Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome again back to another episode of Adventure
in DevOps. Today, I'm joined by our guest Ben Johnson,
and unfortunately Will, my fellow co host, would not be
able to make it, but he sends his regards. Apparently
they may have pushed something at the end of Friday
last and well we probably know not to do that,
but you know, maybe he's a little bit tired because
we were last week, we were talking a lot about
having really long careers, and so I'm really excited this
week to talk with Ben, who actually joins us for
the second time.
Speaker 2: Who has just I mean, it seems like you've been
in and.
Speaker 1: Out a lot of different companies for a very long
period of time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I'm the CEO of Particle forty one,
and we have expertise in software development about engineering devopsn
sipos sees term DevOps anymore, I guess. And then data science,
which of course includes AI solution for clients.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, right, you know that's the newest trend
of course.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, we'll try not to talk about that too much.
Speaker 2: Why not use the term develops anymore.
Speaker 3: So it's been this debate DevOps versus platform engineering. I
love these articles because they do really talk about the
kind of the issue with DevOps as it was widely
adopted as it became the new cloud it and so
we love this internal discussion, especially since I'm selling these services.
I want to be clear that our job is to
actually engineer ourselves out of a job. And so we've
started to use that term platform engineering and try to
create that conversation where we're talking about the good and
the bad of DevOps and what will we all believe
it to be this kind of eternal definition definition thing
that's in the community so prevalently.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I definitely was one of these warriors
at the beginning to try to maintain the purity of
what DevOps was, and I think for a lot of
people that means different things. And over time I definitely
lost that battle, and I sort of gave up because
my vision is that it's a mindset change for organizations
on how they approach things.
Speaker 2: And I have.
Speaker 1: Noticed now it's pretty much a replacement instead of calling
team release engineering team.
Speaker 2: Or actually a long time ago it.
Speaker 1: Was called platform engineering teams, I think what we have
now is something slightly different or sre are often known
as DevOps team, and they spend a lot of time
right now, I think working on Kubernetes more than anything.
Speaker 3: Sure, yep, we're in that daily, daily battle, or not
really a battle, but we love to help. So we
just don't want to be like the what was it
the episode of Lost where they had to push the
red button every five minutes or something really bad happened.
We of course want to work our way out out
of out of that type of situation. The business shouldn't
be in that kind of situation, so we want to
take the magic red button out of the equation as
much as possible.
Speaker 1: Have you so you transition to using the term platform
engineering because you found that like a lot of your
clients had a wrong impression of.
Speaker 2: It or was more progressive.
Speaker 3: DevOps is still the right marketing term. So that's still
what people understand. But we kind of have that conversation
readily about Okay, you know cloud I T is what
we're doing. If we automate some more things, then we're
creating a platform that's resilient and working for you. You're
not working for it, and so yeah, we try to
do some of that.
Speaker 1: Vocabulary makes sense A lot I do have a question
here because a lot of our audience obviously focused in
the devas space, like what sorts of problems do you
see yourself and your company coming into helping clients with.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we're really big on that app modernization at
monetization part of it. So since we have a robust
software development team, we're usually and some of my best partners,
partners in crimeer MSPs MSPs are kind of hoarding the
legacy tech and that's what we really want to do
is replace the world's legacy tech with modern services of
modern cloud services. And so we're kind of coming into
some older things that were built as as pets and
we're converting them to cattle. So what that usually looks
like is containerizing. One thing we're working on as a
payment solution that was provided and the original engineers use
Seapanel as their means to virtualize. So we thought, well, okay,
you provided Spanel, does that mean that you're in customers
are logging. Nope, Nope, we are using Spanel as our virtualizer,
and so we showed we're showing them and we've showed
them how converting that to containers with the c c
D pipeline eliminates the cost for c panel and it's
actually way easier to use. You just interact with the
repository and Bob's your uncle. Sounds overly simplified, but it's
really not. It's like just you know, huge reduction in
price to support the all that virtualization and then we've
kind of converting it to cattle, so it's it's it's
going to be a n PCI scope, so we don't
want to have the pets to do all that security
work with and so like, yeah, a lot of containerization
and then we're not afraid to touch the applications like
most managed service providers might be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so yeah, I was going to ask you about that.
So MSP is a managed service provider, and we're talking
to like ones that had come in and delivered their
own software as an application that your clients were running previously,
or help them to build something, or gave them the technology.
We're talking on prem or post a lift and shift
into one of the cloud providers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all of that, those are the kinds of projects
we're getting like readily involved in on prem to cloud,
the cloud migration. And then what does the application, how
does the application need to be refactored to support that movement.
Speaker 1: Do you still see a lot of organizations on using
on premise solutions when they don't need to be still
or has that really died down a lot in the industry.
Speaker 3: No, it's still there. It's still there, and it's surprisingly
in really important, like really important industries like banking. Not like,
so we all know Capital one super vocal in the community,
a lot of we know a lot of Capital one
people are friends and they were kind of the pioneers.
But you think about all these little credit unions where
the IT folks were a little bit scared of the cloud, right,
like a little bit like, well, it's maybe not secure,
and so they kind of never made that shift. So
there's a lot of still fairly critical things that are
on prem and then once they invested in those data centers,
they they had to kind of stick with that investment.
And so now we're seeing all of that tech age out.
And then not to over beat up AI, but I
think their desire to use AI is also driving them
towards cloud services so that it's a little more available
to them. Whereas you know, setting up all that in
an age data center just doesn't is really not like, Okay,
that's why we should have been part of this move.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have the whole rest of the episode to
beat up on AI if that route.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: I think it's really interesting that we still see so
many companies running on prem things, and I think you
really hit it pretty on the nose there that the
more secure, the more requirements regulations that companies have, the
more likely to be on prem, and almost it almost
seems more ridiculous, like I would those are the companies
that I sort of want to be in the cloud
more likely, because like those are more critical services in
most cases.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we also see a weird kind of on prem
which is more of like an instance model, so they
were giving they were actually giving a box to their
customers and say, hey, put it in your store. We
see this in kind of retail type environments, restaurants where
brick and mortar existed. There's this kind of distributed on
prem and now you know the like now they want
to centralize, so really go to the SaaS model rather
than all these distributed nodes, and then you know, getting
data out of all those nodes to do BI solutions
was a challenge. There was a lot of interaction with
those brick and mortar locations. Yeah, all the kind of
like hang ups between being distributed I call it distributed
on prem, you know, really starting to show and they
really want to take the benefit of the cloud and
centralizing and all the data things that they can do
for customers, so that I wasn't really expecting.
