval to go to it. But check it out at platform con

729
00:57:25.480 --> 00:57:30.039
dot com. And you've got a
few months to get into to get signed

730
00:57:30.079 --> 00:57:34.000
up for that, so plenty of
time I start. I'm going to put

731
00:57:34.039 --> 00:57:37.280
it on my list because I'm sure
there's something there I'm interested in. Yeah,

732
00:57:37.360 --> 00:57:42.920
they cover a pretty good range of
topics, you know, not just

733
00:57:43.320 --> 00:57:49.639
obviously not just DevOps related, but
platform related and platform really is I'm like

734
00:57:49.679 --> 00:57:54.239
in the word platform because I think
it's more representative of all of the things

735
00:57:55.039 --> 00:58:02.800
that we cover versus DevOps. Yeah, for sure, So that's going to

736
00:58:02.840 --> 00:58:07.960
be my pick. So for anyone
who's listening to the show and wants to

737
00:58:08.280 --> 00:58:15.039
reach out to you about it,
either about authors or just career or just

738
00:58:15.159 --> 00:58:19.840
to say hey, when can you
get that will do fired so that we

739
00:58:19.920 --> 00:58:24.639
can go on with a decent podcast? How can they contact you? I

740
00:58:24.719 --> 00:58:30.800
think for sure? I accept LinkedIn
connections if you start a conversation, I

741
00:58:30.880 --> 00:58:35.199
will I will I kick people out
of my connections if they don't talk to

742
00:58:35.280 --> 00:58:39.559
me on LinkedIn. I think knowing
who your network is that is valuable to

743
00:58:39.639 --> 00:58:45.360
you is valuable, and it's difficult
to go through your rolodex if you don't

744
00:58:45.519 --> 00:58:49.960
know who you can actually talk to. But I think fundamentally the best place

745
00:58:50.159 --> 00:58:53.599
is on discord. I'm in a
bunch of different Discord communities. I think

746
00:58:53.639 --> 00:58:57.840
we can get the link in my
host profile or something like that for sure.

747
00:58:57.960 --> 00:59:00.320
Yeah, And that's definitely going to
be the best way. And I

748
00:59:00.159 --> 00:59:05.760
happily talk about whatever you want to
talk about. Their cool right on.

749
00:59:07.599 --> 00:59:09.440
My wife spends a lot of time
on Facebook. Not a lot of time,

750
00:59:09.440 --> 00:59:14.679
but she's on Facebook. But she
has a similar rule where she only

751
00:59:14.840 --> 00:59:20.559
allows fifty people as her Facebook friends. So if someone else wants to be

752
00:59:20.760 --> 00:59:23.639
her friend on Facebook and their number
fifty one, she's like, I got

753
00:59:23.760 --> 00:59:27.920
to kick someone else out before I
can be friends with you because fifty is

754
00:59:27.960 --> 00:59:31.079
the limit. So there's two really
good points about that. First one,

755
00:59:31.119 --> 00:59:35.079
I'm doing the exact same thing on
Facebook. I mean, if we think

756
00:59:35.079 --> 00:59:38.960
about Dunbar's number, which is not
a fixed number for the record, it's

757
00:59:39.199 --> 00:59:44.519
just not possible to have that many
close connections, so realistically, you should

758
00:59:44.559 --> 00:59:47.360
keep people in the loop that are
relevant for you. It's way more effective

759
00:59:47.400 --> 00:59:52.800
and you'll be happier when you are
focusing on your connections that matter. On

760
00:59:52.920 --> 00:59:55.480
LinkedIn, it's slightly different. I
don't put a fixed number there because there

761
00:59:55.559 --> 00:59:59.800
is a advertisement effect for my brand. It's sort of like Twitter. The

762
00:59:59.840 --> 01:00:01.519
more people that hear me, the
better. But I'm not on Facebook and

763
01:00:01.519 --> 01:00:05.920
I almost never use it other than
I you know, I do need to

764
01:00:05.920 --> 01:00:08.719
talk to one of these really close
people, and I don't really use Facebook

765
01:00:08.760 --> 01:00:14.880
at all besides that. Yeah,
agreed. Cool, All right, Well,

766
01:00:15.039 --> 01:00:19.599
Warren, I'm excited to have you
here and I'm looking forward to many

767
01:00:19.679 --> 01:00:22.960
many episodes with you, and I
think this is going to be fun.

768
01:00:23.400 --> 01:00:29.119
Yeah, me too, I'm I'm
excited right on. Cool. Well,

769
01:00:29.159 --> 01:00:31.960
thanks for listening to everyone, and
we will see y'all next week with another

770
01:00:32.159 --> 01:00:37.159
episode. And I'll stop the podcast
as soon as I find my mouse there

771
01:00:37.199 --> 01:00:40.119
we go, all right, see
everyone. Bye.

