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