Speaker 2: No, I totally got it.
Speaker 1: Would you say that it's being driven from the like
software application providers who want to transition to the SaaS
moll I mean, I'm sure they're going in some cases,
but or the end users. The companies that have were
responsible for running their own sort of IT department in
order to build up a hack data center, which was
a couple of machines sitting under their desk.
Speaker 2: Where do you see the poll from?
Speaker 3: It's both. It's both that the customer wants new features.
Those new features are going to be deliverable from a
centralized location. The barrier of entry is reduced using cloud services,
so the cost of manage is lower. What ended up
happening is that then the service provider ended up having
access to those on prem servers to better support them.
So certainly the IT departments that are trying to run
like point of sales and do the things that they're
supposed to do to run those environments. Are wanting a
better solution. So yeah, I mean there are a few
in restaurants we definitely see this on prem footprint that
is required because when you're in a restaurant and you're
looking at the like in the kitchen, there's this ticket
management screen that shows the order. You know, some people
have looked behind the counter and see see it your
favorite fast food place that they're looking at the order,
they're preparing the ingredients. It's super fast paced, and if
that restaurant were to have glitchy Internet, that would disable
the whole service. So there are practical applications, and then
those practical applications we're looking at like little Kubernetes clusters
with you know, surprisingly fault small footprint machines, but you know,
taking three nooks and turn them into a Kubernetes cluster
allows you to have some on prem presence for like
super low latency and fault tolerance, but you still need
to have everything backed up to the cloud for corporate analytics.
And so you know, you're running a franchise of restaurants,
of course you're not going to go talk to all
those locations at once to understand revenue and things. So
we are seeing these kind of hybrid environments and Kubernetes
is making that, of course a lot easier to serve
them to rent the ICD to then so they get
updates and such. But there are a couple of applications
where on prem makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: I'm sort of curious there on where the burden and
responsibility for managing those physical machines that are on prem
comes from.
Speaker 2: Is it being managed by the.
Speaker 1: Third party provider who's offering the service an application, who
then like sends the knocks to the individual locations and
manages maintenance, et cetera, patching, et cetera. Or is it
sort of a shared responsibility model.
Speaker 3: It's very similar to I mean, like an iPhone or
something would be very similar automatic updates, but the shared
responsibility is that, yeah, if you miss use the device,
then you know, we'll have to give you a new one.
And so yeah, it's I would say it's a shared
responsibility model because the physical device is in the location,
so somebody has to give it power, somebody has to
plug it into internet access, you know, somebody has to
do that and hopefully they don't put it right above
the fryer. Hopefully that has.
Speaker 2: Happened, you joke.
Speaker 1: But there's a non truly number of times where I've
seen an issue with the company on site not knowing
how to manage the data center effectively and putting it
in a place which is problematic, not just in the building,
but choosing another building that's maybe close to an airport
or difficult to get to in case there's an issue,
or not well managed, like not like not following appropriate
codes because they're using a building that wasn't scoped out
to actually be a data center in some way, and
then they're being a fire or a flood and having
a real issue.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the on prem IT or in these franchise situations,
there is a facilities management function that already exists. I
mean even the point of sale machines that that you're ordering,
or the devices that the service staff at the restaurant
is carrying around to take the order, the things on
the tables to because sometimes we're doing self ordering now
where people are ordering their drinks directly from the table.
So in these cases, there is an IT services company
that can follow an sop you're sending them the device
with everything embedded on it that you need, and you're
giving them some instruction and you're hoping that they will
follow those instructions so that then you can be responsible
for keeping the software updated. So I think mobility is
a great metaphor for what's happening there.
Speaker 1: And it's your company. Particle forty one is facilitating making
this happen.
Speaker 3: We're writing the software and we're setting up the DevOps routines.
But yeah, our client is the kind of the parent
provider providing that software to all the restaurants, and then
of course they're interacting with different franchisees in that particular
use case. But we've also seen it in retail where
there was inventory management solution that was on prem that's
being centralized. So in retail, centralization is possible because the
loss of Internet doesn't completely bring down the whole place.
We can just cash up some things locally until Internet
is restored and do some queuing on prem inside of
the point of sale device. But we don't have to
be so fault tolerant that we're shipping a whole Kubernetes
cluster to the location.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I got it. If it's all right, I
sort of.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the really interesting things that you
mentioned pre show and looking at your pro was the
number of times that you've been in a position where
you've had to stand up on your team, like I imagine,
especially with multiple customers, it's not just one engineer.
Speaker 2: You're not just body listening.
Speaker 1: You're really the bining their whole process, potentially doing the
shift for them. That's a lot of teams that I
imagine you may have created from the ground up.
Speaker 2: Is that accurate?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great So we use a special operations
metaphor here, so we think of ourselves and this sounds grandiose,
but it's really a great metaphor. The more you know
about like Green Berets, so green Berets will go behind
enemy lines and they will recruit from the local militia,
so from the local people. So if you're a Green Beret,
typically you know a language, like a specific language like
Mandarin or something, and then you might also know explosives,
or you might know you know some kind of offensive skill.
It's very much similar to that where you are trained
in training because you are going to be working shoulder
to shoulder with other folks that maybe don't have the
same skills as you and are looking to you for
your expertise and your advice. So our selection us as
super rigid. You know, sometimes you would even look at somebody,
we might turn away and go like, well they look great,
their backgrounds great, and you kind of have to trust
our process because similar to the special operations, like if
somebody didn't make it to selection, there's a reason and
you just kind of trust that. You know, you don't
judge a book by their cover, and so yeah, our
selection process is really rigid because we know we're going
to get into a situation where we need to be
trained in training, we need to be ready to pass
on you know, pass on those skills. And then we
don't have any long term agreements. So we we love
to come in and help and the way we earn,
you know, more time with the client is to do
do good work. And you know, a reward for a
perfectly executed sprint is another perfectly executed sprint. So for us,
like pressure is a gift. So that's something we kind
of say across our teams. And each team member has
two concentric circles that they're operating in so they're operating
in a team engagement that has a clear mission, clear objectives.
You know, it's an agile, multi multi disciplined team with
developers QA, maybe a DevOps person or project manager, front end,
back end engineers, whatever the particular objective that the client
is trying to reach needs. And then they're also involved
in a squad, and a squad is really for them
and their professional development, and so squad leaders are helping
people be what we call T shaped, so not only
have good hard skills, but good soft skills. And then
we reward heavily for self training, so like if you
go get AWS certified, we incentivize you and we love
to so we really use this kind of special operations
before where training yourself being elite is is what how
you move up and how you're rewarded. And you know,
we really lean into, you know, how can we be
the agent that helps a team fill in all those gaps?
And when I say that, when I use team in
that context, like the client's team, the broader mission team
that we're engaged in. But people still have a place
where they can go and say, man, I'm stressed, I'm
my capacity is getting stretched, and we don't use the
word capability. We use the word capacity. So a lot
of times in our self talk, we're like, man, I
don't know if I'm capable of this. Well, that's a
good indication you just don't have capacity for it yet.
Speaker 1: That's a good way of looking at it. I've come
to a similar conclusion about using the word capability. It
always felt off in some way.
Speaker 2: I am.
Speaker 1: I am sort of curious though, if there's something you're
doing during the recruitment or hiring process that really stands
out as really the most impactful part of the review
or overall for identifying which candidates will be more successful
in this trainers trainer role.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it almost always involves looking at at code, looking
at at work product, and handling some kind of problem
together and seeing how the candidate performs in that. So
whether they bring up portfolio of code that they've worked
on before and you know, get into it and explain
it and we are impressed by that, or we do
have a series of take home projects we also use
code or byte But what we're really trying to assert
is is what does this person like to work with? Like,
what will they be like when they're on our team?
And then once you once you're in, then certifications are
mandatory for advancement. And so between a combination of those things,
we feel like we meet the selection criteria that would
be successful behind enemy line, so to speak, and and
that you have the skills to help and train train
the client's team in areas where they're where they haven't
flushed in. If you've been working on a legacy system
and now we're going to work on modern cloud service,
there are probably gaps that we need to be prepared
to fill, and we want to do that in a
super open way so that there's always this like we
can we can go work on something else at any time,
Like we're constantly keeping you informed as to what we're
working on and why so so that you don't feel
like you're just moving all your expertise to an outside team.
We want to feel like an inside an inside team.
Speaker 1: No, I mean, that's a pretty healthy perspective to have.
I've seen a lot of consultants come in and try
to encourage after work follow ups a long period of
time where they're engaged with a company, And at least
from my own perspective, when I worked in a resulting model,
I had a very similar expectation that realistically, I like
the day that you don't need me anymore is sort
of a celebration, like we achieved something so that you
know clearly you had a need and now you feel
like you don't, like something must have changed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think we celebrate that. We celebrate that we
can get into a position where and a lot of
our clients we work with them for a long time
because that partnership is there and they know exactly what's
going on, and so if that's the case, why stop.
So yeah, I think I think it works to our
benefit large percentage of the time. But yeah, you have
to take that risk. I mean, relationships are about risk,
right If you don't if you don't risk yourself, you
won't get to know anybody. And so there's there's always
that inherent risk that Okay, I don't need you anymore,
but it just doesn't really play out in reality. Like
if you're meeting somebody's needs and relationships and you've taken
that risk to show them that you're to be vulnerable
with them and share yourself, then that's where magic happens.
But if you never take that risk and you hold
on to things you're not vulnerable, then then you won't
have any powerful relationships.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I totally, I totally agree, definitely right on
the money there. I do have a I do this
question obviously, if building up teams is a common thing
that you're doing, I have to ask how you see
whatever is happening in the market.
Speaker 3: Today, Yes, this is this idea, this is that's an
interesting question I have too, Like I, it has always been,
there's always been this catch twenty two of people who
are just starting their journey. I want to get a job. Okay,
well you need experience. Well how do I get experience
without the job? It's like this kind of circular logic.
I feel like AI is going to make that worse
because the usually the entry level jobs are the ones
that are heavy typing but low unknowns. So if AI
is helping us with those the kind of the typing work,
then the demand for expertise should increase, but kind of
the number of people that it would take to run
a successful project should decrease. I don't have it like
the magical answer for that person who's just starting their career,
other than to take some time to think about the abstraction.
So One of the things we interview for in DevOps
is like network topography. Well, more often than not, most
of the folks have not ever configured a Cisco switch.
It's just you don't do that anymore because you're not
running on prem So to understand like why is an
IP address numbered the way it is? What are internal
ranges versus external ranges? You know, why do you use
a slash eight versus a slash twenty four? And just
asking some of those questions to see what is their
networking expertise. So the people who still know the context
of why things are the way they are and think
about the abstraction of how should we work. I call
it working on the business versus in the business. And
as you move up the like up the corporate ladder,
you probably work more on than in. And I think
there's just going to be a greater demand for thinking
strategically about what we do, not just the details of
what we do right and and kind of getting all
into the details of the syntax, and so I think
it's going to become easier for sure, But the demand
on the higher level knowledge I think will be, uh,
you know, be a lot higher. It's totally opposite of
like when when I started, probably when you started, you know,
knowing how to do memory collection and C plus plus
was just like like that's solid. But if that is
kind of obfuscated now, like who's going to know things
like that? Right? So knowing kind of some of the weeds,
but just really knowing like how to run a successful
project and what is good architecture that's going to be
that's going to be key.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean I'm sort of with you where I took
a moment and really reevaluated the advice that I was
giving to early engineers or ones that haven't even started
their career yet, because what I have been saying historically
may have been, you know, we have this idea of
being T shaped that means sort of understanding a lot
of things, but being deep in one area. And I
do feel like the sides of the tea are sort
of crumbling a little bit because the barrier for being
able to deliver on them is now much lower.
Speaker 2: But I don't think the as.
Speaker 1: You put it, the expertise is still needed and so
still figuring out where to go deep is super important
and figuring out like I hear a lot of people say
oh yeah, I want to go into like cloud security,
and I you know, think to myself like, well, I
feel like I'm in cloud security and there's like six
different fundamental areas, like whether you're red teaming or blue teaming,
and there's you know, purple teaming, green teaming, yellow team.
I think there's a lot in there with a whole
bunch of different things. And do you want to prefer
attacking networks or trying to defend them? Are just an
easy way of breaking it apart, and a lot of
people don't have answers to that. They're just like, you know,
they hear some words or see some job titles and say,
oh that's cool. But I feel like trying to figure
out where your expertise is going to be as you
put it, understanding, you know, dive into the networks, understand
what's going on there, or how to set up these tools.
Someone has to do that. You mentioned the C plus
plus memory management. Yeah, no one has to do that anymore,
but someone is building. Someone is building Rust compilers, and
so understanding how what important aspects are for memory management
still is absolutely a thing and just being like oh, yeah,
I'm going to learn some programming language, like that's no
longer a barrier for entry, an obstacle or a benefit.
You need to find something that actually you care about
and want to dive into.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the debate there is generalism versus speciality,
and I don't know if this settles the debate at all.
Like generalism will absolutely be of higher reward than it
was before, but so will speciality. Like you know, here's this,
you know, ten thousand lines of AI generated code that's
been probably you know, several user queries into a chat,
GPT or a copilot or whatever, and now it's all
come together. But if the architecture was wrong to start with,
then did we really do did we really accomplish anything?
And then let's say the architecture was okay to start with,
but there's issues. Who now digs into that? I mean
certainly not the person who kind of clumbed it together
asking copilot a bunch of questions. So there's going to
be this reward for being able to go deep and
this reward for knowing multiple things. And I don't know
if it's in either.
Speaker 2: Or Yeah, no, I'm totally with you.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite interviews ever has been really asking
to get someone to design a system, and I still
feel like the code is bad for lms that are
generating stuff, let alone trying to describe what the appropriate
components are that makes sense for the business problem, not
just like oh yeah, I hook up the like these
network devices with these block stores and I have a
solution like no, actually understanding what the domain components are
that are relevant and asking about how you would design
that system, because I feel like that's the sort of
thing where you still really aren't able to get any
sort of automated created solution that matches perfectly what your
business is and then be able like okay, well why
would you do it that way? You know, what are
the trade off there? And then trying to understand that
even the code being generated, well, we were always generating
code in some way, you know, we were generating binary
or then assembly, some sort of machine language, and then
some still higher level abstractions.
Speaker 2: But this is another one on top.
Speaker 3: Yeah, A couple of things come up there. One is
we have a team that I'm super proud of. They've
won multiple awards in their ability to create VR experiences
for a client who's in the safety space, and so
they can't use any form of AI for code generation
because the physics engine is all proprietary to our client.
So we really need to fully understand that the environmental
engine that we're working with, because the company's value increases
as we increase the capabilities of that core engine. And
then the experiences are just kind of the assembly of
it all into the relevant experience, you know, safe gun handling, safe,
safe forklift operation, these kind of like high risk training environments,
and and so there are going to be cases where
you don't even you don't even want to put a
line of that code into a GPT because that is
proprietary and that is irrelevant to the public. And so yeah,
you still have to know what you're doing, so that
that definitely comes up there that there will be a
lot of use cases where the button is is not
not applicable. What we are seeing though, is the evolution
of id E integrated with you know, with the and
that is just speeding up typing like phenomenally. Well, so hey,
rite the controller for this right the and it's kind
of adhering to the framework, it's adhering to best practices
as best it can. So yeah, you still need to
be asking it the right questions. We're just excited about
the reduction in typing the and so then the reduction
in possible errors, and that feels very cybernetic and feels
like really cool, right, That feels like a hood or
something that's giving you intel in real time. So we're
excited about that, but cautiously optimistic as well.
Speaker 1: It's not super critical to understanding how to do the
job more as just a tool that you can bring
to execute effectively.
Speaker 3: Yes, and and that we like, like the idea of
less keystrokes. I think as programmers we've always liked those ideas, right, like,
helped me bang on the keyboard less cool? But when
it's telling you how that seems problematic.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean for me, it's always there was always a
struggle where the bottleneck was never the speed at which
I could type. And maybe that's just because I'm a
terrible hands on engineer and that I like thinking through problems.
Speaker 3: Now, you're right, the actual business problem or the you know,
what should it do totally is more more important because yeah,
you can create it. You can create a mess or
a bad user experience faster. That doesn't really kind of
cancels each other out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, It's not like a thing getting to the wrong
answer faster is somehow better here because you don't necessarily
know that it's wrong without really diving into and evaluating it.
So there is this trade off. For sure, you almost
need to be an expert to know that it's bad,
and at that point it sort of reduces its viability
and it's not even the right answer in some circumstances.
So I do want to ask if.
Speaker 2: You know, since you're building so many of these teams,
both on your.
Speaker 1: Side and also on the client side, I assume you're
pulling from the market a lot, you're pulling from recent graduates.
Maybe you can settle the age old debate like how
critical are having cloud certificates to prove you've learned something
from one of the cloud writers before having a job, or.
Speaker 3: The experience matter for hiring them. So Special Operations is
all about selection criteria, so if you had the ability
to go, get it. So I use that metaphor as
a guiding almost like adding principle. So it's not that
the certifications are really this must have good to have it.
It's more around why not have it? So in a
competitive market space, in a market space where we want
to give objective measure to our expertise. I think certifications
serve an amazingly good purpose. And in the AFS world,
the professional certifications, like the higher up certifications are really difficult.
They require a lot of so a lot of understanding
of the different things and the different vocabulary, and so
we love that we give significant rewards to people as
they get certified and move up, our partnership with AWS
is increased and leverage. So there's a lot of business reasons,
and that's why we do incentivize certification because it is
my aim is for me and for them. But I
want to be honest about that. You know, anytime somebody's
aim is for you and for them, but you don't
talk about what you get out of it, you feel
like it always feels like a sale or a space
in And so we're really clear, like it does help
us as a company for you to spend the time,
and so we want to reward you for that. But
that's how I feel about it, like why not get
them for an objective measure of something that you've learned.
I don't totally like secondary education around computer science really
needs to improve, really needs to improve, because a lot
of people are coming out of school not understanding some
of the fundamental things, and so that's where I think.
I don't necessarily think a degree over experience is the
same as a certification. Of course, it's experience. The way
I would see it as its experienced certifications degree in
that order is how I feel.
Speaker 2: I think I will like maybe fight you a little
bit on this.
Speaker 1: I'm not a fan of the education system in humanity today.
I almost want to go push for like a full
apprenticeship sort of strategy, although I see there's a lot
of downsides there as well. The one thing I'll say,
having hired a lot of engineers from different backgrounds, is
the lack of understanding data structures and algorithms that come
out of let's say boot camps or have only gone
through the certification route. That's like the one thing I
think was super valuable. Everyone who goes through some sort
of education based higher academic career does sort of force
to learn about Like I don't care if you know
how to write a function to do a binary search,
or what a red black tree or a nested spanning
tree or basically graph like whatever.
Speaker 2: But you've heard what those words are and if.
Speaker 1: I say, like linked lists, you'd be like, oh, oh no,
not one of those, but you would know that it's
a thing that you could go look up. And without that,
I do feel like there is a missing sort of
foundation that makes some conversations difficult because you'll see, oh,
you know, why is my program so slow? And I'd be like, well,
you know, test it. It's like, well, I'm not sure
how like I'm not sure how to actually validate that
or why it's so slow, Like how do I dig
into that? And I feel like understanding that there are
some tools out there and asymptotic complexity and I just
said a lot of words here, and you know, I
think that's the sort of thing that you get.
Speaker 2: More accustomed to those.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think I over agree overall there that
there's like the certifications are not a replacement for experience,
but the professional ones they do carry this sort of
you had to learn those important concepts in order to
pass those sorts, not like the associate ones. So like,
you know, forget about the associate ones form aws. The
ones that make the difference are for sure the professional.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, I agree with your like, I agree with
what you're saying those fundamental courses are yeah, those are big.
Those are big.
Speaker 1: So I wish I wish I could have a better
understanding of macroeconomics here, because I don't understand why there
have been so many layoffs recently. And I think my
theory is a lot of companies messed up in the
last few years and over hiring, not having a clear
business model or a business strategy, or understanding how money
is going to come in, and went down the path
up hiring and proving that you could somehow turn around
have high revenue and also high expense and that's you know,
maybe a little negative whatever someone will pay for it.
And now the money's not coming in and they have
to let.
Speaker 2: Lots of people go. I don't know that. They're like,
I don't think AI has really anything to do with that.
Speaker 3: There are something I would agree with that, I don't
think it has anything to do with it either, But
the power of the raised interest rate, I feel like
it's collapsed VC almost altogether. And so now startups are
you don't like, the startup community is super criticled right now,
and so where that would take some really, that would
take on some innovative folks that maybe had a lot
of experience, We're willing to take a risk for equity.
I just think that part of the market is really
missing and languishing right now. And then that tail, the
startup becoming a medium sized company or becoming like that
tail is now injured for quite some time. So yeah,
I think we just we had it really good for
a long time with with money being available and a
lot of people willing to take risk because the cost
of money was so low, and yeah, the tail here
is going to be an interesting tale to live with.
And then what is the additional impact from AI? So
I mean, we're I don't like to operate out of fear,
and so I'm not I'm not afraid. I think what
we're using this opportunity to do is is just improve
our expertise, improve how we work as a team, to
be as elite as we POSSI can be, and and
then see just really hone in on the kind of
customers we want to work with and just really doing
our absolute best on every engagement.
Speaker 1: That's a really good perspective, I think because historically you
could maybe like maybe you've had less debt coming out
of university and so you could maybe sit in the
you know, right into a startup job and then it
was funded for a while, so you had enough to
pay off debts and then get some equity and then
you could make it. But without the equity coming in
or the funding coming into the companies, the equity doesn't
work with anything anymore.
Speaker 2: I think we see a lot of startup companies.
Speaker 1: Realizing they can't sell people on getting equity. I think
I think a solution here could be just less like
lower software engineering job, pay over time to put it
in nine and then it would be much easier to
hire people and it wouldn't be the glamorous role everyone
saw it to be in the past, but I think
would be way more sustainable.
Speaker 3: And I think you saw a very similar trend in legal,
Like there were a ton of lawyers and so now
lawyers have had to provide a service they you know,
like that the market was flooded with all these folks
thinking that they could that that a law degree ensured success,
and now they've all had to figure out, well, Okay,
what what is it that I really want to do
to add value? Like being just being a lawyer isn't enough.
I need to figure out my my niche, and I
think that's the same for technologists, like you got to
kind of figure out like what your what your value
prop is. Passionate Programmer, like Chad was written in a time,
was written in a time where it was kind of
pre this VC craze, and so I think Passionate Programmer
is still a really great book. And then I think
we'll see bootstrapping resurgence in bootstrapping where startups really need
to validate their idea. But I do think that since
the barrier is reducing, as salaries come down a little bit,
as as things kind of scale back, we'll see that
scrappiness research. I just I have this optimism in in
innovation and ingenuity that we'll probably see more of the
Hey if I if I built a thing that was
so much like this other thing, but it had this
extra feature. I think we're seeing that with the the
AI enabled you know, little video products or little uh
writing products, We're seeing just like, Okay, well I can
be as good as that thing with an extra feature.
The getting to as good as is really reduced, Like
I can be as good as some other service really quickly.
It's then happen by differentiate and steal market share. And
I think we'll see a lot of startups get super
scrappy about about that. So the fear of the startup
was always that, hey, with no encumbrance of trying to
maintain revenue and maintain overhead, could you come up with
a better idea. I think that'll still be there. It'll
just be from people who know how to really evaluate
their core audience and just target exactly what that small
group of people need. Music very much the same way.
Now you don't really see the big, huge monster band
that everybody loves. You see these folks that are probably
making a couple hundred thousand dollars a year as a
solo artist or as a scrap but they're marketing themselves
on social media and they're getting known and they're accumulating
enough of an audience to have concerts at big venues
and make a living. Music's been benefiting that for a
long time. Where now there's a bunch of smaller, just
smaller artists that feed our eclectic nature for differences. And
I think that's really cool.
Speaker 1: No, I mean that's a really great perspective actually, because
it really makes me think that there is no giant
corporate job that you're a musician of a large you
know business. I mean orchestra may be the one that
comes to mind, or some sort of marching band, or
if you work for a sports team, right, you know,
they usually have large sections, but it's not that big
compared to tech organizations.
Speaker 2: And it may mean that.
Speaker 1: You know, we've seen the limit and personal brand identification
and then also really pushing that brand forward, like what
is your thing? Being a person on LinkedIn or Facebook
or wherever you want to post and having a blog
that explains what you're doing, Like it seems like a
personal entrepreneurship change that it really will be the innovation
in the tech space going forward.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean if you could make us small software
that served a particular niche of people, like you know,
you made something for physical therapists that just really made
their lives easier. Sure, you might not get rich, you
might not go Ipo would be my example of that,
but if you had a stable base. I think thirty
seven Signals in a way has kind of been this
where you know, they have their their base camp subscribers
and there you know, their kind of area that they've covered.
People who love their software, and they've never taken a
ton of money, they've never gone into a ton of debt.
They just kind of, hey, we're we're fine operating in
the amount of subscribers that we have and seeing what
else they need, right and kind of building into that demand.
So the bootstrapping model, I think is going to come back.
And then the importance of listening to customers and being
willing to take ris for your your million subscribers rather
than trying to go super big. I think that's going
to be really really interesting.
Speaker 1: It may not even be that big, honestly, Like I
was thinking about this recently, Like think about where you
are a physical location that you have access to that
no one else has access to because it's where you
are at. And so there's some small area and there's
some number of software engineers or entrepreneurs technical entrepreneurs per
per capita that are distributed amongst the world in some way,
like there are like not every physical therapist office of
physical therapy office needs your software, maybe just the ones
in your city or some part of your city, and
that could be your specific niche And like really it's
like who do you know, Like, like what do your
parents do, What do your friends' parents do, what do
your friends do?
Speaker 2: Et cetera, et cetera in your network?
Speaker 1: Just of those people you know, and I for sure
there's someone there who already has some need and that
could be your your job to build and maintain that
piece of software.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I saw. I think it is one
of the thirty seven signals. Guys. He absolutely hated his
HOA software because they would they had parking reservations, so
there was some kind of app for managing parking, and
like every time he had to use it, he just
like died inside a little bit. And so he rewrote
that and sold it to his HOA to replace that
help them get it at a much like what he built.
He sold to them at a much lower price, and
wherever they were getting that software from they could discontinue
that and then he could continue to add the features
for them. And then that grew to a couple other
Hoas and it became a kind of a positive investment
right for him. So I agree with you. I think
like maybe that that micro niche We built dock works
a few years ago. We built the software called dockworks,
and it was you could if you were worked on
marine you're in the marine service industry, you really couldn't
find a CRM that allowed you to model the boats
or the boat inventory. You could go use like shop
Monkey or some of the other workflow management softwares, but
in shop Monkey it was a car, so you couldn't
you can put like some boats have four engines, you know,
like tons of engines, so that the modeling was all
wrong and you were like kind of shoehning it. So
we started talking to these marine service companies about like,
what do you need that's unique to marine services, And
so the core of it was still workflow management, invoiceeing,
work orders, that kind of stuff, payment, but to make
it tailored for their business. And we ended up selling
that to dock Master, who is a really great home
for that because they helped marinas manage the the slots
for the for the boats. So it had a great
time learning all about marine language because boating is a
boating and sailing is a whole other vocabulary. But it
was a really fun, you know, little adventure to build
a SaaS tool and find a really good home for it,
and I think overall it was a success.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think anyone looked at their ERP system
was like I love this, right, I mean, I know
a lot of people are using something, and I think
SAP is the you know, the enterprise, big one out there,
but there's it had been an explosion of micro ERP
is usually built by the company itself, like we need
something probably from Excel sheets or even a word document
or what's the worse emails often and yeah, I mean
that's a really good example of just even managing that
automatically and using your network to find and then build that.
And you didn't even have to be an expert to start, right,
you know. It's like, hey, you know you're suffering in
some way. How do we how do we turn that around?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Great story.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that. And I think at the at
the core of this, it's like, what is your mindset?
If your mindset is like based on a scarcity, like
oh no, there's you know, there's very few clients in
my space to work with, then of course you will
operate as if like it's scarce, right, But and it
may seem cliche to certain folks, but this abundance mindset
of like there is plenty of opportunity. I just have
to apply myself to the opportunity that I find. I
think it's just an all around healthier mindset and and
I would argue more true, there's tons of opportunity. But
if I hear this a lot from CEOs, well, my
particular group of users is super hard to market to. Like, Okay, well,
if you believe that, then that will of course be true.
Your your audience will be super hard to market to.
But re asking the question, well, where are where is
my audience? What are they looking at? How can I
be there when they're when they're thinking and consuming content
is opening folks up to a whole new kind of
marketing that usually involves some form of content creation or
like you said, founder branding. But but it just takes
that like that belief that they are there. My product
is meeting a need. That's why I built it, that's
why I love it, and I just need to find
the right way to share this with them. And being
understood is my responsibility. It's not their responsibility to understand.
It's my responsibility to get in front of them and
share my product or service as many times as it
is needed for them to for them to see the value.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I think it's a really great piece of motivation,
motivational wisdom. Mine the one, the one that stuck with
me for a while is like, it wasn't always Google
that was the you know, best known search engine in
the world. And I hear way too often that, oh,
you know, I can't compete with this company who does
it way better than what I have right now. And
I'm telling you, the company you're competing with isn't Google.
So like, you know, you could be the one, like
that could be your thing. You know, you weren't the
leader and then you became the leader, and understanding what
that difference is, uh, and what it has to be
is really what makes the product successful. And if you
believe that you can't beat them, then for sure, then
you're you're not going to do.
Speaker 3: That, right right, Yeah, I mean yeah, And there's so
many levers for you to be to be different. I mean,
for us, we're in a super competitive space, but I
understand that our relationship with a particular person, a particular
client is what really matters, because then we'll we'll get
the referral, the warm referral, We'll so we're not going
to worry about what would other people are in the space.
We're going to worry about what we do and do
well and like really double down on our culture and
make sure that we work with people who are the
right culture fit for us. And I think in that way,
the world is really big and we'll we'll we'll find
those we will find those people that we can treat
really special.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I hear you're.
Speaker 1: Talking about all these different topics that you putting words
to a lot of the thoughts that that I've had.
I wish I had an excuse being someone on prem
or using Kupernetes that we can go it by Particle forty.
Speaker 2: One's help here.
Speaker 1: But you know, that's a good good reminder that really
you don't even have to be a fundamentally tech company
focused in order to find opportunities for pulling in technology
or changing something that you're doing to reduce costs or
stay ahead of the game, et cetera.
Speaker 3: Well, that's why I add I did fractional CTO Services
or CTO Advisory, And I don't mean for that to
be a plug. I just mean that, like I love
working on the mindset around entrepreneurialism and the mindset around
business growth and the process for that. As I meet entrepreneurs,
so many of them are hustling. So things like having
a plan on the page, understanding your mission and values,
what are your ninety day goals? How are you applying
those nineties Just even some time compression from the annual
planning cycle to a quarterly planning cycle can be such
a game changer, not only for the leader but for
the team too, like, hey, what are we trying to Like, yeah,
we set those annual goals, but so time compression. There's
just a lot of things that I'm really passionate about
that I get to expose in that fractional CTO area.
Whether the end result is to many of my fractional
CTO clients, they already have vendors that they're quite happy with,
but they need help with the language. So they want
to speak in results language. The vendor wants to speak
in solutions language. We need to have good currency for
how to bridge that gap, and so like, yeah, I
just love working with folks on really the strategy and
the business at large, and then how technology accelerates that.
Speaker 1: Has there been one particular vertical that seems like it's
been coming up more and more, And say the last
year than historically that you've focused then.
Speaker 3: So by design, I love legal services. I built a
company and sold it to Legal Zoom. I love industries
that are a little more on the aniquated side because
there's just more opportunity for things like robotic process automation
or just things that folks feel is going to be
not possible, and so I love that. My first business
in travel, you know, travel was all on a green
screen and so to you know, to do automate automate
travel ticketing, and that just Snowbay thought you could do that,
you'd had to punch into the green screen. So yeah,
I love some of those more antiquated industries that still
need still need love and can get to the next level.
Speaker 2: I absolutely think that's great.
Speaker 1: I remember working at some regulated industries and when it
came to software processes, hearing so many times we can't
do that.
Speaker 2: We have some regulation.
Speaker 1: I like I having known the regulation, I'd like point
me to the line that says that we can't as
an aerospace or healthcare, because for sure there is nothing
like that there. We can build the process which matches
the regulation, but you do need someone to come in
from the outside that has that mindset has worked either
in and around it, or really had the fundamental knowledge
about what the regulations are, what works in the industry
as a whole, to apply it to that specific business
to help them over the hurdle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, online advertising has been a really key space for
this because as the privacy is the desire for privacy
has increased, the ability to target dynamically has decreased. So
then there's a lot of like privacy people who can
help you anonymize, like understand that you're anonymizing the information
you're you're still making reasonable decisions on where to where
to show, what ads, how to make the match, but
you're just having to be a little safer with it.
So there were a lot of dark arts going on
in online advertising for a long time, and it's cool
to see folks kind of clean that up. I still
want email to get fully disrupted, you know, something at
the intersection of like calendly and spam email and like
what products and services am I open to hearing about
and some kind of you know, match make there. I
think email is super broken.
Speaker 1: Do you mean for the getting emails between like in
your personal network or from businesses like transactional.
Speaker 2: Stuff like orders.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just for advertisements, yeah, all all of the above.
Like what I'm experiencing is that I hand out my
calendar link to anybody who I want to speak with,
and I would love to exchange value, like exchange value,
not even a transaction, but just exchange value. But to
have to meet new people through email is just like
everybody's trying to meet everybody through email and it's just
a big cluster. So some kind of some kind of
mediary there where I can say, hey, I'm open to
this type of conversation. You know, LinkedIn has probably taken
some of that where everybody's now spamming LinkedIn, But it
seems like some kind of pay at play, like hey,
I am open to talking to the cloud providers if
you would, you know, if you'll pay a small hourly rate,
then you can come pitch me. You know, something like this.
Speaker 2: I just read this. I don't remember what it is.
Speaker 1: There is for sure this product that is like subject
Matter Experts for sale where people can actually search for that.
I don't recall what the product was that was doing it.
It's one of the fractional spaces that I'm in. Suggested
that as an option. I haven't really checked it out,
but that's what that sort of reminds me of my company. Actually,
we've gone down the whole part like middle area, like
not quite the advertisement, but giving out personal like individualized
email addresses to people per product they log in with,
so like we're a login provider and also everything else
for in the B to B space and for the
end users, individual email addresses for them, so that only
that particular target can email them with the things that
they are expecting from there, and that I think really
cuts down on some of the noise.
Speaker 2: I mean, obviously we're not their only email provider.
Speaker 1: In that regard, but it does help eliminate when that
email provider gets popped or you know, our customer who
is set up somewhere and they s build their whole
database of email addresses. Well, like we can just shut
that off because of a unique idea in.
Speaker 2: Each one of those.
Speaker 1: But yeah, there's they're for sure a bunch of different
levels here that just don't have good solutions for Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot of noise.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I think that's probably a good leaving off
point rather than opening that can of worms to go
further in.
Speaker 2: And I'll say, should we do some picks?
Speaker 3: Sure? Sure, yeah, I think my pick for today is
a book. The author's name as Byron Katie and the
book is called Loving. What is the kind of the
gist of it is? We all have thoughts that are
kind of stories we tell ourselves, you know. Maybe the
little edgy metaphor is like when my wife pulls the
pillow up in front of her in between us at night, like, well,
my life, my wife doesn't like me, so that may
be a thought that I have at that particular moment,
and so she goes through a somewhat of a meditative diagno,
like a meditative process of asking like what is the thought?
Is that thought true? Like can you know for sure
that that thought is true? And then what would your
life be like without the thought? And then a turnaround,
which is you kind of say the thought, well maybe
I don't really like me or you, you know you
you try different possibilities around around that thought, and what
you're trying to arrive at is like a more to
observe reality, being a lover of reality, rather than these
stories that we tell ourselves. If you can't take a
picture of it, it's not actually true. It's this meaning
that I'm interpreting from the events around me, the story
that I tell myself about that. And I find that,
like our problems, our problems become problems because of the
way we think about them. And so I'm just really
enjoying this book. I'm kind of savoring it because it's
this uh you know, it's really helping with like negative
self talk and just like, well, is that really true
that you know I have horribly critical I think in
the past I've had a horribly critical self talk, and
so kind of grabbing those thoughts, those negative self talk
and then going through this four question process has really
helped to transform my self talk into something more true
than the meanings that I was, you know, more an
appreciator of reality rather than than the man, you're such
an idiot, you know you were you missed that meeting
again or or whatever, like so like is that true?
And I know for sure that that is true? And yeah,
so Loving What Is by Byron Katie.
Speaker 1: Well, it sounds like definitely on the road to enlightenment there,
it's a good book. Yeah, I mean the things that
come to mind for me on that are people project
a lot like you don't know how it is, and
you often substitute what you own, what you think you
would do in a circumstance for what is actually happening.
Speaker 2: So it comes from internal.
Speaker 1: The other one, I think the life lesson that I
learned a long time ago was it's probably not about you.
And that's sort of a hard one to get through because
you know, it's my life, like everything's about me, and
realizing that, like, whatever is happening, especially like people responding
to emails or messages, like it probably literally.
Speaker 2: Has nothing to do with you, of why someone's not responding.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I had a calendly link. I give it to
all my clients like hey, but you know, really inviting
them to any of my free time if they want
to discuss something. And I love that. But one particular client,
I just like I was dreading the meeting that was
coming up that they had kind of spontaneously booked, and
so I a journal to kind of work through these
these thoughts like why am I dreading this meeting? What
is it that? What is the thought? First off, like oh,
they're they're probably going to complain, and like, well is
that really true? And is there is there anything about
our performance. That's really sure, there could be, but I
don't see it. And what I came to was that
they probably just need help. So for me, I went from, oh,
my goodness, I'm dreading this meeting because they're probably going
to complain. I was already getting ready to be defensive.
I was even processing what they might complain about and
how I was going to defend that. And I was
in the super defensive cycle and the meeting hadn't even
happened yet. So then by kind of processing through it
and going through those four questions, I was like, you know,
what's what's actually true is that they need help. They've
they've scheduled this meeting with me because they need help.
They're investing in technology, they want to make sure that
there's ROI they need help to make sure. Wait, that's
what I'm here for. That's actually my purpose, that's that's
my mission. And so then I got really excited to
tend like a complete turnaround to like, Wow, I get
to go to this meeting because I get to help
this client figure out, you know, their concerns. And you know,
maybe two percent of that meeting was constructive criticism. The
rest of it was just helping them move just strategically
through what they were what they were doing. And yeah,
so to be able to turn that feeling of dread
into feeling of excitement was was kind of what I picked.
Speaker 2: Up from this pick amazing.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I actually have two picks for today. The
first one is, I think as a show, we're thinking
about adding sponsorships for anyone that's interested in having their
little blurb be something that we.
Speaker 2: Say and share with our audience.
Speaker 1: I don't know if anyone's actually interested in that, but
I'll drop that there. Something will And I decided and
the official pick for today will be a book by
Adam Grant called Give and Take.
Speaker 2: It's about how the world is made.
Speaker 1: Up of potentially different kinds of personas that fall into givers,
takers and matchers, and who is most successful in different
sorts of engagements and environments and what that means and
how you can recognize who is which one and what
kind you are and what that means for your relationships
and how you can work efficiently.
Speaker 3: I love that. I love that. Given. Yeah, I was
once in a group exercise. It was about thirty people
in the group, and we had been in the group
for it was like a multi day event. We've been
in the group for a couple of hours, right, had
the opportunity to and to introduce ourselves. And the exercise
at the end of the first day was to go
around the circle and as you went around the circle,
you would either call the person a giver or a taker,
and then the number, the number of givers that you
got was tallied versus the you know, so you didn't
get any points for the takers with the number of givers.
And then we stack ranked ourselves and I was I
was like at the end of the list. So the
way I had shown up at that particular event within
the first you know, hours of the event was more
like a taker than a giver. And it was this
really interesting objective measure. The people who were towards the
top of the list were the folks that arrived early.
They talked to everyone, they made sure that they you know,
introduced each other, and it was really like a pathway
to understanding that introversion is more of a mask that
we wear, you know, that there's this choice to engage
that they had taken more seriously, maybe because of their
natural personality, maybe that was comfortable for them or more
natural for them, but that my reserved posture did give
an impression and then when pushed into a binary decision
that I I didn't rank, well, I love that. I mean,
I didn't love it at the time. It was kind of,
you know, like, but it was great to get this
subjective measure of like how I show up in the
first moments, so that group activity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that's actually sort of a good conclusion there.
I mean, my realization was a little bit similar. I
tried to own mine, which is I consider myself a
disagreeable giver and that's you know, I will fight you
on whatever and the opposite. And I feel like that's
a much better place for me to be in because
it also is really difficult for people to see the
difference between an agreeable taker and a giver. And I
feel like that's where the book really helps to dive
into understanding what those patterns are. Because we often associate
people who will help us, who want to help us,
who will want to collaborate with us, based off how
agreeable they are, rather than what they actually care about
and how they go about the process, what the end
goal is. And so I highly recommend the book for
anyone who works on any team or cares about personal relationships.
Speaker 2: I think it's hugely helpful though cool.
Speaker 1: So that's it for today's episode. Thank you so much
Ben Jonson for joining us and talking about teams and
automation and going to the cloud and all the challenges there.
It was really a great show to have you on today.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Thanks, Warren appreciate it.